3rd Space Vest

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3rd Space Vest

GARETH MITCHELL: I'm Gareth Mitchell and still to come the radio amateur gauging how Hi-Fi the Wi-Fi is on the "One Laptop Per Child". Now then, "Doctor, doctor help, my games consult might have vibrating control, it is amazing graphics but the experience still isn't quite realistic enough." Hmm, I'm doing my doctor's voice now by the way. "Hmm, yes many patients report these symptoms. I therefore prescribe a special vest that uses miniature pneumatic rams to simulate bullet hits, shrapnel and explosions." Oh yes wouldn't it be great if doctors really were that cool. Well luckily Doctor Mark Ombrellaro, an American vascular surgeon really is that cool because he's developed what he calls The 3rd Space Vest and he set up a company called TN Games to market it. And what it does is it brings haptics in gaming, in other words the sense of touch to the body as well as just to the hands and Mark's also developed a helmet that even expands that "being shot experience" to the head. Well earlier Mark popped in to give me a demo on a title called "Incursion".

I should describe what I'm wearing, which is a helmet and a vest and it looks a bit like one of those Kevlar bullet proof vests that you see war correspondents and troops wearing which is appropriate for the game that I'm playing at the moment. Because it's the first person superman game and not a lot is happening by describing that but suddenly all these opponents have found that I'm here, all these characters in the game. So yes I'm wearing the vest, I'm wearing the hat and within the hat and the vest is all kind of actuators that can simulate the feeling of gunshots, of shrapnel. And so as you, this is me, firing my gun here, at the moment not a lot is happening as far as far as the haptics, the sense of touch is concerned but now I start kicking off. Oh my goodness, somebody is shooting me from behind and I can simultaneously feel four bullets going into me from behind. It's the weirdest feeling, not amazingly pleasant but then this was never meant to be a pleasant experience but its just adding a whole extra level to the game play. I'm taking shots in the head, shots behind me and there's just been a massive explosion and I simultaneously felt what I think must be shrapnel going into my chest and going all the way up my back as well. I need a rest, right, so we're going to put the game on pause for a minute. Let's speak to Mark Ombrellaro who is the brains behind this torture.

We turned the sound down on the game but Mark amazingly the haptics is still carrying on. As I'm speaking to you I'm still feeling shocks and the shrapnel in my chest, so tell me a bit more about this vest.

MARK OMBRELLARO: You bet. So the vest was originally designed from medical application. If you will, for a telehealth, the ability to do a remote physical exam from a doctor in a remote location and what we ended up doing is taking that same technology and bringing that to a consumer application, namely the videogame environment. So what's happening, we use a pneumatic base system, so there are little air cells and as a surgeon I got them designed over key anatomic points like if you're really getting shot what would be critical points of interest. There are eight impact points if you will; four in the front and four in the back is how we have the vest designed. But with the software that's put into the game, you're not just limited to the actual impact of the bullet, we can do ground effect so like if your character jumps off a platform and lands you get that jolt to the back as you land and feel that effect. We can also do things like G force effects, if you're in a vehicle driving through a videogame environment so its more than just the impact of the shots if you will.

GARETH MITCHELL: And as well as doing the chest and the back, you're doing the head as well and you've made me wear this helmet that looks like a kind of high tech military helmet and you've got all of these hydraulics in here too then?

MARK OMBRELLARO: Correct. We have actually six additional impact zones if you will; front, back, side, side plus we have two little goodies, one over each ear and near misses, which you can hear the bullets and feel them fly by.

GARETH MITCHELL: You get the whole "rookie shay" effect?

MARK OMBRELLARO: Exactly.

GARETH MITCHELL: And I've, I've been shot in the head several times, mainly down to my very lame game play, it has to be said, and my goodness you certainly feel it. When you get shot in the forehead you know you're in trouble.

MARK OMBRELLARO: Yep. Well there's supposed to be a consequence to it so. You know one thing that's very interesting is that people are concerned about videogames and playing the shooter games and the violence associated with that, and how people get disassociated when they just live in a video environment alone. And one of the interesting things, as you've experienced is that as you play the game you're actually understanding the consequence to those actions and you are physically responding as you're playing the game. From a physician's perspective, it's quite interesting because it's actually putting a lot of the consequence back into the video game that nobody has that understanding about anymore, they're a little dissociated from it.

GARETH MITCHELL: So the principle here is pneumatic, that must mean there's a time lag and that's critical in many kinds of gaming isn't it? Can that potentially spoil the gaming experience?

MARK OMBRELLARO: There's actually no time lag. With the code embedded into the game, it's instantaneous in fact as your character is taking damage in the code, at the code level it's already triggering the jacket so in some cases you may notice it by feeling it faster than you will by the visual cues on the screen.

GARETH MITCHELL: So this is faster than the graphics card?

MARK OMBRELLARO: Sometimes yes it can be.

GARETH MITCHELL: OK, right, so enough chatting I think.