Slashdot Mirror
Haptic Battle Pong... Future of Game Interface?
An anonymous reader writes "The Sensable Phantom is a premier force-feedback haptic device and sells for a few thousand dollars now, but when that number comes down, the game industry will be jumping all over the idea of six-degree-of-freedom, precision-force-feedback video games. It looks like Haptic Battle Pong may be the first attempt at a true 6-dof, force-feedback game. It's not Quake, but maybe this is the next big thing in video games?"
This thing has interactive chat room sex toy written all over it.
:-D
Now I can use both hands!!
I thought that was when my brother and I turned to fisticuffs after particularly gruelling sessions on the Atari...
slashdotted already? check out more information on this here
There's no "I" in Linux.. err..
I can see the story now:
SMALLTOWN, INDIANA (AP) -- In a tragic incident in Smalltown, IN, two Smalltown High students have been arrested after breaking 20 windows in their high school by bouching balls off of them repeatedly until they could no longer withstand the force. Preliminary reports indicates that the kids, who belonged to a group called 'The Bouncy Mafia', were wearing trenchcoats and had in their possessions two copies of 'Battle Pong'. State legislators have rushed to ban the game, calling it a grave threat to our schools and the mental state of today's youth.
</tongue firmly in cheek>
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Quick batman to the google mirror...
/.'ed
here
or
here
hurry of these too will be
I'm wary of all these new 82-button controllers with orgasm mode. And here's why.
It did before, it's going to do it again. In a few years, people say "I remember when I was a kid all we had was pong, and not some fancy 6 way thingamcbobber pong. Just back and forth..."
Until these things are less than $35, I will just pay the annual fee for the local recreation club and play the real ping pong game. Trust me, I get feed back, sometimes right on my nose. Damn them Indians are good with pongs. :/
geek page at KY speaks
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
If it's not intuitive, then it's useless. How many great games have been completely ruined by an interface that is almost impossbile to use? If I'm going to be wishing for the 'good old days' of WASD, then you can count this buried.
To wear a cup, for those ogc'ers who have their aimbot set on crotch.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Here is a site that explains a little more about 6-D Haptics. Cool stuff.
Haptics could offer the magical possibility of changing the average gamer from a large cholesterol repository into a lean mass of muscle. Well, maybe not, but it's a neat idea.
We've slashdotted Brown!
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
Thats nothing compared to my classy joypad
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
will hustler get a hold of one of these? can you say "attachments"? well the stylus is a little thin.
I want 2D games back.
That device looks remarkably like the tools 3D developers use to model objects based off sculptures. These basically read coordinates from the real 3D space that your working on, such as a sculpture of a bust, and then places vertices in the corresponding 3D space in the computer program, Maya, Softimage, etc. These devices cost a lot because of their precision. If you wanted to get laser-mouse quality movement & precision, you'd need to buy one that cost $2000+. I imagine this Phantom device follows the same system as the 3D coord mapping device. As mentioned in the write up, these devices would definately be able to have a very full range of motion, otherwise gamers would be breaking these things a lot for any range of reasons. Looks interesting however, we shall see where this goes.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
They've probably forgotten that your average online gamer is a pasty blob that receives more of a tan from the CRT's phosphor glow than outdoor activities... Games would last about, oh, 5 minutes before they passed out from exhaustion.
Can you imaging a LAN party of this game? I can smell it now: Warm electronics, Bad breath *AND* Body Odour!
Having seen one of these machines in action, I feel qualified to spout off about it. ;-)
They are way cool. The two player mode where the players challenge each other side by side is a riot. I guess they've figured out how to spatially locate the paddles in three dimensions.
Anyway, it's very cool.
Paying a grand for a force feedback is chump change. Just sue them for ten million when it gives you carpal tunnel syndrome.
How ya like dat?
I don't want the real world, I want to escape it.
Can I bum a sig?
What will happen when all games are like this, and you actually have to be good at physical activity and have some degree of real-life hand-eye coordination? Then the jocks will become better at videogames, too. The last refuge nerdly superiority will be cruelly taken away. This could have major consequences, though one of them might be to get said nerds to spend more time doing actual physical activity, whether within a game or not.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Anyone have a mirror with images?
http://www.BackYardParty.com
Limited market, limited appeal. And it's not just little no-name games that skimp on supporting clever devices. For example, Jedi Knight 2 only added force feedback mice in the 1.3 patch, and still doesn't (officially) support force feedback joysticks. GTA3 on the PC doesn't (at the moment) even support steering wheel pedals! I can't begin to tell you how surprised and disappointed I was about that.
I'm not saying I don't like the idea, just that it will take a long, long time (5+ years) before these things take off, if they take off.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The Phantom has been around for years now, so waiting for the price to come down any further is probably futile. And somehow I don't think Pong is going to unleash massive pent-up demand sufficient to change the production costs that much.
Why play pong with one of the little desktop models when they can use one of the larger workspace 6DOF models like we use ? Of course, they might have a little trouble getting their hands on one of these, since SensAble only made six of them.
but this seems like the technology to make the light sabre game I've been dreaming about since I was 12.
The greater the difficulty, the more you had to be dead on with blocking laser blasts or opposing sabres (your sabre becomes thinner and more damaging with greater difficulty). The format would be arcade, much like the virtual cop style where you move from scene to scene, then hold steady and fight. Except the scenes would change frequently, and you would have the standard force abilities at your disposal.
Then, the PC version comes after the tech gets cheap enough for people to buy it, and you use the keyboard to navigate, and do the other flips, jumps, etc. Third person view, I'd think.
Anyway, thats what I do during class. That and think of how Yoda should've fought Dooku.
No kidding. It shows WAY more colors than Q1.
THINK ABOUT IT! Pong has been around for years! people who used to play it on there atari 2600's still want to play it. pong is a strong game in the market today and many people still buy it. i for one would buy the joystick for force-feedback pong and i am sure many classic gamers would too. ant this library keyboard is so neat
"Your mind is like a parachute. If it doesn't work, you're screwed." - me
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
In my opinion, a game is a game -- and should stay there.
.. Living in a virtual world, and pretending its reality, lets you lose yourself...
Feedback is nice, but if you want reality, come to reality
no offence everquest folks
"cogito, ergo sum"
Is it possible for one of these things to hurt you...
How much force are we talking when we say force feedback ?
Depending on the direction the force is being applied, very little force could cause injury... especially over repeated use.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
The big danger behind the game is it's usage. Games like this are meant to played a bunch. Why's that a problem?
Guess what the #1 cause of Carpal Tunnel is.
It's vibration. So when you have this vibrating combined with the repetitive movements, you can easily get carpal tunnel and tendonitis very quickly.
But hey, should be fun tho'.
The Masters of the Pong Arena :
:
:
:
Dan Morris and Neel Joshi
The planet Earth has been invaded by an alien civilization from the planet Xoltar. The invaders have shown no mercy toward human beings. Those that were lucky have been enslaved, working in the Xoltarian tungsten mines. Those that were unlucky - the fastest and the strongest of all men - have been sent back to Xoltar as gladiators in the Battle Pong Arena.
Today you will step into that arena, armed only with your rocket-paddle and your land mines. If you survive, you will win your freedom and your return to Earth... but do you have what it takes to survive?
Haptic battle pong is played between two opponents, each seated at a machine with a desktop Phantom. The two machines are connected via TCP. The Phantom is used to position and orient the paddle, and the keyboard is used to move the player around the battle pong area. Each player begins the game with 99 health points; a player loses health each time the ball bounces on his side of the arena.
Players can also press a key to switch from "paddle mode" to "gun mode". In "gun mode", a player can fire rockets at his opponent to take off additional health points (the gun is also controlled via the Phantom).
Players are also equipped with three "land mines"; each represents a "haptic attack" that can be directed toward the opponent. The attacks include "heavy paddle", "slow paddle", and "remote operation paddle" (which allows the attacker to remotely manipulate the opponent's Phantom).
This game makes extensive use of the full 6-DOF input available from the desktop Phantoms, for swinging at the ball and orienting the player's gun. 3-dof force-feedback is used to simulate contact between the racquet and the ball, impact forces from gunshots and explosions, and the "haptic attacks" that are discussed above (the remote-operation attack is a particularly good time).
Currently, the presence of haptics in the mass market is limited primarily to traditional non-force-feedback devices (mice, etc.) and simple single-dof feedback devices (e.g. vibrating game controllers). The community currently studying or producing more complex haptic interfaces focuses primarily on high-end, specialized applications: surgical simulation, tele-operation, 3d-modeling, etc. We are of the opinion that when the cost of devices like the Phantom comes down to a point that these devices are accessible to the general public, the primary applications of such devices (and the primary economic support for such devices) will come from the game industry, which will jump on the opportunity to incorporate six degrees of freedom into video games.
We sought to produce what may be among the first 6-dof, force-feedback games, and in particular to explore the playability of a game that uses six degrees of freedom. Furthermore, we sought to create a final project with a significant amount of action and violence. Our solution was "Haptic Battle Pong". We find this to be especially appropriate, since "pong" is typically associated with the origins of graphic video games, and the incorporation of six degrees of freedom and complex force-feedback may well represent a new beginning for the video game industry.
This document will server as a 'manual' for the game (how to play, etc.), as well as a summary of our implementation decisions. We assume that the reader is familiar with the Sensable Phantom force-feedback device, which reports six degrees of motion and provides three degrees of force-feedback. See http://www.sensable.com for more details.
IIa. Starting the Game
Each player should sit at a computer with a desktop Phantom and a decent graphics card (our polygon count is not high, but we make extensive use of textures, etc., so software GL won't work very well, especially given the high computational demands of the haptic interface). The computers should be connected by a reasonable network; latency should not be a huge issue, since all contact physics are computed locally. Use the usual windows volume control to set the volume for the game; the effects and music volume are controlled by the 'wave' and 'synthesizer/MIDI' volume controls, respectively. Each player should run "haptic_battle_pong.exe", which should start up the game (you should hear the 'Mike Tyson's Punch-Out' theme when the program starts).
Players should grip the Phantom fairly tightly, since there will be some "kick" from various game events (the forces are not too high, but a loose grip can cause you to let go of the Phantom). It is critical that players hold the stylus so that the tip of the device is pointing upwards (thus the last joint should be down toward the table). On the screen, this corresponds to the paddle pointing toward the ground, as if it were a tennis racquet held upside down. The grip the player uses will probably resemble an Eastern ping-pong grip, rather than a tennis racquet grip. This is an equipment-safety requirement; there is a point in the desktop Phantom's workspace where the second-to-last end-effector joint cannot rotate any more, and the Phantom may be damaged if a user reaches this point but continues to push on the Phantom. This point never comes into play if the user holds the Phantom as instructed, but may be a problem if the user holds the Phantom like a tennis racquet.
When the player is holding the Phantom and is ready to start playing, he should click the "start haptic loop" button. This will start the ball/physics simulation as well. At this point, the player will be able to hit the ball against the middle wall (since no opponent is present). If the paddle appears not to be oriented correctly (aligned with the stylus), the Phantom probably needs to be re-calibrated. Our application does not perform autocalibration; we suggest running the Sensable demo applications (e.g. 'Dice') a few times.
When both players are ready, one player should click the 'start server' button. The other player should type the IP address or hostname of the server into the text area, and click 'connect to server'. At this point, players should be able to see each other moving and the game can begin. The middle wall no longer represents a physical object; the ball will pass over to the opponent's side.
The game will be reset (health set to 99, all mines restored, all active mines removed from the playing area) when the connection is initiated, but players may also want to press '0' to reset the game again when both sides are ready.
If one player disconnects, the other player will be automatically returned to one-player mode.
IIb. Keyboard/GUI controls
The controls are documented in the 'help' screen (just click the 'help/about' button), but we will run through them here to explain the gameplay a bit
Use the Phantom to move and orient the paddle. The Phantom's workspace roughly represents the 'reach' of the player, so you will usually have to move the player, in addition to the Phantom, to reach the ball.
Use 'A', 'W', 'S', and 'D' to move left, forward, back, and right respectively.
Use the spacebar or the control key to jump. You don't need to jump very often, but sometimes the ball will pass slightly above your reach, and jumping will occasionally help avoid enemy bullets or mines.
Use 'TAB' to toggle gun mode; you should see your paddle change to/from a rocket launcher.
Use 'E' to fire your gun (when you are in gun mode)
Use 'E' to enable/disable your 'spin paddle' (when you are in paddle mode). This will allow you to put spin on the ball. Your paddle will be blue when you have enabled spin. We don't recommend doing this right away; it does make the ball more difficult to control (although backspin shots are a lot of fun once you get used to the game).
Use 'Z' to place a mine. You cannot hurt yourself with your own mines, but you generally want to do this on your opponent's side of the court. The mine will initially appear red; it will turn black when it is 'armed' (at this point your opponent can detonate it by stepping on it).
Use '1', '2', '3', and '4' to select your regular, slow-paddle, heavy-paddle, and remote-operation-paddle mines, respectively. Note that you only have one mine of each type in a game, and that you can only have one active mine in the playing area at a time.
Use 'C' to detonate your own mine. This won't do any damage to your opponent, but you may want to remove your mine from the playing area so you can place another mine.
Use '0' to reset the game at any time. Player health will return to 99, all active mines will disappear, and all players will again have one of each type of mine.
Use 'T' to reset the ball to its initial position. This is basically never used during the game, but it may be useful when you're first getting used to hitting the ball, and you may want to 'feed' the ball to yourself a few times.
This may seem like a large number of keys, but you generally are only using the movement keys, TAB, and 'E' at any one time. You will also note that all the keys we chose are in easy reach of each other, so keeping your hand resting on the movement keys will be fine.
In addition to these keys, there are several GUI controls that offer additional functionality
The haptic loop can be stopped at any time using the start/stop haptic loop button. The game will need to be reset if the haptic loop is stopped, but you should stop the haptic loop if you need to release the Phantom (since just putting down on the table is not a great idea when forces can still be applied to it). You may also need to stop and re-start the haptic loop if at any time during the game you exceed the Phantom's maximum velocity (a limit imposed by the driver) and receive an error message telling you that the Phantom is shutting down. This doesn't seem to happen too often, but you may start moving the Phantom quickly in the heat of the battle.
The 'gravity' checkbox can be used to disable gravity. In fact, when both players disable gravity (and reset the ball using either the 'T' key or the 'reset ball' button), the game is placed into a much simpler "pong mode" in which the ball is constrained to move in a plane parallel to the ground. This can be helpful for getting used to the game or just playing an easier version of the game. When in this mode, a target will appear on each player's back wall; hitting this target takes five points away from the opponent. The game is basically played like air hockey. Using spin in this mode will take the ball out of the plane, so don't use spin in this mode. J
The 'connect to server' button can be used at any time to disconnect and re-connect to the server whose hostname/IP address is currently in the text box. We don't recommend connecting to yourself, despite the fact that the initial string in the edit window is 'localhost'. J
The 'skycam' button can be used to move the camera to a stationary position, above the playing area. Most players seem to prefer the default first-person camera (you can return to this camera using the 'playercam' button).
IIc. Game Rules
The rules of the game are as follows
Each player begins with 99 health points; the first to 0 loses the game (just press '0' to restart the game when you die)
One health point is lost each time the ball bounces on your side. If the ball is on your side for several seconds, you will begin to lose health points as time passes (so don't get so excited about shooting your gun that you forget to hit the ball!)
A player loses five health points if he is hit by an opponent's bullet
A player loses ten health points for detonating an opponent's mine, and loses additional health points as long as he is standing in the burning mine
Players can move anywhere in the playing area, but a player can only fire his gun when he is on his side of the court (you will not be able to fire if you are very close to the center wall or on your opponent's side).
Players have one mine of each type per game.
Players have unlimited ammunition, but can only fire once every two seconds. A clicking sound indicates that your gun has reloaded.
Also note that there is a back wall present on each side of the court, although it is not visible on your own side of the court. There is also a ceiling at about twice the player height; the ball loses its vertical velocity when it hits this ceiling.
A brief overview of the game is provided on the first page of this document; here we will discuss some of the features we included in more detail, and some of the design decisions underlying those features.
The basic control mechanism for the game uses the Phantom to control the paddle (both its orientation and its position in a limited workspace) and the keyboard to control player motion. We chose this approach, as opposed to using the Phantom exclusively, for several reasons
The controls feel rather like Quake or similar first-person shooter games, which makes the gameplay intuitive for someone who has played games of this type before. Quake uses a mouse in one hand to control the player's gun, and the keyboard (the same buttons we use) to control player motion.
We could have simply mapped the Phantom's workspace to the total workspace (thus presenting no moving avatar at all), but we felt that the player motion aspect of the game adds excitement and more variety from shot to shot.
In general, just using the Phantom for 6-dof control of the paddle is extremely complex, especially for the first few times a new user plays the game. Adding additional complexity to the Phantom interface - e.g. moving the player in addition to moving the paddle - would have made it very difficult to learn the game.
The contact between the ball and the paddle is modeled as a mass penetrating a plane with a fixed spring constant. With spin disabled, the force exerted on the ball is always perpendicular to the plane of the paddle and proportional to the ball's penetration through the plane of the paddle. This leads to a fairly intuitive model of contact from the player's perspective, and provides the basic physical properties that you'd like to have in a ball-paddle collision (a faster-moving ball bounces off faster, a faster-moving paddle makes the ball move faster (due to longer contact time), etc.).
Force-feedback is used to haptically render the contact between the ball and the paddle. Our qualitative experiments showed us that force-feedback was essential to hitting controlled shots, which was encouraging; it seems like force-feedback actually can contribute significantly to complex gameplay.
Originally, we set the force rendered on the phantom to be proportional to the force exerted on the ball at all times. This actually was not intuitive from a player's perspective, and generally led to very brief contacts that were difficult to control. We experimented with a variety of force models, and ultimately decided that the simplest contact model - a constant force that is not dependent on the velocity of the ball or the penetration distance of the ball - was the best approach. This actually feels quite convincing once you are able to control the paddle.
The only problem with this approach, initially, was that the Phantom tended to vibrate when a player tried to 'pick up' a stationary ball, due to the rapid and repeated initiation and release of contact with the ball. So currently at low penetration distances, we actually do apply a force to the phantom that is proportional to the force applied to the ball (and thus to the penetration distance), but above some threshold distance the force jumps up to an empirically determined constant.
When spin is enabled, an angular velocity is imparted on the ball that is proportional to the motion of the paddle within the plane of the paddle face. A force is also applied to the Phantom in this plane as well. Once the ball has some angular velocity, it will bounce off all surfaces (walls, floor, and paddles) in a direction that is not perfectly perpendicular to the surface (it deviates according to the angular velocity of the ball). Combined with the graphical effect of the spinning textured ball, this seems to be a convincing representation of the spin that one might apply to a tennis or ping-pong ball.
Force-feedback is also used for the "haptic attacks" that can be directed at an opponent using land mines. The simpler attacks (slow-paddle and heavy-paddle) are very simple haptic effects which can be very convincing to someone who has not used a Phantom before. This can make for a very exciting introduction to haptic feedback, and part of our goal in designing this game was to provide haptic sensations that would immediately impress a "gamer". The tele-operation attack in particular demonstrates the potential for players to interact in a physical way that has never before been possible in video games, which we anticipate would be exciting to most video game enthusiasts. It makes for a very convincing demo when one of the players detonates a remote-operation mine and lets go of his or her phantom; if the opponent is in the same room, players are immediately impressed by the ability of one Phantom to control another Phantom in space.
Force-feedback is also used to provide a "kick" when a player fires his gun, to provide a "kick" when a player is hit by an opposing bullet, and to provide a "rumbling" sensation when a player is in contact with a detonated mine. These are simpler effects that are little more than what is available on a 1-dof feedback device (although they are accurate in the direction in which the force is applied), but they do add to the excitement of the game.
We use a number of sound effects to provide realism; this actually helps players in getting the timing of the game down, and of course in building some intensity during gameplay. We also play MIDI music during the game to add additional 'ambience'; we selected the music from the Nintendo classic 'Mike Tyson's Punch-Out'.
One of the biggest difficulties players have in learning to play the game is adjusting to the level of depth perception that is required to control a game in 6-DOF. We found that adding projective shadows for the ball and the paddle (cast onto the ground) actually make a big difference in helping the player find the appropriate depth for contacting the ball. Similarly, the texture-mapping on the ball makes it much easier to perceive the spin of the ball when spin is enabled.
Several other graphical features, including snazzy texture-mapped fire and the use of the familiar Quake III rocket launcher, add to the intensity of the game significantly.
After playing only a few games of Haptic Battle Pong, we are able to reliably control the six-dof input device and make a variety of interesting shots. Various strategies have started to emerge, and the game has actually become quite exciting. The complexity of the game is still limited by the difficulty of 6-dof control, but we anticipate that if the Phantom were a more regularly-used device, this would cease to be a problem (i.e., Quake would probably have been hard to play before anyone had mice and keyboard).
At the moment, a Phantom costs several thousand dollars. But the costs will inevitably come down, and the success of this project is encouraging for the future of high-degree-of-freedom gaming.
Also, there are lots of guns and explosions.
Wow, a Slashdot post I actually feel qualified to post about. I used to run a site on haptics when they first made their way into gaming (Force One), and actually had the chance to visit some of the people breaking ground in the industry, including Immersion and Sensable.
The Sensable people are focused on industrial and research applications of force feedback (haptics) - and while the 6dof stuff looks like fun (and it is) there's no real application in any type of gaming for something like this. Someone else made the point that this would wind up in a sex chat room - and I agree! That's the mantra I've been chanting for years now.
Immersion, on the other hand, is at the forefront of mainstream FF technology. They're behind almost every major force-enabled interface device on the mainstream market - they made everything for Logitech's FF joysticks and wheels, and even Microsoft's stuff as well (although MS bought another company for their preliminary products).
I hope Sensable's technology gets the killer mainstream app it needs.
Personally, I don't want to suffer realistic force feedback from a game like Quake. I'd rather not feel what a launched rocket feels like, thankyouverymuch.
--
http://www.aikiweb.com - AikiWeb Aikido Information
"The Phantom's workspace roughly represents the 'reach' of the player, so you will usually have to move the player, in addition to the Phantom, to reach the ball."
I dunno about this. It smacks of effort.
Here's a simulated preview of a force feedback pong simulation:
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
etc...
Sounds a lot like Chinese water torture to me.
Haptic Battle Pong has been around for quite a while. Head down to your local YMCA and play a game of racquetball. ;) Plenty of "haptic feedback" if you get in front of a moving ball. Let's see if this "battle pong" can match that!
I worked with one of these on a HCI project in college and while they work very well, it didn't seem sturdy enough to work well for a gamer. If they can make it more resilient to high forces, it would be fantastic.
From the article:
/.ers will understand the comparison. :-P
The contact between the ball and the paddle is modeled as a mass penetrating a plane with a fixed spring constant.
They used sex as the model? I hope
ooo, these will be some good games.
there was even a special controller for it, SpaceOrb 360. I got one and it's terribly hard to use in real life -- so it was back to joystick w/ hat control. but the theory is good. i have heard of people getting really good on that thing. the company seem to be out of business now -- their "space orb" technology used to be marketed as a specialized input device for molecular visualization / CAD etc... but i guess that never picked up either; again, great theory, TOUGH (i mean it) learning curve.
waiting for direct mind contolled video games
My life in the land of the rising sun.
With the right spin, or lack thereof, you can get a ball to speed up, slow down, skip, jump, wiggle, and otherwise behave in novel ways. Table tennis balls are also quite flammable, though I've never seen one catch fire during a match.
I've also played "Pain Pong" where you can get a point in the traditional manner OR for hitting your opponnent on the fly. Thats not quite the same as a rocket launcher though.
All that aside though your point is a good one, that video games allow the impossible. For example a "tribes" style jetpack to add more movement in the 3rd dimension isn't possible in my meatspace.
The other big thing video games have going for them in my life is that I can find an opponent on the internet at 10pm on a Wednesday night after the kids are in bed, and I would have trouble finding a table tennis partner at that time, even if they had a table at my local gym.
And yes, like the above poster, all the Indians I know are quite good too, though our mainland Chinese are just as good.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
IN YEAR 2155 PONG WAR WAS BEGINING... Dan: What happen? Neel: Someone set up us the "land mine" Neel: We get signal Dan: What! Neel: Main screen turn on. Dan: It's you!! Xoltar: How are you slaves!! Xoltar: All your balls are belong to us Xoltar: You are on the way to bankruptcy Dan: What you say? Xoltar: You have no chance to profit make your time Xoltar: Ha ha ha ....
Neel: Dan!!
Dan: Take off every 'STYLUS'!!
Dan: Vibrate 'STYLUS'.
Dan: For great haptic attack!
I still have one, I actually learned how to play on it before keys+mouse. Funny thing, I actually got pretty decent on it playing FPS games like Quake but I could never quite master the free-space type games like Descent and Forsaken (which came with a free Orb).
Also, a major problem with the Orb was that they broke. They broke quite often. Hardcore Orb-ers had at least one backup sitting around. The spring would pop and it would be useless. Part of the reason they went out of business.
They were going to produce a USB version but gave up on it. I'm fairly certain one of the Mars robots was controlled by the Orb prototype device by the same company before they went belly-up.
I never use this thing as key+mouse is way superior, but if anyone's interested in purchasing it from me to fool around with (working ones are hard to come by), drop me a line at ericfi_1@yahoo.com.
This isn't entirely true. Immersion and Logitech produced the Wingman Force Feedback Mousewhich allowed true force feedback over 2-dimensions, with plugins to (then) current games. There also exists a full hand haptic device, though not for games (way too expensive) would rock the world at pong (i guess it would be more like handball with that..)
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
I had an opportunity to play with a prototype of this (or possibly a competitor's, it was a long time ago) at a trade show a few years ago. It was extremely cool. Basically, it strapped to your index finger and your thumb. It was connected to a very simplistic software demo, which basically involved stacking cubes. Each of the cubes had a different size and weight, some of them were "slippery" and some weren't. The tactile feedback was quite remarkable. And the way the unit was balanced and motored, made it feel like it part of your hand. I really hope this type of HID becomes more prevalent, so they can be manufactured and sold under the $150 price point. There's just something sexy about playing Quake and shooting by pointing at the screen and going "ptew! ptew!" :)
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Anyone who has one and wants to try it out, let me know, we have both the 3dof and the 6dof here at work, I actually write apps for it :P
Simply a souped up version of an already existing game with lots of useless gadgets addded, all slapped together with a nicely incoherent storyline and a new flashy title. Did these guys work for Squaresoft?
Hate me!
I believe Descent 3 was the first force-feedback 6DOF game. And, as D3 is the game which fully exploits 6DOF to its logical end, it is the game which will demonstrate whether this device has an advantage over the classic Joystick with Twist-Grip (R-AXIS) and 8-way HAT switch.
Somehow, I just can't picture it being superior.
The Phantom appears to have no Hand-Rest - and as such, extended hours of non-stop gaming would seem to be out of the question. At least a joystick doesn't give you cramp.
"Welcome to SensAble Technolgies' website. To alleviate temporary high traffic levels, we've replaced our normal home page with this text version. We apologize for any inconvenience and expect normal service to return shortly."
Hmmm... maybe fufme could use this as their model M ... so when does the phantom model F arrive ;) Maybe they could rename it from the sensable phantom to the sensual phantom.
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has an interesting project on using Haptic Brushes for virtual painting, which is pretty neat.
They have something called Interactive Haptic Painting with 3D Virtual Brushes which was also presented at Siggraph. Very cool.
An amusing pong-oriented animation
While that may be YOUR price point for a controller, I think the sucess of the MOMO steering wheel has proved that many people are willing to pay more to change the experience. Some people buy an entire console system for ONE game.
The big problem will be software. Games will pretty much have to be written for this device.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Does anyone have a link to the actual program to play around with... (as I look at my Phantom next to my desk here at work....)
M
Didn't you read the Slashdot article on the Painstation?
their != there
At the Seattle robitics fair last summer they had something very similar to this connected to an SGI 0xygen machine. It was very cool. You moved the device around in 3d and it moved a ring on screen. If you tried to move it through some of the stationary stuff that was also on screen, it would resist. You could even put the ring on a hook on screen and the device would just rest there in midair. It was very cool.
How many of you would actually want to keep your arm(s) suspended for hours on end? Because to take full advantage of this newfangled thingamcbob, you'd often have to raise your arm, and more likely then not, for extended periods of time. If Pong (crosses fingers) actually does come out for it, you know you won't be able to stop. Until they get some sort of rest on this thing, 'twon't appear on my desk. That, and until they find a way for it, right out of the box, to rearrange the emtpy Coke cans on my desk to make room for the thing :)
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
...I want a Brockian Ultra Cricket game.
Actually, the first time I typed in the subject line, I accidentally wrote "Battle Ping," which sounds like one of those competition hacking events at network security conferences.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
How is this thing suppose to be used for games? From the screenshots that I saw on the website, it seems that you put your finger on top of this thing bar and push it around? How does pushing a little metal stick around, translate to feeling the 3D model on your screen?
i used to work for www.ReachIn.se.
their force-feedback solution uses
the phantom. the phantom has 6DOF
orientation, but the FF is only 3DOF.
i.e. there's no rotational FF around
the stylus's tip. these things require
1000 update/s rate to feel accurate.
compare that with 60 frames/s for
video and you know how much computing
power it requires. unless you've used
one before, it's hard to imagine how
real it can feel. the main dude at
ReachIn did a little game that simulated
centrifugal force by using the stylus
to swing a ball around. it IS very real.
i also had an idea of 'haptic texture'
which can simplify the geometry
calculations a great deal. it works
much like how 2D textures give a new look
to a flat polygon. haptics is a great
thing. its just waiting for the lay
public to wake up to its possibilities
and then *boom* prices drop and apps
abound. but before that happens, the
public has to wake up to the possibilities
of stereo 3D first...
I've yet to see any periphreal that's supposed to get you "more into the game" succeed. Remember the Nintendo Power Glove? I think they sold bout 10 of them. Remember the Nintendo Virtual Boy? Of course you don't, it was the lowest selling video game system of all time cuz it made you sick after about 15 minutes of play (though I'd still like to pick one up off ebay :) Anyways, I don't see this as turning out any different than any of those. Granted, I feel like I'm missing something when I play a game without my dualshock PS2 controllers now, but this magical chair will go down the same road as those other devices methinks
-Alex
http://www.sensable.com/haptics/products/images/se 3large.jpg + webcam + face tracking image recognition + back orifice = remote poking device
With "six-degree-of-freedom, precision-force-feedback" yada yada....why don't these folks just play real ping pong?
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
The guys responsible for the force feedback Pong were also involved in that giant tetris thing two years ago, which was reported here at the time.
I had a SpaceOrb some years ago that I couldn't bear to live without for all my first-person shooter games. Basically a little ball that you push/pull/swivel for the direction you wanted to run, walk, or jump/duck. And being fully analog, meant that a hard push forward was running and a moderate push was a jog or walk. Unfortunately no product support since win98 has meant I've had to go back to a mouse now.
Glenn
The Smrt way to trade CFDs on the ASX
SPORB!