You hear that? At first you might think that’s the sound of Iron Man stomping towards you, ready to kill you with his wit and metal fists — but it’s not. That’s actually the sound of someone clumsily tripping over themselves and nearly falling over while wearing the Taclim VR boots from Cerevo at CES in Las Vegas, NV this week.
Experiencing virtual reality for the first time is amazing, but reaching out and interacting with that virtual world using your hands for the first time is truly a revelation. Stepping into that world, literally using your feet, and kicking it in the face may very well be the future. That is, it’s the future according to Cerevo, the creators of these cyberpunk-styled shoes.
Cerevo designed the shoes to not only be tracked in 3D space as you move around, but also to provide tactile feedback. The idea here is that whether you’re walking on a hardwood floor or on the sand of a beach, the sensors around your feet will know and transmit the appropriate physical sensation. Each shoe has three sensors, depicted above, in addition to one sensor in each of the hand controllers.
It’s unclear whether the Taclim controllers are required to also use the boots, or if you can mix and match them with other hand controllers. However, as you can tell in the featured image at the top of this article and the image below, the hand controllers look fairly similar to the new Vive prototypes that Valve showed during last year’s Steam Dev Days, but the user appears to be wearing a custom designed VR headset in the promotional imagery.
The shoes are much thicker than a traditional shoe that a typical person might wear in everyday life, but you wouldn’t be expected to wear these unless you’re in VR. Although, nothing is really stopping you I guess. They’re not being designed for consumer use necessarily either, but instead as a peripheral business owners can use to enhance their VR experiences, according to Cerevo CEO Takuma Iwasa.
We will keep you updated with more news about the Taclim VR shoes and hand controllers from CES 2017 throughout the week. Do you think VR boots like these are the future? Let us know in the comments below!
