Surplex is a VR full-body tracker, hidden inside a pair of sleek & comfortable shoes. With 480 pressure sensors, Surplex can track your body movements with great accuracy even while making tiny motions. Better still, you don’t need to be confined to limited space, or tangled up with cords and straps as with other VR trackers. Surplex is your secret weapon for an immersive VR experience.

Unlock more fun by having full control of your character in video games. Surplex supports major FBT VR games such as VRChat, Blade and Sorcery, Beat Saber and Neos VR. Enjoy whimsical fun, intensive battles and everything in between with realistic movements and full avatar control.

Soon, we will team up with three different game studios and release “full body tracking” versions for their fan-favorite titles: VRWorkout, Planet Theta, and Tennis Esports. As soon as you receive your Surplex, you can turn your room into a personal gym with VRWorkout, relish the moments of interpersonal chemistry in the dating app Planet Theta, and serve an ace in the exhilarating tennis sim Tennis Esports.

Can Surplex connect to MY headset? Yes! Surplex works with all steamVR-compatible headsets. Never struggle to get your headset working again, just enjoy having more VR fun.

For Potential Standalone VR and AR Headset users:

Currently, we only support VR headsets through SteamVR, and thus, we will need a PC running at the same time. Standalone VR headsets and AR headsets don’t support Full Body Tracking directly, the main reason is that there hasn’t been a universal protocol layer built on top of it. We noticed that there is a protocol called OpenXR, which might handle this in the near future. We will definitely support Standalone VR Headset or AR headset once it’s feasible!

There are two parts to the magic of Surplex: the sole and the IMU.

Each sole of Surplex is layered with 240 pressure sensors that detect a broader range of data about how you are standing and your body movements. They are only 1mm in thickness but contribute the most to accurate motion capture. They read the pressure on your foot to create a skeletal model of the user’s character. Each time you move your torso or whole body, you shift the center of gravity, and in turn the pressure on your feet changes. That’s why even though these sensors won’t directly detect anything else, Surplex knows how your entire body moves.

The 9-Axis IMU we use (BNO085), on the other hand, offers a more delicate tracking of your leg movements and angles. Surplex utilizes this information to infer leg motion, so your movement can be captured even without pressure information (such as when you jump in the air or raise your leg). Combined with the pressure sensors, this results in seamless movement in the virtual space.

Demo shot within VRChat： 

You can check out our YouTube channel for a detailed demo video which demonstrates our product’s capability to track Hip, Legs and Knee movements. Even with intense accuracy testing, all the joints achieved <5cm mean accuracy.

Setting up Surplex is as simple as wearing a pair of shoes. Switch them on, connect them to your PC, and jump straight into the VR space. The gap between the VR world and the real world has never been smaller.

Calibration UI:

Surplex can eliminate the most common issues that have plagued the VR experience, like drifting or occlusion, which often occur due to interference from the surroundings.

Most full-body tracking solutions are sensitive to reflective surfaces, plastic, clothes  or other objects, producing blind-spots that hinder your experience. Surplex gets around the problem by relying on sensors inside the shoes, so you can play on any surface, in any environment.

We don’t want you to have an arbitrary boundary to stop you from the exhilarating gameplay. With Surplex you can walk and jump anywhere without space limitations.  

Time flies when you are having fun. Surplex uses low-power sensors and multiple battery optimizations to achieve a 9-hour battery life. You won’t ever have to worry about running out of juice in the middle of the action.

Surplex can track your whole body, including your legs and waist. Its sensors can detect the position & rotation of foot, knee, waist, chest & elbow, widely supported by popular VR games and applications. Express your emotion with the most detailed movements like never before.

The advanced sensors, battery, and chip add up to a feather-light shoe that you will barely notice. Surplex makes you forget about the real world and become fully immersed into an exciting new reality.

After the crowdfunding campaign comes to an end, we will send out a survey to collect your shoe sizes. Currently, you can choose from sizes 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, though half-size options of 6.5, 7.5, 8.5, 9.5, 10.5 and 11.5 will be available after the associated stretch goal is reached. 0ther sizes will be provided on demand as more users order.

* Surplex shoes are made of poly materials that are soft and flexible. For wide sizes, you can pick one size up. For example, if your shoe size is 10 wide, you can choose Surplex size 11. The same goes for larger feet. For example, with US size 13 feet, you can also pick Surplex size 12.

*One of our developers had a size 40 foot and was wearing a size 41 prototype shoe (the color of the delivery product will be silver). You can see from this video that although the shoes are 1cm longer, he can still do various movements freely without the shoes slipping off.

For now, the first batch will be shipped starting from December 2022, and the large batch will be shipped from January to March 2023, due to the limited chips available. 

Hey! We are Surplex, we are an early-stage startup focusing on novel sensor technologies and human-computer interaction forms based on them. We envision combining high-dimensional/multi-modal sensor data and state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms to deliver more intuitive HCI forms such as Full Body Tracking, Hand Tracking & Control, etc. 

Our startup is proudly backed by MiraclePlus (previously known as Y Combinator China) and invested by former Microsoft Executive Vice President(EVP) Dr. Qi Lu.

Risks and Challenges

Our mission is to serve the people and be a part of their life. Our factory is reliable and starts production now. However, we need to inform you of certain risks and challenges:

There might be some unforeseen problems in our production or delivery process, which might affect the final product or the promised delivery time. If anything goes wrong, we promise to keep our backers updated and informed about any issues and how we plan to solve them, so that you can know where your product is and when you will get it.