Can I walk around in VR?
A
From his own slightly seasick experiments, Guru can tell you that room-scale VR is unbelievably accurate and sharp these days, and the experience you’ll get with something like a £299 Oculus Quest 2 – actually, scratch that, only with the Quest 2 – is nothing short of magnificent. But by ‘walk around’ you probably don’t mean ‘fumble around one and a bit square metres of a fully rearranged living room constantly fighting with the guardian system’.
Different games use different methods of perambulation. Some allow you to project a spot on the floor and teleport there, some allow you to biliously steer yourself along with an analogue stick, and some even give you a preposterous walking mode whereby you put your arms by your sides and swing them back and forth, which is fantastic for spectators but does leave the player feeling a little like a penguin trapped in some kind of mad scientist’s laboratory. Some, like Half Life: Alyx, even offer you the option of whatever suits you best.
Virtuix’s forthcoming Omni One seems like it’ll be the best option for full-on interaction. It’s a weird mix of exoskeleton and 360-degree treadmill, supporting everything from running at full pelt to jumping, crouching and kneeling. It’s designed to comfortably fit in a living room and 30 games should be available for it at launch. Early indications are that it’ll cost about $2,000 and ship in the middle of this year. Guru is pretty sure that if it’s that cheap he’ll break it within an hour, though Virtuix’s reputation in the commercial VR rig sector is strong so let’s offer it the benefit of the doubt.
Don’t forget there are a bunch of ways to enjoy VR without walking at all; Microsoft Flight Sim is a blast, Guru highly recommends Euro Truck Simulator 2, and The Climb and its sequel are great vertigoinducing cliff-danglers that ask only for your hands.