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Make it 10x bigger and 3x faster and you’re halfway to having a holodeck.
Disney has their own version of Epic’s “Volume” I believe, which is also very holodeck-esque
I don’t think it needs to be much bigger for an individual, just fast enough to keep them near the center even at a run. Smaller pads will be the way to go, just have to drive and control them in sync. Maybe predictive software to only run where your feet are at or will be, to minimize the noise.
I’d imagine running puts a lot more wear on the moving parts :/ It’s gonna have to be pretty reliable
Really interesting video. I can imagine playing an MMORPG where you get around by actually walking and running. Suddenly the biggest computer geeks would be super fit.
like when the collective world went outside at the same time when Pokemon Go launched. Our quiet downtown area was amazing to walk through. all those people.
Kind of a shame that the pandemic was so soon after. I wonder how much it affected the game’s popularity.
It was 3.6 years after? And it was pretty dead at that point. Like it was popular with a core group who were making Niantic and TPC tons of money, but the phenomenon was dead by the anniversary.
It died in my area when they dropped the amount of spawn nodes to the point where you couldn’t really walk around. You had to drive pretty far at that point, and that kill let most people’s enthusiasm.
I don’t know if it was complaints by local businesses or what, but after that I never saw large groups walking around again.
COVID hit and they released “play safe” features like remote raids and increased spawn radius. Then they started enshitification and striped features, raised prices, started starving players of resources and new features were pay gated. It’s still mildly popular but you need to join discord groups to raid.
Seems like it might be helpful to prevent people from escaping the work prisons we’ll all be toiling in one day. 🤣
(Was that too dark?) Super-cool tech, though. 👍
“they” would probably opt for more efficient robots and just let us poor people die/kill each other
A company called Virtuix already developed a treadmill like this called the Omni like 10 years ago. They have released a few home versions of it and some larger ones for arcades. They’re still refining it for mass production it seems.
Pretty sure that was basically a plastic bowl you slide around in your socks on.
Wait, pretty sure I saw this demonstrated by a small startup almost 20 years ago.
Pretty sure companies like that get bought by companies like Disney…
Disney also employs badass engineers they call ‘imagineers’. I got contacted by recruiting for that but didn’t have enough personal just for fun creative engineering projects in my portfolio to land it
Still cool to have been contacted by their recruiters at all for such a neat job! It’s one of the few areas of Disney that actually seems like it would be a blast to work in.
Seems like it would only work for objects with large, flat bottoms—if you tried to use it barefoot it would likely rip your toes off.
This is just a crude early version. Eventually the tiles will be significantly smaller, quieter, and less prone to ripping toes off.
I wonder if a layer of Ripstop over the tiles would reduce performance. I could imagine fabric being a less expensive option than R&Ding more proprietary tech like making the tiles even smaller.
Edit: Glossed over the fact the tiles rotate. Nevermind me.
I wonder what it feels like to lay down naked on this thing and have it spin you around.
Pinchy.
Also, hair-pully.
Edit: oh god imagine running fast on this thing then falling over with long hair. scalped
