New game controller tugs at thumb tips

TG Daily writes.

The controller delivers directional cues to the player by stretching the skin of the thumb tips in different directions.

"We have developed feedback modes that enhance immersiveness and realism for gaming scenarios such as collision, recoil from a gun, the feeling of being pushed by ocean waves or crawling prone in a first-person shooter game," says William Provancher, an associate professor of mechanical engineering.

Product Design & Development says the university demonstrated the device and presented studies about it during the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Haptics Symposium.

The latest game controller prototype looks like controllers for Microsoft's Xbox or Sony's PlayStation, but with an addition to the controller's normal thumb joysticks, on which the thumbs are placed and moved in different directions to control the game.

If a gamer's avatar runs into a wall, the tactor under the thumb moves back to mimic impact. Both tactors can move from side to side to mimic ocean waves. And when a fish bites in one of the games the researchers tried, "as the fish jerks on the line, you can feel the tactor jerk under your thumb", Provancher says.

Videogames commonly are designed so the left thumb stick controls motion and the right controls the player's gaze or aim, Science Daily states.

Provancher hopes to adapt the new game controller design for use as a smartphone peripheral device. A phone would fit into the device with game-controlling thumb sticks and tactors on each side of the phone.