Stance Controller VR Setup for FPS

Today I discovered Ben Krasnow's Youtube channel via Reddit. Mr. Krasnow is a hardware engineer working for Valve Software. He makes videos of neat hardware projects that he does. One video in particular struck me. He hacked together a posture-based game controller.

A posture-based game controller is the best solution I have seen so far to the problem of moving around in a virtual reality environment. In Mr. Krasnow's video the posture-based controller is used in conjunction with a mouse to navigate so that the user can easily keep an eye on their monitor. If the controller is coupled with an Oculus Rift the mouse becomes unnecessary because the problem of a fixed monitor no longer exists.

With an Oculus Rift the posture-based controller now gives the potential for a player to freely navigate a virtual world. Moving forward/backward and strafing are implemented by shifting weight in the intended direction of horizontal travel. Looking up/down is handled by the orientation sensors in the Oculus Rift and rotating avatar orientation is handled by rotating the chair the player is sitting on. In addition to these controls traditionally provided by a 2-thumbstick/mouse-and-keyboard control scheme, the player can also freely look left and right without changing their avatar's movement orientation thanks to the orientation sensors in the Oculus Rift. This setup is pretty amazing, and I wish I didn't have to sleep so I could work on this in addition to Project FLIER.

Really though, who needs sleep?