In the game I saw a miniature cartoon farm in front of me at waist height a few different animals were running around on the ground. I tried the prototype running with a Vive headset and a small demo game that Foldaway built. And further, what’s normally a single ‘click’ when you press down on a thumbstick for input can become a continuous press with varying force depending upon the situation. The company has managed to make it work like a regular joystick for thumb input, with the added benefit of it being able to push or pull against your thumb in any direction. While it might be difficult to imagine how some haptic technologies could feasibly fit into a standard pair of VR controllers, the force-feedback joystick from Foldaway Haptics looks like a prime candidate.īack in 2019 I got to demo the device, which takes the form of an origami-like structure that can tilt itself in any direction. A Joystick that Pushes Back Photo by Road to VR Here’s a look at the five most interesting haptic demos that have stuck with me in the last five years. Over the years I’ve had the fortune to see a wide range of VR haptic solutions ranging from the ‘amazing but impractical’ to the ‘simple and somehow unadopted’.
But beyond the rumble we have in today’s VR controllers there’s lots of other immersive haptic tech yet to be widely adopted. Next to sight and sound, haptics are one of the lowest hanging fruits for creating immersion in VR.
