How Haptic brings your objects back to life
After learning to use of Haptics into 3D Interactions, let’s focus on how Haptics can enhance virtual object in the Haptics Demo of Interhaptics. Common objects can be easily moved and displaced without constraints given by the environment; their movements aren’t defined for the user, but by the user. You can grab the objects shown in this panel and they will have different haptic feedback which enriches their functionalities and enhances an aspect of their characteristics. Unlike the first posts (read more) where Haptics brings explanations about how objects work, this post focuses on the haptic feedback that the users expect or which enhances the characteristics of the experience. This will prevent the disconnect from the virtual world and consolidate their immersion, empowering the AR/VR experiences.
Haptics for physical interaction — Balls
Balls are probably the simplest objects to imagine in VR, they roll, bounce, and can move around all the time. It’s simple physics. That being said, not every ball feels or behaves the same. So not every ball should feel the same. The black ball, for example, is meant to be bouncing and soft. If you catch it with one hand, and touch it with the other, you will feel an increasing feedback standing for a sensation growing in intensity. If you leave it and let it bounce, you need to trust the haptic feedback to catch it! The feedback happens naturally every time the ball crosses your hand. Take the time to explore how a different feedback changes the feeling of the second wooden ball.
Haptics for physical interaction — Train
When you are manipulating objects with a pivot, such as the train in the Haptics demonstrator, they rotate and react as function of gravity and hand movement. In reality, you feel a shock every time the pivot arrives at its end course. A well-placed haptics feedback used at the end of the course of the pivot gives the right feedback to the user.
Haptics to convey Emotions
Touch is one of the most powerful mediums to convey emotions and feeling. Haptics feedback used carefully in VR experience can go a long way to create an emotional contact between the virtual world and the users. In the Haptics demo, we just show a hint of how haptics can be used in this direction. We created a beating heart with the haptics feedback enhancing the audio and animation feedback. The result is quite interesting and worth exploring further. We will go deeper in future blog posts for this amazing possible use of Haptics for emotional communication.
Haptics to convey Information
Haptics have been used to convey information since the old Nokia 3310. The buzzer inside was an UX master stroke which announced us when pick up our phone from our pocket. This is one of the most striking uses of Haptics to convey information. We recreated this scenario in VR, where the user simply picks up a phone, and each one of them gives a different vibrational feedback. It is quite interesting to observe how this feedback feels completely natural and expected during the interaction. We are used to feel phones vibrating, so a virtual one which is vibrating in our hand makes perfect sense. This is just one example on how haptics can convey information in VR. We will go deeper in this direction with future demos and blog posts, where we will explore the use of haptics for sensory substitution.
Check out all our articles here to read about how Haptic can bring your objects back to life.
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