Virtual reality is entering the mainstream, influencing such fields as medicine and military training. Consumer-grade devices like Samsung's Gear VR (made with virtual-reality pioneer Oculus) and Google's make-it-yourself Cardboard viewer have democratised the technology, but headsets are just the beginning. To make the most of VR's immersive possibilities, we need to involve not just the user's eyes and ears, but his gut, as well.

Behold the VR peripheral ever created: the CableRobot Simulator, created by Germany's Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and unveiled this week during the Driving Simulation Conference & Exhibition in the town of Tübingen.

Designed to study motion-perception and cognition, this expansive motion-simulation setup, two years in the making, uses a polyhedron-shaped gondola suspended in a 200-cubic-metre hall by a system of eight wire cables. The cables are connected to electric winch motors producing a total of 467 horsepower — enough to accelerate the 176lb carbon-fibre gondola and its passenger at a stomach-flopping 1.5g.

The user wears an Oculus Rift-style wireless headset connected to an optical tracking system and an appropriate controller — a steering wheel or a flight stick, for example. Player inputs prompt the winch motors to engage and move, rotate or tilt the cage in real time. Driving and flying simulations are the most obvious applications but, like the Planck Institute's robot-arm CyberMotion Simulator from 2013, the CableRobot can allow users to experience motion playback of actual onboard recordings — imagine immersive, gut-wrenching hot laps of Silverstone with Lewis Hamilton.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story erroneously suggested that the CableRobot Simulator could be used as a gaming peripheral. The Max Planck Institut has no such plans for the machine, which was created solely to research motion cognition and perception. BBC Autos apologises for this misleading suggestion.

