TN Games - Gaming Vest and Helmet

Posted By: Tina Wood | Feb 9th @ 5:15 AM

I dropped by TN Games last week to check our their TN Games' 3rd Space™ Vest. The vest allows you to feel the impact of punches, kicks, bullets and blasts that happen to your character in the game. The vest communicates with compatible games to give precise, 3 dimensionally accurate impact where it happens, as it happens. Impacts from in front of you, you feel in the front. Impacts from behind you, you feel in the back. I also had a chance to check out the helmet which will available later this year. And if your a developer TN Games has made enabling 3rdSpace into game titles easy. A simple, yet customizable, API can be integrated into any game with minimal effort. TN Games provides game developers full support so if you want it check out their site.

Tags: Gaming Vest, Seattle

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Comments (5)

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SuthunTrendkill

"Yo 'Trend, get on CoD."
"One sec, lemme suit up."

Sounds cool and at the same time, nerdy(in the negative sense). Undeniably, any device that further immerses you into a video game is awesome, but having to take about 2 minutes to gear up in something that looks like some cheap costume from a war movie just to sit down in front of a blurry, 15 inch monitor with dead pixels and fingerprints on the screen is one of those things one would not want to be seen doing. And honestly, I don't think anyone with a computer wants TWO things they do every day on it to be secret.

Bootstrap

I want one - for the console. Don't do much PC gaming, and SuthunTrendkill is right - it would be a little silly with a 15" monitor. But in the living room, it would be great.

Sounds like they have their business plan together, too, with the free code for developers.

There are an awful lot of download links for this post. Is that all correct?

Arztek

...but Trend, what if you're sitting down in front of an optimized 58" LCD HDTV with surround sound like myself? Kind of changes the parameters. Hehe.

Anyway, I'm not sure I'd want to game with a 3rd space vest or helmet anytime soon, but I totally respect Mark for aiding in the design of and testing that stuff. I think I would actually turn around or look up if I received physical jolts on my back or head during game play.

There is something of a physical disconnect when we play FPS games and we just don't physically look around because we're not feeling the corresponding stimulus and we're accustomed to controllers. I think it might be awkward to feel like your in the game, only to rely on a controller for response. We would obviously become conditioned to play the games that way, but I feel 3rd space technology is best reserved for true virtual reality interactivity.

Cool segment, Tina. BTW - You would make a really cute soldier.

SuthunTrendkill

{In reply to Arztek}

Oh, well aren't we the snobby little rich kid? I joke. Like I said, it would be awesome on some levels, and in front of my 65" DLP, it would be awesome. And I agree with you, it just seems so unnecessary at this point and time to have products like this when your still just looking at a screen in your living room/bedroom/what have you.

benirose

Hey, I just ran across your blog via the "Life at Microsoft" video and I'm diggin this blog!

First off, I wanted to ask what that Mac lookalike laptop you were gaming on was. I thought that was humorous.

Also, I thought it'd be really cool if they set this thing up with Wireless USB or Bluetooth (not sure what the data transfer requirements would be on something like this) then it'd feel even less like a game because you're not tethered into a computer. Throw in some goggles with accelerometers that turns the field of vision every time you turn and a wireless controller that looks like a gun, and you're really immersed in a gaming environment!