There have been countless strides being made into improving on the already immersive experience of Virtual Reality. While there are suits and even full on treadmills to offer getting into the VR experience at an unparallel level for those who are willing to shell out the big bucks, the new HaptX glove looks like something you can consider buying, once it loses the Nintendo Power Glove look.
You can see from the above interactive demo that the most prominent thing about the glove so far shows the contribution of the Vive Tracker which helps improve the accuracy of tracking. Albeit the size of the glove doesn’t come off as a practical solution for the VR enthusiasts, we are still a ways from seeing a model that is of a size which can actually allow for seeing it to be consumer friendly.
The power of the HaptX glove allows you actually feel objects in your hand as if they are actually there, right down to their texture, as demonstrated by grabbing hard objects such as the moon, soft objects like the clouds, or even feeling raindrops.
The applications for these are countless and can even go to benefit the medical field for training surgeons and using stronger tools and actually feeling the feedback. Albeit the majority of applications for this type of glove would be to help improve interactivity in video games, maybe by the incorporation of gun recoil or reloading a gun in games like Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades on the HTC VIve.
Currently, the HaptX glove is stll a massive work in progress and will ship to select consumers in 2018. We can hope that the actual size of the glove can be reduced down to where it won’t weigh down the average consumers arm from a few minutes of use, because the video makes it look like quite the weight.