Tag: Motion Control

Too many of today’s pranks are cruel or downright mean. I prefer old school pranks, which are a bit more lighthearted, and not likely to end with you or your victim getting a punch in the face or a kick in the groin.

Reki Kawahara’s popular light novel and anime series Sword Art Online is about a group of gamers who become trapped in a virtual reality fantasy MMORPG. The gamers wore headsets that connected to their brain, stimulating all of their senses to create an extremely realistic experience.

A few days ago we talked about Mogees, a tiny digital musical instrument that triggers sound by vibration. The Motus is another unorthodox yet intuitive portable instrument. It lets you create or trigger sounds by motion.

A few years ago we checked out a motion-controlled robot. LEGO designer Daniele Benedettelli also came up with a motion control setup for his Cyclops robot, but instead of using a motion sensor he made a exoskeleton made of LEGO that tracks his movement and relays it to the robot.

Japanese company No New Folk are working on Orphe, a pair of shoes for performers. Each shoe has 100 individually controlled LEDs, an ARM Cortex microprocessor, a Bluetooth chip and a motion sensor that can be used to control another device with the wearer’s movements.

We may quickly be solving how to show virtual reality effectively, but we’re still figuring out how to move in it. We’ve seen pseudo–treadmills and full sets of motion sensors, but Stompz claims its eponymous motion controllers are all we need to move around in virtual spaces.

If you thought Mad Catz’ LYNX transforming gamepad was the bees knees’, check out the Grifta. It makes the LYNX look like an SNES controller. The Grifta can be used as a normal gamepad or split into two halves.

If you liked using the Wii, the PlayStation Move or the Kinect, keep an eye on The Realm System. Like the Wii and PS Move, it has a pair of handheld motion controllers but it also has rubber resistance bands that are tied to a waist strap.

Remember the old days when you played Atari’s Pong console? That was all that the console played, and we loved hitting that square shaped ball back and forth. We just didn’t know any better. It seems so slow now.

ThinkGeek has turned another one of its April Fools jokes into an actual product. The Technomancer Digital Wizard Hoodie uses 32 multicolored LEDs and a speaker box to emit light and sound effects. The cool thing – or the dealbreaker, depending on how geeky you are – about the hoodie is that you have to activate the effects using hand gestures, as if you were casting a spell.

There are lots of articles online speculating about how Apple can create an instant game console by increasing the integration between the Apple TV and iOS devices. It’s an interesting idea, but so far we’ve seen that Apple is slow to embrace its gaming community.

Red Dead Revolver‘s dueling mode was one of the game’s unique features. It attempted to emulate the feeling of tension by making the player go through a timing-based mini game. But what if you could actually go through the motions of a duel itself?

I don’t really care much for tactile feedback in videogames, but if you’re into that sort of immersion, Tactical Haptics is working on a device that’s right up your alley. At the 2013 Game Developers Conference, the company showed off a prototype motion controller with a unique haptic feedback system.

A week ago, we learned about the Mycestro, a pointing device that, despite its unusual form, only has a humble goal: to replace your mouse. The Ego! Smartmouse on the other hand is quite the opposite.

There are already a variety of apps that turn iOS and Android devices into wireless mice or trackpads or both. Some of them are even free. But a company called Spicebox thinks you’ll want to pay for a peripheral that does just about the exact same thing.

I’ve seen some unusual gadgets over the years, but the iKazoo might be one of the most offbeat, yet intriguing devices I’ve seen in a while.