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?"

Comments

host down :(

[jglow]

slashdotted already? check out more information on this here

Google Mirror

[tenman]

Quick batman to the google mirror...

here
or
here

hurry of these too will be /.'ed

Exercising more than your mind...

[elocutio]

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.

When the price comes down?

[soboroff]

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.

true 6-D freedom

[lingqi]

Think Descent -- I can't find a link to the original one -- but ever since the early 90's, when iD is still doing sprite graphics w/ doom/dII, descent has already made a FULL 3-D game with 6D freedom. remember this is a couple years (2-4? not sure) before anybody had 3D accelerators. It was so ahead of its time that it never really picked up as much steam as it should have, since people tend to get motion sick (wimps) -- Personally i liked it much better than the doom series (flame me all you want, but don't do it unless you have at least beaten both 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

I've got a working SpaceOrb

[Wag]

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.

Re:Spurious assumption

[spagma]

Go get yourself a $10 gravis gamepad. You will enjoy yourself so much more. I couldn't care less about force feedback, rumble packs and things of that nature. The gamepad will take care of most of your needs for any game that requires something other than mouse controls. As for steering wheels, I can see the benefit of using them, especially since it gives a more linear control for turning, but I don't think it is enough to even complain about.