Today is the day that I publish a post that (because of my work) I’ve postponed for too much time: my hands-on with Vitruvian VR, one of the funniest VR machines I’ve tried in the last months.
Vitruvian VR
Vitruvian VR is an Italian startup whose mission is to build a machine that can make the user move in the air, as if he is flying, while immersed in virtual reality. The name comes from the famous Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci: the pose that the user has inside the big circle of the machine resembles the one of the famous painting by Leonardo.
Vitruvian aims at providing full 360 degrees of body rotation on all axes with no gimbal lock. The user can so rotate his full body in all directions as if he was flying freely in the sky. The machine to offer it is of course quite big, so it is not meant as domestic hardware, but for installations for enterprise use (e.g. for the training of astronauts) or for out-of-home entertainment (e.g. flight simulation in VR arcades).
Since with this product the user can rotate his own body to align it with the direction he is flying in virtual reality, when flying with it, the motion sickness is theoretically zeroed.
Currently, Vitruvian is still in its prototypical version, and the team is working on the first version that solves some of the current issues and realizes the vision of the team. In the meanwhile, they are looking for additional funds, partners, and customers.
Hands-on Vitruvian VR
I know the Vitruvian people since a few years ago (we’re both desperate VR Italian people :P), but I’ve been able to try their device only at AWE EU in Lisbon at the end of 2022. At AWE Vitruvian was one of the main attractions, and it got fully booked pretty fast. It was such a success that it even won an Auggie Award at the final ceremony!
Setup
The big machine of Vitruvian is basically a giant gyroscope. If we ignore the mechanical technical details, we can say that it is a giant circle that rotates in all directions, and you rotate with it.
The first thing I had to do when arrived at the booth, was to be secured to this “big circle”: the Vitruvian team made sure to lock my feet to the base of the circle and my torso to a back rest that was installed on it. I had to be secured well because the circle can be rotated in every possible direction, so the team had to be sure that however I moved, I couldn’t fall down from the machine.
After all the safety measures had been taken and I had been secured to the big circle like a pilot of a jet, I could finally put my hands on the two joysticks that were in front of me: one for the left and the other for the right hand. The team explained to me that the right one was to be used to rotate the big gyroscope around the vertical axis (rotate left/right) while the left one was to rotate around the horizontal axis (lean up/down). Then they put on me a VR headset, which was an old HP Windows Mixed Reality device. Giovanni, the CCO of the company, jokingly said that he was sorry that I had to wear such an old headset. I answered that it didn’t matter… trying an old hardware would have made me feel a bit younger than I was. I knew that what I was trying was a prototype, so I didn’t care much about the details.
After I was ready to go, I had to wait for the team to start the experience, launching before the Windows Mixed Reality ecosystem and then the Unity application of the demo. Vitruvian had at that time two demos available: one with Space Engine, to let the users fly around the outer space, and then a little game about paragliding that was produced internally. The demo I tried was the game one.
Hands-On
I love crazy VR hardware, so on the Vitruvian, I felt like a kid trying its new shiny toy. So as soon as I was in it, the demo started, and the team told me I could go, the first thing I did was to push the left trigger immediately to the max, until the gyroscope put me completely upside down.
Unluckily I don’t have a picture of this epic moment, but I was with my head down and my foot towards the ceiling. Let’s see that I performed a good test of all the safety belts they used on me (but I’m still alive, so they worked). Being completely upside-down, my body started feeling discomfort, like strong nausea. Luckily that day I didn’t have a big breakfast. And also the system got a bit crazy: initially, the game became unplayable, then the screen became all black. Basically, I broke the system in a few seconds, but it was so fun, and I would 100% do it again. My friends at Vitruvian told me that I’m completely crazy and the demo was expecting people to get a bit used to controls before trying more extreme stuff. Anyway, they enjoyed my craziness, too.
After the game was restarted, I started playing it without trying to break everything. The demo was about paragliding down a mountain and flying down trying to get through some hoops following a path in the air that lead me to the valley. It was a very basic demo. In the beginning, I had some serious difficulties in playing it, but then after I got used to the system, I was much better at flying.
The reasons for my initial difficulties were given by the prototypical nature of the system. In particular, the big problem was that the joysticks worked not in an analog way, but in an on/off fashion. This meant that for instance, the up/down joystick either made the system go up at a certain speed when pushed forward, or down at a certain speed when pushed backward, or still if it was around its center. There was no velocity increment, the angular speed was either zero or a certain value, so there was no fine control of the movements. Using the joysticks in their usual way was impossible because I couldn’t calibrate the angular speed. The best way of moving, as soon as I understood it, was to give short bursts of movement in a particular direction and adjust the direction of flight with these little discretized movements in the horizontal and vertical directions to tune where I was going towards.
When I started moving this way, I started to play better. But I found another problem: the movement of the machine always started with a slight delay after my movement of the joystick. Furthermore, when each small burst of movement given by me finished, the machine stopped abruptly, and there was a recoil moment when the gyro circle oscillated a bit.
Let’s say it has not been the smoothest way of moving I have ever tried in VR, and for sure it was not something people should try if they have a weak stomach. If you have to try it, I warn you that it can be an intense experience: it’s true that you don’t feel “motion sickness”, but, especially if you try to move fast like me, you may feel discomfort from the abrupt movements of the machine.
Add to it the fact that the mechanic of rotating around one axis with one hand and around the other axis with the other hand is not the most intuitive one to use in VR… many times I tried to use the wrong hand to perform a specific rotation I wanted to have.
But notwithstanding the clunkiness of the prototype, the simplicity of the demo, and the sickness, I had a lot of fun trying it. It was great for me to try something new in the VR space, and was fun being able to fly in VR with my whole body, and even try extreme maneuvers like going totally upside-down. Feeling the machine rotating my body in all directions was amazing, especially for someone like me that loves hardcore VR experiences. I clearly understood the value of mixing this machine with a flying game.
Final Impressions
I’m a big fan of Vitruvian VR. It is currently a prototype, and as it is typical of a project in that state, it has a lot of problems. But it made me try something cool and innovative in VR, and I could spot its potential in making people fly in virtual reality. I can see some uses in some specific training industries (e.g. aerospace) and also some potential uses in arcades, especially for hardcore VR gamers that don’t suffer from motion sickness. It’s not a machine meant for the mass market, but one that can work in some specific use cases.
But the company has still to prove its real value by delivering its final product. The prototype is good to showcase the vision, but we need to see if the real product is able to fulfill its promises. I hope they can find more funds and partners to make it happen… and I can’t wait to break also the new version with some crazy maneuvers!