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Force-Feedback Devices Provide Virtual Texture
Verteiron writes: "Saw this over at ComputerWorld. Looks like Logitech, among others, is starting to take the field of force-feedback out of the gaming world and onto the desktop. Apparently this new kind of mouse has a motor in it that can simulate various textures as you move it across your screen, letting you "feel" icons and windows. This is more than a gimmick: "people complete basic cursor-targeting tasks faster with tactile feedback". Another device featured is the Phantom, a nifty creation of SensAble Technologies. It goes one step further, allowing you to trace a fingertip across the surface of a virtual object, feeling its contours, tracing edges and even allowing you to sculpt and deform what's on the screen." Can we see support in Linux 2.6, please?
> be the pr0n industry. Anyone care to
> patent it while they have the chance?
Too late:
www.fufme.com
matt
I think this development of force-feedback response for normal computer tasks is a greater development than any kind of "talk-type" software, in that now GUI interfaces can be truly accessible for the blind.
Think of it. Instead of rolling the mouse or trackball around, blindly trying to hit the "sweet spot" that will trigger the vocal signal, or being stuck with a command line interface that no one (in the Windows/Mac world) programs for, force-feedback reactions to desktop features and talk-response can be combined to make point-and-click applications and interfaces really usable. In effect, the mouse and mousing surface can replace the monitor.
I'd buy a force-feedback mouse and apps just to support the technology, even though I still have enough sight to use a normal computer (albeit with a honking huge monitor that I still sit almost nose-to-screen with). This is really good news when it comes to making computers accessible to those of us who got dealt a bad hand at birth:)
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Americans are bred for stupidity.
We have several phantom devices at the virtual environments lab at my university. They are pretty pricy (in the thousands) a piece. One historic event that we did recently, is the first international handshake, using phantom devices, at the recent VSMM conference. Pretty neat devices.
Eh...
The WingMan Force Feedback Mouse
This mouse is permenantly mounted to its "mouse pad". Movement is limited to about two inches of movement either way. The motion isn't absolute to the screen, so it's possible to end up in the middle of the screen and unable to move to the right. (You work around it by slowly moving left, then quickly moving right.) This is very frustrating.
Because the mouse is connected to the mouse pad, it can actually push back against you. It's a neat trick, but I'm not real sure about the value. When playing a game, having your mouse kick back when you fire would be distracting. Worse, being locked to the pad means that in a first person shooter, you can end up unable to turn in a direction.
Using their web browser plugin, a web page author can push your mouse around, or give a graphic a simplistic texture. Just what I need, my mouse to gravitate towards the "Purchase Now". Or, oooh, I can _feel_ the Slashdot logo. Yippee. It's got all of the apeal of a BLINK tag or a web site entirely designed in Flash.
The strangest feature is that the mouse can generate simple tones by vibrating. It's a creepy feeling. I don't want my mouse to feel like an electric razer, and I want my audio to come from my nice sound card. It's such a bad idea that I suspect it's a side effect of the design that they decided to call a feature.
The only potential advantage is that once their drive is installed, menu items subtly "click". So do links in Internet Explorer. I didn't particularly like it, but I can see it making "hitting the target" easier.
All in all, I'd rather have a nice mouse I can actually pick up.
iFeel Mouse
On the up side it is a nice optical mouse. But they sell cheaper optical mice. Because it's not attached to a mouse pad, all it can do is vibrate. You don't sense any particular texture. You don't feel it push in any direction. It just vibrates. Push it over a textured web graphic and it vibrates. Fire a gun in a game and it vibrates. Move it over a link and it vibrates. It's as complex and useful as a "rumble pack" for a console controller. Oh, and it does the vibrating tone thing, but barely audiably.
It's a lot more practically useful than the WingMan mouse, but you're still paying a premium for a silly idea. Just buy a nice optical mouse without force feedback. Logitech even makes those.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
If it's a hoax, it's very thorough and elaborate, right down to the carefully worded Y2K statement. I followed every link on the site and didn't encounter a fooled-you! page anywhere.
The only thing that's suspicious is that the face of the actual unit is a little "cleaner" to my eyes than a real piece of plastic would be. The lines are just too bright and even; I don't see any texture at all.
It looks for all the world like someone has taken a regular picture of a CD-rom and touched up the face. I zoomed up the jpegs to about 800% and couldn't find anything suspicious; though I'm by no means any kind of expert on digital fakery. I've seen it and done it, but almost anyone could. Also, what the hell is that button on the right supposed to be for? "Eject?"
Ok, I'm getting ever more curious. First of all, there's no place on the order form (gave a fictitious name and address, duh) for any kind of billing. All it asks for is your name, a country, and a valid email address. And an item and quantity. When I clicked "place order" it informed me that all servers were busy. That seems highly unlikely, as they weren't too busy to show me the pictures of the unit.
www.fufme.com is actually "scooby.valueweb.net" according to my DNS server.
My final opinion: either someone's paying a lot of money to have a big laugh, is conducting some sort of cybersex survey, or is running a full-blown scam. The only reason I discount the latter is there doesn't appear to be any way to actually buy one of these. I think it's a survey.
There. Is everyone laughing? Thank you.
- I love how interesting articles get abandoned yet repeat articles get posted.. I really don't understand.
In that case, you may be interested to check out Kuro5hin and/or Half-Empty. Both sites are similar to Slashdot, only differentAlex Bischoff
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Since I know nothing about this subject since yesterday when I came across
this excellent review of SensAble feedback device in Byte.com
the link's all I have to say. But the review of the SensAble kit seems to have some good insights.
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G'wan, admit it, this idea passed through your minds...
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Oooh! That fills good!
Someone has coined the term "teledildos" for
remove feedback "devices" that could be used
on a computer. Either a live person on the
other end, or a computer program/recording.
There was a movie or TV show with this sorta plot... cybersex was so real that some people never had the real thing, and never missed it... then they started to get paranoid about it, thinkin' about diseases (in a future where STDs had been wiped out) and such... anyone have any idea what this movie was? Now I'm wondering...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Of course, we could just slop it in any old way.
No, wait. Excuse me. Long day at the office. I confused proper programmers with that other OS.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Can we see support in Linux 2.6, please?
Wouldn't this be more of a 'Forced Feedback Driver for X' thing than a kernel support in 2.6 thing?
I seem to recall that all of Logitech's force-feedback technology is licensed from SensAble (or maybe I'm confusing them with Haptic Technologies. When I got curious about "haptic" devices about a year ago, I remember seeing a version of the WingMan on the SensAble web site. They were pushing it purely as a GUI enhancement ("Feel when you mouse moves from one window to another!), but apparently weren't getting any takers. Only Logitech took them up, and for a long time, even Logitech considered it purely a "game device".
Nowadays, SensAble concentrates on 3D haptic devices, useful for design engineering, sculpture, etc. It occurs to me that this too would make a nice GUI pointer. Think of the idioms you could invent with a 3d pointer! But of course, the gadget is much too expensive for that market.
Which also explains the problem with the WingMan and iFeel. It isn't that physical feedback is a bad idea. It's just that they haven't figured out how to make a real feedback device that's cheap enough for the mass market.
__________
Must be a late day at work for me but the next obvious use for this technology would be the pr0n industry. Anyone care to patent it while they have the chance?
-Vel
Linux 2.6? Oh, be optimistic; say Linux 3.0
:)
Wouldn't this be more of a 'Forced Feedback Driver for X' thing than a kernel support in 2.6 thing?
;-)
I noticed that too. I couldn't help but think, "Yah, but what I really want is support in GCC!".
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
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I don't know why they don't just remove the "Extrans" option since it hasn't worked for about a year now. Sigh.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
a repeat
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The Register has some more info about it from a while back.
not only is the article old (been on slashdot before, twice, I think), but the posts appear to be the same ones.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Hell you could even web enable the stuff and force people to slow down over your links.
Yes moderators this is meant to be sarcastic and funny.. not trolling!
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I wonder what this mouse will do if windows crashes ? Jumping from your table and die in the trashcan ?
LogiTech tried this forced-feedback effect years ago and it failed miserably. Remember in good ol' DOOM when during the mouse initialization you would get the message "M_Init: This device is not a cyberman?" [or something like that]. Well, I was one of the few suckers who invested in the CyberMan, thinking it was a rather cool idea and that there would be a lot of support for it in the future. Well, needless to say, I was probably one of the five people who owned one (not counting the few promotional ones probably tossed at iD). The only other piece of software which ever (to my knowledge) supported the CyberMan was Quest For Glory 4. I still think that the CyberMan held lots of potential, especially for CAD type programs and other things (specifically games) which needed the flexability of a mouse which could move around in three dimensions, but now I'm getting off topic. Either way, the CyberMan had forced feedback, and it was really quite cool, because different situations caused different effects. Being shot was a quick buzz, chewed on by a demon was longer and deeper and more annoying, and standing in that green slime made the thing go crazy - all in all, it really hightened that experience. Here's the catch: IT DIDN'T CATCH ON. It seemed great, and it still seems great, but there was no market for forced-feedback devices just a few short years ago. Now, the market has changed drastically since the DOOM days, but even the N64 Rumble Pack isn't used as widely as was hoped. So what do I think? It feels to me as if there will be a lot of hype over these forced-feedback devices. There will be critical acclaim and a few software packages which will support the hardware at first. After that initial rush, I highly doubt much will come from the hardware and there will be a bunch of people left with high-tech yet unsupported devices on their desks. Hey, I'm still hoping some new software will come out which I can use my CyberMan with. I'm just not holding my breath any more.
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"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
Drag and drop of files would be a bit of a pain with a force feedback mouse. Sure, everything will be fine until you start feeling macho and then try to drag a fifty megabyte file all by yourself. Then you sprain a muscle.
<p>
I can do this already on my Linux machine. I sneezed all over the monitor screen a couple of weeks ago and the stuff has gone all hard now, so if I touch the screen I can certainly feel its contours. And if I pick hard enough I can indeed "sculpt and deform" it. In a sort of organic bas-relief effect.
<p>
It enhances air war-type games too. Imagine the scene: "Sir, I have a bogey on the screen at 12 o' clock".
<p>
I guess my wife is right, it's way past time I cleaned up in my den...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I have a FF joystick... and games that support it just take on a whole new dimmension...
I mean feeling the mech take its steps, or fire a weapon... wow...
Does it make me a better player? Far from it, it tends to throw off my aim... Do I enjoy the game more? Oh yeah... that's a new flavour of fun...
Now real-world applications are looking at this technology... interesting... I don't think I want a surgeon using his MS Sidewinder FF to transplant an organ or anything... but I'm sure there will be some good applications... (remote control bomb-defusing comes to mind...)
BlackNova Traders
Now the blind can enjoy internet porn too. this MUST be a good thing. Seriously though.. I think it may be useful for blind net-users.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
How good are todays programs at, say, switching mouse icon when they are supposed to? Not so good that I could rely on the icon to know wether I should click or not.
But let's be optimistic. In the best case, gadgets like these will force UI designers to follow standards more. Less of that "Oh, but surely everyone should realize that they are supposed to right-control-doubleclick *there*" attitude.
*sigh* wouldn't the simplest and possibly best solution to mouse feedback be active mouse buttons? gently pop up the buttons when the pointer is over something intresting. More useful and less annoying thatn a vibrator. And if you want to make a useful blind-aid combine with six pop up dots braille style for text scanning and buttons to lock mouse movement to vertical/horizonal only. (I cant draw a straight line with a mouse and *with* visual feedback.)
All opinions are my own - until criticized
It's sad that the only real use for this that I can think of is fabric purchasing (a miniscule market), or pr0n (a huge market). But for the latter, we need a much larger surface...
All it will take will be one poorly designed piece of hardware (never happens, right?) with sloppy, or non-imposed force-feedback limits. Imagine a gloove that works much like the above mentioned mouse. Imagine a 'hacker' creating a program which takes advantage of this poorly designed piece of hardware to, say, crush your hand. I don't want to even think about what could happen with certain 'erotic pleasure' devices. Yowza! =)
ALG
All you have to do to texturize the average mouse is eat at your desk. Damn crums, they make all sorts of clicks and slips.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Or when they get b*tchslapped, they actually feel it!
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Chief Frog Inspector
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