A company called Tactical Haptics wants to give video games a sense of touch in a way that could put rumble packs to shame.
Founder and CEO William Provancher told Mashable that his company has built a virtual reality device called Reactive Grip, a combination of software and hardware that lets video game players use a specialized controller to experience physical sensations unlike anything previously seen in gaming. Reactive Grip does a couple of things to create a more lifelike experience for virtual reality users, and he hopes the technology will spark the next step in immersive gaming.
See also: Oculus Rift: Hands On With the Future of Gaming
First comes the tactile component. Tactical Haptics allows users to pick up a virtual basketball and feel the divots in its skin, according to Provancher. The second element deals with how your arm muscles react to objects you hold. If you wave an object, for example, a real sword, above your head, the Reactive Grip allows you to feel its weight and how the sword tilts one way or another, depending on the direction you swing it. Provancher says his company has developed a "physics engine" that incorporates that muscle feedback into virtual reality environments.
"It's essentially creating a really simple yet effective illusion that you have physical interaction with things," Provancher says. "What you experience is a combination of what's called a motion component (what you feel in your muscles) and tactile (what you feel in the skin)."
Reactive Grip does this by taking a digital representation of the sword you're holding, measuring your hands and using that information to determine the physical force you would feel while waving it about.
The technology has received a number of positive reviews, but Tactical Haptics has struggled to convert those reviews into cash on its Kickstarter campaign page. As of this writing, it has raised about $83,000, and has only seven more days to reach its $175,000 goal.
Provancher thinks that the novelty of improved virtual reality feedback is hard to convey through videos and text, which is why, he believes, Reactive Grip hasn't been able to attract as much cash as he'd hoped. He also doesn't think it helps that the technology is only available for computer games.
Integrating Reactive Grip with a gaming system is difficult. For it to work, the system must be compatible with with the virtual reality hardware and software, otherwise the system won't be able to provide user feedback, rendering Reactive Grip useless. Many games are designed for players using regular controllers, and even if new games implemented the feedback, old games wouldn't because the virtual reality components are not backwards compatible. There is no patch that allows video game players to experience user feedback with games that weren't originally built for it. The combination of these effects, Provancher said, makes consumers less likely to purchase  a gaming system that uses his company's product.
"It's a really huge challenge to ever penetrate into any of these gaming fields," Provancher says.
Though he hopes it happens eventually, the CEO is checking out how Reactive Grip could benefit other fields.
One such area could be minimally invasive surgery, which is popular because it leaves only small scars. Surgeons make tiny incisions and insert their tools into the body. Those tools have small cameras that send video to monitors in the room that the surgeon uses to navigate.
"The problem...is quite often you can't feel what's happening inside the person's body," Provancher says. "If you could sense that, you could feed that back to somebody's fingertips, the surgeon's fingertips."
But his heart still lies with the video game industry.
"We may end up pivoting into another market and just trying to convert ourselves into a profitable business with markets that are interested and prepared," Provancher says. "I hate to think about it that way, because it kind of depresses me, because there's such potential there."
Later, he added, "It will be one of the coolest things that 2,000 people have tried."
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Image: Flickr, jit