Novint
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Novint Technologies, Inc. is a corporation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that designs and builds haptic devices. After several years of designing custom devices for a variety of companies including Lockheed Martin, Chrysler, Chevron, Mobil, Aramco, and Harvard University, Novint released the Novint Falcon -- a mass-market haptic device -- in 2006.
[edit] Novint Falcon
Novint's flagship mass-market product is the Novint Falcon, a USB haptic device designed to replace the mouse in video games and other applications. The Falcon is comprised of a ping-pong ball-sized spherical grip, connected via three arms to a roughly conical housing, which sits on a weighted base. The housing contains sensors and motors attached to each arm; via triangulation, the sensors can determine where the grip is in three-dimensional space via the arms, and the motors can move the grip in three-dimensional space and provide tactile feedback to the Falcon's user. The grip also has a cluster of four buttons on top of it, and can be easily removed and replaced with other grips, such as a pistol-shaped grip for first person shooters. At the flattened point of the Falcon's conical housing is a Novint Falcon logo that lights up in different colors to indicate the state of the device.
[edit] Novint Falcon Software
The Falcon is packaged with a demonstration program which, among other things, presents a variety of textures to interact with using the Falcon. For instance, choosing an ice texture presents a hard, slippery surface to interact with, and selecting molasses presents a viscous, liquid texture with a grainy interior.
Also available as a free download for the Falcon is Haptics Life 2, a Half Life 2 mod in which the mouse controls have been replaced with Falcon controls. As a result, the weight of carried objects and damage dealt to the player's character are conveyed by the controller to the player, and each gun in the game has a different, tangible recoil.
