Suiting Up With HoloSuit’s Full-Body VR Suit

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A good step for VR in general. I hope the kickstarter and actual product come out well in the end because in some cases, overexpectation/hype for VR/AR/MR products and software cause people to turn away from the experience when it doesn't quite reach expectations. VR might not be super mainstream now, but hopefully in 5 years, we'll see more widespread adoption.
 

Davil

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VR submarine is honestly pretty stupid. The US Navy has actual full mock ups of different parts of the ships they use for training all the time. So VR is actually a step down in that case. I don't even see the usefulness in pants and junk. Really the holy grail for VR right now is a high resolution wireless experience. A glove would be OK I suppose, but truthfully the controllers on the Vive are pretty good at replicating the feel of something like a gun, particularly if you have a stock mock up.
 
burdensome and clunky handheld devices

As opposed to a full-body suit? : 3

The haptic feedback seems interesting, but having a sparse scattering of rumble motors doesn't exactly seem particularly great. How about devices that apply a bit of pressure to the fingertips and palm of the hand? Maybe use a tiny servo motor on the back of each finger to tighten a cord connected to a cushion on the front. Something like that probably wouldn't be very expensive to implement either, and could be combined with per-finger rumble for additional effects. A more advanced implementation could even lock finger movement, perhaps using a cable routed down the back of each finger to the hand, where they could be tightened or loosened by additional motors to limit finger movement and make it feel like a physical object is being held that can't just be easily clipped through.

As far as limb detection goes, something along the lines of Kinect would probably be more practical for widespread adoption, as it would not require a special suit at all. To improve precision, the optical sensor data could be combined with the positioning data from the headset, controllers / gloves, and perhaps foot sensors attached to a pair of shoes. The main benefit of a suit would be haptic feedback of course, but again, I think you would want more detail than just a rumble motor here or there.
 

SockPuppet

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I applaud the efforts of all the engineers involved in this project. They're solving some EXTREMELY difficult problems here that aren't apparent to the laymen.

That being said, having to put on a full-on suit just isn't going to cut it. No one is going to want to take 30 minutes to suit up and calibrate 36 sensors before a quick gaming session. This simply isn't feasible in the real world. When the lighthouses also double as a camera array that tracks your whole body in sub-millimeter precision without having to stray on 50 pounds of gear is the day this becomes popular.
 
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