If fiddling with joypads and keyboards just doesn't make you feel close enough to the action, you could soon be playing video games by running and leaping with all the kamikaze enthusiasm of Lara Croft, thanks to Austrian company Cyberith. In the race to escape reality and get ever deeper inside imaginary digital worlds, the tech firm has unveiled the Virtualizer, a kind of full-body joystick hailed as “the next level of immersive gaming”.
Looking like a cross between a grown-up baby walker and a treadmill, the device incorporates a number of different sensors that let you “step inside the game and become one with your character”. There is a low-friction baseplate full of optical sensors, on which you can slip and slide around in your socks while stepping out of the way of landmines and tiptoeing past enemy guards. Then there is a harness, of the climbers' variety, suspended from a big ring around your waist, baby-bouncer style, which slides up and down three poles. It allows you to rotate, jump, kneel and crouch – and even sit down while pretending to drive tanks and fly planes (or simply have a rest when all the action gets a bit too much).
“I want to bring virtual reality to the next level,” says Tuncay Cakman, the ponytailed and magnificently goatee-bearded founder of Cyberith, pictured here demonstrating his invention. “I grew up playing games like Quake, Dune and Duke Nukem, but just sitting in front of a keyboard and a mouse and staring at a screen was not enough for me.” Rather than taking up some outdoor pursuits, he turned his attentions to finding a way to actually step into these fantasy worlds. “I started to think of a solution to walk inside the game,” an ambition he began to realise while a student at the Technical University of Vienna.
Recently launched on Kickstarter, the Virtualizer joins a recent resurgence in virtual reality development, with devices like the Oculus Rift headset bringing gamers closer to the action – a little too close for some. “We'll need some seatbelts for people,” said Brendan Irbe, founder of Oculus, which was recently bought by Facebook for $2bn. “You want to stand up, you want to walk around.”
Cyberith's Virtualizer allows you to do just that, and goes one step further, incorporating haptic feedback to let you “feel the game” as well. “Feel grenades exploding next to you, jump off a cliff and level the impact, the possibilities are endless,” says Cyberith. Those worried that they are bringing dynamite and cliff-jumping jolts into their living rooms can rest assured that the deadly impacts are just simulated by audio transducers embedded in the baseplate, which give a gentle rumble beneath your socks.
The developers have set their ambitions beyond the gaming sphere, seeing commercial applications for the Virtualizer in everything from architecture to psychological therapy. “Why not explore historic sites, walk through a DNA strand or go for a walk on the moon with the Virtualizer?” they ask. “Or why not take a walk through your future home before it’s even built or design 3D models while you’re standing inside of them?”
Forget exercise ball seats and telescopic standing-up desks: the immersive VR baby bouncer could be the architect's office chair of the future.
