Are Haptic Suits the Future of VR?
Reviewing the bHaptics suit for Oculus Quest
Haptic suits represent the next step towards true immersion in virtual reality gaming. Virtual reality works by establishing a space that can stimulate our senses enough to create the illusion of being in a different world. The current VR headsets on the market create this illusion by stimulating our sense of sight (through 6DoF visuals) and our sense of hearing (through binaural 3D audio), along with slight vibration feedback from the controllers.
However, with the emergence of haptic feedback accessories, VR games now have the ability to activate a third human sense, our sense of touch.
What is Haptic Feedback?
Put simply, haptic feedback is the use of vibration to convey another layer of information to the user. In VR, we can use haptic feedback in the controllers to simulate things like the kick from firing a pistol or the impact of hitting an enemy with your fists. When we start looking at top-of-the-line accessories that can generate more sophisticated forms of haptic feedback, the amount of immersion VR games provide can increase drastically.
If you’re looking to learn more about haptics, check out this article.
