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Games Entertainment

Haptic Battle Pong... Future of Game Interface? 158

Posted by CmdrTaco from the one-degree-short-of-kevin-bacon dept.
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?"
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Haptic Battle Pong... Future of Game Interface? More

Haptic Battle Pong... Future of Game Interface?

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  • sex toy? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:20PM (#3686947)
    This thing has interactive chat room sex toy written all over it.

    Now I can use both hands!! :-D
    • Naw,
      I've seen the piccies, it's about as sexy as R2D2 (at least he's got a round head).

      I think I'll wait for something with a rubber sleeve and a Haptic version of Lula...
    • They're going to have to create new categories of Repetitive Motion Disorder to accomodate the epidemic that'll occur if millions of horny /.ers get this.

  • Battle Pong? (Score:5, Funny)

    by RumGunner ( 457733 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:20PM (#3686948) Homepage
    I thought that was when my brother and I turned to fisticuffs after particularly gruelling sessions on the Atari...


    • ...I want a Brockian Ultra Cricket game.

      Actually, the first time I typed in the subject line, I accidentally wrote "Battle Ping," which sounds like one of those competition hacking events at network security conferences.

    • whoever rated this funny was sorely mistaken. the comment was not, in fact, funny. it was particularly unfunny. and it was crap.

  • host down :( (Score:3, Informative)

    by jglow ( 525234 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:23PM (#3686979) Homepage Journal
    slashdotted already? check out more information on this here [est-kl.com]

  • Battle Pong? (Score:3, Funny)

    by InterruptDescriptorT ( 531083 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:24PM (#3686988) Homepage
    I can see the story now:

    SMALLTOWN, INDIANA (AP) -- In a tragic incident in Smalltown, IN, two Smalltown High students have been arrested after breaking 20 windows in their high school by bouching balls off of them repeatedly until they could no longer withstand the force. Preliminary reports indicates that the kids, who belonged to a group called 'The Bouncy Mafia', were wearing trenchcoats and had in their possessions two copies of 'Battle Pong'. State legislators have rushed to ban the game, calling it a grave threat to our schools and the mental state of today's youth.

    </tongue firmly in cheek>

  • Google Mirror (Score:4, Informative)

    by tenman ( 247215 ) <`moc.iausten' `ta' `gro.todhsals'> on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:25PM (#3686994) Journal
    Quick batman to the google mirror...

    here [216.239.35.100]
    or
    here [est-kl.com]

    hurry of these too will be /.'ed
  • I'm wary of all these new 82-button controllers with orgasm mode. And [lboro.ac.uk] here's [loonygames.com] why [com.com].

  • haptic battle pong? (Score:3, Funny)

    by doubtless ( 267357 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:28PM (#3687025) Homepage
    Until these things are less than $35, I will just pay the annual fee for the local recreation club and play the real ping pong game. Trust me, I get feed back, sometimes right on my nose. Damn them Indians are good with pongs. :/

    • Exactly. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by YanceyAI ( 192279 )
      So true. If I want that much realism in gaming, I'll actually play tennis, snow board, play paint ball--and get the tan and the bod to go with.

      I don't want the real world, I want to escape it.

      • Re:Exactly. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by exploder ( 196936 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @01:25PM (#3687470) Homepage
        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.
        • 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?

          Hmmmm... I guess you could if you played Ping Pong while under the influence... a Ping Pong Drug Game!

          Player 1: I just hit the blue circle on the table with the ball, take the blue pill.

          Player 2: Wait, since I hit the red circle with my return, I'm supposed to take an upper... won't that counteract the blue pill?

          Player 1: Take em both!!

          We must protect the children before video games gives them these ideas!!!!
          • drugs are not color coded and if we should be protecting the kids from anything it would be you spreading false info about drugs... uppers and downers mixed dont cancle each other out... the tem "upper" and "downer" really arent true at all they just give the gist of the feeling but do not BEGIN to explain what really goes on in your body... so dont try mixing drugs if your just trying to counteract something
        • With the right spin, or lack thereof, you can get a ball to speed up, slow down, skip, jump, wiggle, and otherwise behave in novel ways. Table tennis balls are also quite flammable, though I've never seen one catch fire during a match.
          I've also played "Pain Pong" where you can get a point in the traditional manner OR for hitting your opponnent on the fly. Thats not quite the same as a rocket launcher though.

          All that aside though your point is a good one, that video games allow the impossible. For example a "tribes" style jetpack to add more movement in the 3rd dimension isn't possible in my meatspace.

          The other big thing video games have going for them in my life is that I can find an opponent on the internet at 10pm on a Wednesday night after the kids are in bed, and I would have trouble finding a table tennis partner at that time, even if they had a table at my local gym.

          And yes, like the above poster, all the Indians I know are quite good too, though our mainland Chinese are just as good.
        • Talking about "game god"... (A bit Off-Topic)
          There's a plugin for Half-Life (for certain mods) called Admin Mod which allows the server admins much more control than the game usually allows thru user made plugins.

          It's really cool when on my server I make people glow, fly, stuck into the ground, teleport, make them have laser pointers, kill, slap and even control them. Also, I can spawn stuff into the game!

          Ofcourse I don't use any of these "cheats" on real matches, but it's cool when everyone agrees on it.

          Just for kicks, AdminMod is released under the GPL.
        • Virtual Reality is no match for the fully-lucid dream environment! :) Anyone who has experienced this knows EXACTLY what I'm talking about! :)

  • First 6-dof game? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gehrehmee ( 16338 )
    It looks like Haptic Battle Pong may be the first attempt at a true 6-dof, force-feedback game.
    Uhm... Descent 3?
    • Indeed! Descent was the first true 6 degrees of
      freedom game afaik, and Descent 3 had force feeback support so I would have to question the title of "first".

      Speaking of which, the source code to Descent I and is freely available at the site where I'm co-evil-overlord:

      http://d1x.warpcore.org/

    • Re:First 6-dof game? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by phriedom ( 561200 )
      Descent didn't give you feedback in all dimensions. One or two at best.

  • It depends (Score:1, Insightful)

    by 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.
    • they can't refine the interface so that it's easy to use unless they get feedback from the audience it's intended for. one day, they will hit on an interface that's easy to use for 6dof, force-feedback, but this is what they have to work with now.

  • Remember... (Score:5, Funny)

    by wbav ( 223901 ) <Guardian.Bob+Slashdot@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:29PM (#3687040) Homepage Journal
    To wear a cup, for those ogc'ers who have their aimbot set on crotch.
    • Desert Eagle: $1200
      Ammuntion: $100
      2 hundred yard, single round head shot with said gun: Priceless

      For some things their are AWP's, for everything else, their's OGC.

  • Exercising more than your mind... (Score:3, Informative)

    by elocutio ( 567729 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:31PM (#3687058)
    Here [unc.edu] is a site that explains a little more about 6-D Haptics. Cool stuff.

    Haptics could offer the magical possibility of changing the average gamer from a large cholesterol repository into a lean mass of muscle. Well, maybe not, but it's a neat idea.
    • Hey, that would actually be a cool idea. Use a force feeedback device to simulate weightlifting. Much better than trying to bring dumbells to work.
    • elocutio writes: Haptics could offer the magical possibility of changing the average gamer from a large cholesterol repository into a lean mass of muscle. Well, maybe not, but it's a neat idea.

      I spent several months working on a business plan for online athletic sports that use networked video games hooked up to exercise equipment. Unfortunately, Nebraska is not exactly the venture capital capital of the world, so it hasn't been easy finding (local) investors. I'd rather not move to Silicon Valley, so for the moment I've put the plan on hold to pursue other things.

      My comment is about the idea that hapics will lead to online athletics. The term "haptics" is generally used to refer to data input, but not necessarily force feedback. Furthermore, there are often substantial differences between force feedback that's designed for accuracy (a big interest to sculptors), and force feedback that's designed for high resistance (so we raise your heart rate). We wouldn't mind accurate feedback in sports, but accuracy has to be traded off with cost, repeatability between machines, the amount of force needed to give the customer a workout, et cetera.

      Thus, many of the advances in haptics technology are not of the kind that will get us any closer to true online athletics. To make a business out of games-with-a-workout, it looks like we'll probably have to do more than just wait for the necessary components to be developed in other fields.

      --William L. Dye
      slash@willdye.com

      P.S. I haven't given up on the business idea yet. If anyone is seriously interested in helping, feel free to write.

  • Mine's better (Score:3, Interesting)

    by brejc8 ( 223089 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:32PM (#3687066) Homepage Journal
    Thats nothing compared to my classy joypad [man.ac.uk]

  • now when.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by paradesign ( 561561 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:33PM (#3687073) Homepage
    will hustler get a hold of one of these? can you say "attachments"? well the stylus is a little thin.

  • 3D Modelling device (Score:3, Interesting)

    by quantax ( 12175 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:33PM (#3687074) Homepage
    That device looks remarkably like the tools 3D developers use to model objects based off sculptures. These basically read coordinates from the real 3D space that your working on, such as a sculpture of a bust, and then places vertices in the corresponding 3D space in the computer program, Maya, Softimage, etc. These devices cost a lot because of their precision. If you wanted to get laser-mouse quality movement & precision, you'd need to buy one that cost $2000+. I imagine this Phantom device follows the same system as the 3D coord mapping device. As mentioned in the write up, these devices would definately be able to have a very full range of motion, otherwise gamers would be breaking these things a lot for any range of reasons. Looks interesting however, we shall see where this goes.

  • Money, Dude. (Score:3, Funny)

    by macdaddy357 ( 582412 ) <macdaddy357@hotmail.com> on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:43PM (#3687138)
    Paying a grand for a force feedback is chump change. Just sue them for ten million when it gives you carpal tunnel syndrome.

  • What about the nerds? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Space Coyote ( 413320 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:53PM (#3687212) Homepage
    What will happen when all games are like this, and you actually have to be good at physical activity and have some degree of real-life hand-eye coordination? Then the jocks will become better at videogames, too. The last refuge nerdly superiority will be cruelly taken away. This could have major consequences, though one of them might be to get said nerds to spend more time doing actual physical activity, whether within a game or not.
    • How many of you would actually want to keep your arm(s) suspended for hours on end? Because to take full advantage of this newfangled thingamcbob, you'd often have to raise your arm, and more likely then not, for extended periods of time. If Pong (crosses fingers) actually does come out for it, you know you won't be able to stop. Until they get some sort of rest on this thing, 'twon't appear on my desk. That, and until they find a way for it, right out of the box, to rearrange the emtpy Coke cans on my desk to make room for the thing :)
  • Anyone have a mirror with images?

  • Spurious assumption (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:56PM (#3687241) Homepage
    • 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 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 )
      GTA3 PC barely supports reconfiguring the mouse and keyboard to anything managable. I really have to work around the awkward controls.

      It's impossible to steer the car very well in mouse steering mode, and it's impossible to walk around and look easily where you are going without using the mouse for walking. So you get this lameness of having to change your hand positions whenever you get into or exit a car. The game rocks, but more freedom in binding the controls would go a long way.
      • i can't imagine using the keyboard to move the guy around anyway, i'm so used to mousing on FPS games. it was a little weird at first switching back and forth, but i gotta have my mouse for moving/aiming in FPS, and there's no way i can imagine steering very well with the mouse, or other pointing device.

        and besides, you spend 90% of the time in a car anyway, so it's really not that bad.
        • Heh, The only percent of the time that matters is when you have a wanted level of 4 stars, your car is on fire and is about to explode, the mission has 30 seconds left, and you have to jump out and run before the cops run you over or your car blows up in your face.

          It's not so bad to have to switch controls and hand positions, it's the times when you need to do it that make it kind of suck. :)
          • besides, you spend 90% of the time in a car anyway, so [switching from keyboard to mouse is] really not that bad.

          Well sure, I've got used to it as well, but I'd far rather be switching from wheel and pedals to mouse... I guess my point is really that we (as purchasers) do demonstrably put up with and work around developers skimping on control options. I don't see the advent of these devices as offering a compelling reason for developers to spend even more time developing and testing with yet another possible control device, when developers today don't have time to even support the most obvious devices.

      • I've got my controls in gta3 setup pretty well. My friend who is used to PS2 controls doesn't like it, but I'm used to FPS games and it's great for me. I don't steer with the mouse but I do aim with it and control direction with it. Other than that C is forward (walking and car) V is backwards,Z is left and X is right. RSHIFT runs and LCTRL and RMB shoot. The middle mouse button zooms in and the left mouse button is for turning on zooming. Works great for me...makes the game seem like a realistic UT...=)

      • Re:Spurious assumption (Score:2, Informative)

        by spagma ( 514837 )
        Go get yourself a $10 gravis gamepad. You will enjoy yourself so much more. I couldn't care less about force feedback, rumble packs and things of that nature. The gamepad will take care of most of your needs for any game that requires something other than mouse controls. As for steering wheels, I can see the benefit of using them, especially since it gives a more linear control for turning, but I don't think it is enough to even complain about.
      • 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.'
    • Ummm that would probably be because steering wheels wouldn't be all that great for the total interface of the game....[GTA3]
      How exactly do you use the steering wheel to aim the guns etc?
        • Ummm that would probably be because steering wheels wouldn't be all that great for the total interface of the game....[GTA3] How exactly do you use the steering wheel to aim the guns etc?

        Same way you have to do it now. You have to switch from keyboard (or joystick) to the mouse when you get out of the car. I'm prepared to accept that, but I'd rather be switching from a good car controller (a wheel and pedals) than a mediocre one (keyboard).

    • bad news - 5+ years isn't that long of a time.

      also, the reason that games don't use force-feedback is because the technology isn't out there OR most people who play the game don't have the equipment. a good number of PSOne/PS2 games used the rumble pak in the controllers, and a lot of N64 games did as well. while this is limited, it is still force-feedback, and the PS2 controllers come with it built-in.

      if you build it, they will come. the gaming industry might not jump all over it, but they'll get into it, especially once the technology is more refined and cheaper.

      it might be a while (maybe even five years! OH NO!) before we see fully-interactive force-feedback games. but the market is the same size it ever was for games. and i don't believe that the appeal for a fully force-feedback game is limited at all.
        • 5+ years isn't that long of a time.

        It is if you buy one of these now. If you'd bought one of the early Microsoft FF sticks back in 1997, what are the chances that it would even still be working now? And FF implementation still isn't universal. That's a long wait to use a new toy. But if someone doesn't start buying them, the cycle of price drops and app support won't begin.

        • the reason that games don't use force-feedback is because the technology isn't out there

        Er, thanks for supporting my point. Why will it be different for 6 dof devices? Where's the killer app that will push takeup that will down prices that will push apps...

        Don't get me wrong, I do like the look of these things, but my budget for a controller - any controller - is $50 maximum, and only if there are already compelling apps. I don't think that I'm that unusual, and I can't see that these will reach that price quickly enough to trigger widescale adoption. I mean, how many gamers have force feedback sticks today? They're hardly ubiquitous.

        • While that may be YOUR price point for a controller, I think the sucess of the MOMO steering wheel has proved that many people are willing to pay more to change the experience. Some people buy an entire console system for ONE game.

          The big problem will be software. Games will pretty much have to be written for this device.
    • Not to say that they will take off, but... I got a chance to use one of these "Phantoms" when they were under development at MIT. They are very cool. I only saw a few simple demo programs, including pushing blocks around and playing with virtual clay, but it felt completely real.

      --Ben
    • GTA3 was a port, port's nearly always suck when it comes to support. If they had programmed it with the PC in mind from the beginning then there would be far wider support and far fewer bugs.

      Travis
    • It may be true that it will take a loong time for these things to take off, but in fact, if games continue becoming more and more realistic, more degrees of freedom are not only needed, but essential. There comes a point where just a few buttons on a keyboard can no longer be representative of the complex and realistic movements on the screen.

  • When the price comes down? (Score:3, Informative)

    by soboroff ( 91667 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @12:57PM (#3687244)

    The Phantom has been around for years now, so waiting for the price to come down any further is probably futile. And somehow I don't think Pong is going to unleash massive pent-up demand sufficient to change the production costs that much.
    • Here is a link to a somewhat similar application that may become cheaper to make. The basic idea is to measure infra red light, reflected from a hand. Using several diodes the 3d position of the hand can be meassured. It seems that the system is still under construction :)
      [beamcontrol.com]
      http://www.beamcontrol.com/spatial_position.html

      BTW: I am looking forward to playing 3d Descent rather than 3D ponf once the technology is here
  • Why play pong with one of the little desktop models when they can use one of the larger workspace 6DOF models like we use [ge.com]? Of course, they might have a little trouble getting their hands on one of these, since SensAble only made six of them.

  • Pong is a good start, (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ryepup ( 522994 )
    but this seems like the technology to make the light sabre game I've been dreaming about since I was 12.

    The greater the difficulty, the more you had to be dead on with blocking laser blasts or opposing sabres (your sabre becomes thinner and more damaging with greater difficulty). The format would be arcade, much like the virtual cop style where you move from scene to scene, then hold steady and fight. Except the scenes would change frequently, and you would have the standard force abilities at your disposal.

    Then, the PC version comes after the tech gets cheap enough for people to buy it, and you use the keyboard to navigate, and do the other flips, jumps, etc. Third person view, I'd think.

    Anyway, thats what I do during class. That and think of how Yoda should've fought Dooku.

  • "It's not Quake..." (Score:3, Funny)

    by misfit13b ( 572861 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @01:08PM (#3687323)
    No kidding. It shows WAY more colors than Q1.
  • Forget Pong, I'm still waiting for someone to make Global Domination from the James Bond movie, "Never Say Never Again"...

    "Your mind is like a parachute. If it doesn't work, you're screwed." - me

  • I dunnno (Score:2, Insightful)

    by vinays ( 584391 )
    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
    • we're living in a virtual world right now. we're discussing this topic with - who? i don't know any of you, i think, and nor do you know me. there's already a loss of personification.

      like you said, they're games - and (i hope) most people will treat them as such, and NOT live in them 24/7. there will always be the community that plays the game all the time, but we have those already. if the human race has reached the point where we can't differentiate between a game and reality, then we're in serious trouble. unless the Matrix DOES have us, in which case, we're in trouble anyway.
  • Is it possible for one of these things to hurt you...

    How much force are we talking when we say force feedback ?
    Depending on the direction the force is being applied, very little force could cause injury... especially over repeated use.

  • The Danger (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NickRob ( 575331 )
    The big danger behind the game is it's usage. Games like this are meant to played a bunch. Why's that a problem?

    Guess what the #1 cause of Carpal Tunnel is.

    It's vibration. So when you have this vibrating combined with the repetitive movements, you can easily get carpal tunnel and tendonitis very quickly.

    But hey, should be fun tho'.

  • Haptics are extremely cool. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wow, a Slashdot post I actually feel qualified to post about. I used to run a site on haptics when they first made their way into gaming (Force One), and actually had the chance to visit some of the people breaking ground in the industry, including Immersion and Sensable.

    The Sensable people are focused on industrial and research applications of force feedback (haptics) - and while the 6dof stuff looks like fun (and it is) there's no real application in any type of gaming for something like this. Someone else made the point that this would wind up in a sex chat room - and I agree! That's the mantra I've been chanting for years now.

    Immersion, on the other hand, is at the forefront of mainstream FF technology. They're behind almost every major force-enabled interface device on the mainstream market - they made everything for Logitech's FF joysticks and wheels, and even Microsoft's stuff as well (although MS bought another company for their preliminary products).

    I hope Sensable's technology gets the killer mainstream app it needs.
  • It's not Quake, but maybe this is the next big thing in video games?

    Personally, I don't want to suffer realistic force feedback from a game like Quake. I'd rather not feel what a launched rocket feels like, thankyouverymuch.

  • Here's a simulated preview of a force feedback pong simulation:

    Tap.
    Tap.
    Tap.
    Tap.
    Tap.
    Tap.
    etc...

    Sounds a lot like Chinese water torture to me.
  • Haptic Battle Pong has been around for quite a while. Head down to your local YMCA and play a game of racquetball. ;) Plenty of "haptic feedback" if you get in front of a moving ball. Let's see if this "battle pong" can match that!

    • Does this "racquetball" of yours include rocket launchers, huh, does it? Or how about mines, maybe a raquet that you can hold in the downward "eastern" orientation, or how about big flashing lights like a discotheque? .....
      I retract my previous retort and would wish to sign up for this YMCA **Hums "Young man ......"**
  • I worked with one of these on a HCI project in college and while they work very well, it didn't seem sturdy enough to work well for a gamer. If they can make it more resilient to high forces, it would be fantastic.
  • From the article:
    The contact between the ball and the paddle is modeled as a mass penetrating a plane with a fixed spring constant.

    They used sex as the model? I hope /.ers will understand the comparison. :-P
  • ooo, these will be some good games.

  • true 6-D freedom (Score:2, Informative)

    by lingqi ( 577227 )
    Think Descent [interplay.com] -- I can't find a link to the original one -- but ever since the early 90's, when iD is still doing sprite graphics w/ doom/dII, descent has already made a FULL 3-D game with 6D freedom. remember this is a couple years (2-4? not sure) before anybody had 3D accelerators. It was so ahead of its time that it never really picked up as much steam as it should have, since people tend to get motion sick (wimps) -- Personally i liked it much better than the doom series (flame me all you want, but don't do it unless you have at least beaten both games).

    there was even a special controller for it, SpaceOrb 360 [makeitsimple.com]. I got one and it's terribly hard to use in real life -- so it was back to joystick w/ hat control. but the theory is good. i have heard of people getting really good on that thing. the company seem to be out of business now -- their "space orb" technology used to be marketed as a specialized input device for molecular visualization / CAD etc... but i guess that never picked up either; again, great theory, TOUGH (i mean it) learning curve.

    waiting for direct mind contolled video games

    • I still have one, I actually learned how to play on it before keys+mouse. Funny thing, I actually got pretty decent on it playing FPS games like Quake but I could never quite master the free-space type games like Descent and Forsaken (which came with a free Orb).

      Also, a major problem with the Orb was that they broke. They broke quite often. Hardcore Orb-ers had at least one backup sitting around. The spring would pop and it would be useless. Part of the reason they went out of business.

      They were going to produce a USB version but gave up on it. I'm fairly certain one of the Mars robots was controlled by the Orb prototype device by the same company before they went belly-up.

      I never use this thing as key+mouse is way superior, but if anyone's interested in purchasing it from me to fool around with (working ones are hard to come by), drop me a line at ericfi_1@yahoo.com.
      • haha i have an old orb too; should still work -- no idea where i am going to find drivers though...

        some day (yeah, some day) i might figure out a use for it... maybe connect it w/ a lego mindstorm contraption and what not. supposedly it has 10-bit resolution on each of the 6 axis -- no too shabby -- maybe it will make a better real-world control than a game one? it's an RS-232 connector so should not be too hard to figure out...

        i believe the design of the orb was not optimal -- a sphere, while seemingly intuitive for the 6-D thing, actually was very hard to hold onto, and much worse when your hand gets all sweaty from trying to get this group of bots that have homing missiles; i keep thinking that a "whole hand" -- i.e. glove type would be better for the 6-D thing, but i don't think there are any out there; well, for the game market, at least.

        i never really thought keys+mouse on a free-space type game was approporiate because you are, in the end, throwing away all the benefits of the free-space-ness -- then again i never really got good at it, but i know there are many that has. so i stick to joysticks for those... speaking of which, joysticks sure are rare these days.
    • At one point I got REALLY good at using the SpaceOrb 360 in descent. I never did like it for games like doom or quake but it was AWESOME in descent. When you first start using the orb you kinda move around a bit at random by accedent... And you are just struggling to keep your ship moving in a strait line...

      But after you get used to the thing, my god its amazing!!!

      I used to play deathmatch and co-op with one of my friends. He had a full joystick, throttle and peddles... I used to be able to do circles around him.

      I mean literally, I could do circles around him while staying pointed at his ship... while moving through different degrees of a sphere.

      I was pretty nifty seeing him trying to stay pointed at ME while I did that.

      Another thing I noticed.. you pretty much HAD to turn autoleveling OFF in the game. Once you got used to the orb, you pretty much gave up on the consept of 'up' and 'down' and you pretty much oriented your self however was usefull.

      As far as the things breaking... I have never had that problem honestly. I think maybe people where just pushing too hard on the devices or something. My only problem now is lack of support with the device. LOL.

      I love the consept of spaceorb devices... but honestly I think they are more nitch than usefull. Atleast for games. Im positive for 3d cad and modeling its probally fairly usefull.

      As far as the comment about using the commercial spaceorb for controlling the mars robots... It was not for the actual robots but for modeling them beforehand.

      hehehe, just my 2c.
  • IN YEAR 2155 PONG WAR WAS BEGINING... Dan: What happen? Neel: Someone set up us the "land mine" Neel: We get signal Dan: What! Neel: Main screen turn on. Dan: It's you!! Xoltar: How are you slaves!! Xoltar: All your balls are belong to us Xoltar: You are on the way to bankruptcy Dan: What you say? Xoltar: You have no chance to profit make your time Xoltar: Ha ha ha .... Neel: Dan!! Dan: Take off every 'STYLUS'!! Dan: Vibrate 'STYLUS'. Dan: For great haptic attack!
  • Currently, the presence of haptics in the mass market is limited primarily to traditional non-force-feedback devices (mice, etc.) and simple single-dof feedback devices (e.g. vibrating game controllers).

    This isn't entirely true. Immersion and Logitech produced the Wingman Force Feedback Mouse [immersion.com]which allowed true force feedback over 2-dimensions, with plugins to (then) current games. There also exists a full hand haptic device [immersion.com], though not for games (way too expensive) would rock the world at pong (i guess it would be more like handball with that..)

  • I had an opportunity to play with a prototype of this (or possibly a competitor's, it was a long time ago) at a trade show a few years ago. It was extremely cool. Basically, it strapped to your index finger and your thumb. It was connected to a very simplistic software demo, which basically involved stacking cubes. Each of the cubes had a different size and weight, some of them were "slippery" and some weren't. The tactile feedback was quite remarkable. And the way the unit was balanced and motored, made it feel like it part of your hand. I really hope this type of HID becomes more prevalent, so they can be manufactured and sold under the $150 price point. There's just something sexy about playing Quake and shooting by pointing at the screen and going "ptew! ptew!" :)
  • Anyone who has one and wants to try it out, let me know, we have both the 3dof and the 6dof here at work, I actually write apps for it :P
  • Simply a souped up version of an already existing game with lots of useless gadgets addded, all slapped together with a nicely incoherent storyline and a new flashy title. Did these guys work for Squaresoft?
  • "Welcome to SensAble Technolgies' website. To alleviate temporary high traffic levels, we've replaced our normal home page with this text version. We apologize for any inconvenience and expect normal service to return shortly."
  • Hmmm... maybe fufme [fu-fme.com] could use this as their model M ... so when does the phantom model F arrive ;) Maybe they could rename it from the sensable phantom to the sensual phantom.

  • Haptic Painting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by metlin ( 258108 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2002 @03:41PM (#3688449) Journal
    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has an interesting project on using Haptic Brushes for virtual painting, which is pretty neat.

    They have something called Interactive Haptic Painting with 3D Virtual Brushes [unc.edu] which was also presented at Siggraph. Very cool.

  • [novagate.net]
    An amusing pong-oriented animation

  • At the Seattle robitics fair last summer they had something very similar to this connected to an SGI 0xygen machine. It was very cool. You moved the device around in 3d and it moved a ring on screen. If you tried to move it through some of the stationary stuff that was also on screen, it would resist. You could even put the ring on a hook on screen and the device would just rest there in midair. It was very cool.
  • I've yet to see any periphreal that's supposed to get you "more into the game" succeed. Remember the Nintendo Power Glove? I think they sold bout 10 of them. Remember the Nintendo Virtual Boy? Of course you don't, it was the lowest selling video game system of all time cuz it made you sick after about 15 minutes of play (though I'd still like to pick one up off ebay :) Anyways, I don't see this as turning out any different than any of those. Granted, I feel like I'm missing something when I play a game without my dualshock PS2 controllers now, but this magical chair will go down the same road as those other devices methinks
  • http://www.sensable.com/haptics/products/images/se 3large.jpg + webcam + face tracking image recognition + back orifice = remote poking device
  • With "six-degree-of-freedom, precision-force-feedback" yada yada....why don't these folks just play real ping pong?
  • I had a SpaceOrb some years ago that I couldn't bear to live without for all my first-person shooter games. Basically a little ball that you push/pull/swivel for the direction you wanted to run, walk, or jump/duck. And being fully analog, meant that a hard push forward was running and a moderate push was a jog or walk. Unfortunately no product support since win98 has meant I've had to go back to a mouse now.

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