Video: Walking in the Virtusphere

Sébastien Kuntz of A VR Geek Blog got some hands-on (in?) time with the Virtusphere recently. The Virtusphere is, as he puts it, "a 2.6m polycarbonate sphere of 120kg lying on wheels, with an incredibly sophisticated movement detection device below (a mouse!), used as a virtual reality locomotion device." Once a user climbs inside, he or she can walk, run, or jump with a little bit of practice, though Kuntz notes that it's a little unnatural to be walking inside a sphere, unlike the Cyberwalk treadmill option.  In its defense, and this is possibly why the military is using it for training, at $50,000, the Virtusphere is about 20 times less than the omni-directional treadmill.

The video shows a user walking in the Virtusphere while viewing a world created with Dassualt Systemes' Virtools through a head-mounted display.