Today I am trying the Cybershoes VR gaming station which is yet another product that claims to solve the problem of locomotion in VR. The Cybershoes however do this in an interesting way and that is seated!
So back in the day when consumer VR was still in its infancy stages we are all told to sit down and take it as the standard that would be around for a while well at least from companies like Oculus. Well flash forward a few years and all of a sudden sitting in VR was no longer the thing to do and virtual reality was all about room scale now. It was at this time that most VR-gamer’s got up out of their comfy seats to find out that as mind blowing as room scale VR is it can get tiring after a while standing on your feet… especially at the end of a long day of well… standing on your feet!
So now we have the Cybershoes Gaming Station which claims to solve for both of these issues… It allows for infinite walking and turning while in VR all while still slightly seated. The Cybershoes take a different approach to solving for the locomotion problem by having the user sit in a bar stool and strap foot controllers over their shoes to sort of walk in place while perched on the stool for stability.
I have to say this approach works surprisingly well in most of the games I tried and does add to the immersion of playing them but it isn’t perfect either! As it has been with the other VR walking solutions I have tried recently I just could not get the Cybershoes to ever truly feel like the walking action was 1:1 with my leg movements. With both the AgileVR and WalkOVR systems I got closer because they both have the ability to fine tune the experience in their launcher software. With the Cybershoes the software suite is a bit lacking on any ability to tune the device and the only means of adjustment is currently through a physical slider on the units controller.
Overall I found the Cybershoes to be fun to play with and one hell of a leg workout too… Oh yeah, the Cybershoes are awesome for VR fitness applications and had me breaking a sweat and feeling the burn in no time! I plan to revisit the fitness aspect of this device soon but for now if you want to learn more about the Cybershoes or buy a set for yourself then please heads to the link below:
Learn more about Cybershoes here: