While this certainly looks better (cleaner + higher resolution and range) than MIT's inFORM (<a href="http://tangible.media.mit.edu/project/inform/" rel="nofollow">http://tangible.media.mit.edu/project/inform/</a>), it's still bound to a surface, and effectively just a 2D monochrome image presented with pressure instead of light.<p>What I want to see is a haptic method that can represent complex topologies, and at the moment, it looks like that's still gloves (although this will certainly be useful for quick/casual interactions, as well as its applications in the medical field as michaeljansen notes).
Almost any announcement associated with Bristol Interaction and Graphics (BIG) should be taken with a pinch of salt. The group follows a similar approach to MIT's media lab - lots of conference publications and heavy on media exposure.<p>Does anyone remember the demos of Pranav Mistry's sixth sense device in 2011?
This seems to make the R2D2 Starwars Leia hologram message viable?<p><a href="http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xIFJLMyUwrg" rel="nofollow">http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xIFJLMyUwrg</a><p>With this kind of technology built into Playstation 7 you'll be able to play FIFA 2025 in a big living room with all your friends, with an entire mini football pitch projected in the middle of everyone (in 4D?).<p>Awesome. I've been imagining this for years!
This solves a really big problem with gestural interaction, the lack of feedback other than visual cues. Right now the only way to get this is through gloves, rings etc. which are impractical at best and impossible for many of the early use cases (for example: surgeons who need to keep their hands sterile).