Microsoft’s Kinect would have you believe that no controller is the way of the future for gaming. Microsoft’s Kinect would have you believe that gaming hardware represents a barbaric, uncivilized class of gamer. Well, colour me barbaric, because Microsoft’s Kinect don’ got nuthin’ on this.
Researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics have slapped together (I guess more accurately, like, ‘toiled meticulously for countless weeks’) a gaming rig that refuses to take any of this new age motion control bullspit. Seriously, start making some phone calls – you’re gonna need a bigger living room for this one, guys.
Though dubbed the ‘Motion Cueing Design and Experimental Validation machine’, I prefer to just call it rad as all hell. The engineers have hooked up an F1 Ferrari cockpit to an industrial-grade robot arm, and the result is, frankly, something I hope I get to take for a test drive before I die. The aim of the robot is to study how humans perceive motion, and even in this video, there are some neat tricks at play – such as how to simulate inertia, the cockpit will tilt forward and backward. Brilliant stuff.
And I thought Steel Battalion’s controller was ridiculous. Next time someone says hardware is a thing of the past, tell them they’re wrong. Tell them it only needs to get bigger.
