Recently I tried my hand at a hoverboard and found it an exciting challenge to trust this moving object below me. Then I came across the Alto 100, which uses hoverboard technology to create a balance board for VR locomotion. Alto is a sleek little pad that users stand on and shift their weight. The Melbourne-based studio behind the Alto, Viso Space, wants movement to feel effortless and fluid.
VR locomotion is an interesting nut to crack. Free motion is becoming a popular trend for shooter-based games and even some RPGs. You can find it in many popular titles. It’s probably the most requested feature I come across while browsing forums. It’s also nauseating when done badly, even with some of our fitness hacks.
The Alto Balance Board aims to solve this interesting challenge with an affordable solution for the home.
The Alto is a people mover in VR, like a virtual surfboard. Moving feels like sliding, but you lean into your movements. Your brain receives the signal that you should move forward based on your incline, thus hypothetically eliminating motion sickness.
It is powered by rechargeable double A batteries that are powered by a 5 V power supply and connected to a base unit via USB or Bluetooth. You can hop on and off as needed to explore the world around you, with haptic feedback under your feet to simulate walking. In the team demo, they built in small gradations that the board can simulate, which feels like moving across a gravelly surface.
Since the board doesn’t use pressure sensors, you probably won’t be using this for something like a boxing or fighting game. We envision narrative adventures like Skyrim, in which the user traverses large parts of the landscape with the Alto and then gets out to scout individual rooms for loot. Lean on the board and move faster or slower depending on your posture. In the video below, the board moves under the user’s feet when they change direction.
The movement in the Alto is very similar to a Segway or a hoverboard, so you can’t quickly change direction just yet. The team is working on a solution to this problem, one solution may be to use a “handbrake” feature.
We are also interested in the size of the device. At its current scale, it would fit well in rooms that are not designed for spatial VR (like apartments). However, those used to the size of the room may want to physically move around. This could become a trip hazard if the board is not recognized by your base stations and rendered in-game.
The Alto 100 IndieGoGo has now ended and all units have been shipped. The little hoverboard looks well-designed and sturdy enough, but the developers admit there are still kinks to be solved. Therefore, the current iteration is intended for software developers. They expect a full launch by late 2018, so this isn’t a technology that will fade into the airwaves when the stars align.
Ultimately, Viso Space hopes this is the start of a bigger initiative that better simulates the haptics of VR. Ideally, the company would like to enable gamers to freely navigate and touch the virtual world with real sensations.
Trying to solve locomotion in VR is not breaking new ground, but doing it at this price point makes the project seem ambitious. Most of the treadmill technologies we’ve seen are aimed at arcade operators with vague notions of convenience. The Alto 100 seems to be built with the home user in mind.
The missing link at this point is developer support, but the device feels affordable for the experience it offers.
We also speculate that such a device might have some calibration challenges. If you’ve ever spent time with Steam VR calibration, you have an idea of the potential for a headache.
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