Virtual reality is great at tricking your senses of sight and sound, but doesn’t do a lot for touch right now. Dexmo might change that.
Chinese company Dexta Robotics is working on an exoskeleton glove that lets you feel the shape and substance of virtual objects. The result lets you tell the difference between, say, a stone and a rubber duck by squeezing the virtual object that you are virtually holding.
One of the main things that stops modern virtual reality setups from being the holodeck is the lack of tactile response. Sure, you can see that there’s a sword in your hand, and you can swing it, but if you throw the sword in-game there’s no real way to tell that it’s gone. And if you pick up a table leg, or a flower, there’s no real way to feel the difference between them.
Dexmo, in principle, could change that. It’s not a controller, but rather a full exoskeleton glove that provides various degrees of force-feedback to help simulate the shape and firmness of virtual objects. The glove itself is lightweight, and runs wirelessly.
But don’t expect to see a Dexmo on the market anytime soon.
“Selling Dexmo is different than selling consumer electronics because you can’t use Dexmo right out of the box,” Gu told Engadget. “It will take some really amazing content for people to realize how gaming-changing this innovation actually is.”
So Dexmo doesn’t want to ship the glove until there’s software that takes advantage of its powers, which makes sense. There’s not a lot you can do with this kind of technology if designers don’t start incorporating it. For this reason the company is currently looking for software partners.
So we don’t know when you will be able to play with Dexmo, but we’ll be watching for progress. This could get interesting.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.