Reactive Grip Wants To Go Beyond The Rumble

[IanDavis]

Reactive Grip Wants To Go Beyond The Rumble

Yes, it works with Oculus Rift.

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Despite how far gaming tech has come over the years, controllers still offer the same basic feedback that the Dualshock/Rumble Pak introduced in '97. It's alright, and at times is better than no feedback at all, but there's really not much to it. Now with devices like Oculus Rift promising to bring workable VR tech to the masses, frankly, rumble just won't cut it anymore. To fix that, a startup named Tactical Haptics wants to make games feel physically immersive with a little devices called the [a href=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tacticalhaptics/reactive-griptm-touch-feedback-for-vr-and-video-ga?ref=live]Reactive Grip[/a].

Grafted atop a customized Razer Hydra, the Reactive Grip has four sliding contact bars built into the handle. To simulate things like the kick of a handgun or the nibble of a fish on the end of a line, it slides those contact bars around, making it feel as if it's actually moving in your hand. The actual technique is referred to as "skin stretch feedback", which is a phrase that should be kept far away from any future marketing. The controller is designed to work with the Sixense STEM, Razer Hydra, or any other motion tracking device you can bolt onto the front.

And yes, Tactical Haptics is attempting to [a href=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tacticalhaptics/reactive-griptm-touch-feedback-for-vr-and-video-ga?ref=live]Kickstart[/a] the device, but as of the time of writing, it's well short of its $175,000 goal, with less than two days to go. While there's not much hope for this round of crowdfunding, hopefully it gets a lucky break somewhere down the line, because I'd love to see this kind of tech grow.

Source: [a href=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tacticalhaptics/reactive-griptm-touch-feedback-for-vr-and-video-ga?ref=live]Tactical Haptics[/a]



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[josemlopes]

Just like the Oculus Rift its one of those things that they really need to let people use it to see what its like.

This also looks a lot harder for games to support fully (like the Razer Hydra) meaning that for most of the time its just a heavy paper weight.

Im still curious to see more of it, all it needed in the end of the video was Carmacks opinion (they got all those other guys and not him? He is also into VR so I was kind of surprised)

 

[Baldr]

What HAPPEN to the full Immersion Haptic gloves that some company was showing off at E3 2005? They were big bulky and had be strapped to a table to work properly, but they were more along the lines of what VR needs than any other gloves out there. You could feel solid virtual objects, could even tell if they were rough, smooth, or furry.

 

[Alpha Maeko]

I like how that one guy near the end seemed as unenthused as possible about it, almost like he was reading a script at gunpoint.

Anywho, this looks really neat... but I don't plan on getting it. Would be convenient if it became apart of console tech, though. An official new peripheral for the Xbox One that has this stuff in it? Sure, I'll bite.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well it's a start but hardly something you should spend all your money on at this point, give it time until they make their second or third model.

 

[truckspond]

I was wondering how long it would take for such devices to emerge. It looks like the models shown in the video use the same base as the Razer Hydra so it will probably be compatible with that by simply replacing the included handles with the ones shown in the video (It does use Sixense hardware after all!)

 

[JarinArenos]

I remember my microsoft Force Feedback Pro joystick from way back when, and it was light years more advanced than the feedback in modern controllers...