Researchers at RICE University create a means for gamers to "feel" objects in a virtual world-- the Hands Omni, a glove with inflatable air bladders under each fingertips allowing for the creation of in-game touch effects.
The right-handed glove is designed to be unobtrusive, being wireless and, at 350g, fairly light. It can affect each finger, although the prototype triggers the ring and little fingers as one unit since, as the team puts it, “It’s not very often you pick something up with just your pinkie.”
"[Y]ou can hook this up to a video game and when you reach out and grab a virtual object, it feels like you’re actually grabbing that object,” researcher Thor Walker says.
The glove comes through a partnership with game peripheral maker Virtuix, the company behind the Omni virtual reality treadmill. This means its creators cannot reveal how the technology works exactly (although they say it should be easy to implement in games and other VR projects), not to mention it might become a consumer sometime in the near future.