The Next Advance In Virtual Reality

"Typically, a user steps inside an eight-foot chamber, surrounded on all sides (sometimes including floor and ceiling) by video screens. Wearing 3-D glasses and gripping a joystick, the user navigates through a virtual world, such as the interior of a blood vessel or pre-Vesuvian Pompeii. But moving around with a joystick hardly mimics reality—nor does banging into a laboratory wall while strolling across a virtual open field. Also, because movement through the virtual world is not directly correlated with the user's body movement, it's easy for someone to lose track of their navigational path, essentially getting "lost" in the virtual world. And that's where locomotion interface comes in.The Treadport that Hollerbach and his team are developing is a virtual reality cave in which the user controls the flow of imagery by moving on a treadmill. 'There's a physical cost to moving,' says Hollerbach. 'The ability to walk or run makes the whole thing far more natural.'"

Thanks to Technology Review Editor