HaptX, a company building a VR glove offering impressively detailed haptic feedback as well as force feedback, is steadily improving. My hands-on with their latest device—which is smaller, lighter, and more comfortable than prior iterations—offered me moments of magic where it felt like my hand was actually interacting with real objects. Let's get this out of the way up front: there's still much room for improvement to HaptX's haptic force feedback glove. Before technology like this could make its way to consumers, it needs to be much smaller, easier to use, and less expensive. But for now the company is focusing on getting everything right first, and is targeting the less price sensitive enterprise segment to get there. They announced recently that they now leasing dev kits of their VR glove to enterprises who want to experiment with it. [caption id="attachment_83092" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Photo by Road to VR[/caption] If nothing else, HaptX is a great proof of the importance of taking haptics beyond the simple rumbling mechanisms available in most of today's VR equipment. The glove can create brief moments where you really feel like you're touching something that isn't actually there. For me this was clearest when doing something seemingly mundane: using my fingers to rotate a cube. I probably did so for a good five or ten minutes, using cubes of various sizes, because I wanted to understand why it felt convincing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54YfbomcRnU The answer is feedback. It seems obvious, but it's quite fascinating when you break it down. I wrote in greater detail about how the HaptX glove works in my first hands-on with the device—but there's two major pieces that make it capable of those brief moments of magical immersion: First is haptic feedback, which aims to create subtle sensations of objects touching the user. For this, the HaptX glove uses arrays of micro-pneumatic actuators—effectively grids of little inflatable bladders which can be inflated and deflated quickly and precisely. By using the arrays to press against the palm and fingertips as needed, the glove can create a sense that an object is touching the user. [caption id="attachment_71368" align="aligncenter" width="640"] A look at the micro-pneumatic actuator arrays which are inflated and deflated to create sensations of touch against your skin. | Photo by Road to VR[/caption] The second is force feedback, which is about pushing back or inhibiting the user's movement in the same way that a corresponding physical object would. To this end, the HaptX glove has a mechanical brake on each finger which can prevent the finger from bending any further. For instance, when gripping a baseball, your fingers come in contact with the sides of the ball and are physically stopped by it. The HaptX glove simulates this by stopping your fingers from moving past where the point that they would stop if you were really holding a physical object. [caption id="attachment_83097" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image courtesy HaptX[/caption] I've attempted the same cube spinning interaction with various VR hand-tracking tech (which tracked my hands but offered no haptics or force feedback), and it's never felt very good. The HaptX glove succeeds here because it provides additional information (feedback) which hand-tracking without haptics cannot provide. For one, I know when my virtual hand is coming in contact with the virtual object beyond simple visual verification because I can feel it pushing against my finger tips. This means it's clear to me that the object is responding to me and able to be gripped. [caption id="attachment_83093" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Photo by Road to VR[/caption] But it's the force feedback which ultimately seals the deal, because by stopping my fingers at roughly the correct points in space means I can then rely on entirely natural physical manipulations, like subtly rotating the cube with two fingers (the way that you might twist a knob). Without the force feedback, I'd need to make a mock grabbing gesture in order to keep my fingers in the right place (which feels very unnatural), or rely on an unnatural abstracted gesture to make the system understand that I wanted to grip, but then I'd need to figure out new means of manipulating the object with that gesture instead of interacting with the object as if was truly there. Continued on Page 2 » Having both the haptic (touching) and force feedback (gripping) information conveyed through your hands also means that you don't need to rely completely on your eyes for that information, which opens the door to reliably manipulating objects that you aren't directly looking at. I tested this with the cube rotating motion. I would begin twisting the cube and then look completely away from it, completely relying on the feedback through my hands to continue rotating it. Amazingly, it actually worked. It was definitely easy to accidentally drop the cube, but the fact that it worked at all demonstrated to me how critical this feedback is to interacting naturally with the virtual world, and showed me that HaptX is on a promising path. - - — - - Fit and function is still the key challenge for HaptX to unlock the glove's full potential. This is a good thing, I'd say, as haptics and force feedback is usually the challenging part. [caption id="attachment_83096" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Photo by Road to VR[/caption] Putting on the HaptX glove is still something of a procedure, and it's so bulky that it's tough to do anything else once the glove is on—I even found it challenging just to tighten my own glove or my headset. While the micro-pneumatic arrays are capable of impressively detailed feedback across your palm and fingertips, if the pads aren't fit snugly against your skin then they can't impart much force, which is why the fit is crucial. [caption id="attachment_83095" align="alignright" width="325"] The HaptX glove is powered by sizeable hardware, but it has shrunk over time. | Photo by Road to VR[/caption] It's clear that the company understands this challenge; it's an area they say they're increasingly focusing on. Although it's obviously bulky, the latest HaptX glove is actually smaller, lighter, and more comfortable than prior iterations. And while they are still working with just a single glove size for development, in the future they expect to offer multiple sizes which will better suit different hands. The briefcase-sized box that powers the glove has also been shrunk and refined, now fitting the tech for two gloves into a similar size previously required for just one. HaptX's glove offers the most detailed and convincing haptics and force feedback that I've tried to date. It isn't perfect, but their trajectory is promising and I'm excited to see how far they can advance the experience.