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Sony Files Patent For Temperature Feedback Move Controller
Zothecula writes "Video game developers are always looking for new ways to give players a more immersive experience. But with several motion-controlled systems widely available and a viable virtual reality headset in the works, what else could be done to make games seem more realistic? Sony may have an unexpected answer with a recent patent that describes a controller that changes temperature between hot and cold to match in-game actions. With the controller giving 'temperature feedback,' the idea is that players would be able to more closely feel what their character feels, from getting hit with a fireball to traveling through a blizzard."
In their mind !!
If you RTFA: It's also planned as a "sheath attachment".
This news gives me a warm feeling in my... controller!
There goes the battery life in my controller. How to they planning to implement cold anyways?
Apparently Sony is moving into adult entertainment now. This thing plus dual shock can make one hell of a toy for one lucky lady.
Except for "Drop it like it's hot!".
Now seriously, getting hit by a fireball requires a sudden change in temperature from normal to hot, and then a sudden heat dissipation (OK, maybe not so sudden). Pretty difficult to achieve such a sudden temperature change given a controller's restrictions, unless you would, as a customer, accept a bulky controller which would be plugged in to a power source. Peltier effect can achieve pretty sudden temperature changes (backed by a highly thermoconductive material, e.g. copper, aluminum) but it sucks energy like there's no tomorrow. Running on batteries? Forget it.
However, I would accept a bulky, power-hungry controller if it would give me such feedback. Cold beer effect for walking in a blizzard, sudden heat when hit by fireball... yes please.
Question is... would it pee in your hand if your character starts swimming?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
"Sony's patent also describes possibly containing the whole temperature feedback system into a "sheath attachment" that slides over an existing controller."
Two questions, will the sheath attachment be lubricated and can i put two sheath attachments on at the same time?
I don't know how many people have tried this in a science center. They have two tubes of alternating warm and cool wrapped around a cylinder. When you place your hands on them it tricks your brain into thinking it's very hot. If you put a finger on each tube they are mildly cool and warm.
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Very interesting, but since heat is energy, the control will either have to emit heat (to get warm) or at the very least "pump" heat from place to place, neither of which are very cheap energy-wise (relative to the small size and batteries of a wireless controller). So this may not be practical in a wireless, battery-powered controller.
I would think thermoelectrics would be good for this, but the problem is once the whole controller is hot from being held, it would be hard to cool unless the heat could be radiated into the air.
Better known as 318230.
add the ability to send a high voltage shock through the heart pacemaker...so of like getting hit with a lightning blade or a rasengan.
If Sony really wants an immersive, realistic "Sony Experience," it should develop a controller that installs a root kit on the other player's system that allows you to temporarily read his messages, see what music he has and make his controller punch him in the face.
Wait. I think I was picturing the Soviet version. Reverse that. It installs the root kit on your system and you're the one who gets punched in the face.
Hey my mom has one of these in her closet
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....and my controller melts in my hands and I wish I had medical insurance!
Yet another useless stupid option to turn off before playing a game. I always have to hunt around and turn the stupid vibration options off because all it does is distract my aim or whatever. Rumble pack has been nothing but pure gimmick ever since Nintendo tried it. Wherever this technology goes it's almost certainly on the immediate disable list.
Fear is the mind killer.
I hated the rumble pack addition to the controllers. I will hate this as well. If you want to do anything with the controllers, make them cool down a little bit so long gaming sessions don't give you hot sweaty hands anymore.
I can imagine having to wear gloves in Skyrim where it snowing a lot of the time!
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I wonder how quickly it could actually change temperatures in response to in-game stimuli. For instance, while I'm sure it could change temperature easily enough to correspond to an in-game environment (e.g. jungle, arctic, etc.), I seriously doubt it could respond meaningfully to a sudden fireball, blast of steam exhaust, or other type of fire. And what about games where even the environment can change rapidly? For instance, Metroid Prime has the player going between lava caverns, jungles, and arctic wastes. With all of the backtracking in the game, it's not uncommon to visit all three of them in the span of a minute or two. Can the idea described in the patent keep up with that?
I haven't looked at the patent, but I suppose they could pre-heat and pre-chill some materials inside the controller, then simply expose them to the player in response to stimuli, rather than heating/cooling the entire device in response, but at that point you'd need some sort of mechanism to expose/hide the materials, and that just sounds like it's ripe for being damaged. You might be able to alleviate the issue a bit by making part of the surface of the controller out of a material that can quickly conduct differing temperatures, then could unsheath/sheath the materials while under that surface, but even the small delay in temperature propagation caused by doing so would affect immersion immensely. After all, you don't want the player getting mixed signals about when fireballs are whizzing by or whatever else.
So, long story short, cool idea for environmental effects that'll last for more than a few minutes, but, as with the scent producing accessories that were around a few years back, it just seems impractical for a number of different uses.
Also, sweaty hands while playing games are no fun. Anything that heats up my controller is a non-starter, in my opinion.
I seem to remember reading about a patent for this ~10 years ago or so. ..it's a _stupid_ idea, too.
the idea is to put a peltier or similar element on the controller.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
A credit card that gets hotter, the higher the balance.
Or maybe just delivering electric shocks.
SMELL-O-VISION! When your character gets fragged, smell the nasty burning hair!
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I can just see it now. I'm in a game and I get blasted by a flame thrower and I can feel it in my hands. I guess the next logical step after that will be bodysuits to really feel it all. And don't forget I still have a lot of hopes that they do smell-o-vision. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smell-O-Vision
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There has got to be prior art for this in the adult toy industry. Or does this get by for being 'on a console' just like all that 'on a computer' crap?
When i play video games for an extended amount of time I am no longer aware of the physical reality around me, only the virtual world and the online chat. I am focused so precisely on what I am doing, a shot of cold air or a cold keyboard when I enter an Ice level would actually detract from that. Vibration from the controller is mostly ignored when playing xbox games and a distraction as well.
With huge TV's and cheap(er) high quality Audio, I really have all I need, just focus on making better games and faster consoles and more vibrant environments and gaming will be fun for years to come.
Controllers with built in fan have been around for awhile. So this just adds in-game logic for the concept. Sad that's a patent, just copy all the smell-o-vision/vibrating seat/fans that they played with in movies and add "in a controller."
It's one step away from smell-o-vision and it's a bad idea. It will either make your hands sweaty and nasty or it will make your fingers less agile.
Why is Sony limiting this technology to the controller? The PS4 should actually come with an air conditioner changing the temperature in the room. So if the character is in a cold environment, you should be freezing. Similarly, they should also include a flame thrower in the PS4, so that when you get hit by a fire spell in the game, you actually start burning. That would be totally immersive!
"Brand Me" and "Cauterize That Wound!" More fun than those old wood burning sets.
This will revolutionize the porn game industry... imagine what the controllers could do with this technology.
Not sure why they bother filing these.
But hey, let not waste this opportunity to bash Sony even though they have not done anything wrong - it's just silly.
i'm going to become rich and famous after i invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet
Well, I guess the one thing this idea has going for it is no more sweaty palms. Unless you happen to be in hell or near a lava pit or something like that, in which case it'll likely just make your palms sweatier.
Sony was always pathetic at innovating in the video game market. I would say that Nintendo (and at one time, Sega) are (or were) the pioneers for decades. Anything Sony does that's not blatantly ripping Nintendo off, it's a stupid idea like this. Along with RIIIDGE RACER!!! And they're certainly not interested in gimmicks...
I'm amazed by the alleged intelligent people here not getting how amazing such a device would be. How else are you going to play a game like Japan's; "Bedtime Hide and Seek Tentacle Hentai Sexy Robot Extreme"?
" You are getting warmer,... tee, hee. No, no, now you are getting colder. My robo-nipples cannot wait. tee hee."
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My hands are getting sweaty! Can we go back and fight the ice dragon again?
I worked on a system similar to this for a man with an prosthetic arm. We stuck a temperature sensor in the finger of the prosthetic hand, and used a small thermoelectric plate which contacted his skin where the prosthetic attached to him. The back side of the peltier plate was glued to an aluminum bar acting as a thermal source/sink, and the front side had a small stainless plate acting as the contact point with a second temperature sensor bonded to it for feedback. Using a microcontroller and a bit of simple hardware, we made the peltier plate temperature equal to the temperature detected at the finger. With some limits, of course.
The man went from having a plastic arm to having something that *felt* like an actual part of his body again. He described going home and touching his wife's face, and almost breaking down crying - it felt pretty good to hear that, especially since it only took us a few days to design/build the thing.
Anyway, it ran off three NiCd AA batteries and had a battery life of about 24 hours - he'd plug it in to charge when he went to bed, and it would easily last until the next charge cycle. These days thermoelectric devices are more efficient, batteries are a lot better and microcontrollers have much better power consumption.
There's a few things that make a system like this fairly low power:
- You don't need a big contact area to get the sensation of temperature across to the user - you don't need to heat or cool their whole hand. Half a square centimeter is plenty if you put it at a fairly temperature-sensitive part of the hand, such as where your fingers meet your palm. It'll feel weird at first but the 'immersion' feeling will eventually set in.
- There's only a narrow range of temperature that you have to drive the contact plate to. You don't need to do 0 to 50 degrees C, and I fully expect Sony to restrict the range to +-10C at most for liability reasons, not to mention practical reasons.
- Skin isn't *that* thermally conductive.
So if your contact plate is sized small and only within a few degrees of body temperature, you're probably only moving half a watt at most between the hand from the contact plate.
Secondly, I seriously doubt the thermal "immersion" effect will be running all the time, probably only acting on 'events' the game - walking indoors/outdoors (pulse of hot/cold), picking up a weapon from the ground (cold), getting hit with a fireball (hot), falling into water (cold), etc. Much like vibration motors in controllers don't run all the time.
End result is that running the thermoelectrics won't take that much power, and sinking/sourcing heat from within the controller shouldn't be that hard. Overall, seems pretty practical to me.
Just in time for my line of disposable latex sleeves for Move controllers. You know, for people with sweaty hands.
Let me take this opportunity to publically declare the following ideas as prior art and therefore non-patentable by anyone.
Applying electric shock to the user when they screw up, die, etc.
Changing shape of the controller to simulate damage to vechicles being (poorly) commanded.
Scratching or prickling the player with a sharp projection to hurt them in response to an on-screen attack of some kind.
Projecting bright lights and or piercing sounds from the controller to anger or disorient the user.
Strong gryos or moving masses within the controller to physically make control difficult or even cause the controller to "jump" out of a persons hand (Not your moms "dualshock")
Dynamically changing thermal conductivity of controller to make it seem to user as if the controllers temperature has changed. (This is a workaround to sony patent)
A feign controller damage revenge/tilt mode for crybabies who throw their controller around.
Smoke and or smells release to simulate fog, fire, aliens with bad breath..etc.
Create magnetic fields in an attempt to disorient magnetometer embedded in controllers of other players nearby compelling them to physically move to avoid disruption.
Release of liquids to simulate falling off a cliff into a ravine or make the controller extraordinarily slippery or sticky imparing the users ability to control the device.
Any and all possible combinations of controller options can work together to sell an effect. For example applying DC current to a controller to lock up the users muscles and then prickle them or use moving mass to make their hands shake violently.
Controllers which sense current light level in the room and adjust ingame experience to match.
Controllers sense physical proximty to other players and use this feedback on-screen.
Controllers with fans directing puffs of air to simulate strong winds or large masses wizzing by the on-screen character.
Controllers with stored physical prizes such as fake jems or game momentos released once the user has achived a significant goal like beating a boss or winning the game.
Controllers with displays coupled to position and motion sensors to act as augmented reality to on-screen environment.
Controllers which sense the capacitance of the users skin, oxygen saturation, pulse, lekage of EM from body and other facts to effect the physical attributes of on screen avatar or otherwise disparage a user for being out of shape.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sony_rootkit
never forget, never forgive
I don't think anyone tried to patent the "rumble" feedback. Here's another feedback. Is this really patentable?
If so, I expect companies will rush out and file patents on making a controller emit audio to serve as a game feedback, making a controller flash LEDs to serve as a game feedback, making a controller give little electric shocks as a game feedback, etc. Basically just go down the list of possible stimuli and patent everything.
P.S. In the novel Bug Park, people tele-operate micro-robots by VR technology. The battery life of the remote micro-robot is signaled by means of a thermal plate touching the operator's skin: when the battery is full, the plate feels warm, and the plate cools as battery life drops. I'm not a lawyer, so maybe "in a video game" is different enough from "when tele-operating a micro-robot"... but IMHO, even if this patent passes the "obvious" test, it should flunk the prior art test.
steveha
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Can we patent the idea of UIs using our other senses, like taste and smell? Or will they get away with "limitations" like that a smell device would obviously require some sort of replaceable scent cartridge and claim that nobody has thought of exactly that? Oh, and there's a computer involved, too, lest we forget! I bet it even has normal computer gear in it too, like CPU, RAM, memory, network connection(s)....
Totally unobvious! Nobody would ever think of that!
And we can use other less-well-known senses, like our sense of position....
I thought they were going to make a controller whose sensitivity went down when warm, up when cold. ie, if I'm very tense and wanting major accuracy, give it. Sensing temperature, not changing the controller temperature.
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