Disney Ready To Animate the World Through Revolutionary New VR Device

It looks like the VR universe is seriously heating up. The Industry has advanced immensely in the last few years. One of the newest fields that has gained ground is the haptic VR space geared around making the VR experience more authentic. Disney is a leader in the field right now, having devised a working model called the VR360° video player with integrated haptic feedback, wowing audiences at the ACM Symposium in Munich this year with their new approach to VR, focusing on body sensations rather than just visuals.

But what exactly is the VR360° video player?

It’s basically a 360-degree virtual-reality app that enables users to enhance their experience by adding customized haptic (body sensations) effects that can be triggered by user movements, biofeedback, or timelines.

A team led by Ali Israr, senior research engineer at Disney Research, has demonstrated the haptic plugin using a unique chair to provide full body sensations and a library of “feel effects” that enabled users to select and customize sensations such as falling rain, a beating heart, or a cat walking.

Israr said of the system,  “Current VR systems provide ‘buzz-like’ haptic sensations through hand controllers,” he said. “But technology exists for much richer sensations. We’ve created a framework that would enable users to select from a wide range of meaningful sensations that can be adjusted to complement the visual scene and to play them through a variety of haptic feedback devices.”

See this video to get a rough idea of what the experience would be like. We want to try this real bad: