Haptics at CES — 25 years ago!
First haptic mouse & GUI was shown at CES back in 1998
With the Consumer Electronics Show happening in Vegas this week, I can’t help but think about my experiences there over the years. Having founded a number of tech companies across the decades, I’ve attended CES for a wide range of purposes from showing off virtual reality medical simulators to presenting a new form of AI. But my most memorable trip to CES was 25 years ago when the VR company I had founded back in 1993, Immersion Corporation, showed off something quite revolutionary — the world’s first haptic computer mouse and haptic GUI.
We called it the Feelit Mouse and it was a reference design aimed at major manufacturers complete with custom motors, custom drivers, a custom haptics chip, and a deep API for software developers. It enabled users to feel menus, icons, sliders, buttons, and folders across the Windows interface. It even worked in Microsoft Word and Excel, allowing users to feel their cursor snap between letters or words when cutting and pasting.
The Feelit Mouse was a sophisticated device that could simulate virtual surfaces, virtual liquids, textures, detents — it could even simulate the feel of stretching a virtual rubber band. In fact, when you stretched a window on the desktop, that’s what it felt like — an elastic band. And when you moved an icon, you felt the virtual friction and inertia of motion.
The technology was years in the making, but it was finally viable for mass production at consumer prices. To convey the value, we even published formal research studies in 1996 and in 1998 that showed users could target icons, menus and sliders with greater skill and less effort when using haptic feedback. It was clear — haptics adds value to GUIs.
Of course, the mouse was intended for more than menus and sliders. We had a full API for developers working on games, VR, and productivity apps. We even put out a book on how to program haptics. And this was the 90’s, so we had to invent basic methods for adding a sense of touch to the web. We even enabled person-to-person touch over the internet (shown for the first time at Siggraph in 1996 in an experience called SlingBall).
In other words, we covered all the bases for a viable consumer product. The target price for Feelit Mouse was $99 which was a little costly back then. So we also had a reference design for a less expensive version ($49). It could only deliver vibration-based sensations, but we developed a method called Impulse Wave Shaping that made it quite compelling.
This product made a splash at COMDEX in Nov 1997 and CES in Jan 1998 which resulted in the reference design being turned into a family of consumer products. The first shipping haptic mouse was the Wingman Force Feedback Mouse from Logitech which was fully featured but required a mousepad-like base. This was followed up a year later by a lower cost version called the iFeel Mouse. It had the form factor of a traditional optical mouse and was sold for $49.
Of course to appreciate what these mice were capable of, you’d have to feel them for yourself. But the next best thing is a video — as shown below, they were actually featured on ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. The clip does a reasonable job at explaining what it felt like to use these haptic mice. The clip also shows a few seconds of our VR surgical simulators which were also sold at the time:
What the video doesn’t show are the various games from developers like Lucas Arts and Electronic Arts that supported the mice in fun ways. We even worked with one of the first metaverse platforms in 1999, There.com, to add haptics into their virtual world. It really seemed like haptics would become a standard part of computing back then, especially for making GUIs more intuitive, interactive, and engaging.
Of course, you’re probably wondering — what happened?
Why did haptic mice fade away a few years after they emerged? They were affordable, compelling, and supported by a wide range of software.
Well, there were many factors at play, but one challenge was the sudden popularity of wireless mice in the early 2000’s. Wireless abruptly became the big new feature everyone wanted on their desks and unfortunately, electronics were much less efficient back then so batteries couldn’t support both wireless and haptics in a viable way. Cost was also an issue, as a $99 mouse was a pricey 25 years ago.
It’s funny — back in 98, I had one-on-one meetings with both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to show them the power of haptic mice. Both were polite and engaged, but were probably thinking — come back in a couple decades. That said, I am still confident haptics will become a standard part of computing, especially as the metaverse drives realistic and immersive experiences into the mainstream. I just never expected it would take thirty years.
Louis Rosenberg, PhD is an early pioneer of virtual and augmented reality. His work began over 30 years ago in labs at Stanford and NASA. In 1992 he developed the first mixed reality system at Air Force Research Laboratory. In 1993 he founded the early VR company Immersion. In 2004 he founded the early AR company Outland Research. He earned his PhD from Stanford University, was a tenured professor at California State University, and is currently the CEO of the artificial intelligence company Unanimous AI, the Chief Scientist of the Responsible Metaverse Alliance, and Global Technology advisor to XRSI.
