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Forums - Gaming Discussion - New 4D Gaming Vest Lets You Feel Pain (& Fun) of Being Shot

"I am not a hardcore gamer," Palan said. "I am a roboticist. When I started with [the TGV], I pitched the idea for making a vest for a movie-watching experience inspired by Disney's 4-D motion pictures screened at various adventure parks. But it seems to be an easier task to have a gaming application to test the hardware."

Palan's venture is based in haptics -- feedback technology that engages the user's sense of touch. In order to test the hardware in an actual game, Palan and company chose fan favorite PC shooter "Half Life 2." Bespectacled MIT graduate-turned-alien-killing-hero Gordon Freemanwould be proud. 

Though it's easy to imagine one of the big three console manufacturers getting behind the TGV, Palan has had no luck so far getting their attention. "I tried to contact Microsoft," he explained. "I met a person at a Microsoft conference but I haven't heard anything back yet. I would be glad to get in touch with the right person, but my efforts to do so have not yielded any results."

In Palan's view the TGV heralds a host of advantages for gamers: "From our preliminary run we have noticed that a user benefits from such feedback as it increases their alertness and awareness of their surroundings." No one likes getting killed, and the TGV reinforces that with a sharp sensation. "Suppose the user is shot in the back in the game," said Palan. "There is no other way to know that precisely apart from the Haptic feedback. The main aim is to increase the immersiveness."

Palan also thinks the technology could branch out to other disparate fields, such as military simulations and medical training: "There are definitely many more uses for this technology then just getting shot, but everyone is just taking baby steps towards the future, building one sensation at a time."

As for the future of haptics in video games however, Palan believes the future is now, or at least very soon. 

"I believe that it will not be more than two years from now that such devices will be common among gamers," Palan said. 

Whether he's right or not, increasing immersion via unique control interfaces seems to be the order of the day for many developers. With 3-D gaming struggling to find its bearings in consumers' relevancy radars and the next round of game consoles only a few years away, Palan's project may very well end up being inspiration for the next big thing in gaming.

For more on Palan's project, check out his official site here.

 

 

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It has something interesting but I don't see any application in gaming outisde FPSs.



if this thread gets more hits then my thread about the Vest i shall be mildly bothered



“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

- George Orwell, ‘1984’

Interesting, though it costs $140.

Supported games

http://tngames.com/pages/Games-and-Drivers



I would love it.



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Cool!



well see in two years.



Being in 3rd place never felt so good

there is nothing as 4D

its just a marketing stunt

 

This neural interface.Starcraft 2 supports it



All I can say is "Lame!"



Solid_Snake4RD said:

there is nothing as 4D

its just a marketing stunt

 

This neural interface.Starcraft 2 supports it

Do you mean there is no such thing as 4D?

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimension