Back at GDC 2013, we caught up with Tactical Haptics and demoed their Reactive Grip technology which seeks to provide players with convincing tactile sensations on controllers and other peripherals. The company has released a new video showing two new demos that show off the Reactive Grip technology.
Tactical Haptics’ initial Reactive Grip prototypes are based the Razer Hydra by Sixense. They’ve gutted the peripheral and added their tech to create a motion controller that reacts to what the player is doing on screen with compelling tactile feedback.
At GDC 2013 I tried a few different demos with their prototype — a gun, sword, and morning star, all of which provided convincing feedback.
The company is now showing off two new demos, a slingshot and a car:
Having used the system before, I’ve got a good feeling that the slingshot demo will feel great. The car demo is interesting as they’ve supplanted the steering wheel with a virtual joystick… what’d I’d also like to see would be a full blown racing wheel with Reactive Grip included, that way those of us without $60,000 to spare might be able to get a bit of the simulated racing experience!
You can find the latest at the Tactical Haptics Facebook Page, where the company recently teased, “…we’ve now shrunk the size of the handle of our Reactive Grip Motion Controller down to a similar size as the handle of the Sixense Wireless Dev Kit’s controllers… so once we start showing this publicly, the forums will really be confused about whether our tech is in their wireless controller… =)”