Things you'll have to explain to your kids.

I imagine by the time I have kids, controllers will likely be void of use. Motion sensors and all.

edited 26th Jan '12 9:04:38 AM by tehjinx

tactile feedback is one of the biggest tenets of user experience. plus, if you can't approximate the accuracy of a mouse with a joystick, and you can't approximate the accuracy of a joystick with a motion sensor, I don't see either of the former technologies getting phased out.

@choobs: no one saw the rise of video games in general either. Everyone assumed it would be a passing fad during the "great crash of '83". Now it's a multi-billion dollar industry, on par with more traditional outlets like cinema and television.

Sure, I don't see the controller going away until something better replaces it...and your point about tactile response is a good one. But certainly something cooler waits in the wings. We'll just have to wait and see what it's gonna be.

I recall this one first-person shooter in an arcade which utilized motion sensing technology, by having a frame around the gameplay area, AND a game gun. When I walked (in place) and dodged, so did the avatar. When I shot, so did the avatar. No joystick fiddling or button pressing. It was incredibly immersive and quite intuitive.

This was years ago. I'm surprised it has never caught on (unless it was some sort of expense-related thing, or people panicked about teaching their young people how to shoot) because it was the awesomest awesome I have ever been awed by. You could easily make a multiplayer game out of it and have a whole party with their own weapons instead of plain old controllers.

edited 26th Jan '12 1:45:03 PM by Leradny

I suspect that there are still people trying to figure out how to make the Power-glove thing (what was that, Nintendo?) work better, be lighter and be more robust.

@Leradny: that sounds totally boss.

@Maddie: yeah, that was Nintendo and the Power-Glove never worked for much. A guy I knew in high school re-programmed a Power-Glove to work with his computer (as an input device roughly akin to a mouse) and that worked okay for him, but then again he was a programming genius and a bit of a nutter, so draw your own conclusions.

I also remember the first floor-pad...Nintendo did that too, but it was massively unsuccessful due to the fact that there weren't any good games for it; wasn't until DDR that that concept actually got a fair shake.

Oh, most def something cooler awaits. I just don't think that controllers are going the way of beta-max anytime soon, since the new technologies being introduced are not direct competitors (I mean, the gaming industry did not make the film industry obsolete)

Also, add the phrase "go the way of beta-max" to the list of things that kids will need to learn.

I'm thinking that with the advances made in mo-cap technology, it's simply a matter of time before someone gives a glove-like controller another shot. The Powerglove was 21 years ago. That's hiw many generations of tech?

Make it lighter and more flexible (more like a glove and less like an armored gauntlet), more sensitive to small movements, and less all-around clunky, figure out something besides having a panel of buttons running up the arm of it so that you have to use the other hand on the glove arm, and it could well combine the sensitivity of a mouse with the accuracy of a joystick, and then add the flexibility of a motion sensor.

8.69 berjillion years, give or take an eon or two.

Though you are correct, it is high time someone gave that concept another look.

What's a "power glove?"

someone else explain it to him.

Anyhow...something we'll all likely have to explain in a few years. How someone could put this◊ in their luggage on an international flight and forget about it, yet still retain it when the flight was over.

My parents bought that in France while we were vacationing there in 1997; we were buying good Parisian bread and meat, yet had no way to cut it to make sandwiches. The answer was to buy a knife. I thought for years that said knife had vanished into the ether, yet I uncovered it in a bag of random possessions my mother gave me after she cleaned house.

Flyboy: One of these.

Opinels are grand knives.

edited 26th Jan '12 9:52:58 PM by Madrugada

The fact that we bought it at the Euro equivalent of a convenience store leads me to believe that they just do some stuff better over there.

Oh, and the thing is still sharp as the Devil, despite having sat in a drawer for a decade and a half. XD

Oh Nintendo. And we thought you finally had an original thought in your head with the Wii after who knows how long of mediocrity and self-plagiarism.

At least they're super consistent when they copy their own work. Keep all the good points and all the bad points, slap it on a new design, and bam, a few more hundred dollars to extract from each family.

I think you misunderstand the mentality of the purchasers. Armored gauntlets are cool.

I also happen to agree with whoever said they probably won't catch on until they have the ability to resist motion.

You can make it look like an armored gauntlet as long as it flexes and moves with your hand like a regular glove. Part of the problem with the Powerglove was that it was too bulky — it allowed you to sort of flex and bend your fingers but it gave you about as much fine control as an ice hockey glove would have.

Somehow, hockey players are still super dextrous even though they've got like 5cm of padding around each phalange.

Makes no sense.

Reaslly? they've got fine control of where exactly their fingertip is pointing? From watching hockey, stick control appears to be much more wrist, arm, and whole-hand than fingertip.

at the very least, they are dextrous enough to rip off their gloves when a fight starts.

I'd think that a modern redo of the Power Glove would work, actually. Make it feel like a good pair of Isotoners, and bam, we're all set.

I think the main thing that would be cool about a modern power glove would be the offer of tactile feedback. We already have position and gesture tracking with wii and kinect, but the main UX thing is the fact that humans respond best to touch when doing physical movements. Getting a bit of vibration on the fingertips when appropriate would be super cool.

(also, it would be really cheap to throw in sensors along the glove that would make gesture tracking a ton more accurate)

When a phone was just a phone.

I'm sure someone said this before, though I'll say it again, when PC monitors, as well as T Vs, were huge, heavy boxes.

"Hey dad? What are these 'Saturday morning cartoons' I keep hearing about?" "Well, back before everyone had cable or satellite TV, kids would have to wake up early in the morning on Saturday and tune into programs like 1 Saturday Morning, Fox Box, and Kids WB to watch cartoons instead of getting to see them whenever they want on Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon."

or on tivo or on demand or on netflix.

Actually, now that I think back, I remember learning how to use the VCR before my dad did so I could tape those shows that aired at inconvenient hours.

I imagine I'll have to explain the concept of the door-to-door salesman to my kids; that prior to the days of pop-up ads, a company would attempt to sell their product by sending an actual person to the homes of strangers with a physical example of their product. Furthermore, those called upon by these salesmen didn't immediately assume they were homicidal terrorist child abductors, call in the SWAT team, and lock the family in the panic room; rather, they were seen as a nuisance at the worst, and curtly dismissed. Granted, I'll have to mention to my kids that their grandfather did have the 12 gauge within easy reach while dismissing them; but that's life in the rural south for you.

Of course, I may then have to explain the concept of "private gun ownership" to the kids...