Virtuix, the maker of the virtual reality treadmill Omni, prepares applications beyond gaming. Here you see the treadmill in a gaming context:
http://youtu.be/aTtfAQEeAJI
Roel Verrycken, the US correspondent of the Belgian newspaper De Tijd, had an interview with founder Jan Goetgeluk and asked which new applications his company is developing. Goetgeluk:
For training police or military personnel. We have a special military version which is a bit bigger and sturdier and which has some additional functions. Recently we participated at a specialized fair and there’s a lot of interest from that sector. Remember the attack on Osama bin Laden? The US military built the house in which he was hiding. Using the Omni the training coould be done virtually without having to build a complete house. Every possible environment can be programmed virtually for training purposes. We see a very important market there.
Asked how dependent Virtuix is on the development and commercial launch of the Oculus Rift headset, Goetgeluk explained Omni is compatible with all devices. He referred to the Samsung VR goggles, and said that smartphones will have the capacity to be transformed into virtual reality devices. “Everyone in the industry is determined to advance virtual reality. It’s still a fledgling industry, now we’ll have to gain mass market traction. That’s something for 2015.”
You can read the complete interview (Dutch language) on our newspaper website.
This work by rolandlegrand is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International