It is just like the Energy Glove, however for VR

Nintendo’s Energy Glove was, to cite one of many eighties’ best movies, “so bad.” The NES peripheral transfixed a era of children, solely to later understand that the “unhealthy” on this occasion ought to maybe have been taken a bit extra actually. Nintendo finally bought 1 million of the issues, however the know-how simply wasn’t there, and the dream controlling gameplay with a robo-glove appeared to have died together with it.

With the newfound (relative) prominence of digital actuality, maybe it’s time give the thought one other go. Definitely interacting on this means makes a heck of much more sense in VR than it does an 8-bit aspect scroller. That is the promise behind ContactGlove, a brand new product from the Japanese agency Diver-X, which debuted this week at CES.

Picture Credit: Brian Heater

Along with choosing up an Innovation Award on the present, ContactGlove can also be the topic of an ongoing Kickstarter campaign, which has already handed its $200,000 objective, with 16 days left to go. The product combines hand monitoring with haptic suggestions to offer the person a extra hands-on method to interacting with the digital atmosphere round them.

After calibrating the system, ContactGlove tracks finger actions for extra pure interplay, in addition to button/stick actions made with the hand for a extra conventional gaming expertise. Battery life is round two hours with haptics on and eight hours with it turned off. It’s also possible to sizzling swap the battery to stick with it and working.

The product claims to be a less expensive/extra accessible method to VR gloves than what’s at present on the market. After all, when coping with VR {hardware}, “cheaper” is actually relative. The agency places the ultimate retail value of the product at just below $500 for the pair.

It’s suitable with HTC Vive headsets, in addition to Steam VR {hardware}. The corporate can also be making an SDK out there for Unity and Unreal Engine builders to make higher use of the system. Diver-X expects to start out transport in July, at which level we’ll discover out what sort of unhealthy ContactGlove actually is.