Virtuix Omni

Lore & Background

The Virtuix Omni was founded by Jan Goetgeluk, who applied for a U.S. patent on 23 October 2013 for his Locomotion System and Apparatus. The prototype used dummy shoes and Kinect software for movement detection, and was presented at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2013 in Los Angeles, where it was covered by Engadget and The Verge. Virtuix launched a Kickstarter campaign in June 2013, which was endorsed by Oculus Rift founder Palmer Luckey and overshot its $150,000 goal within three and a half hours, ultimately raising $1.1 million. Goetgeluk also appeared on the TV show Shark Tank in 2013 seeking $2 million for 10% of the company but failed to secure funding from the Sharks; however, Mark Cuban invested after the show aired.

The final version of the Omni was presented at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and it won a Best Technology award at E3 2015. Production began in November 2015, with the first units shipping to consumers in January 2016. In December 2016, Virtuix announced it could not fulfill international pre-orders due to logistical and financial difficulties, refunding customers with an additional 3% interest compounded annually.

Kickstarter backers began receiving their orders in the third week of January 2017. By mid-2017, the company had shifted the Omni Pro to commercial use only, shipping over 3,500 units to more than 500 commercial locations. An updated consumer version, the Omni One, was planned for release by the end of 2021, with first units shipping to investors in March 2023.

Reader's Guide

The Virtuix Omni represents a significant attempt to solve the problem of natural locomotion in virtual reality, allowing users to physically walk, jog, or run within supported games. Its development history illustrates the challenges of bringing a novel hardware controller from crowdfunding to production, including delays, international shipping difficulties, and a pivot from consumer to commercial markets. The Omni Pro found a niche in arcades and entertainment venues, supported by the Omniverse platform, a proprietary content delivery and arcade management system that launched in September 2017 with 24 optimized games.

The Omni Arena e-sports attraction, unveiled in November 2018, featured four Omni 2.0 platforms and offered weekly and monthly prize contests with an annual prize pool over $100,000, with the first installations completed in March 2019. The device also appeared in Steven Spielberg's 2018 film adaptation of Ready Player One, and has been used for military and sports training. The later Omni One model removed the support ring to allow crouching, kneeling, and jumping, and was offered as a dev-kit or bundled with a standalone VR headset.