Feel Three: Virtual Reality Simulator is a Kickstarter campaign that has achieved over 150% of its original goal. Feel Three is providing an affordable and modular pod to play your virtual reality games in. These pods are designed to make you feel like you are inside of your game. The simulator is so versatile that they can be designed for over 100 games, all which are compatible with the simulator themselves. This is supposedly the next step in making virtual reality more immersive and real, but is that what the industry really needs?
The simulators are designed to be designed. By that I mean they are going to be built by the user for each game. In the package you will receive (shipping is starting at the end of 2019) you are going to have plenty of different options for building. The spheres are strong, maintain the center of gravity, and even have motors built into them. They are customizable down to the chair. You can be in a cockpit, drivers seat in a car, the pilot of a plane, and even turn it into a motor bike.
The range of motion is over 100° and has 5 different rotation simulations that are reloaded into the software of the engines. This will provide total immersion while keeping you in the seat. This is an experience that is hard to find anywhere, let alone in your own house. The last notable feature is the compatibility of the software and hardware from Feel Three. With over 100 games that have been optimized for the simulator, every major VR controller being added into the chairs, every major headset now being supported, and the new “motion movie” mode is something to take note of. This mode is similar to the ideas from Vreal (who recently went out of business) and the new Viveport Video app.
There is plenty that the simulating machine can do for you, but how much of is it needed? Very rarely do we find a good locomotion system inside of a VR game, and even more rarely are these systems improved by an outside influence. The answer to bad locomotion inside of VR is not more movement. In fact, the less movement you have in a game, the better your game is going to be. All of the games that are compatible rely on moving your body through a virtual world. No headset is good enough to convince us that it is real right now, so why are we trying to convince our bodies it is?
Above is a screenshot from the official Kickstarter page for Feel Three. Off of first glace, you may get excited by this idea and want to try it out, but it is not what it seems. Just because your body is going to be laying completely back, doesn’t mean your experience will be any more immersive than your headset is allowing already. Adding bad motion to bad motion does not equal good motion. Two negatives don’t make a positive, and this is what we are seeing with this latest release from Feel Three.
One of the best ways the VR industry can improve immseriveness inside of headsets right now, is with the headsets themselves. This makes less business and money for third party inventors trying to make it big, but the industry is not ready for the adding motion yet. Feel Three is a fantastic idea and a perfect modular system, and it isn’t their fault that the industry isn’t ready for their idea yet. Down the road, this may be the future of locomotion in VR.
