Matt Carrell has been working on Stompz for the last five years and tells the story of how it came about. Back in 2009, he was a runner in military training where he couldn’t leave the fence line. He started to use the Trimersion Virtual Reality HMD, and hacked together a system to be able to run in place in real life and have that provide input so that he could run around in Call of Duty.
This system has evolved into Stompz, which uses accelerometers attached to your feed to detect when you’re walking in place and then provides that as an input control to VR. Matt explains some of the other motions that are possible with Stompz, and how that could be mapped to other input controls — as well as how it could move beyond the feet to your arms or other objects.
One of the key insights that Matt has is that walking in place provides just enough haptic feedback for your brain to believe that it’s actually running or walking — even if you’re sitting down. He questions how popular or effective systems like the Virtuix Omni or the Cyberith Virtualizer will be when you have to have a harness attached to your crotch, and he’s got some alternative omnidirectional treadmill ideas based upon a modified swivel chair.
Finally, he talks about his PodVR podcast that he started with Brian Bullard, and how Ready Player One has provided an inspiration for how VR will spread into society.
Reddit discussion here.
TOPICS
- 0:00 – Intro – Matt Carrell has been working on Stompz for 5 years. First iteration of Stompz in 2009. Loves VR community and VR chats. Co-founder of Sacramento VR. Finding any way to get involved in VR. Building train stations everywhere without trains yet. No consumer version, and enthusiasts may seem crazy. Waiting for the wave to come
- 2:31 – How Stompz works. Accelerometer on your feet to detect your foot motion, which then activates the forward key. Primary use is walking in place. Has a lot of interesting sensors in it. Developers would like to use these into their games. Alternative to Omni. Let you hack into the sensors so that you use it for whatever you want. Low-cost way for you to get access to data.
- 4:09 – Arm integration and other places on the body as well. Control a flight simulator with it.
- 4:50 – First starting Stompz in 2009. He was a runner and was in military training and couldn’t go anywhere, and wanted to be able to run around. Put a Trimersion VR display on his head so that he could run in place in Call of Duty and be somewhere else.
- 6:06 – Stereographic HMD with Trimersion with a gun that was connected to your headset
- 6:33 – Where did you get a Trimersion? From eBay. It failed.
- 6:55 – Wanted to get an existing VR HMD. Could pay $36k for a VR HMD, and it had a lot of wires and was really heavy. Couldn’t find a good VR HMD on the market in 2009.
- 7:35 – First heard of Oculus late. Missed opportunity to make an omni-directional treadmill. Wants to see omni-directional solution done right.
- 8:50 – Build a prototype of your omnidirectional treadmill. Sat in a modified swivel chair. All your weight is seated in your chair. Balance is a big issue on low-friction services. Against crotch straps.
- 10:02 – Running in VR. Where do you go? Anywhere. Don’t like seated VR experiences. Wants VR to be 360 experience. Feel like the real power of VR is fully immersed in 360-degrees. Gamers have to get used to turning with their head. Moving head in VR is impressive. Need a 360-version and to be able to go anywhere. Running through Unity Bootcamp. Would love to geotag runs where you could run down Pebble beach or Hawaii Beach. Mountains are difficult because going uphill breaks immersion.
- 12:14 – Does it feel like you’re actually running? People are really big on haptics, and Stompz provides haptic feedback. People are pumping their arms like they’re going somewhere. Don’t need the full intense, forward-leaning feedback
- 13:40 – Motion sickness and simulator sickness from walking in place. People do get motion sickness. Thinks that people get it less since they’re getting a lot of physical feedback of running. Brain feedback where something that’s off. Worse simulator sickness when people stop and turn rather than moving and turning.
- 14:44 – Using Stompz to step in a specific direction to determine where you’re going. Can tilt forward or backwards with the foot to move back. Found that a backwards tilt could provide a crouch motion. Other configurations to do other actions like crawling
- 15:58 – PodVR podcast to talk about cool things happening in the Silicon Valley. Have timely information to share with people. Want to get this information out.
- 16:48 – Potential of VR. Ready Player One novel. Good vision of the future for that. It’ll be in every household. People will have other roles in VR. Economy in VR. Will spread to every field. It’s going to blow up big.
Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:09.675] Matt Carrell: I'm Matt Stomps, Matt Carroll. I've been working on the Stomps foot controller for five years now and it's actually got a little backstory to it. I created my first device with wireless mice inside of an Altoids can strapped to the bottom of a shoe with just a piece of plastic to make sure I didn't crush it. And I just used that to kind of run around on my homemade omnidirectional treadmill. And this is back in 2009. And I made a little software that let you, you know, whenever you push your foot back, it would move you forward in space and let you run around 360. and so I've kind of been developing it from there. I've made a skate version and the new iteration has straps on your foot, the old one strapped on your ankle, lets you run around in the game. I've got a cool little setup here at SBVR with a boxing stand that I've never used to actually punch a bag, but it allows you to keep the wires out of the way so you can actually run around. I've got a good video of it that's going to go online soon. Stomps has been going on for quite a while now and I think it's almost ready to come to market. But that's just that bit of what I do with virtual reality. I actually love the community. So I'm a VR chat. I'm there every Sunday after Cymatic Bruce's show. And then I started Sacramento VR, co-founder of that. And, you know, just doing anything that I can to get into the community. SVVR, I go down to those meetups, you know, even two hour drive from Sacramento. But I love seeing Carl. I love seeing Bruce. So I try to find any way that I can to get into virtual reality, because I feel like we're all paddling out in the ocean waiting for the wave. Once the wave comes, hopefully you'll catch it. I heard a really good analogy last night at the bar from Kevin Joyce. Kevin Joyce, founder of VR Focus, he said, we're all building train stations out in the middle of nowhere, but once a train comes through, it has to pass through our station. So that's kind of everybody hopes. You know, of course, that's not necessarily true, but that's all of our hopes is to have that train station ready for once that train comes along, we'll be there. And right now we look crazy. You know, we're all building all of these things. There's no market, no consumer version. Nobody's put anything on a shelf yet. And, you know, might be two years, but we're all building this thing out in the middle of the desert. And, you know, people say, look at that crazy guy out there just swimming in the ocean. He's not going anywhere. Yeah, well, when that wave comes, you know, they're going to see something real cool.
[00:02:31.568] Kent Bye: Awesome. So what happens with Stomps? I mean, what is the actual interaction that you're having within virtual reality and how is that happening?
[00:02:39.275] Matt Carrell: Good question. So what Stomps does is it just takes accelerometer data and it allows you to just walk in place and the walk in place movement, so gesture recognition, just does a forward W key basically into the game and it plugs in So if you have an OVR controller in your game, it'll automatically work with stomps. So there's no SDK needed, it just plugs in as a keyboard or a joystick, and as long as you have that built into your game, which most games do, then it's automatically going to allow you to use locomotion. the primary use for it, but in developing that I realized that this has a lot of cool sensors packed into it. So it's got all of the inertial measurement units the iPhone would have. So a tilt sensor, a movement sensor, a knock sensor, so when you tilt your phone in a game It's got the same thing, but I realize that a lot of developers, you know, would like to use that in their virtual reality games and they kind of tried to use Wiimotes, but there's no real easy access to that for developers. So my plan is not only to be able to use this as like an alternative to an Omni, where you can sit down and you can still, you know, run in place where you can stand up and actually get a little bit of exercise. It's also going to let you hack into the sensors and use that for whatever you want. So the goal is to have it so that when you swipe, it'll insert one button press or one key press and then you know if you want to punch it'll put another one in there so a real low-cost way to allow you to interact with your games automatically.
[00:04:09.346] Kent Bye: And when you say swipe and punch, are you talking about your arms as well?
[00:04:12.269] Matt Carrell: Right, arms, yeah. I wear it anywhere, so it doesn't have to be on the feet, which is kind of the revelation that I've had, is that I've been using this for, you know, just foot controller, when it could be used for anything. So I'm using it right now as a flight simulator, and it basically acts as the pitch and roll. and allows you to control the aircraft with just putting your hand out. So I have a Leap Motion. One of the demos that they had was you could use your hand to control the aircraft similarly. And what I've done is now you can do it 360. You don't have to be seated. You can just use the exact same movement and gestures and control your game the same way and hack it.
[00:04:50.242] Kent Bye: And so take me back to 2009 when you first started in the seed of this idea. This is way before this latest wave of virtual reality. And what were you trying to do back then?
[00:05:00.430] Matt Carrell: Good question. Actually, I was not super familiar with virtual reality. I've always had kind of an immersive personality, but I was a runner at the time. It's hard to believe now because I'm getting put on a weight, but I loved to run and I was in military training. It was not such a nice place and I couldn't go anywhere. You couldn't leave the fence line. and I wanted to be able to run around like how can I run and enjoy my somewhere virtually and so I kind of came up with you know this idea of maybe I could put a display on my head and I could try and work away so I could actually run in place 360 degrees and be somewhere else and not be here in you know crappy Afghanistan. So yeah I worked it out in my head turns out you know okay virtual reality's been around for a while there are some consumer versions I had a Trimersion, which is an old-school head-mounted display that was kind of failed. So I worked it out so that I could do all of this thing. And yeah, I made it at the time it was Call of Duty, and I was running around Call of Duty at 2009 so that I could escape my surroundings. I see, and so you were using a 2D screen then. It was a stereographic, it was an HMD, yeah, and Tri-Immersion had a kind of cool setup, head tracker, the gun, so Ant VR has the gun that's connected to the headset. It had the exact same thing, wireless, and then it would plug into your Xbox or PlayStation and use it as a joystick. So instead of a mouse sensor, the head tracker has worked as the joystick and it would rotate you in the game.
[00:06:33.405] Kent Bye: Where did you get a hold of this professional-grade virtual reality HMD?
[00:06:36.627] Matt Carrell: It was not professional-grade. It was $300 on eBay, and they put it into the market, and I guess the founder had some issue with his investors, and that's why it failed. But he had a head-mounted display that was a consumer version, a head-mounted display way back in the day, and it just failed.
[00:06:55.195] Kent Bye: I see, and so that's... And you just bought it on eBay, it was sent to Afghanistan, and then you started running around in Call of Duty.
[00:07:01.185] Matt Carrell: Right. So similar to what Palmer Luckey had, where before he ever thought to create the Rift, he wanted to see if there's something already out there. And you know, even the military grade HMDs were lacking. I mean, you could go out there and shell $36,000 for an HD headset, but it had heavy wires, it was sitting on the bridge of your nose with probably 10 pounds, and it just was lacking. So I did the same thing. I went out and tried to find a good HMD. Couldn't find one. This was as close as it got to a legitimate, lightweight, wireless HMD.
[00:07:36.863] Kent Bye: And so how did you come across the Rift for the first time then?
[00:07:40.305] Matt Carrell: I missed the boat, actually. I don't know how I did this. In fact, by the time I realized that virtual reality was a thing, because I'd been trying to market my omnidirectional treadmill for a while, so I was like, oh wow, virtual reality is a thing, that's great, maybe I can, you know, get my omnidirectional treadmill out there. Turns out I missed the boat on that one too. And then, oh, look, somebody already beat me to it. That sucks. So we'll see. I really would like to make an omnidirectional treadmill. I don't feel like it's been done right yet. So I think that the stomps that I have now, which is great, you know, it's not an omnidirectional treadmill or slide mill or anything. You know, you just kind of walk in place, but it could easily be plugged into a omnidirectional treadmill and used for full one-to-one running and walking. inside of an omnidirectional treadmill. That's my goal, because I mean, that's what I've been working on for five years now. I really want to see that done right. And, you know, Cybreath did a good job. They have the seated solution, which is great. Omni's trying it, but both of them are really making a giant piece of furniture or exercise equipment I just really don't think people will use. So I think that it could be done smaller, cheaper, and lower profile.
[00:08:50.807] Kent Bye: And so did you actually build a prototype of your omnidirectional treadmill then?
[00:08:54.701] Matt Carrell: Okay. Yeah. So mine was a modified swiveling chair. All right. So what you did was you sat in this chair because I didn't, I didn't want to have the full standing baby Walker. I knew that that wouldn't sell. I was wrong. And then, so I had a chair and what it did was it was just a smooth surface, a low friction platform. And you had the chair that you sat on and then you could just kind of like run while seated. and actually slide your feet like you're running, but all the weight is still seated in the chair. So it was, you know, comfortable, balanced, which balance was a major issue that we came up with was, you know, if you're sliding around on these low friction surfaces, then you're kind of going to be all over the place. So you need to have some sort of stability. And I did not want to have a harness. I just have this huge thing against having straps around my crotch. I just don't know if that's the best way to do it. So it seems like that's what everybody wants. And now we've seen one Kickstarter pass with the Omni, and Cyberth is about to come out with theirs. And I feel good. I think that they're going to do well with that. So I guess that's what the market wants.
[00:10:02.630] Kent Bye: I see. And so because you've, you were a runner in the past and you've developed this stomps to be able to run in virtual reality. I'm just curious about what your experience is like and where you actually go when you're running in virtual reality now.
[00:10:14.041] Matt Carrell: Ooh, good question. So anywhere, that's the beauty of it is that I do not like these static seated virtual reality experiences. Rift Wars is amazing and I do think that that's a fantastic VR game, but I want this to be 360. I understand DK2 is going to be a seated face fronting thing. You have 360 tracking, but they want it to be a seated version. but I feel like the real power is when I'm in virtual reality you know you tell somebody because gamers have this awesome psychology I love it when you tell you know a gamer hey you know go ahead and turn they move their thumb to move the joystick you know I mean hey say I want you to turn around and they're like how do I turn around I'm wearing you know I'm sitting down how do I turn and it's like no turn your head turn around and this is I see this all the time when I you know you take someone's VR virginity is they like they move their head and it's like oh my god what the screen I'm here this is inside of the game and you know they're not going to get that without a 360 version and once people get familiar with that they're going to want to be able to go anywhere so to answer your question right now I have a unity boot camp which is like a forest scene and you can run around in the waterfalls and float down the river and walk across the bridge, which is perfect for what I'm doing. But I would love to see kind of a geotagging runner's thing, where you go out, you do your run, and then you put it online and other people can experience, you know, run down Pebble Beach. or, you know, run along the beach at Hawaii, and it's all beaches for some reason, but, you know, I can't imagine, like, mountains would be difficult because it's all going to be on a flat surface, and if you're running uphill, it's going to break the immersion. So, I have all these inspired ideas about where I would like to run, you know, across the Golden Gate Bridge, for those of you who are locationally challenged, you know, so.
[00:12:14.219] Kent Bye: Back to the point of you know, you're running in place. Does that feel like you're actually running forward then? Because you were a runner and you're sort of running in place How does that feel when you have the visual stimulus that you're kind of moving through space?
[00:12:29.017] Matt Carrell: I get this all the time and I love it because one of the main things about doing stomps and omnidirectional treadmill and all of that is everybody's big on haptics. I mean like, okay, now we have immersion, now I have my body in the game with the hydro or the stem and Prio. Well, it's not enough. Every time we do that, it's like I need something more. So what Stomps does and what all these other things are doing is haptic feedback is simple. It's the actual feeling of putting my foot down on the ground and receiving feedback that it hit the ground. You know what I mean? So joysticks, you know, using your keys on the keyboard doesn't give you that. So when you see somebody getting stomps and they start running, you know, they actually pump their arms like they, you know, or they need to go somewhere. And, you know, it's cool because people are doing the ninja run, you know, the Naruto Ninja run and stomps and it totally clicks with your brain that yeah, yeah I'm running through this environment because you are you know, I mean and they don't need to have that forward-leaning full intense run to get that you know, you need to do is a little bit of a you know Thumper and found your foot on the ground so you can do it for a long time But you're still getting that haptic feedback, which is really cool
[00:13:39.140] Kent Bye: I see. And so, and when you're running straight, do you find that people have less motion sickness or more motion sickness when doing turns or anything that, or how have you experienced when people are using this, if they feel any sort of a simulator sickness from it?
[00:13:53.050] Matt Carrell: Good question. So the simulator sickness usually surprises people. It is apparently the, I do get people who come out and get motion sickness. It's not often. In fact, I think people feel it less. because they're actually, you know, the head is bobbing back and forth and they're actually running so the brain is getting all those cues that, you know, my inner ear says that I'm running and my brain sees that I'm running so I am running. And I think that reduces it, but a lot of times what happens is I get that last minute, Oh, I got to pull this off. I'm not feeling well. Right. So I'm not sure what that is. I think that that's kind of a, the brain cue that all of a sudden something happens that wasn't right. Like, yeah, like you said, they'll turn, which you can either turn while you're running or stop the turn. I noticed that when people stop and they turn, they get it worse, but when they're actually moving, so I think it has something to do with inner ear.
[00:14:42.843] Kent Bye: I see. And have you considered using the stomps to be able to do like, you know, put your foot over to the right to be able to move right or put your foot to the left, you know, there's kind of like this user interaction to start to actually navigate spaces by kind of stepping out a little bit to kind of direct which way you want to go.
[00:15:00.154] Matt Carrell: I've seen that. I've only seen that recently with Ant VR and, you know, I don't know if that actually works but What mine has is those sensors I was talking about, so the gyroscope. When you stop, the gyroscopes initiate and then you can tilt your foot forward or backwards to actually move reverse, right or left by just doing a tilt action. So that is all well and good. A lot of people prefer to actually run and do the accelerometer. But one of the cool things that I found is that if you wanted to crouch, you know, of course DK2 will help you crouch and all of that, but since you can customize the controls on this, I could even have a backwards tilt will crouch you. You can put a key that will lay you down, and you can actually do a low crawl, you know, but these are things that would be difficult to do with a wired DK. So it allows you to kind of get all of that out of your game with just these simple controls. Yeah, so tilt action is what you would do instead of the stepping out.
[00:15:59.617] Kent Bye: Tell me a bit about PodVR and what you're trying to accomplish there.
[00:16:03.240] Matt Carrell: PodVR, we just started PodVR. It's like, hey, I want to talk about this cool stuff because we have the perfect location in Silicon Valley. It's all going down. We have kind of timely information that we wanted to share with everybody. So Brian Bullard wanted to do a podcast and brought me on board and I love doing it. I actually was not a podcaster. I didn't listen to them. I didn't really know anything about it. The first one was rough. But now we've kind of refined it. And as we got to know each other better, we played off each other's cues a lot better. So yeah, it's a lot of fun. I don't really have a lot to say about it other than we want to get everybody all this information and share it in an easy format. And I think that's the best way to do it.
[00:16:48.111] Kent Bye: And finally, what do you see as kind of like the potential of VR, of where it could go and what it could be?
[00:16:54.314] Matt Carrell: Oh, wow. Well, Ready Player One did that for me. I mean, I think he's got a good vision of the future with that. And I think that Palmer would probably agree that this is going to be, you know, every household Everybody's gonna have some sort of role or avatar in virtual reality that they play, you know It's gonna be a whole new economy. It's gonna go and find its way in every industry every field, you know, I mean training military Education, you know, it's just the power of it's gonna be awesome in that I don't know why that some people can't see that but I definitely feel like this is going to blow up big Great.
[00:17:31.108] Kent Bye: Well, thank you so much Cool
