Ever since reading Ready Player One years back, I’ve wanted haptic gloves (gloves that allow you to feel things you touch in VR) or at least a good glove for tracking my hands in VR. I just saw a reference to these in my youtube viewing, and I’m gonna give my thoughts on them as I’m looking at them.
The main company website is here:
I’m not gonna go everything point by point, they have their own marketing team for that. I’m just gonna comment on things I find interesting.
So far it appears that they have what is supposed to be a precision tracking system with fingerless gloves to be delivered January 2020 and later, but there is reference to a haptic feedback version.
Let’s see, compatible with Oculus, Gear VR, Vive, Open VR. Nice.
Price point for the fingerless gloves, CHF 650, which is about $656 US. Pricey… but possibly doable. They’ve gotta sell me on it’s capabilities, and importantly, compatibility, before I start throwing around that kind of money again.
Features:
Looks like there is a sensor you add onto your headseat, and a pair of gloves. I’m not sure if there are any other parts.
Tracking outside my field of view? Niiiiiiice. That’s been the number one drawback for the other tracking systems I’ve heard of.
Wireless, definitely a must.
Millimeter-scale precision, a definite plus. I have often have trouble interacting with objects precisely in VR, and this should help with that.
Rechargeable… eh. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Probably helps the form factor of the battery packs, but it’s gonna suck if I forget to recharge and I want to jump into VR with them. I keep batteries on hand to swap out with my current controllers.
Demo videos:
The below videos are mostly the ones posted on their main page, in order.
This looks like a promise of capability, but so far I’m not seeing anything that proves capability, just fanciful renderings of what “could be”. I’m not seeing game titles. Definitely seems to emulate a version of the Minority Report display. I’m seeing a lot of promises and cool renders… but nothing proving it works.
Ah, an actual demo. Someone trying to play piano with it. The person appears to have the music memorized like an actual pianist playing the song… but their movements and playing are suuuuper hesitant. Then again, they don’t have force feedback in this version of the glove, so I’ll at least give them credit for being able to somewhat play the piano with the gloves.
This one is kinda cool. Used on a gun range. This is also a rough prototype. Hopefully they’ll have more later stage prototype videos soon.
This one followed one of the other ones on Vimeo. I don’t know why the hell they didn’t use this one as one of their primary demos, as in it’s own way it is much more impressive of a demo than the gun one. Shows someone picking up virtual balls and tossing them, with the on-screen hand closely following their movements. Looks like they did include it on the demos page, though.
Okay, this is pretty darn cool. Flying in a plane, being able to push the controls with the gloves.
Well, it definitely warrants looking into this further, I just hope to see some videos of a more finished product as I go along. I really hope I can find somewhere to try these before I make a decision on whether or not to get a pair of them.
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