Meta, until recently known as Facebook, has been working on its ambitious for a long time Metaverso. Between increasingly advanced viewers and the same name change, Zuckerberg’s company is paving the way towards a future made up of virtual worlds that we will also be able to touch with our hands, thanks to futuristic haptic gloves designed to give substance and weight to digital objects.
The technology used by the prototype of the virtual gloves of Meta, a peripheral that could accompany future Oculus viewers by replacing the current controllers, is as interesting as it is complex. It is no coincidence that it has been in development for 7 years and it will take a long time to become a commercial reality, but it already puts us in front of prospects that are in no uncertain terms exciting.
In fact, we talk about the possibility of perceiving a virtual object held in the hand, also experiencing its weight thanks to a series of miniaturized engines able to convey the air, with different intensity levels, in a series of actuators. Hence the simulated tactile feedback that, integrated into high-precision motion detection sensors, promise to combine the tactile sensation of holding an object in the hand with the ability to manipulate it with a precision previously unimaginable.
Meta is working on a pair of virtual gloves that promise to make the metaverse tangible
Technologies of this type will be important to make us really part of virtual worlds, it does not matter whether we are talking about video games or social networks of the future. Both, on the other hand, fall within the prospects of a sector that promises very high realism, thanks also to technologies such as NVIDIA Modulus. But as anticipated, it will take a long time to see devices of this kind arrive in stores.
The first problem concerns the costs of a complex device such as Meta’s virtual gloves and the second, even more relevant, concerns the need to return truly realistic sensations. In fact, it is not enough to activate a few engines and pump a little air to deceive our senses. To do this they need technologies that do not yet exist, as admitted by the director of Meta’s Reality Labs division, Sean Keller. But according to meta designers, who are currently working on precision gesture tracking and glove actuators, the combination of visual input, a single actuator and sound already delivers a compelling feel.
