[nonrepeating]

Nifty, but the article should have elaborated on the use cases. It suggested that training is the biggest one, but are these really a substitute for actually feeling real-world things? Seems like they’d have to be almost magically precise to, say, simulate the difference between quality and unacceptable fabric.

[haptic1216]

The technology to simulate texture with that amount of detail does not exist yet. HaptX has a few dozen tiny pneumatic pistons poking your hand in various places and that's about the best thing available today.

The industry has really only found use in training so far. But it's pretty promising in my opinion.

As to efficacy, I don't know if there have been rigorous studies yet, the industry is still pretty new. But anecdotally we do see that users build better muscle memory that reduces training time with real world equipment.

The idea is generally to have users do their first round of training virtually instead of with real equipment. Then they require less time with the real equipment and don't make newbie mistakes that break things.

You'd be surprised at just how poor quality the haptics can be and still be convincing. VR has some interesting psychological effects that make your perception of the haptics much better than it actually is. What you see can actually override your proprioception to a large enough degree that we can get away with not being so precise.

[throwaway27312]

I work on VR, for training various types of mechanics and machine operators. I've tried every handtracking/glove/touch system under the sun, and tested integrating them with my product when possible. I've tried the HaptX gloves at various trade shows, and even had them to my office to demo their newest stuff personally.

There is no use case for HaptX. They're not a substitute for anything. They're not magically precise. They're nothing.

[riversflow]

Yeah, if this article was more balanced and less sensational they might have touched on(heh) how incredibly sensitive our sense of touch/proprioception in our fingers and hands is, especially if trained[1].

[1] https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/amazing-sensitiv...

[ImPostingOnHN]

Imagine A/B testing physical user interfaces, like a cockpit. Or training on all the different planes with different cockpits using 1 setup.