The consumer versions of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are both set to release early next year, but no matter how good they get at solving problems relating to image quality and latency, there’s still one giant problem with all virtual reality devices: feedback.
Even if the images of a futuristic space battle you see in the headset look realistic, your body doesn’t feel the force of a spaceship turning and looping through space. With CableRobot, an insane-looking contraption built by a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany, it will.
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As you can see in the video above, this isn’t something like a Microsoft Kinect that you’ll be able to play at your house by simply moving a coffee table out of the way. The device, which suspends a single seat mid air, is able to turn, twist, and fling itself across the room and stop on a dime, and takes over what looks like a small auditorium. The seat is attached to a platform, which is surrounded by a cage, which is pulled by eight retracting cables and a high power winch system, hence the name: CableRobot.
Connect that system so it corresponds to the movement you’d feel in a virtual reality flight simulator or driving game, and you get an experience that feels so real you might barf.
