Device Reduces Stress While Gaming

Bayscribe writes "Vyro Games, a Dublin Ireland company, unveils a device today that forces you to relax while playing games. It is called a PiP, or "Personal Input Pod," and it measures things like the moisture in your hand to assess whether you're stressed. If you're showing signs of stress, your performance in a game deteriorates. If you relax, you do much better. The PiP communicates wirelessly with software on devices such as mobile phones, PCs or games consoles... If you relax, the dragon spreads its wings and flies. If not, it stumbles all over the place."

Comments

Old... very, very old

[Anonymous Coward]

The only "new" about this is the idea of using it while playing computer games (re-inventive). The same devices were very popular in the end of the 60s and early 70s, and you found repeated schematics for them in every electronics magazine out there. The most common ones back then measured alpha and/or beta waves (if I recall correctly) from brain activity and controlled oscillators with this, triggering people to relax to reduce the sound, or simply controlling the sound by controlled relaxation.

Re:Old... very, very old

[@madeus]

I know this story has been posted a few times, coming up every 2-3 years since at least the 80's (that I know of), and it does the rounds in the TV and newspapers too.

It's been a "fish that swims and grows as you relax" and "an animal that evolves (from a fish to a lizard to a monkey) as you relax" this time apparently it's an insect. It's usually funded by University research grant (a waste of money IMO, especially when it's public funds) and with pumped up headlines like "games of the future to be controlled by your mind".

As you say, really simple stuff, I'm really sick of reading about this same "advancement"/"new technology" over and over. I'll probably *still* be reading "news" about it when I'm an old man.