This thing was released without anyone knowing about it. I only found out about it because I read a steam update
https://home.novint.com/store/store.php
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.
Our sense of touch connects us to the world around us and is an integral part of how we experience things, both physically and emotionally. In the past, games have incorporated increasingly sophisticated graphics and sound design, but none have added realistic touch, until now. The award-winning Novint Falcon makes virtual items and experiences feel real. 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.
In the same way the introduction of sound changed motion pictures, or graphics made the Internet what it is today, Novint's technology transforms the user experience by adding realistic interactive 3D touch to computing. While the concept of interactive touch in computing is as unimaginable to most people as the idea of television was in the age of radio, we envision a not-too-distant future when it is as commonplace and ubiquitous as a mobile phone or a computer mouse.
Novint is pioneering a new category of touch products for the consumer market, beginning with the release of the Falcon. In the past, the cost of 3D touch (haptic) hardware made the technology impractical for consumer applications, but the Falcon performs comparably to commercial devices that cost thousands of dollars, and is designed to be affordable for consumers.
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