Haptics 101: Motors For Touch With Ashley Huffman

Haptics 101: Motors For Touch With Ashley Huffman

When you play a game like Eleven Table Tennis you should hold something paddle-like in one hand that vibrates believably when a simulated ball collides. An open palm with a simulated ball resting on it during a serve should also provide the subtle sensation of it leaving the surface of your skin. Today, the best table tennis game in VR is played with two controllers, one in each hand. These objects feature an array of buttons with motors inside to provide haptic feedback, but as VR advances beyond the Meta Quest it’s possible ideas like a glove, watch or wristband can provide the missing part of the experience better than a second controller. At AWE in Long Beach I tried new gloves [https://www.bhaptics.com/tactsuit/tactglove-dk3/] from bHaptics that sell as a pair for $385 with 7 motors per hand — one each in the fingertips, two on the palm and one at the wrist. I spent most of my time during the demo petting a simulated cat. To better understand my experience in the weeks after my demo I joined Riverside for a conversation with the “Queen of Haptics” Ashley Huffman, who works at Titan Haptics and runs the All Things Haptics newsletter [https://haptics.substack.com/]. Titan makes the wrist motor in the new bHaptics glove. bHaptics gears its gloves toward industrial or military training and they’re able to bring the price down for this kind of equipment from many prior systems because they rely on Meta’s software-based tracking of the hands by the headset’s cameras for interaction. Nearly $400 is still a big ask for a pair of gloves, but as we look to the future I wonder if we could one day go to an Apple Store with $50 or $100 and pick up a single glove that looks a lot like a Titleist golf glove. Just three motors over the palm in a triangular formation could provide that Eleven Table Tennis serving sensation, allowing you to feel the ball move around the surface of your hand, and an Apple Watch at the wrist or perhaps a motor like the ones from Titan Haptics on the back of the hand could provide a satisfying ping sensation. That’s something I’d love to take into software like Golf+ [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/p/ryan-engle-of-golf-on-quest-steam], Walkabout [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/p/passport-hollywood-opens-in-walkabout], and Eleven Table Tennis. “As soon as you start trying to leverage a buzz or only a low rumble to mean something expressive, that’s where you’re hitting kind of issues,” Huffman says on the Good VR Podcast. “‘Cause you’re basically taking a dog whistle for humans and ‘let’s turn that into putting.’ No, that’s not the experience.” Huffman and I talked for 46 minutes and I edited the discussion down to 32 minutes. Listen now for a solid introduction to haptics in VR. Become a subscriber on Substack to support Good VR directly and receive most podcast episodes before everyone. You can also simply donate any amount via Stripe to support my work at Good Virtual Reality. https://buy.stripe.com/7sY8wPeTAcnG3eD1vZao800 [https://buy.stripe.com/7sY8wPeTAcnG3eD1vZao800] Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Imaginations Mingle In The Freedom Of PCs With Resonite

Tomáš Mariančík aka Frooxius is the singular mind behind Resonite — a PC-based VR service where people can create together in VR. He started up Resonite [https://resonite.com/] upon exit from Neos, a virtual universe that “exploded” a few years ago when one of the other people involved in the organization focused on introducing crypto concepts to the service. “It was hard,” Frooxius says on the Good VR Podcast. “One of the hardest things I ever did.” The fresh start of Resonite has done wonders for Mariančík’s mental health. “Being able to exist without a lot of the constant anxiety and fear and just kind of focus and be like, what I’m building is my own and nobody can take it from me,” Frooxius said. “It was hugely impactful on my mental health in general.” The developer identifies himself as a furry and joined the Good VR Podcast from the freedom of PC VR wearing a Vive Pro Eye with Project Babble facial tracker attached as well as Index controllers for finger tracking. The course of our conversation covers what furries are, what Resonite is, how the service sets itself apart from VRChat, and the unique power of VR as a medium. “Virtual reality is about putting people into your imagination and visiting imagination of other people,” Frooxius said. “To me VR is a medium that lets you take the imagination out of your head and make it into a world that you can share with others and where it can mingle with imagination of other people.” We spoke for about 46 minutes which I edited down to 21 minutes for video and almost 16 minutes for audio. The video version takes a trip to the Shadowed Cove world by Team VibeZ in Resonite. “The goal of Resonite is to give people as much control over the world they’re in as possible,” Frooxius said. “Let people shape the universe the virtual universe they inhabit. It’s almost like if you took VRChat and the Unity editor and smooshed them together into one thing….whatever you change you see the impact of it inside of VR instantly.” Become a subscriber on Substack to support my work directly and receive most podcast episodes before everyone. You can also simply donate any amount via Stripe to support my work at Good Virtual Reality. https://buy.stripe.com/7sY8wPeTAcnG3eD1vZao800 [https://buy.stripe.com/7sY8wPeTAcnG3eD1vZao800] Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

10 Questions For Ian Hamilton & Good Virtual Reality

Welcome to Good Virtual Reality and I’m so glad you’re here. My name is Ian Hamilton. I’m the owner of this website, goodvirtualreality.com, and I’m a journalist. My work here is driven by my human curiosity as well as the direct connections I make to people out there who believe in what they do with their whole heart. Some weeks ago a subscriber sent me the following message using the chat features of Substack: “You’ve interviewed so many developers, builders, journalists, and people working inside XR, but I realized I have not heard your own VR story in the same full way. As someone who loves VR, XR, and the whole emerging medium, I would love to hear an episode where the community gets to interview you.” What followed from my reader Christopher were 10 extremely engaging questions I’ve had on the back-burner of my brain: * What was the first VR experience that made you realize this medium was not just another gaming peripheral, but something larger? * When you first became a VR journalist, what did you think VR was going to become — and how has reality surprised you? * What was the biggest story you covered at UploadVR that changed how you understood the industry? * What is one VR demo, headset reveal, developer interview, or convention moment that still lives in your memory because it felt like seeing the future early? * What did working on VR Download teach you about explaining VR to people who are not inside the industry? * Do you have any funny or human behind-the-scenes stories from VR Download — technical disasters, awkward live moments, accidental comedy, spilled drinks, broken headsets, anything listeners never got to hear? * What are some of your favorite positive memories of working with David Heaney or the UploadVR team during the best years of the show? * What is something people misunderstand about VR journalism from the outside? * What technology, company, headset, game, or developer did you initially underestimate — and later realize was much more important than you thought? * After everything you’ve seen, what do you now believe “good virtual reality” actually means? I’ve answered these questions, plus one bonus question, over a podcast lasting 1 hour and 10 minutes. If you enjoy this podcast and have more questions that have been sparked by my answers, send me an email to editor@goodvirtualreality.com, and I’ll address them in a future episode. Please consider becoming a subscriber on Substack to support my work directly and receive most podcast episodes before everyone else. You can also simply donate any amount via Stripe to support my work here at Good Virtual Reality. https://buy.stripe.com/7sY8wPeTAcnG3eD1vZao800 [https://buy.stripe.com/7sY8wPeTAcnG3eD1vZao800] Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

XREAL's Two Eyewear Types: 'Glasses With Apps Versus Glasses That Connect To Your Device That Has Apps'

At Augmented World Expo in Long Beach I tried the XREAL Aura glasses running Android XR. The device brings into focus Google’s ambitions to power two completely different architectures for spatial computing eyewear using the same operating system. The two approaches are: * VR headsets like Samsung Galaxy XR with wide field of view optics featuring opaque displays passing AR through from the external cameras. * AR glasses like XREAL Aura with smaller field of view for directly optical see through and adjustable lenses that can darken for more immersive VR-like moments. One of the top priorities for my time at AWE was identifying how VR-like Aura actually is and what the path might look like ahead for XREAL as it continues iterating quickly. I only used Aura for a few minutes and they are still months away from release. Aura features a split architecture which puts processing in a phone-like puck you wear on your side that can also take in a display and power from other devices. XREAL is shipping a lot in the optical see-through (OST) category, including a tier of lower-cost devices not running Android XR. “We have a pretty robust roadmap that goes across a lot of things…I expect to use Android XR for future devices as well…we’re gonna keep going down the wearable display path, and we’ll also keep going down the spatial computing path,” XREAL General Manager of North America Ralph Jodice says on the Good VR Podcast. “The easier way to think of it is glasses with apps versus glasses that connect to your device that has apps.” I enjoyed darkening the opacity of the display and seeing my hands reskinned for Demeo, for example, but I also didn’t spend enough time with Aura or interact with enough content to say anything definitive here. Still, I learned a lot from the experience and the conversation with Jodice helps frame how XREAL’s strategy positions the company. “I don’t think people will stop buying TVs or stop buying laptops and start only buying AR glasses,” Jodice says. “But I do believe they will reach for their AR glasses when that other screen is not available.” Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Alvin Wang Graylin On HTC Competing With Meta

At Augmented World Expo in Long Beach I met with Alvin Wang Graylin [https://substack.com/@awgraylin] for an in-depth discussion looking back at the last decade of attempts to create a mass market for consumer VR headsets. He left HTC in 2025 after joining the organization in 2016, a few months before the launch of the PC-based Vive headset powered by Valve’s SteamVR technology. That means he had a front row seat to the effect of Meta’s competitive strategies, from funding VR developers to acquiring them to undercutting HTC’s consumer headsets on price. “These are things that are just not healthy for the industry, and nobody was really making money,” Graylin said. If the VR market suffers from a “chicken and egg” problem in that consumers won’t buy headsets because developers won’t make content and developers won’t make content because there are no consumers to buy them, then Graylin’s perspective suggests Meta’s aggressive approach over this decade made it practically impossible for anyone else to help grow the ecosystem that would allow chickens and eggs to flourish. “ I think everything about our product was better at the time,” he said of the HTC Vive. “We just didn't have the budgets there. They really underpriced us, that was their kind of key competitive advantage is that they were essentially losing money, and they were willing to lose a lot of money per device to sell. We were probably twice their price, we were still matching or in some cases selling more than they were into markets, and particularly for B2B markets. So after I think about a year, we started to ship more B2B because they started to price down lower than our cost.” Our discussion covered the space between headsets and glasses as well as the differing benefits of see-through and opaque optics. I contend VR headsets slimming down into glasses sizes with lighter weights will help them replace laptops and desktops while progressively accessing larger markets with the added benefits of immersive content. Graylin, meanwhile, praises the architectural benefit of see-through optics allowing glasses to function as prescription eyewear if they run out of power. We spoke for around 48 minutes by the pool at the Hyatt Regency in Long Beach recorded on my iPhone. I passed the audio through Adobe Podcasts and edited it down in Descript to just over 30 minutes. This publication is a 100 percent independent, community-supported journalism effort made exclusively by people for people. Please consider a donation [https://buy.stripe.com/7sY8wPeTAcnG3eD1vZao800] to support our reporting or become a paid subscriber. Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]