Via SlashDot, the next generation of gaming peripherals: a haptic vest that lets you feel every punch, kick, stab and blast from your combat-game opponent.
Might I mention that such a system featured quite heavily in Philip Brewer’s story “An Education of Scars”, as published here a little over a year ago?
Yes. Yes, I might. 🙂
The folks at Technology Review have run up a top ten of futurismic display/interface combos, all on display at SIGGRAPH 2009, I particularly like the haptic holography from researchers at the University of Tokyo:
The virtual objects appear in mid-air thanks to an LCD and a concave mirror. The sensation of touching the objects is created using an ultrasound device positioned below the LCD and mirror.
It’ll be interesting to see whether people end up using more traditional haptic devices like gloves and goggles combinations, or choose something based on holography and sound waves.
Also note that Wii remotes are used as off-the-shelf sensors, the street, or academia, finds its own use for things.
Wonderful haptic jacket being developed at Phillips Electronics, from Physorg:
Paul Lemmens, a Philips senior scientist, explains that the jacket isn’t meant to make viewers feel the actual punches and blows that the actors are receiving on the screen. Rather, the intentions are more subtle.
The jacket’s purpose is to make viewers feel anxiety and other emotions through signals such as sending a shiver up the viewer’s spine, creating tension in the limbs, and creating a pulse on the chest to simulate a rapid heartbeat.
Intense.
Michael Anissimov takes a look at haptics – the name for interfaces based on the sense of touch. Largely ignored so far in favour of video and audio (which are much simpler and cheaper to implement), haptic technology is the logical next step in immersive virtual experiences; a haptic suit could simulate real tactile contact in a virtual world. [Image borrowed from Sensory Motor Performance Program]
As Michael points out, the sex industry will be one of the first to take up on this technology (as it did with video, and the internet itself), but once the price drops to within the reach of the average consumer, your home games console will support haptics, as well as most MMOs. Meanwhile, the development will probably be driven by potential military applications … but I doubt it’ll be long before we’re all getting our Lawnmower Man on.
What would you use haptics for? And where would you draw the line?