Backpack simulates jumps for a more immersive gaming experience – t3n – Digital Pioneers

Visually, the gaming backpack doesn’t look that great. (screenshot: youtube)

Making simulations of physical forces in virtual reality, such as those that occur on roller coasters or racing cars, more realistic usually requires bulky, expensive, and unsuitable-for-private-use hardware solutions within one’s own four walls. Physical trauma is just as impossible as the feeling of falling.

To bring more realism to home players, Pedro Lopez of the University of Chicago and his colleagues have developed a backpack called Jumpmod that can create the feeling of being pulled up or down by altering the user’s perception of variable vertical momentum. “You can pull a lot of pranks just by playing with perception instead of actually having these huge infrastructures,” Lopez says loudly. new world.

To trick the brain, Jumpmod recognizes within milliseconds the need to give the impression of jumping or falling, then quickly moves a two-kilogram weight up or down to achieve this.

The results of this research were presented on April 24 at the Human Factors in Computing Systems conference in Hamburg. Lopez believes the system could also be used to train people to jump more effectively through physical feedback. So it is very likely that Jumpmod will not only have a significant impact in the gaming area.

For Jumpmod to be suitable for the masses, it still needs some tweaks. For example, a backpack can be made more comfortable to ensure that not all force is transferred to the backpack straps.