Created by Spanish haptic tech company OWO, the vest looks to provide gamers with a more immersive experience.
The vest (with sleeves) allows users to receive physical feedback from the character on the screen, in the form of feeling actions like punches, kicks and gunshots, as well as more gentle sensations such as a caring embrace or a light breeze.
The sensations are delivered via electrical stimulation in the suit, with developers able to control nine parameters to create different sensations for players to experience via projects on development platforms like Unity or Unreal. Ten electrodes positioned in various positions around the stretchy suit deliver the feedback.
The suit can be calibrated to match the intensity of the electrical feedback to the players’ individual pain threshold. More advanced and reportedly considerably more intense than previously available haptic gaming devices, the OWO vest could be an exciting development for VR enthusiasts.
While it has been available for around a year, a major partnership with games developer Ubisoft will see a special edition vest released as a bundle with hyped upcoming release Assassin’s Creed Mirage in October 2023, which will help the technology reach a much wider audience.
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