The original Kinect became popular among home-brew, DIY tinkerers… but failed to make much of a splash among its actual intended audience, the gamers. For the next iteration, Disney Research is working on one element they feel might have been missing from the original device, and that’s any form of physical feedback. But they don’t want you wear anything in order to feel this feedback, since that would defeat the purpose of the Kinect, so they’re working on a device which basically blows compressed air on you at the right time, in the hopes of making you feel something or other. It’s called the Aireal.
The air coming out of Aireal does so as a vortex, which is capable of traveling quite a long distance without losing much speed or its shape. The Aireal device also moves to track the player, meaning precise placement of the air hits on your body can be achieved.
How well this works is still being worked out, but Disney Research will be presenting a technical paper on the technology at SIGGRAPH 2013 in July. There’s also no word on whether Microsoft is even interested in bringing this to market, or whether even Sony or Nintendo would like to incorporate this into their gaming console strategies. But credit must be given to a desire for innovation, whether it bears commercial fruit or not.
Hit the jump for another picture, a video, and links.
How Could Google Glass Help You Out During A Date?
Google Glass isn’t even really available to consumers yet (unless you’re a developer with a great idea and $1,500 burning a hole in your pocket), but it hasn’t stopped creative minds with fertile imaginations to conjure up potential uses. In the hilarious video below, we see how the futuristic glasses could help you out during a date. From allowing you to Google them on the fly to give you a leg up on their likes and dislikes, to providing you with entertainment as they drift off into boring talk of politics, the glasses are there to save the day.
Granted the imagined uses are very far off from how the device actually works, but the fact that videos like this are cropping up now show that if Google Glass takes off, there’s going to be an adjustment period where people have to figure out just how to act and react to their presence in civilized society. Already some bars are talking about banning them, while some lawmakers in Wrest Virginia are proposing legislation prohibiting their use while driving. There’s a long road ahead for the search giant’s latest project, and it’s going to be interesting to see if this turns into a Gmail-like success, or a Google Wave-like failure.
In the meantime, why not watch the video? It’s pretty funny.
VIA [ Coolpile ]