This joystick allows you to feel the sliding of objects between your fingers

The MAKinteract Lab has developed a VR controller that lets you feel objects slip between your fingers. Which greatly improves the feeling of immersion.

Virtual reality is an exciting hunting ground for researchers. And some are doubling down on their innovation capabilities to offer tools that are more immersive than ever. During CES 2022, Shiftall introduced Pebble Feel, a tool that will make you feel hot and cold in virtual reality. For its part, the MAKinteract Lab (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) has designed a VR controller that increases the sense of touch.

In this case, players will feel the objects they are manipulating in their virtual reality session. But what is this magic? According to the researchers, this joystick appears as A portable tactile controller capable of rewriting the thickness and sliding of a pinched virtual object between two fingers.

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Virtual Reality: Pottery is like the real thing

To make their point, they have put together a gameplay sequence where the player is busy making pottery in virtual reality. In order to make the experience realistic, it is necessary to comply as closely as possible with the requirements related to real pottery. In this case, the artist must feel that the object is rotating in his hands to make it completely cylindrical and stable.

To simulate the modeling of a piece of clay, the SpinOcchio controller includes rotating discs capable of pivoting upon contact with the user’s fingers. It is an ability that recreates the features of a curvy object, allowing the player to craft his object as realistically as possible. And so this turns into a VR potter. This is also the whole point of VR: accurately recreate an activity that otherwise would have been inaccessible to the user.

SpinOcchio will be presented at the Human-Computer Interaction 2022 conference to be held at the end of April in New Orleans. In the meantime, you can get a glimpse of how it works below. And if you like that kind of experience, know that virtual reality will eventually allow you to get sensations directly on your skin through chemical products.