Omni Treadmill Pre-Orders Available For $499

I know a lot of people have a problem with paying $500 for an Xbox One, but I can readily say that $500 for Virtuix' crowd-funded gaming device, the Omni Gaming Treadmill is well worth the price of admission. The device has successfully been Kickstarted and pre-orders are now available to the public.

Blues picked up the story from Polygon, where they spotted the pricing for the device and the availability of the pre-orders.

It's cool because it comes in two formats: Single-player ($499) and two-player ($1,019.00). I can't believe they were actually thinking about multi-player mayhem via the treadmill. That's some cool stuff right there, assuming you have the room and the money.

The standard package includes an Omni Gaming Treadmill and one pair of shoes. The two-player option sports two Omni Gaming Treadmills and two pair of shoes.

For those who don't know, the Omni Gaming Treadmill is sort of like a husband to the Oculus Rift being a wife. The two marry perfectly together, as the Treadmill simulates movement, ducking, jumping, and real-time running based on player movement. It's unbelievably sexy and is the actual next step in the innovation of interactivity.

The thing is, it only has its strongest appeal when combined with the Oculus Rift, because it will simulate your movement and give you the actual feeling of 1 to 1 immersion with the headset on. As many gamers have already pointed out, it's the perfect combination to get yourself in shape while playing DayZ. Even more than that is if the whole thing was combined with a rumble body vest... you would get the ultimate heart-attack experience.

The Omni Treadmill requires special shoes, however, in order to simulate the walking movement on its indented incline. The shoes help give players a non-gripped walking experience. My only concern is if the shoes wear thin over time and if a new pair is required to keep the non-adhesive element in play?

Anyway, the Omni doesn't ship until March 2014. I know that in the original article it was mentioned that it would ship in January 2014, but you know... production and all that jazz.

Hopefully the guys and gals at Oculus can get their commercial product out there so that gamers can combine both. Man, using this in conjunction with the DayZ standalone alpha would be so awesome. After a month of playing DayZ, your friends would all gather around to check out your massive, pre-2000 Schwarzenegger leg muscles.

You can learn more about the Omni Gaming Treadmill over on the official Kickstarter page, or you can check out the pitch video to see exactly how the thing works below. These are exciting times for gamers, no doubt.