The Omni One Is a VR Gaming Treadmill Offering Pricey Immersion. I Tried It Out

Remember when immersive VR gaming experiences in your living room seemed just over the horizon? They're finally here with the Omni One, though the device has its own pros and cons. 

The Omni One is a full-body VR rig that includes a headset, controllers, body support vest and a disc-like treadmill. It's meant to make games and other VR experiences more immersive by allowing you to walk, run, crouch and jump in real time as you play. I've been testing out the Omni One for a few weeks now, including getting a bunch of my coworkers to try it out. It's a ton of fun but it takes some getting used to.

The Omni One is developed by Virtuix, the company behind Omni Arena, a location-based VR arcade-like experience where you and a group of friends can play games together in real time. Omni One is a new product designed for the home. It's a single-player device but allows for online multiplayer, so you can play with others. 

Wearing and walking on Omni One's VR experience

You wear a pair of shoe covers with sensors near the front, which need to be charged with the included USB-C cable. Under the shoes there are two friction settings: a green one for more traction, which is used when walking around normally, and a gray setting that decreases friction when you're playing. 

With these shoe covers on, you step onto a slippery semicircular disc and strap yourself into the support vest. It feels like you're wearing a large hiking backpack. Pressing a button near your left shoulder will unlock the system, allowing it to rotate freely. There's a dial on the support arm that will adjust how much resistance or support it provides for stabilization.

The treadmill's disc is curved up because you're basically sliding back into place repeatedly in order to move continuously. It's not like a treadmill with a rotating tread, but more like you're staying in place by trying to walk on slippery ice. And let me tell you, it's not easy when you first try it out. 

The backpack pulls on you so it feels a bit like you're dragging something behind you. This stabilizes you from falling as you tend to lean much further forward to walk in a game than you would normally. You also need to lift your feet up higher than you'd expect in order for the feet trackers to properly register movement. The exaggerated movement makes it feel similar to walking in snowshoes. Like I said, it takes time to adapt to moving in the Omni One.

The system has height, weight and dimension limits. The Omni One supports heights of 4 foot, 4 inches, up to 6 foot, 4 inches. There's a player weight maximum of 250 pounds. The support vest has a max waist circumference of 46 inches. The treadmill has a footprint measuring 48 by 60 inches and is around 48 inches tall. It weighs 150 pounds but luckily it has wheels at the back so you can tip it and roll it with ease. There's also a little cubby located under the footstep for storing some accessories, like the shoes. 

It also supports video casting, so you can wirelessly connect it to a TV for others to see what you're experiencing. This is great for when you have some friends over, so they can be included in the fun. While the headset can be adjusted for different head sizes by using an overhead velcro strap and tightening wheel at the back, the shoes are a different story. 

The shoes come in three sizes and you can't use the Omni One without them. Inviting some friends over for a VR evening gets difficult if you have people with vastly different sized feet. It would be great if these could somehow accommodate different shoe sizes, just as the headset can adjust to different sized heads. Virtuix does sell extra shoes separately but they're a whopping $100 per pair. It's worth noting that you can use the headset and controllers to play games without the treadmill, so that opens up some options -- but that's nowhere near as exciting, right?

The headset is a customized Pico 4E headset with an 8-core Qualcomm XR2 chipset and 256GB of storage. It has a resolution of 2,160 by 2,160 pixels per eye, which results in a density of 1,200 pixels per inch. That makes for sharp visuals, as well as a 105-degree field of view with pancake lenses. It supports eye and inside-out tracking, with full-color passthrough.

How immersive is the Omni One?

At first the Omni One feels unnatural to use and has a steep learning curve. But I assure you that with time and tweaking, it becomes a lot more intuitive to use the dial on the arm to indicate how much support you'd like. But does it actually feel immersive? There are fleeting moments where everything lines up nicely and you feel like you're actually there. But for the most part, it feels like you're awkwardly walking or running your way through a video game. 

The Omni One has an exercise focus as well. Since the vest is causing resistance, and your walking is so unnatural, using the Omni One is kind of a workout. But that's also one of the downsides. Putting on the shoes, getting strapped in and loading up a game all takes time so you're probably not going to just jump into it for short 15-minute gaming sessions. But using it for a while will get you worked up and sweaty. It got to the point where I had to have a fan pointed directly at me when playing to help cool me down. 

The user interface tracks how many steps you've taken and calories burned. It's clear that exercise is a key component to the Omni One. Now I'm not someone who shies away from a workout, but if I'm in a gaming mood, factoring in a shower afterward is a bit much, and that adds to the time I need to set aside. So unfortunately, there's a downside to using this for short and long periods of time.

Too high a price and too few games for most people

The other downside, and this is kind of the dealbreaker, is that the game library just isn't robust at all. Virtuix has a storefront to buy games, but at the time of this recording, there's only about 18 to choose from, though it says another 31 titles are coming soon. I play video games for a living and I haven't heard of most of these titles, and the VR games I'm familiar with aren't available for the Omni One. 

Virtuix says the Omni One can be used with SteamVR to expand your library. I didn't end up testing this out because, unfortunately, to play those games you need to install an emulation software package. From there, settings will have to be adjusted on a per-game basis. Even then, "many games will not offer a good locomotion experience."

The Omni One retails for $2,600 plus shipping. That's a lot of money for the majority of people, but there's also nothing else quite like this. Unfortunately this is also the introductory pricing: It'll increase to $3,500 on Nov. 15. Considering the most popular VR headsets in Meta's Quest lineup start retailing around $300 to $400 depending on which you get, you're paying $2,000 to $3,000 more for the treadmill attachment and you have access to a much smaller game library.

Omni One final thoughts: A cool first step… if you can afford it

I love how unique and cool of an experience the Omni One is. When you get your friends together and show them this, everyone wants to try it. VR is already a goofy gaming platform and this just adds to that excitement and fun. And if getting some exercise into your video games is a goal then this will definitely help you break a sweat. 

What I don't love is how limited the game selection is and how it doesn't easily let me access SteamVR or other VR libraries. It also doesn't really feel like natural walking and, as a result, I'm not feeling fully immersed all that often. With all that, it becomes a tough sell considering its high price.

The Omni One feels like a major first step towards the future of VR, but it's still just an early look at this point. As of right now it's more of a fun add-on, but I couldn't see myself using it as my main VR gaming experience. It needs far more games and a more seamless locomotion experience so I won't get so sweaty by the end of it. I'd love to somehow get this same level of stability while feeling like I'm walking normally.