By Evan Ackerman
Motion sensing controllers are all the rage nowadays, what with the Wiimote and (for what it’s worth) the PS3’s Sixaxis. If you’re a long time Nintendo fan, you may even remember the Power Glove, circa 1989. Immersion Corporation is producing a new motion sensitive hardware glove that not only translates finger, palm, wrist, and arm motions into a format that your computer can understand, but also includes varying degrees of tactile feedback. You use the glove to control a virtual hand, and using either vibration pads or an exoskeleton, the glove creates resistance when your virtual hand encounters a virtual object.
Originally developed for the military and now targeted at designers and engineers, the VirtualHand glove isn’t (yet) directly available for gaming or long distance relationships. Immersion does offer a software development kit for you to play around with, but they don’t tell you how much it costs, which means you probably can’t afford one.
