Slashdot Mirror
Game Feedback Gets More Intense With Electrodes
ne_ol'schmoe writes "The simple feedback of a Dual Shock is passé - vomit comet simulators will soon be possible without leaving your chair, since those wacky tech-heads at NTT have come up with a way to change people's perception of balance, using electrodes that fit behind your ear. They expect to integrate it with racing and flight games to have users lean into turns, and also to simulate gravity changes for a more realistic experience. Sounds cool, but now games will have to come with barf bags, I guess."
Some kid's going to do a barrel roll in Flight Simulator 2006 and become so unbalanced he'll fall off his chair and crack his head open. I don't think it's a good idea to mess with a sense that can seriously affect your ability to stay standing and move around, especially when it's just for the sake of a game.
For those of us who remember "motion sickness" in the original Doom - I guess it's just a matter of time before people get accustomed to the feelings.
I remember I needed to take hours of breaks after just half-an-hour of Doom the first couple of weeks, because of motion sickness. Far worse than "car sickness" which I used to have when I was a kid.
I grew up from "car sickness". I grew up from "motion sickness" in games. I guess it'll just take some weeks/months of playing with these electrode-things before one get used to it - and thus simply doesn't need the barf-bag.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Motion sickness is caused by the lack of sync between what the eyes percieve and what the inner ear reports. By stimulating the sense of motion in sync with the visuals of a game there will in theory be less chance of motion sickness than the current state of the art: visuals are not synced to motion.
Of course inacurate or inproperly synced motion cues will cause obvious problems.
Every First-person-shooter I've played since 1996 seems to produce "sim-sickness" quite effectively without horking the inner-ear. I've found the newest "console" FPS games are even more effective at it. There's been several (Time-Splitters3,Warhammer40k,Quake3,etc...) that become so intolerable so fast that I can't even get through a level without wanting to just lay down and die. Unless this piece of kit can reduce or eliminate sim-sickness (where your inner ear wants a piece of the action your eyes/motor cortext are having fun with) by giving us another input it's not going to catch on.
Of course, it would be a blast for modders to create a program which would specifically be used to "torture", like a centerfuge. Keep that puppy around for when someone has been drinking too much, wrap them up in a blanket and clear the area. This could also see use in interrogation. It's one thing to wear people down from the outside (physical exertion, exposure, witholding food/water) but hook them up to something like this and you have a low-tech device that produces severe discomfort and disorientation. We'll know the real-deal when 3rd world countries start buying them by the pallet.
I could go on, but this is about as clean as it gets, because...
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
HAHAHA! Imagine what a virus writer could use these for:
"I was playing Flight Simulator with those new balance thingies... and suddenly, I started to rock forward and backwards, very very fast, and I barfed all over my keyboard, and then I fell off the chair and broke my left arm. Dammn thingies.
I spent yesterday in the hospital with my mom. They thought she had a small stroke because her balance was off and she kept falling to the right. Turns out it was a condition called labyrinthitis.
Messing with your inner ear through electrical pulse could certainley have some long term effects, like swelling or neuron damage.
An artificial vertigo sensation while playing a game isn't a fair trade off for possibly days of irregular balance.
WURD!!