CES 2022 unveiled some amazing products for gaming, like CyberPowerPC's breathing PC case and several companies showing off new accessories that will enhance your virtual reality setup. One of these is OWO's haptic vest, which lets users feel pain from bee stings to bullet wounds.
Sounds great, right? But how does the vest work, and why should you want one?
What Is OWO's Haptic Vest?
The vest looks more like a shirt, and you must wear it directly on the skin. It will allow you to feel sensations in 10 different parts of the upper body, including your arms. Some of these sensations include insect bites, being shot, feeling the bullet exit your wound, being stabbed, and punched.
It will also allow you to feel the difference in weight between light and heavy objects when lifting or pushing, feeling the recoil of shooting a gun, free-falling, and fast-paced driving.
The vest will be completely wireless, have an 8-hour battery life, comes in multiple sizes, and you can customize it through OWO's mobile app.
OWO has stated that they plan to have the product being sold to consumers in October 2022. Those interested in ordering the haptic vest can pre-order it on the OWOgame.com pre-order page. OWO's haptic vest will retail for $450 upon release to the public.
How Does the OWO Haptic Vest Work?
Within the vest are high conductivity electrodes that use electrical impulses to bring your muscles various sensations. If you're being punched in-game, the vest will send an impulse to the entire electrode.
If the sensation is more like insect bites, it will give you smaller impulses within multiple electrodes. OWO can modify nine parameters of the wave to bring different sensations to your muscles. These electrical impulses will contract your muscles giving you a realistic sensation of pain.
While lifting or pushing a heavy object in-game, the vest will send electrical impulses to your arms, which will allow you to feel the difference between various objects.
What Systems Will the OWO Haptic Vest Work With?
OWO claims that the vest will be compatible with all platforms since the vest connects to your system via Bluetooth. The bigger question is with compatible games. As of the writing of this article, OWO has a handful of native and semi-native games that work with its vest. These include:
- Fortnite
- Rocket League
- Valorant
- League Of Legends
- Fear The Dark Unknown
- Hit N'Rush
- Song Beater
- System Of Souls
- Kronno Zomber
- Beyond Mankind
- Crisis VRigade 2
To encourage developers to support the vest with its games, OWO is providing them with a software development kit on its website. As of the writing of this article, OWO is supporting games running on Unity and Unreal Engine.
OWO is also encouraging developers to reach out via social media or email if their games are being run on something other than Unity or Unreal Engine, if any issues come up, and if developers have ideas for new sensations that would work well with the vest.
Setting up the vest may be slightly different depending on which headset you own, but OWO will release more information regarding specific issues once more real-world testing is done.
Customization and Product Features
OWO knows that not everyone has the same pain tolerance, so it designed an app that will allow you to customize the vest to your specific needs. The app will allow you to adjust the intensity of various sensations and control which part of the body you want or don't want to be affected. On the OWO.com Sensations page, OWO states that you can "customize the intensity of each microsensation in every muscle."
To care for the vest, OWO recommends hand-washing it in cold water after taking off the gel patches and then covering the patches with the included plastic protectors. The better you care for the vest, the less often you'll need to replace the gel patches.
The vest will have an 8-hour battery life and charge via USB Type-C. It will connect to your headset via Bluetooth 4.0 and Wifi. The vest will also come in a variety of sizes from XXS to XL, so it will support all different body types.
How Will It Enhance Your VR Experience?
People are still asking, "how will this really enhance my VR experience?" Many people don't see the benefit of feeling pain in-game and may see OWO's vest as an overpriced accessory.
What's fantastic about the vest is that it will do more than simply bring you pain. Since OWO has total control over the wave, it can create multiple distinct sensations, not just pain.
Some existing sensations allow you to feel the difference in weight by contracting muscles in your arms and upper body. This will give you a more realistic sensation between picking up a handgun and a rocket launcher or pushing a heavy boulder versus opening a door.
Other sensations have to do with wind. The vest will allow you to feel the intensity of free-falling or increasing speed while driving a super car.
Sensations like these will make you think twice in-game of whether to take a turn too fast or if you really want to jump off a building. The feelings of pain in first-person shooters while in virtual reality will encourage you to quickly find cover and be extra cautious when being out in the open. This collection of sensations will make your VR experience much more exciting because they affect how your brain reacts in different situations.
Not everyone will be sold on the idea of feeling pain while playing a video game, but it's extremely exciting that this sort of technology is making its way into consumer products.
What's Next for VR Accessories?
Similar products to OWO's vest have been released in the past, but we've seen no real progress passed the presentation stage and into consumers' hands.
OWO has created a VR accessory that enhances gameplay, allows users to adjust sensations in an easy-to-use app, and is at an affordable spot at $450. Once the vest is in the hands of consumers, it will hopefully pressure other companies to create even more exciting accessories that will enhance your virtual reality setup.