If you’re looking for a high entertainment value per byte of code, [Nardax] has you covered with his wearable spellcasting controller. With not much effort, he has built a very fun looking device, proving what we’ve always known: a little interaction can go a long way.
[Nardax] originally intended his glorified elbow-mount potentiometer to be a fireworks controller. Ironically, he’s now using it to throw virtual fireballs instead. Depending on the angle at which he holds his elbow before releasing it, he can cast different spells in the game World of Warcraft. We’re not at all sure that it helps his gameplay, but we’re absolutely sure that it’s more fun that simply mashing different keys.
There’s a lot of room for expansion here, but the question is how far you push it. Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. It looks like [Nardax] is enjoying his product-testing research, though, so we’ll keep our eyes out for the next iterations of this project.
We’ve seen a number of high-tech competitors to the good old power glove, and although some are a lot more sophisticated than a potentiometer strapped to the elbow, this project made us smile. Sometimes, it’s not just how much tech you’ve got, but how you use it. After all, a DDS pad is just a collection of switches under a rug.
My hope for the next iteration of the Vive (not that I can afford one as it is) is that it will use gloves, with associated position sensors, rather than the weird controllers.
I imagine getting precision on the level that they’re getting with the controllers would be an engineering nightmare, with something semi-flexible like that, but still. I feel like it would be a huge improvement, and this reminded me of it.
I can’t wait until this is integrated by developers into games. You could even actually have to learn spells, no more swapping between them. Though I can imagine the implementation might crash & burn the first few times.
Q did it better.