Ever wanted to have big muscles? This Disney jacket lets you know what it feels like
Plus what it's like when a snake moves across your body
One of the key ingredients missing from fully immersive virtual reality (VR) experiences is tactile feedback – a physical sensation that matches what you're seeing in the virtual realm.
Disney Research, along with MIT and Carnegie Melon University, came up with a clever system that may just solve that problem.
The Force Jacket is essentially a, well, jacket brimming with 26 airbags and 'force sensors' that fill and/or vibrate to give wearers physical feedback across their entire upper body.
This is well beyond the haptic feedback provided in controllers for headsets like the HTC Vive, which though giving you some semblance of the sensation of touch, don't extend to the rest of the body.
The VR applications for the Force Jacket are apparent. Disney Research's video highlights how the jacket could make you feel like you're growing giant muscles, or that there's a 'friendly' (their words) snake gliding across your body.
Vests and jackets that allow you to feel physical sensations that correspond to what you're seeing in VR have been done before, but Disney and Co.'s jacket seems particularly fine-tuned.
Check it out in action in the video below:
Get the best Black Friday deals direct to your inbox, plus news, reviews, and more.
Sign up to be the first to know about unmissable Black Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar content.
- What's the best VR headset around? Check out our list to find out!
Michelle was previously a news editor at TechRadar, leading consumer tech news and reviews. Michelle is now a Content Strategist at Facebook. A versatile, highly effective content writer and skilled editor with a keen eye for detail, Michelle is a collaborative problem solver and covered everything from smartwatches and microprocessors to VR and self-driving cars.