Don Rider is the inventor of the Mad Genius motion controller which caught the attention of the VR community when prototypes of the system were first revealed. Rider has taken his creation to Kickstarter to refine and miniaturize the design for proper manufacturing. The VR community had plenty of questions about the system and we went directly to the source to get them answered. Mad Genius Kickstarter The Mad Genius controller looks like a standard gaming controller but really consists of two halves connected by a powerful magnet. When split apart, the ultrasonic-based motion technology takes over, allowing players to control games using a combination of motion and gesture input. Rider says that the controller is accurate to 1/100th of an inch and also provides absolute positional tracking, rather than relative tracking that one would find with IMU-based systems. He says that he's applied for a patent for the technology. "I don't need any averaging of old samples. My "raw" (x,y,z) data is the data that I use—I don't have to clean it up or include data from old samples. It took a lot of software to be able to get accurate data from a single sample. The methods used to do this take up quite a lot of the patent," Rider told me. He was clear that while the Mad Genius controller could be used for VR, that isn't the intended use in the controller's current form. "At this point I want to produce optimized positioning solutions for other applications. I need that chip with all of the locating hardware to do this efficiently. VR is one of those applications but I haven't optimized for it yet. One step at a time," he said. But that hasn't stopped the VR community from taking notice of what could be useful tech for consumer virtual reality. A thread posted on the Oculus sub-section of Reddit revealed many unanswered questions about how the system worked and what its limitations might be. A section of the Mad Genius website explains at length what the controller does, but not quite how it works. Wanting to know more ourselves, we got in touch with Rider to see if he'd answer some questions for the community, he happily obliged. After calling for questions on Reddit, we passed them along to Rider who kindly answered them in great depth. Community Q&A With Don Rider, Inventor of the Mad Genius Controller Q: How are you planning on handling the Xbox wireless controller approval and licensing process, and does your budget account for the cost associated with it? A: The connection between the Mad Genius controller and the Xbox (or any other console) isn’t a wireless connection so this isn’t an issue. Here’s how it works. The controller halves (I suppose you can think of them as two controllers that can stick together) each have a transmitter that serves as the tracking marker. A sensor array of four sensors is attached to the outside frame of the flatscreen. The sensor array determines the markers’ locations in absolute (x,y,z) space relative to the television. Velocity and acceleration is derived from the changing location data. All of this data is translated into standard console button and analog stick movements according to a Game Profile loaded for the game being played. These button and analog stick movements are merged with those from the physical buttons and analog sticks in the controller halves. The sum of the motion information and the button/stick information is sent to the console through a cable that plugs into the standard controller plug on the console. This final link in the chain, sending the sum of the motion and button/sticks to the controller, can be changed to match the console. For a PS3 it sends PS3 controller commands. For an Xbox One it sends Xbox One commands. For older consoles (ie, the PS2) a different plug may be needed. We still want the controller to be wireless. The wireless connection will be from the two controller halves to the sensor array. Since I control both ends of the wireless connection I can use any wireless connection I like. Q: Do you intend to reduce the price for a consumer release? Would a $100 price tag be possible? A: I don’t know if a $100 price tag is possible or not. Pulling accurate location data out of the ultrasound takes some custom components. I’m working from outside the console so I have to bring my own processors and do everything on board. The cost is dependent on the quantity produced more than anything else. That’s what’s frustrating with getting started. If we’re producing quantities in the thousands we have to spread the fixed startup costs (FPGA development, setup for plastics, development, workspace and all that) over fewer units. When the quantities are low these costs wind up being more than the parts and materials going into the unit. I want the Kickstarter price to be lower but at the quantities we’ll likely be producing the cost of each controller is high. Post Kickstarter if the controller makes a splash we might end up making lots of them. If we’re making enough of them our costs go down and the price would go down as well. I don’t have a guess as to what this price might be at this point. We’re only on Step 2 and that’s Step 29. This is always a sore point with Kickstarter backers and I understand and agree. Backers are the people who go the extra mile and lend their support when there’s risk. I sincerely appreciate their support. If I get to build this thing it will be because of their generous support. In return for their trust and support they pay a higher price than people who wait and see. I don’t like this at all. I’m working on ways to even this up as best I can. I haven’t come up with anything I can do within the Kickstarter without violating the terms of service. I can’t offer any bonuses to backers in the future that might give them back some additional value. Everything is supposed to be delivered in one shot and then it’s over. I understand why they do this. If you have ongoing obligations and someone’s not happy what do you do? I’m going to do something anyway, though. I have a few ideas and I’m open to any and all suggestions. Q: You didn't implement wireless support since CES 2014 (10 months ago), how can we be sure you'll be able to do it in the next 11 months (ETA Nov 2015)? A: The wireless connection will be between the controller and the sensor array. It’s a simple serial connection and there are a lot of drop-in solutions already available. Implementation is a matter of experimenting to see which one works the best and dropping the chip in. It’s not difficult and I’m not worried about whether it’s doable or not. The problem with making the controller wireless at the current time has nothing to do with the difficulty (or lack thereof) of implementing the wireless connection. I started this project in my garage. The prototype you see in the Skyrim and Halo videos was built by hand on a tiny budget with Radio Shack parts, duct tape and paper clips. One guy, zero funding. It was the result of a series of “Gee, I wonder if this will work?” questions. “I wonder if I can get accurate tracking?” so I built some hardware. “I wonder if I can get the tracking to work for a larger range?” so I built more. “I wonder if I can use this to make the game do something?” so more hardware. “I wonder if I can make it do something useful?” so more. In order to add motion to a console game without an API there was a long list of problems to solve. I’d like to say I knew how to do everything up front, laid out a plan and executed an optimal design but few things work that way. I didn’t even know if it was possible. I tried a dozen things for every link in the chain until I found something that worked well. At the garage stage it’s easier and cheaper to do this with full size parts. Making printed circuit boards gets expensive when designs are changing daily so everything is on through-hole cards. I wasn’t worried about being pretty and compact. I just wondered if I could make it work. This is why the controller isn’t wireless. Using full size parts meant everything just won’t fit inside a controller shell. I put the controller circuitry on an outside card and ran a cable to the controller. To make the controller wireless the full size parts have to go and everything needs to be done nice and clean with surface mount parts. I need to do more than just adding the wireless, I need to redesign the entire thing. At this stage of the game I don’t have extra resources to burn. I’m not funded and there are so many other things to do. I’ve been evaluating manufacturing sources. CES brought me together with some parts manufacturers who had alternatives to what I used in the first prototype. These parts can bring down costs but I had to do a lot of building to see if they would do what I needed. At the same time I’ve been tweaking the software inside the controller. Compare the tracking of Halo and Skyrim to the Titanfall video—I’ve made many improvements to the tracking and translation algorithms. Those videos don’t make themselves! It was a question of where to put my time. The wireless connection would be better but the system works the same whether the cable is there or not. When it comes to demonstrating the functionality (how it works and how well it works) the wireless connection doesn’t add very much to the demo compared to the effort required to redesign everything. There were other things that were much more important and that’s where I put my time. Continue Reading on Page 2... Q: The current setup requires a lot of space for the base stations, do you intend to reduce that? What would be the minimum distance between the base stations? How many base stations are needed, and if there are more than one, how are their positions calibrated? In existing ultrasonic tracking systems, the relative positions of the base stations need to be measured by the end-user, ideally with sub-millimeter accuracy. Does their system have automatic calibration, say by base stations pinging each other, or does it not require calibration at all? If so, how? A: The locating method uses a minimum of four sensors. More sensors can be added to reduce occlusions but four is the minimum. The spacing between the sensors depends on the application. If the sensors are farther apart you get higher accuracy at a longer range. Move them closer together and the total size of the sensor array is smaller at the cost of accuracy. For a console controller I have the flatscreen. It makes a convenient home for the sensor array. The sensor arrangement was chosen to go flat against the wall so that you can set this up in your living room without seeing hardware all over the place. Two sensors are positioned at the bottom corners of the screen. One is positioned at the center of the bottom edge and the other at the center of the top edge. The system needs two measurements to account for the television size. The first is from the bottom/center sensor to the top/center. The second is from the bottom/center to either of the outside sensors. That’s all the calibration that’s necessary. When I set up a system I “calibrate” it with a tape measure and off I go. In practice I’ve found you have to be misaligned pretty badly before you notice it in game play. It’s surprisingly forgiving. If your measurements accurate to within ¼” you’re unlikely to notice it. I do have some calibration routines that take the two initial measurements and tweak them based on the tracking data coming in. I usually don’t bother. It’s not that critical and and I want to keep the setup simple. I’ll probably include the calibration as an optional thing in case you want to tweak things. Everything in this system was optimized for console gaming but there are many other configurations of the markers and sensors that also work. Each configuration has pluses and minuses. For a different application I might arrange things differently. Q: It seems the update rate is 50 Hz , do you intend to improve that for the consumer release? What would be the maximum supported frequency? A: Building this first system has been an incredible learning experience. I now know to do so much more than when I started—I know way more about ultrasonic sound than I ever wanted to know! I have a whole list of modifications that improve the sampling rate. I’ve tested each mod individually but I’ve maxed out the processors I’m using. I can’t implement them all together with the current prototype. Argh. The first step post Kickstarter is to port to faster processors. There’s a lot of work I’m doing in software that could be better handled in hardware. Putting these functions in an FPGA will dramatically improve performance. I don’t know what the maximum sampling frequency will be. I have some mods that can increase the sampling rate significantly, but I need to get to better hardware to implement them. I won’t know what the upper limit is until I start building things. Q: What sound technology are you tracking with? Is it subject to being occluded like the Power Glove? Is it tethered to stationary stereo speakers or microphones? A: The system uses ultrasonic sound. The signals go through a lot of software to pull quality data out of what is a fuzzy, difficult, unreliable, sloppy signal. Each controller half has an ultrasonic transmitter that is used as a tracking marker. Four sensors are attached to the outside frame of the television. Q: How did you measure the 1/100 inch accuracy? A: I put the controller in a vice and moved the vice, measuring with a micrometer. In order to have an “accurate” controller location I also looked at what a player needed for it to “feel” accurate. This is what I came up with for using the system with console gaming: If the controller isn’t moving the (x,y,z) measurement shouldn’t move. It can’t bounce around. If I’m aiming at a tiny target and the aim bounces on its own then it will just be frustrating. If the controller moves a very small amount the measurement should reflect that small movement. The difference between a miss and a headshot may only be a few pixels. If I don’t have enough control to move a few pixels I can’t aim. If there’s a large movement that movement has to feel in proportion to the small movement. The response has to be immediate. Averaging a bunch of samples can improve accuracy but the lag in tracking would make it feel inaccurate. So, no sample averaging. I have an LCD monitor that I use for debugging that can display the realtime (x,y,z) coordinates for a marker in hundredths of an inch. If I put the controller in a vice and, say, watch the (x) coordinate over time the most change that I see is that the hundredths digit may change back and forth between two values. “10.45” inches to “10.46” inches and then maybe back again. That satisfies #1. If I move it a tiny bit with my vice and micrometer I can see the coordinate changing immediately and it’s matching what I expect. That satisfied #2 and #4. #3 I measured but it’s much easier to tell during game play. If the response isn’t proportional the aiming just doesn’t feel right. In console gaming #4 is a difficult one. The player sees lag as the delay from when they do something until they see it on the screen. The game will have some lag as it does its processing. The flatscreen can have a lot of lag depending on the model. Putting it in “Game Mode” helps but there’s still a delay until it displays the video that the console is sending. I’ve actually managed to eat into this lag a bit. There are some really fun things in the software that reduce this lag, even though it’s not caused by the controller. No, I won’t tell you how I did it. Q: Is it 3DOF (positional) or 6DOF (positional and rotational) tracking? Is the technology used ultrasonic or inertial-ultrasonic hybrid? A: The prototype in the video is only using the 3D positional data but there’s nothing to stop me from experimenting with additional devices in the future. The prototype was the result of a lot of “I wonder if this will work” thinking. “I wonder how it will work if I use absolute positioning instead of inertial?” “Can I do different things with true absolute positioning data that inertial devices can’t do?” It was an experiment. To control my variables I built it only with the absolute positioning system. I wanted it to be clear that I was doing things using a non-inertial method. If I included any other tracking methods I knew that I would spend the rest of my life trying to explain what was due to the absolute positioning system and what was due to the tracking methods that everyone else was using. Furthermore, demonstrating inertial sensors adds nothing to the demo. They’re everywhere and in everything. We all know how they work. I’m trying to demonstrate something new not what you already know about. Continue Reading on Page 3... Q: It seems the controller suffers from line of sight, can you give details about this? Ie. what is the impact on the accuracy with a hand, arm or torso between the controller and the base stations? A: The controller needs line of sight to the sensors just like optical systems do. Well, not just like optical systems do. “Occlusion” appears to mean a different thing to sound than it does to light. In an optical system as soon as anything comes between the transmitter and the sensor you’re done. There’s just no signal. For sound it’s not that simple. If, say, the edge of your arm comes between things the sound still gets to the sensor. The distance it has to travel is slightly longer so the calculated (x,y,z) distorts a smidge but in game play this often passes unnoticed. If you put a round object in the way the sound will pass around the object, rejoin on the other side and continue on its way. Again, the distance traveled will distort the calculated (x,y,z) a bit but it doesn’t affect game play all that much. Put your whole body in the way, of course, and things stop working. Of course, put a body between you and the television and you won’t do so well either. In console game play the player is facing the television with both hands in front. The game play is more about accurate pointing and moving in 3D space rather than standing and waving your arms around. It’s not about standing there with your arms against your chest. It’s about getting your arms out there and using the room space. Because of this, occlusions aren’t much of a problem in console play which is what I designed this system for. Remember, that this is just the first prototype. I built it to show that the absolute positioning tracking worked at all and that it could be used in game play. It’s a proof-of-concept solution and it’s not yet an optimized one. There are a lot of things that can be done to reduce and/or remove the occlusion problem and I’ll be implementing some of those in the final version. Q: Does the controller need to be directed toward the base stations to work or can it be oriented in any arbitrary direction? A: I’ve worked up a number of ultrasound transmitter designs and they all have their pluses and minuses. The 'Frankencontroller’s' transmitter in the Skyrim and Halo videos works in any orientation. The one in the CES and Titanfall videos is smaller and has a 180 degree field. It works as long as you’re not facing backwards. I’ve built other transmitters and I’m still experimenting. The best one will make it into the final controller. It’s sort of like “The Ultrasonic Bachelor.” Q: What is the frequency of the emitted ultrasounds? A: The prototype uses 40kHz. Q: Does the emitted ultrasound have any negative impact on animals (dogs and cats can hear ultrasounds)? Did you conduct tests about this? A: I have a dog, two cats, a snake, and ducks (Yes, they’re in the house. Don’t ask). No complaints so far. Q: Do you intend to produce other controllers with a similar technology but a form factor similar to the PS Move or Razer Hydra (ie. grip, thumbstick, buttons)? Why did you decide to make a break-apart game controller? Both Sony and Nintendo, when introducing the PS Move and the Wiimote, respectively, chose a design very different from their normal controllers. Supposedly, they had a reason to do that. Their current design doesn't seem ideal as a standard game controller, or as a motion controller. A: Anything is possible and I’m not ruling anything out. Here’s why I chose the design I did: Ever since motion gaming arrived there’s been this war between controller gaming and motion gaming. One motion system eliminated the controller completely. Some let you have buttons but it looks like they didn’t want you to use them. They’re very awkwad and inconvenient. By last measurement, 91% of the internet that isn’t full of nekkid videos is full of gamers flaming back and forth about which method is lame and which one 'rools'. I don’t see it this way at all. Honestly, I didn’t like the way motion gaming has been done. That’s why I built this thing! Motion is fun but sometimes I still want buttons and sticks. Maybe I want to jump around the living room today but tomorrow I mean want to slug out on the couch and button mash. Maybe I want to use buttons for some things and motions for other. I didn’t want to choose. I wanted everything available all the time. I didn’t want to lose “traditional” controller game functions so I started with the “traditional” controller. I made the button and stick configurations similar because I still wanted to be able to play the way I always had. Then it came time to add tracking and motion. With a “traditional” controller both hands are stuck together. What’s the point of tracking that? We need to get our hands apart so we could have full use of motion. I still want everything, though. I still wanted to be able to use the buttons and sticks even when my hands were in motion and apart. The only thing to do was cut the controller in half. I wanted to be able to go back and forth between “traditional” play and motion play during game play without having to look at the controller. Magnets made that easy. Get the two halves close enough and they pop together. At first glance it sounds like this would be awkward. If you hold your controller with one hand it’s not a comfortable thing. Remember, though, I cut the controller in half. You’re only holding half of it. Take a hacksaw to your controller and you’ll see that’s it’s not that bad. Wait—don’t do that. It might have problems when you put it back together. I made some other form changes to make it more comfortable. I changed the shape of the bottom so it’s easier to get your fingers around. All of the heavy stuff is in the grip so that the weight of each controller half falls in the palm. You don’t have to grip it. It’s balanced so that it sits in the palm naturally. It looks the same but there are important changes that were made to accommodate the splitting. It’s quite comfortable. Hundreds of people have tried it out and agree. I’m not finished, of course. There are still tweaks to be tried. I want to have as many people try it out as I can before committing to a final design. Are there other controller designs that would work better? I’d like to find out. This obviously isn’t the only way to do it. I’d love to be able to offer more than one design so that players can choose whichever design they like best. I’d like to offer two options for the left controller half. If the analog stick and the Dpad are reversed it will have more of PS feel. You can see more here. Click on Chapter 2, The Controller. Q: Do you think that shaping it like an inexpensive console controller will contribute to the notion among potential backers that it's not worth the $300+ you wish to charge, despite the presumably expensive tracking technology inside? A: This is something that I thought a lot about. One of my design goals was to add motion without taking away traditional controller aspects that everyone was used to. I thought this was especially important if I’m adding motion to a game you already play. If all the buttons are scrambled up you’re not going to like it. The “motion vs buttons” debate is annoying. I wanted “motion and buttons” not “motion or buttons.” Coming up with a different controller shape would say, “Hey! I’m different!” but it takes away my traditional play. We’re back to “motion vs buttons” again. So, I kept a “traditional” shape. The controller becomes a “stealth” thing, just like you said. At first glance the difference isn’t obvious. Split it apart and suddenly it does all these new things. As a designer I really like this! It’s simple, elegant and it works. I’ve been playing with it for a couple of years now and using motion and buttons really works. I’m hardly a “serious” gamer. I play for fun and don’t have as much free time as I’d like. On a standard controller online play isn’t much fun because I just get slaughtered. When I aim with motion I can hold my own. The Titanfall video is an excellent example of “hybrid” motion and button play. As a Pilot on the ground, things move quickly. Be quick or be dead. I use motion for aiming but I do best using the traditional controls for moving and jumping. I use motion aiming, weapons changes and reloading because it’s fun. If I need to turn around quickly I’ll hit the right analog stick and then go back to aiming with motion. I call down the Titan with motion (the arm over the head and all that) because it’s fun. I can do it with buttons but it’s just so damn kuwl to call the Titan like this. When I’m in the Titan the gameplay is slower so I use a mode where I can move around the room and aim at the same time. It’s just fun! It’s become reflex to step backwards and sidestep behind cover when someone starts shooting. I really miss it if I’m using a standard controller. When I first wrote the movement mapping I thought it would be cute but I didn’t think it would be useful. After all, how far can you move in your living room? I was so wrong on that one. First I had to dump the idea that everything had to be 1:1. Is your mouse 1:1? If so your mouse pad must be friggin’ huge! I made the movement ratio tunable so I could crank up the sensitivity. My motion is magnified and I can move the character further with less motion on my part. Once I did this it was just too much fun. And, if I run out of living room the analog sticks still work and always do. Everything is working (woo hoo!) but this presents a very annoying choice. The “stealth” thing works great and I can do everything I want but it doesn’t look all sexy and stuff. If I use an entirely new controller design it will get attention but I lose all of the old controller elements I wanted to keep. I like this design because it keeps all the old elements and adds the motion without requiring it. Will everyone understand? I have no idea. Continue Reading on Page 4... Q: I am curious about your "location zones" that you tout for setting up motion triggers like pulling back a bow. The video of this showed boxes that the controller needed to enter to trigger the event. It also showed an approximation of the users body and the zones tracked this body. How are you sensing the user? Can the ultrasonic tech detect the general user "blob"? A: I call the “location zones” Trigger Boxes. The key to Trigger Boxes is the controller splitting. When the controller is together motion is usually ignored. When you split the controller apart the controller’s current location is recorded. I call it the “Origin.” This tells me where the controller is at the time it was split. I don’t need to know where the player is. Trigger Boxes can be positioned relative to the Origin. If you split the controller over there the Trigger Boxes are positioned over there as well. Split it over here and the Trigger Boxes go over here. What if you’re in a “movement” mode, where you’re moving around the room to move the character? As you move around the room Origin moves along with you. This, in turn, moves the Trigger Boxes. Not everyone is the same height or has the same size arms and things. Players can also create a Player Profile that’s used to adjust the locations of the Trigger Boxes. That way the Trigger Boxes will be positioned to match each player. There’s a Chapter video about the TriggerBoxes here. Chapter 12, Boxes in Space. Q: The Kickstarter goal seems unattainable. Have you considered cancelling the campaign and starting over, say 100k? The Kickstarter goal is based on what it would take to get all of the setup, design and tooling done and deliver a quality product. There were some components I needed that didn’t exist so I had to invent them. These parts must be manufactured as well as everything else. I’m not just delivering a motion tracking dev kit that backers can own and dream about the day that some games may be made available for it. I’m delivering a system that takes this data and translates it to something that existing consoles and games can understand. There are already games out there for it because it works with any game. This means that there’s a lot more involved in the Mad Genius Controller. If a dev kit plugs into your PC most of the processing will be done in the PC. I’m plugging into a console without an API so I have to provide my own processing power. I look at a lot of Kickstarter projects and I can’t imagine how they’re going to deliver if they only get their minimum. I’ve seen some that had to cut back on the quality of their final product in order to deliver anything at all. I don’t want to do this. Most of the cost of producing something like this lies in the fixed project costs. There are custom components, setup costs for the plastics, the FPGA design, software development and on and on and on. I’m going to need more developers to do this right and they don’t work for free. I need somewhere to put everyone and that’s not free either. These costs have to be spread over the number of controllers we’re making. A smaller number means each controller has to carry a larger portion of this cost. If you make millions of something most of your cost is the components and assembly. If you make thousands most of the cost will be those annoying fixed project costs. If I reduce the goal to $100,000 what happens if the Kickstarter only hits that minimum? Now I’m producing even fewer units but my fixed project costs are the same. The cost of each controller is now even higher but I have even less funding. The only way to deliver is to increase the cost of each controller and it quickly gets ridiculous. The numbers weren’t where I’d like them to be but they are what they are. It turns out that to deliver the controller at a reasonable price I also need to make a reasonable quantity of them. The goal is set based on the quantity of controllers I need to build in order to keep the cost down. So, no. I can’t do another Kickstarter with a lower goal. If I could make this work with a lower goal I would have set the goal there to begin with. Q: It's the same price as STEM which is cutting edge tech so why would I buy this for VR for PC instead of STEM? Ultrasonic locating methods typically have an accuracy in the range of ¼” to ½”. I found a way to get 1/100th of an inch. I think that’s cutting edge but that’s just me. I designed this system to add motion to console gaming without taking away traditional controls. Everything was optimized for that environment. I didn’t want to build one more dev kit that only programmers could use so I added the motion translation and Game Profiles so that a gamer could use it right out of the box without writing any code. So, what does this have to do with VR? Nothing. Well, at first. Just about every other YouTube comment said we should try this with the Oculus so I got one. Most people were using the Oculus seated to avoid breaking bones on the furniture. This kept the player facing in one direction much like the situation with console play. With the player seated the situation isn’t all that different from the console play I’d originally designed the system for. The controller performed extremely well as you can see in the video. Surprisingly well! Well enough that with a little tweaking it would be a good option for a controller. Is it ready to be a full-VR-it’s-like-I-have-a-holodeck-in-my-room controller where I’m walking around and turning in every direction? Not in its current form. But VR isn’t there yet, either. Quite a few of the PC games written for head-mounted displays have been using an Xbox controller. The mouse and keyboard can be difficult when you can’t see them. An Xbox controller you can hang onto. The Mad Genius Controller can connect to anything by presenting itself as an Xbox controller. This means you can use it with a PC game without a software API. If the game works with a game controller it works with the Mad Genius Controller. This means that all you need to do to add motion to a game is to set up the Game Profile through our motion design app. This configures the Mad Genius Controller to match the game and you can get an idea how the motion can feel with very little time invested. Does this give you 1:1 hand motions and things? No, of course not. If you want that you can go the dev kit route and get all of the tracking data that the controller provides. The motion design app can let you test the waters before you commit to a lot of coding for the API. It’s really a question of what you want to do. Full VR is still quite a ways away. It has a lot of difficulties to overcome. I’m sure these difficulties will be overcome but I’d like to play some games in the meantime. I’d want to play lots of different games, including the favorites I already have, with the best motion control possible. That’s why I built this thing, because I’d like to have fun with this stuff now. This is an important difference with what I’m trying to do. One of VR’s biggest hurdles is that few non-developers will want it until lots games are available. Few developers are going to write these games until a large number of gamers already own the VR gear. I don’t know how this is going to work out but I don’t want to wait until it’s all in place. I don’t need to have all aspects of VR in place to add to the gaming experience. I’m going to take whatever pieces are available and add them to the games that are already there and I’m going to have some fun. Q: I would like to know if the controller has haptic feedback/rumble? If yes is it in each side of the controller? A: There are so many new devices out there for feedback. I’ve played with a few of them and the potential to pull you closer to the game is very exciting. The prototype in the video doesn’t have any tactile feedback. It was designed for one thing, to test the absolute positioning system and see how it could work with console game play. Kickstarter is not Amazon. You don’t click “Add to Cart” and I ship you a shrink-wrapped box. Kickstarter is to start projects. My goal with Kickstarter is to get the resources to take that prototype and turn it into something even better. Everything I learned building it will go into the final prototype. Anything else that I can get my hands on will go in the final one as well. I have a huge list of things that I want to add to this thing and haptic feedback is right there at the top. I’d like to put the whole list into the final controller but it’s a question of resources. So, given whatever resources I end up with I’m going to add as many as I can. Thanks to Don Rider for taking the time to answer the community's questions!