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Sony Patents Power Glove-Like Motion Controller For PlayStation VR (hothardware.com)

Posted by timothy on from the grabbing-it dept.

MojoKid writes: With so much of the VR buzz revolving around Oculus, HTC and Google lately, it would be easy to forget that Sony has its own competitor coming, called PlayStation VR. And now, as new patents have revealed, the Japanese gaming giant could have a nifty trick up its sleeve, so to speak. It looks like Sony could developing what some could consider a spiritual successor to the Power Glove, that classic late 80s peripheral for the Nintendo Entertainment System. A diagram pulled from the recent patent filing shows this glove's implementation is straight-forward. However, Sony's glove is not going to be bulky like the Power Glove was. The documents also refer to hand flexor sensors that indicate a level of precision tracking at the fingertip level, as well as some sort of cloud network processing offload.

5 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. Oh, Great by sunderland56 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Now when I raise my middle finger in a game, I get banned. Wonderful. Just what I wanted.

    1. Re:Oh, Great by gstoddart · · Score: 2

      In virtual-space ...everybody knows you're fapping.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  2. Really? Johnny Mnemonic says no... by rgbatduke · · Score: 2

    Seriously. When an idea is so clearly developed that they've made movies involving the use of it, how can a corporation even think of patenting it? This is ridiculous.

    I'm not even sure that there are grounds for patenting particular implementations of the glove. The idea of building a glove with electronics to measure e.g. finger bend and pressure is out there in the public domain -- there are dozens of ways to implement it and NONE of them should be patentable, not unless they contain a truly unique invention that is patentable in its own right for e.g. measuring the bend. But I'm not seeing much of that.

    This is just trolling. Next up -- Sony patents a socket that can be inserted in the human brain so one can play the game without any controller at all. Oh, wait, that too was invented by SF authors (plural), e.g. William Gibson. Maybe they should just put Gibson on retainer.

    rgb

    --
    Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
  3. Of course they're copying the power glove by bv728 · · Score: 2

    Everyone loves the Power Glove. It's so BAD.

  4. Re:Doesn't matter to me by Viewsonic · · Score: 2

    So what you're saying is that you don't buy anything, ever, from anyone.