This Motorized VR Gaming Chair Gives Me ‘Sick’ Shivers Just Looking At It

If it’s too hard to stand for hours on end playing a VR game, you’ll end up wanting to move to a chair as the sofa is a bit stiff. And if you’ve ever played with a VR headset from the comfort of your swivel chair, then you’ll know The Flintstones the action you need to do with your feet to move around. I Roto VR Explorer A gaming chair eliminates all that extra effort with a compact base with no extra bulk. However, it’s the device that gives me VR vertigo just by looking at it.

Roto VR Explorer essentially works as an all-in-one channel for your headset, basically Meta Quest 3. To make the chair teleport itself, you’ll need to wear a hockey puck-like device on top of the Quest’s headband to track when you turn your head. There is also a haptic motor running on the seat and back of the seat to provide dynamic feedback while playing. For those long sessions, you can route the Quest’s power cable through the seat to give it extra juice.

The Roto chair enters the realm of more expensive, more specific mobility devices such as omnidirectional treadmills again some devices have concave, slightly bumpy surfaces that you can walk on. Some researchers have tried floormats feel the foot again car shoes giving that feeling of movement without movement.

We’ve yet to see more still setups designed for Quest than Roto VR. The Explorer has a round stand and two pegs to keep your feet in place. The chair is motorized and says it can spin at 21 revs per second, which sounds like the worst carnival ride of your life. To turn your body you will need to attach a “roto head tracker” over the Quest head strap. The seat is also “all-seater” VR compatible, according to the company.

It might not be the most comfortable setup, though the company says it’s working on a “Pro” version that comes with adjustable armrests and a back-of-head cushion. That should add more haptics to your spine, though we’re curious as to how powerful it is some haptic cushions we’ve used it at companies like Razer.

The large size means this isn’t something you’ll stick next to your computer desk to serve as your go-to gaming chair. The chair trailer shows a group of friends or family around a person wearing earphones stuck in the middle, like a rendition of a monkey in the middle. If you’ve ever watched someone play VR, you probably know that it can get boring and distracting quickly. Finally, the chair is designed for solo gamers who don’t really like standing up to play VR games.

Roto VR says it’s compatible with more than 400 games in the Meta Quest store, but the company didn’t answer our questions about whether it would be compatible with other earphones, if at all. Apple Vision Pro.

The chair is available for pre-order now, but it will still set you back the entire $800 on top of what you already paid for the $500 Meta Quest 3. The chair should start shipping in October. Roto VR plans to show its booth at Gamescom starting Aug. 21 if you happen to be in Cologne, Germany, to—literally—take it for a spin.