Day: September 12, 2021

UPDATED! KAT Walk C: The First Consumer-Level VR Omnidirectional Treadmill

Yesterday, virtual reality vlogger ThrillSeeker reviewed the KAT Walk C (the world’s first VR omnidirectional treadmill intended for the consumer market) in the following 13-minute video, which is an absolute must-watch. The video is epic, mind-boggling, and at times absolutely hilarious!

ThrillSeeker reports that he was easily able to set up the device and get it to work with various VR apps and games. He doesn’t shy away from criticism in his review, about what he thinks are the weak parts of the system. While he says that most VR games probably wouldn’t greatly benefit from the US$1,399 treadmill, he found that adding the ability to use your legs to walk around in open world VR games like The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim VR and No Man’s Sky gives you a completely different sense of scale and realism, compared to using your thumbsticks to walk and/or teleport in virtual reality.

ThrillSeeker, wearing a Valve Index VR headset, walking on the KAT Walk C

For those of you, like Thrillseeker, who have to be on the absolute bleeding edge of virtual reality, you might well want to add to the body-tracking pucks, the Vive Facial Tracker, the FeelReal Multisensory VR Mask, and any haptic vests or any other haptic equipment may you already have, and open your wallets for this device! (Yes, they’re even having s sale!)

I leave you with a 3-minute promotional video for the product by the company behind this device, KAT VR (which also sells a version for business use):

UPDATE Oct. 3rd, 2021: VR vloggers Cas and Chary have also released their review of the KAT WALK C:

LYNX: Announcing a New Standalone VR/AR/MR Headset with an Independent, Open Ecosystem

LYNX is an exciting new, standalone mixed reality headset, by a startup company founded a couple of years ago by Stan Larroque:

Lynx was founded 2 years ago by Stan Larroque and a dedicated team of innovators in electronics, software, optics and hardware. We believe our ecosystem deserves a versatile and open device like Lynx, for all uses from games & entertainment to professional training and education at a very affordable price point.

The LYNX R1

The LYNX headset uses the Snapdragon Qualcomm XR2 chip, and is a standalone consumer device, built for both virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR). It features hand tracking, and supports OpenXR, Unity, Unreal, Godot, SteamVR, and CloudXR. Here’s the complete technical specifications, if you’re interested.

An exploded view of the LYNX-R1 headset

But the best part of this new headset is that it will be an independent, open ecosystem which respects user privacy! That’s right, you don’t have to sign up for an account on the Facebook social network to use this device! For that reason alone, I am terribly excited about this product, and I fully expect to contribute to the Kickstarter, which will be announced sometime later this month (you can sign up to be notified by email here on the LYNC website).

Speaking of money, Mozilla Hubs’ Brian Peiris tweeted that the price of the LYNX-R1 headset will be US$499!

Here’s the one-minute Kickstarter reveal video, which dropped three days ago:

For further information about this potentially game-changing product, please visit their website, or follow the project and its founder, Stan Larroque, on social media: Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube (I also note with joy that they are not on Facebook…hallelujah!).

Thank you to Rainwolf for the heads up!