Haptic Feedback- The future of gaming
“How can you miss such an easy shot?” exclaimed mayur!
“Sorry mate but the gun was shaking very much and it suddenly goes upward and I missed the target!” answered Aditya.
“Don’t you know about recoil, you noob!” Shouted mayur!
Most of us have heard the term “recoil” while playing our beloved first-person shooter game or in short FPS game like Counterstrike, Apex legend, PUBG or Valorant. In laymen terms, recoil means force which generates after firing a bullet and vibrate our gun and it becomes unstable.
We can’t feel the recoil in physical form while playing the game due to the virtual nature of the game but things are changing at a rapid pace. Consoles and new gaming hardware are going to change this.
Consoles like PS5, Oculus VR headsets and Virtuix Omni are among the top contenders in this segment. Sony’s latest console, Play station 5 controllers is a state of the art controller. Its provided your recoil vibrations or hepatic feedbacks based on the type of gun you are using in the game. For example, if you are using a Machine gun then the controller vibration will be more violent compared to any SMG or submachine gun. In this way, the player will get great gaming experience while playing the game feel the recoil of the gun.
How can you sense your gameplay anyway-
The answer to this question is vibration. In case of play station 5, the console generates vibration when pressed fire button on the controller. To create vibration in their console controller, PS5 engineers use micromotors. In laymen terms, when you make your motor unbalanced by adding extra weight on it then its shakes and create vibrations and hence player feel the vibration.
When the player presses the fire button on his PS5 controller then the game will send a signal to controller based on the type of gun used by the player in the game. The signal then tells the motor to rotate at a specific speed to create the vibration effect according to the type of gun. In case of a heavy machine gun, the motor will rotate more vigorously and create heavy vibrations compared to the case of the light submachine gun where the motor will rotate slowly and generate low vibration effect.
This is not an easy thing to do as a designer and engineer needs to make sure while designing the controller that the motors are placed at the precise location as failing to do so will create damping effect which is undesirable and will deteriorate the vibration experience for the user.
In every case of such system which provide you sensing effect while playing the game, the engineer will need to make sure that the placement of motors are at the right place and consume low power otherwise, it will drain the controller battery pretty quickly.
Is Hepatic feedback system is future?
Hepatic feedback system or vibration sensing system is the future of the gaming industry. Hepatic feedback system will soon be going to be launched in different consoles systems by different companies. The best part about this system that has many uses within the gaming community. The system is not only about gun recoil only but its uses are far greater than them. Hepatic feedback systems can create a new environment for the player altogether. It can take the player to a new realm of gaming experience. Combined with VR, the hepatic feedback hardware can bring true revolution in case of gaming.
Just think that you can feel the enemy attacks either its bullets or sword attack. The player can feel the true feeling of being attacked by enemy either its single-player or multiplayer games.
The medical industry can use the hepatic feedback system to a great extend. Remote surgeries are making wonders for people. Doctors can perform surgery at any part of the world by robot surgeon machines. A doctor in the USA can perform surgery in a village of Somalia via state of the art machines. The hepatic feedback system can be used in such cases and make doctor more alert of his conditions during surgery.
The hepatic feedback system can revolutionize the AR field too. Just think how it feels to throw a Pokeball on a pokemon of your choice. The hepatic feedback will make you feel like you throwing the Pokeball on the pokemon.
Present innovation in this field-
What if you feel the enemy strike or feel the horror game moments while playing the game over your upper body? How will it feel when your whole upper body can feel the enemy attack when struck by the sword?
Sounds exciting! Right?
A company has already made this possible. bHaptics had created hepatic feedback jackets which can be worn by anyone. These jackets will provide vibrating sensation on different parts of the body via its multiple motors. This company launched its latest Tactsuit X which have 2 models i.e. Tactsuit X 40(40 hepatic points) and Tactsuit X 16(16 Hepatic points).
These awesome suits battery lasts for 18 to 22 hours easily. These suits will take you to another world when combined with the VR headset and joysticks. These 40 hepatics points will cover nearly every point of your upper body and can mimic most of the in-game attacks quite easily. These suits are not heavy at all. Their weight is approx 1.3 kg only which is quite good.
bHaptics is one of the many players which is working hard to clear the gap between reality and the virtual world during gaming. Every major console player is working in this sector. Play station dual shocks controller were starting phase of this hepatic feedback systems in console controllers and their latest dual shock 5 controllers are state of art controller.
Not only consoles but even mobile games developer also started to offer hepatic feedback by using mobile in-build vibrations motors. The games are using this system partially because vibration consumes more battery and decrease battery charge. With the continuous development of mobile technology, soon we will see the full use of this hepatic feedback feature in mobiles too.
Who knows, maybe someone develops external hardware for mobile gaming too like smart gloves or it gets to sync with the smartwatch. This hardware will provide the hepatic feedback to the user rather than mobile.
The future of gaming is going to be quite awesome for sure, that’s for sure.