Sony has filed a patent for a glove controller
It's so bad.
Perhaps Nintendo's notoriously bad 1989 peripheral the Power Glove was actually nearly three decades ahead of its time as Sony has recently filed three patents on its own glove controller.
As spotted by NeoGAF user Rösti, the patents in question would be comprised of a flex sensor to track finger positions, a contact sensor to note if you're touching anything, and a communication module to send data to a head-mounted display so that a virtual representation of the user's hand would be represented in the VR headset.
The claim goes on to describe "a trackable object that is configured to be illuminated during interactivity," "at least one inertial sensor for generating inertial sensor data", a communications module "configured to receive haptic feedback data", and "at least one pressure sensor configured to generate pressure sensor data".
The claim also noted that the "virtual gloves may be worn by multiple users in a multi-user game."
"In such an implementation, users collaborating may use their gloves to touch objects, move objects, interface with surfaces, press on objects, squeeze objects, toss objects, make gesture actions or motions, or the like," the claim said of this emergent tech.
It's important to note that just because a patent has been filed, that doesn't mean a product of this nature will actually see the light of day. There's no telling how much a project of this magnitude would cost or how well it would work in practice. But it does suggest that Sony is at least considering this form of wearable computing we all found so inspiring back in the Fred Savage days.
