Tag: Haptic Feedback

Chairs with haptic feedback are nothing new. But they haven’t taken off because they’re usually expensive, not realistic – why would your butt vibrate if you get shot? Plus, the novelty wears off fairly quickly. But a cheap one that you can put together is a different proposition.

For years now, display manufacturers like LG and Samsung have been teasing flexible displays by creating mobile devices that can be folded to be more portable. But researchers at Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab show us that flexible displays can also lead to novel yet intuitive ways of interacting with devices. The Human Media Lab’s ReFlex is an Android smartphone with a flexible 720p LG OLED display.

Like most modern controllers, Valve’s Steam Controller has actuators that generate haptic feedback. But YouTuber pilatomic discovered that you can make its motors sing. In his Steam Community post, pilatomic says he found out how to gain full control of the actuators while looking at how the controller communicated with Steam.

Last March, the performing arts group Extant held a unique rendition of the novel Flatland. The installation was set in complete darkness inside a disused church. But the audience members were able to make their way around the set with the help of the Animotus, a haptic navigation device that points to the destination by changing its shape. Yale University researcher Adam Spiers designed and built the Animotus.

Virtual reality has reached the point where it can easily fool our vision and sense of depth and balance. But if it’s to be truly believable our sense of touch needs to be indulged as well.

Until now, touchscreen device makers still have not properly addressed their products’ lack of tactile feedback. If Microsoft senior researcher Hong Tan her way, in the future touchscreen-equipped devices will let us feel clicks and more.

A couple of years ago we saw a pair of shoes with built-in navigation capabilities. That was a one-off, but it looks like you’ll be able to buy something similar to that in the near future.

When Valve unveiled its Steam Controller last year, I was quite skeptical about the value of its built-in touchscreen. It turns out many of Valve’s testers had the same opinion. This January, at the 2014 Steam Dev Days conference, the company announced that it was ditching the touchscreen for a more conventional button configuration.

A company called Tivitas is working on the gamepad equivalent of Mad Catz’ R.A.T. mice, and then some. It’s called the Sinister, a glove-shaped gamepad that’s adjustable in different aspects. It also has a haptic feedback technology that’s supposedly more nuanced compared to the rumble motors used in most gamepads.

Yesterday Valve released a video showing a prototype of the Steam Controller – which is designed to be used with the company’s upcoming Steam Machines – being used to play a handful of games. The demo focused on the controller’s “legacy mode”, in which the controller emulates a mouse and a keyboard, letting you map keys and cursor movement to the controller’s buttons, triggers and trackpads.

Earlier this week Valve teased the free, gaming-oriented and Linux-based SteamOS and the PC-console hybrid Steam Machine. It soon completed the establishment of the fundamentals of its living room invasion by unveiling the Steam Controller. As with the Steam Machine, the controller is Valve’s attempt at bringing the best of PC and console gaming together.