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

First 6-dof game?

[gehrehmee]

It looks like Haptic Battle Pong may be the first attempt at a true 6-dof, force-feedback game.

Uhm... Descent 3?

It depends

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Spurious assumption

[Rogerborg]

• the game industry will be jumping all over the idea of six-degree-of-freedom, precision-force-feedback video games

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.

Re:Spurious assumption

[OgdEnigmaX]

So you get this lameness of having to change your hand positions whenever you get into or exit a car.

Yeah, I hate that too. Hear this, auto industry! We will no longer stand for having to move our hands from our sides to grasp the steering wheel, stick, and other forms of control, upon entry into a motor vehicle.

...Life doesn't have a unified control scheme, dude. While I would tend to agree that a lack of significant remappability is not good, as the way we drive is not the way we walk one might say that what you call 'lameness' is actually 'verisimilitude.'

I dunnno

[vinays]

In my opinion, a game is a game -- and should stay there.

Feedback is nice, but if you want reality, come to reality .. Living in a virtual world, and pretending its reality, lets you lose yourself...

no offence everquest folks

Re:Exactly.

[exploder]

You know, there are altogether too many posts like this: "Why bother making the game more realistic, I'll just go play the real thing."

I'll tell you why. When you're playing pingpong at the rec center, can you cause the ball to catch on fire, split into three, grow to the size of a beachball, speed up, slow down, teleport, wiggle, or otherwise behave in novel ways?

No.

The point of making games more and more realistic is not to somehow asymptotically approach an exact copy of the real world. It's to give more and more reality and substance to a world where you, as the programmer, are essentially god. Tell me that isn't cool.