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A virtual reality glove that allows gamers to touch and feel objects has been developed by a team of engineering students. The Hands Omni glove uses tiny bladders of air to create the sensation of touching and holding physical materials in games.

A prototype of the glove, developed at Rice University in Houston, Texas, inflates and deflates small bladders in each fingertip in response to a player touching, pressing or gripping objects in the virtual world. The glove could support games played on virtual reality headsets such as Facebook's Oculus Rift or Sony's Project Morpheus, in theory.


Kevin Koch, a mechanical engineering student working on the project said virtual reality was currently audio and visual, but there was no sense of touch. The Hands Omni glove gives a sense of "force feedback" for any object that a player touches in a game, making virtual reality more complete.

Each air bladder in the glove can inflate and deflate independently to better mimic the feel of in-game objects. Pressure to the ring finger and little finger is linked, with the developers arguing that people rarely pick things up with just their pinkie. The entire glove weighs around 350 grams and is wireless to give players a full range of motion.

Development of the Hands Onmi glove was sponsored by Houston-based gaming firm Virtuix. An agreement with the company means the technology behind the glove hasn't been revealed, but the development team say it should be fairly simple for developers to implement into games.