When VR first hit the market, developers and industry insiders began boasting that it would be the “future of gaming” thanks to the new levels of immersion that playing on a standard screen can’t achieve. While this hasn’t exactly been the case over the last few years, with VR peripherals still being a relatively niche market, some industry leaders like Activision are still looking to push the genre forward, looking at Sony and Nintendo’s lead with Haptic controllers.
A new patent by Activision might be the next step for VR, thanks to what the company’s new peripheral might mean for first person shooters in virtual reality specifically. The success of this new project may even push improvements on motion tracking controllers entirely, for use on consoles outside of VR environments.
This new patent in question is for a device called a “haptic gun” that Activision is hoping will work in tandem with VR systems, offering real-time feedback in first person shooters. From the description of the item, it sounds like it may be similar to an older Nintendo motion controller peripheral, the Wii Zapper Gun attachment that previously powered titles like Link’s Crossbow Training. Activision’s controller itself will be comprised of multiple pieces that work together with an undetermined VR system, each of which have different tasks of receiving data to relay to the player as haptic feedback and take motion data to relay to the game.
The figures within the patent do also imply that this new technology won’t entirely be for use with current VR systems, but can instead be used for more reality based games like laser tag. From the wording of the abstract and other details, it can be assumed that video games will be the primary use of the “haptic gun”, but figure 7 of the patent does show what appears to be two players moving in a shared physical space. A final, additional piece of the patent does also include a headset that is able to give similar haptic feedback to the player’s head, although it doesn’t appear to be intended to replace an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headset.
Considering Activision’s prevalence with shooter titles like the prolific Call of Duty series, taking the lead by developing a specified peripheral to take the genre to VR would be an obvious move if the medium really is the future of gaming. Additionally, this may be an indication of VR compatibility coming to some of Activision’s titles, either Call of Duty or some of the smaller games in the genre produced by the industry giant. That is still speculation at the time of this writing, but players may want to keep an eye out to see if Activision does have anything planned for this new peripheral.
Source: USPTO Patent
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