For years—decades, really—we’ve relied on primarily two senses to absorb and experience our favorite videogames in all their glory. We see them and we hear them, simple as that. Sure, countless technologies intended to more fully immerse gamers in their games have come along. Some, such as 3D gaming, have gone, while others, such as multichannel surround sound, are here to stay. The fate of others, such as Oculus and its VR competition, remains to be seen. What all of these have in common, though, is that they give our eyes something different to see or our ears something different to hear. Maybe it’s time to give another one of the five senses some love. Of course, we can reasonably remove two of those senses, unless smelling a Last of Us Infected or tasting a sample of World of Warcraft’s Carrion Surprise seems appealing to you. That leaves us with touch, which, in the context of gaming, is frequently referred to as haptics. Haptic feedback, which delivers various physical sensations to the body, is hardly new to the gaming scene. Videogame controllers have included various implementations for nearly two decades— who remembers the Nintendo 64’s Rumble Pak? Joysticks with force feedback were popular among flight sim enthusiasts and other aviation games. Peripherals and accessories that use haptic feedback to make games more immersive are well-established. Still, there’s plenty of room for innovation, a fact that Massachusettsbased Immerz knows well. The company’s KOR-FX gaming vest, which launched last year, is designed to take haptic feedback to new, more realistic, heights. The KOR-FX vest takes in-game positional audio of all kinds and translates it into haptic feedback that will shake you to your core, almost literally. When a grenade explodes to your right, the KOR-FX rocks your body accordingly. When a speedboat roars up to the docks to help you make your getaway, the KOR-FX delivers the physical sensation to let you know it’s here. Make no mistake, though—the KOR-FX is way more than a rumble pack you wear on your chest. The latter rely on small spinning motors to make their vibrations, while the KOR-FX’s 4DFX technology uses a pair of specially designed transducers to produce haptic feedback that is in a class of its own. This is a harness that can harness your game’s sounds like you’ve never before experienced.
Immersion Through Science
Founder and CTO Shahriar Afshar relied on the principles of neuroscience in order to engineer a product that would shake up the gaming world. “We use the human brain as the main hardware, which our electronics merely trigger to project tactile/emotional reality,” Afshar says. “We achieve this by activating the limbic system in the brain by means of concurrent audio and tactile feedback, as well as visual clues that help cement the experience as highly immersive. The end result is a physical presence that none of the preexisting technologies can deliver.” According to Afshar, the KOR-FX vest turns the wearer’s chest into an echo chamber that actually amplifies the vest’s directional tactile feedback, which it extracts from in-game audio. Specifically, proprietary algorithms use a game’s sounds to create haptic information. The vest’s transducers vibrate in such a way that mimics the naturally occurring vibrations that take place in the chest as a response loud noises or speech. The brain then interprets the vibrations that the KOR-FX generates as the real thing. “In this manner, external sounds, like the sound of a grenade explosion, are experienced as a powerful personal sensation that is immediately internalized and felt as though it happened in the real world (or something close to such an experience),” Afshar says. “The trick was finding how to extract the haptic information from ordinary audio that’s available in all forms of entertainment such as games, music and movies.”
From Kickstarter To Kicking Your Chest
KOR-FX has at least one thing in common with Oculus VR’s buzzy virtual reality headset: Both rocketed to success by using The People’s Venture Capital Firm: Kickstarter. On June 9, 2014, Immerz launched the KOR-FX Kickstarter project, seeking a $75,000 investment from prospective backers. The community jumped all over the project, ultimately raising over $180,000 to make the KOR-FX a reality. Immerz began shipping the vest last year, starting with its Kickstarter backers, but the company can trace its history back to 2009, when Immerz developed the first prototype. “The whole process was exciting,” says Immerz CEO Seth Fandetti. “Kickstarter was a great experience and helped us build a community of like-minded enthusiasts who wanted to try our product and help fund the project. The community gave us great ideas and suggestions about what they wanted from a haptic gaming vest.” In 2009, the first-generation KOR-FX vest wasn’t a vest at all. The plastic harness looped over the wearer’s shoulder and looked like a pair of headphones lying flat against the chest, just below the collarbone. After developing two successive plastic prototypes in 2010 and 2011, Immerz realized that a different approach was needed to bring the KOR-FX to market. In 2012, the company began experimenting with various types and sizes of vest for the KOR-FX. For the next two years, Immerz honed its vest design. “Getting the ergonomics right, so that the unit is both unisex and one-sizefits- all, was the most challenging aspect of developing the KOR-FX,” Afshar says. “It took a few years to finally converge on the vest form factor as the most flexible and universal design, allowing for quick mounting and removal, easy adjustments, ease of use in any position or sitting arrangement, and, most importantly, total comfort during long gaming sessions.” Afshar says that Immerz wanted the KOR-FX to be comfortable to the point that gamers forget they’re wearing it. Last year, the company settled on a final design and took it to E3 just days after launching the Kickstarter campaign. The move worked, as Immerz reached its $75,000 goal a week later. After that, KOR-FX was no longer a prototype; it was a product. Then the real work began, as Immerz ramped up production to fill the orders of the over 1,000 backers who contributed enough to receive a KOR-FX vest.
Suit Up
The KOR-FX system consists of two pieces, the KOR-FX vest and a wireless dongle that plugs into a 3.5mm audio source. The 3.5mm plug makes the wireless dongle compatible with a variety of audio sources. As you might imagine, this lets you use the KOR-FX on not only videogames but also music and movies. The dongle has a 3.5mm audio out jack that connects to a pair of headphones. To power the box, you’ll need a USB power source or, alternatively, four AA batteries. The vest itself runs on four AA batteries. A pair of dials on the dongle adjust the volume output to the connected headphones/headset and the intensity of the vest’s feedback, respectively. It’s a great setup, but the KOR-FX’s real magic is the number of “dials and knobs” it has, which lets you customize the KOR-FX’s acoustohaptic feedback according to the game you’re playing. On the right side of the vest, when you’re wearing it, you’ll find the power button, the Bind button (which establishes the wireless connection between the vest and the dongle), and the Mode button. On the left side are two buttons that adjust the intensity of the vest’s haptic feedback. The two intensity buttons are selfexplanatory, but the Mode button requires a brief exploration. Its primary function is to filter out portions of the audio spectrum that trigger the vest. So, for example, on the first setting, the KOR-FX will only utilize the low end of the audio signal’s frequency range—in other words, the bass. Moving up to the second setting will include the audio’s bass and mids, and this is the setting that Immerz recommends. The third and final setting incorporates the full audio frequency range for the vest’s haptic feedback. The Mode button also helps you position the vest on your body in order to experience the best possible haptic feedback. By pressing and holding the Mode, the vest’s transducers will fire at full strength, letting you adjust the vest for the best possible fit and feedback. When you’re set, pressing the button again cancels the effect. Naturally, each game you play will have a different sonic footprint, so you’ll want to tweak the KOR-FX accordingly for the most immersive experience every time. We recommend playing each game for at least a few hours in order to experience all of its nuances, letting you dial in the perfect settings. Once you’ve strapped on the vest and are ready to use it, Immerz recommends an 8-hour break-in period before the KOR-FX is able to deliver the perfect acoustohaptic experience. Afshar explains the reasons behind the break-in period: “It is both an issue of the fabric and the internal structure harmonizing to haptics signals. As with any electrical transducer, our ACH transducers reach peak performance and highest efficiency after the initial break-in period.”
The Future According To KOR-FX
Despite the fact that the KOR-FX vest has yet to celebrate its first official birthday, Fandetti says that Immerz is already hard at work developing new hardware and software to make acoustohaptics even more immersive. Like any good piece of hardware, version 2.0 of the KOR-FX vest is already under development, Fandetti shares. “We had tons of great feedback from our customers for improvements they would like to see in the vest,” Fandetti says. “We also have a list of improvements we have been working on over the past year that we are going to build into the next version of the product.” According to Fandetti, Immerz is preparing the next-gen KOR-FX with a goal of having it ready when upcoming VR products reach the market. Although he’s tight-lipped about specific details, Fandetti reveals, “We are also looking at other forms and application for our haptic solutions in our labs and have some great ideas brewing. . . . In the future we hope to have a full product line of haptics products that complement different applications and uses.” Although the KOR-FX in its current for should work with any game, Immerz is also working on an SDK that will let game developers tweak and tune their games specifically for the vest, which should allow the vest to make games feel even more realistic. Fandetti admits that the process hasn’t been without challenges, but he says that Immerz recognizes the value of making an SDK available. “We would love to give developers the ability to trigger haptic sensations of sorts,” he says, “to help them craft and conceptualize their virtual world with visual, audio, and haptic stimulation. Having this type of immersion . . . is going to be critical to making truly immersive titles in the future. “We still have every intention of bringing an SDK solution to market, but we want to make sure we do it correctly.”
Not Your Father’s VR
Clearly, we’re still a long way away from fanciful implementations of VR, such as a fully functional holodeck. Nevertheless, the virtual reality hardware available to gamers today is miles ahead of its ancestors. “It’s a very exciting time in technology, where being immersed in your environment is the next evolution of many forms of media,” Fandetti says. We are evolving our haptic solutions daily and are so excited to show the world the next generation of haptics
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