Facebook Shows Off Gloves That Allow You to “Feel” VR Objects

The gloves are starting to come off as Facebook tries to get between you and reality.

The social network has announced that it is building a glove that will allow you to touch objects in the metaverse.

Sean Keller, research director at Facebook Reality Labs, said in a post that the value of hands to solve the interaction problem in augmented and virtual reality is immense. People could touch, feel and manipulate virtual objects just like real objects, without having to learn a new way of interacting with the world.

Meta is trying to turn the novel "Ready Player One" into a reality. Maybe it is trying to rip off Nintendo's Power Glove.

The company's glove is meant to be light, soft, and perfect for capturing hand movements. It is being designed to reproduce a range of complex, nuanced sensations for the wearer such as pressure, texture, and vibration to create the effect of feeling a virtual object with your hands.

Meta is setting the bar very high.

Keller said that they are creating almost everything about the discipline from scratch. People are learning how to perceive touch and complete tasks. We are figuring out how to fit a variety of human hand shapes and sizes.

The glove is using hundreds of tiny actuators to trick the wearer into thinking they are in a virtual world. They create too much heat. They are too heavy, expensive, and power hungry, according to the company.

If you need thousands of tangible forces in different locations at different distances, you either need pneumatics, hydraulics, or high-density electroactive actuators, according to Reality Labs hardware engineering director.

The team is looking into using pneumatic and electrical fields to trick your hands.

Do we need Meta's gloves to make the metaverse feel real? The company believes that virtual reality will replace human interaction after nearly two years of COVID lockdowns.

It is starting to annoy the company's own VPs.

Meta has made it clear that it cannot be trusted. Despite being used by billions of people around the world, the network has helped drive people apart, profited from pushing provocative content, and leaked sensitive personal data.

The company doesn't want you to play a game for an hour and then take off the goggles. Meta has ambitions that are much larger than that, and its latest example is its haptic glove.

Allowing the company to take control of our sense of touch is a warning sign. We should think twice before committing ourselves to its metaverse.

Meet the team that is working to bring touch to the digital world.

Facebook's top virtual reality expert seems annoyed by Metaverse Push.

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