Natural Locomotion News

We released Natural Locomotion on Sunday, 8th of April of 2018 with just Vive support, a very basic hands mode and a few profiles. Looking back the application has grown a lot thanks to the support of a wonderful community that allowed us to continue the development. For this update we have only a few changes but we hope you like them.

We would like to announce we are working with Decagear team to add support to Decamove as an official Natural Locomotion tracker!
We received one a few days ago.

• Hip direction for hands mode: You can now move in the direction of your body in hands mode, with a smartphone in the pocket or with a Vive tracker on the waist.
  
  
  
  
• T-pose to calibrate direction quickly can now be disabled, or switched to Y-pose because the T-pose conflicted with a gesture in Population: One.
  
  
  
  
• Some profiles now have a screenshot of the settings. Click them to expand. We will continue adding screenshots for all the profiles.
  
  

• Fitness stats now makes it more obvious that it's a button that can be switched from "session" to "profile" and "global".
  
  
  
  
• Fixed some WMR headsets jumping all the time.
  
• Fixed foot tracker icons, it was showing generic ones instead.
  
• Miscellaneous UI changes.
  
• Added and modified some profiles.
  

• Introduced some changes required for the iPhone version of NaLo tracker (it's finished and will be published soon).
  
• Introduced some changes to pave the way for Decamove support
  
• Reworked store page to better reflect all Natural Locomotion features
  

Changed profiles:

• Borderlands 2 VR: Added jump function in WMR
  
• Hellsplit: Arena: Added WMR profile.
  
• Karnage Chronicles: Fixed instructions for Index controllers.
  
• SwordsmanVR: Added WMR profile and instructions for the rest.
  
• Until You Fall: Added WMR profile.
  
• Zero caliber VR: Updated WMR profile.

[h2]Hands Mode[/h2]
Slowly swing your hand controllers to walk or move them fast to run.



Other "arm swinger" implementations are very "jumpy", very slow to respond, or are a complement on button actions. Natural Locomotion uses a novel system designed to walk and run continuously, and with very precise and intuitive control of speed and acceleration. You can start, stop or change speed very quickly without "move" or "brake" buttons, it just depends on the speed you move your arms.

[h3]Buttonless activator based on gestures[/h3]



[h3]Hip direction for hands mode[/h3]
As we have announced today, hands mode is now compatible with body trackers (Smartphones and trackers). Using a body tracker, the direction of the movement depends on where your hip is oriented which could make this locomotion method even more immersive and comfortable.

[h2] Feet Mode [/h2]
Use motion sensor devices (see the list below) attached in your feet to register your feet movements and walk in the game. It supports two kind of movements: Walk-in-place and swinging feet while sitting on a chair or using a treadmill.



[h3]Supported (tested) headsets[/h3]

• HTC Vive / Pro / Cosmos / Cosmos Elite
  
• Oculus Rift / Rift S / Quest (1 and 2, through Oculus Link or Virtual Desktop)
  
• Windows Mixed Reality and HP Reverb G2
  
• Valve Index
  
• Pimax
  
• HTC Vive Cosmos
  
• Pico Neo 2 and Pico Neo 2 EYE
  

[h3]Supported VR controllers:[/h3]

• HTC Vive wands
  
• Oculus touch
  
• Windows Mixed Reality (with trackpad)
  
• Valve Index
  
• HP Reverb G2
  
• HTC Vive Cosmos
  
• Pico Neo 2 6DoF controllers
  

[h3]Supported devices (for feet mode)[/h3]

• HTC Vive trackers (Dongles included)
  
• Any SteamVR controller converted to tracker
  
• Original Nintendo Switch JoyCon
  
• PS3 Move controllers (No camera required)
  
• Smartphone with Android >= 5.1, with accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer (compass).
  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.myousoftware.nalo_device

[h2] SteamVR Tools [/h2]



[h3]Align VR spaces of different tracking systems[/h3]
Combine lighthouse devices (Trackers, HTC Vive controllers or Index controllers) with Oculus, WMR or Vive Cosmos headsets.



[h3]Convert some SteamVR controllers into trackers[/h3]
This tool will temporarily emulate HTC Vive trackers using other lighthouse devices (And Oculus CV1 controllers) without flashing them.



[h3]Convert Steam Controller dongles to Vive/Index dongles[/h3]
This utility allows you to convert Steam Controller dongles into Vive/Valve controller/tracker dongles (and restore them).



You need one dongle per device. A Vive or Index headset has two of them built in. For example if you have 4 controllers and an Index/Vive headset (only USB and power connected), you only have 2 receptors and you need 2 dongles to use all controllers.



[h2]Profiles[/h2]
The past 3 years we added profiles for 88 games, which could not be very impressive, but if you count the different profiles for each controller type this number jumps to 476 (not counting Revive profiles).

It uses profiles originally made for Oculus Rift, but with joystick till activation by default. It also works very well with the buttonless activator (in edit profile -> configure buttons). If you find any issue please tell us in the forum.





Thanks to RealOVirtual for lending us a Pico Neo 2 EYE for testing.

You are the best! and also the biggest virtual reality news portal in Spanish.

Apparently the previous fix didn't work when the app is opened from Steam. We fixed that.

Last update introduced a bug where the buttonless mode didn't work with some headsets (calculated hip height was completely wrong). This patch fixes it. We have also added a note about Joycon support warning that off-brand (third party) Joycons are not tested and may not work at all.

With this update we have finished to port all the old features to the new version of Natural Locomotion, so the legacy version should not be required anymore.



[h2]Align VR spaces of different tracking systems[/h2]
Combine lighthouse devices (Trackers, HTC Vive controllers or Index controllers) with Oculus, WMR or Vive Cosmos headsets.



[h2]Convert some SteamVR controllers into trackers[/h2]
This tool will temporarily emulate HTC Vive trackers using other lighthouse devices (And Oculus CV1 controllers) without flashing them.



[h2]Convert Steam Controller dongles to Vive/Index dongles[/h2]
This utility allows you to convert Steam Controller dongles into Vive/Valve controller/tracker dongles (and restore them).



You need one dongle per device. A Vive or Index headset has two of them built in. For example if you have 4 controllers and an Index/Vive headset (only USB and power connected), you only have 2 receptors and you need 2 dongles to use all controllers.

• Restore converted dongle to be used with Steam Controller
  
  
  
  
• Added "head_direction" workaround to enable a feature for use the direction of the head instead of feet/hands. This option could be added in the profile editor > Configure speed and trackpad emulation > Workarounds.
  Remember you can combine multiple workarounds by separating them with spaces.
  
  
  
  

• Smartphones disconnected after a few minutes
  
• Fixed Horse Mode (very immersive in Skyrim)
  [previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
  Enable it in the profile editor:
  
  
  To use it press the activation button and shake both hands at the same time to start walking. the more you shake your arms, the faster the horse will run. If you stop shaking hands, the horse will slowly reduce its speed. If you want to instant stop, make a quick movement upwards with both hands while pressing the locomotion activator.
  
  
• "Run game" button and "DLL Hack" didn't work with some profiles
  
• Default profile created when clicking in "Add new" button are not properly configured for the HP Reverb G2 buttons scheme.
  

• The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim VR (HP Reverb): Fixed run button.
  

• Improved performance and stability of the SteamVR Overlay
  
• Alert for Lighthouse HMD users to disable pass-through cameras to avoid SteamVR to crash. We have made progress in investigating this issue and we believe it will be finally fixed soon.
  
• We have temporarily disabled the option "Enable walking backwards by leaning back" when devices from different tracking systems have been detected. This is only working for the following devices combinations:
  
  • Lighthouse HMD + Lighthouse Trackers/controllers
    
  • Any HMD + bluetooth/WiFi devices (smartphones, Joycons...)
    
  
  This feature never worked properly, so we will make a new algorithm from scratch for the non supported combinations. We hope to bring this improved option soon.
  
  
• Removed Force smooth rotation option (from dev settings) which was in conflict with some other features and was not supported by Oculus headsets.
  

We also have a lot of new profiles and a few more features (including the Pico Neo 2 support) prepared to be published in the next update as soon as we finish testing everything exhaustively.