Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Novint Falcon Promotion 20% off


Special offer: Use the referral code "ifeelpixel" to get 20% off a novint falcon pistol grip bundle!

The Novint Falcon is an entirely new type of game controller. Replacing your mouse or joystick, the Falcon is, essentially, a small robot that lets you experience true virtual touch unlike any controller in history.

The Novint Falcon lets you control a game in three dimensions, and also lets you feel high-fidelity three-dimensional force feedback. The Falcon controller moves right and left, forwards and backwards, like a mouse, but also moves up and down. When you hold the Falcon’s detachable Grip and move your cursor to interact with a virtual object, environment, or character, motors in the device turn on and are updated approximately 1000 times a second, letting you feel texture, shape, weight, dimension, and dynamics. The Falcon lets you control and interact with games in more realistic way, allowing you to develop real physical skill and muscle memory, adding a new dimension to gaming.

Hold the Falcon’s interchangeable Grip and feel a character’s actions, instead of controlling a game with mouse-clicks and meters. Feel the weight of a basketball as you shoot it towards a hoop, the momentum and impact as you swing a virtual golf club and strike a ball, the recoil of a weapon or the physical characteristics of virtual objects and environments.

iFeelPixel and Novint develop 3D haptic technology and products that enable people to experience a realistic sense of touch using their computer. Using our 3D haptic interface device, the Novint Falcon, and patented 3D haptic software, computer users may feel 3D objects, feel their shapes and textures, feel the dynamic properties of objects, and feel many other effects. The Novint Falcon gives force feedback through interchangeable handles that a user holds on to. Forces are created through the use of 3 electrical motors, 1 motor connected to each of the 3 arms in the device. The 3 arms connect to the device’s handle. The Novint Falcon is, essentially, a small robot, yet its industrial design is something that consumers will enjoy having on their desktop. Although it gives extremely complex 3D haptic interactions, it is beautiful in its fundamental simplicity and elegance.

Special offer: Use the referral code "ifeelpixel" to get 20% off a novint falcon pistol grip bundle!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Compatibility added for Tactile Mobile phone

Greetings TactileWare users!

This is to inform you that iFeelPixel beta 1.0.0 (Official version) is available at: www.ifeelpixel.com/download/

If your version is outdated, please update to the most current version.

A full list of changes in this version can be found at: http://www.ifeelpixel.com/download/whatsnew10.htm


What's new in this version?

1. New Features

- Tactile Mobile: Creates Tactile effects for your mobile phone with VibeTonz Technology. To date, more than 65 million handsets with Immersion's high-fidelity, programmable haptics technology have shipped around the world.

iFeelPixel software lets mobile phone users design their own haptic effects to personalize touch feedback. Touch feedback makes the mobile phone user experience more sensory, intuitive, useful, fun and allows users to feel a computer screen anywhere. (v.1.0.0).

From its "Tactile Mobile" option, iFeelPixel lets users create personalized haptic effects through a graphical user interface based on the conventions of Immersion's VibeTonz(R) Studio authoring tool for developers. Users can modify wave shape, duration, and intensity to create distinctive vibrational patterns. These creations let users personalize their phone with unique haptic experiences.

- New multimodal file menubar

I. Visual Force Feedback (To enable pseudo-haptic effects with a simple mouse)

II. Haptic feedback is divided into 4 parts:
1. Rumble Feedback (To enable Rumble effects for Nintendo Wiimote).
2. Vibro-Tactile Feedback (To enable Vibro-Tactile effects for Tactile Mobiles).
3. Tactile Feedback (To enable Tactile effects for TouchSense devices).
4. Force Feedback (To enable force effects for Novint Falcon).

The Novint Falcon is an entirely new type of game controller. Replacing your mouse or joystick, the Falcon is, essentially, a small robot that lets you experience true virtual touch unlike any controller in history.

III. Auditory Feedback is divided into 3 parts:
1. Sound Card Feedback
2. Internal Speakers
3. Narrator Voices

Multi-modal feedback including the sensation of touch proved to significantly increase speed and reduce error rates.


2. Updated Options

- Edge Detection: Automatic or Manual Periodic effect (v.1.0.0)

- Color Detection: Color Force (Novint Falcon) and Tactile Duration Slider added (v.1.0.0)


3. New Options

- Tactile Mobile Option (v.1.0.0)


4. Optimizations

- Visual Force Feedback (Pseudo-haptic developed in collaboration with INRIA) motion is much more precise than before (decimal precision). (v.1.0.0)

- Novint Falcon Algorithm optimized:

The force feedback is more consistent when "Mass" is selected. The others algorythms are based on the Grip speed value. If the speed is 0, there is no force feedback effect.

Automatic Force based on Mass Effect: mass is the quantity of inertia possessed by an object or the proportion between force and acceleration refered to in Newton's second law of Motion. Selection choices: mass, mass-damper, spring-mass-damper or mass-acceleration.The mass value is expressed in Kilogram (Default value is 2,5 Kilogram)


5. Others updates

- "Bug Report" updated for the Tactile Mobile (v.1.0.0)

- "Tactile Feedback" updated for Edge, line, corner, color detection (v.1.0.0)

- "Delete file settings" added (v.1.0.0)

- Visual Feedback renamed to "Visual Force Feedback" (v.1.0.0)

- "Clipboard viewer" moved to "clipboard window" (v.1.0.0)

- Volume Slider renamed to "Strength" slider (v.1.0.0)


6. Know issues

List of known issues in this version of iFeelPixel:

. Installation of Immersion VibeTonz Studio is required for tactile mobile users (we are working with Immersion Corporation to offer an alternative solution). (v.1.0.0)

See USB Advanced Network Functionality for Mobile Device Center/ActiveSync troobleshootings.

Note: Mobile Device Center (Vista) or ActiveSync (XP) should be already installed and configured on your machine.


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Best Regards,
iFeelPixel Association

Interactive Accessibility via Haptic Technology
http://www.ifeelpixel.com/