Dr. Schutte frags with his mind

Lucky Cynic

OCZ, the memory guys seem to have been developing this neat shit for quite a while. And at a $200 price tag, it doesn't seem too crazy at all. Very interesting use of muscles. I wonder how accurate it really is, but then again, they are using UT3 as the game of choice for the demo, so it must be pretty damn good...

OCZ has been showing off its "brain mouse", now much more professionally titled the Neural Impulse Actuator (NIA). The NIA can measure brain waves and respond to triggers from muscles in your face, translating them into mouse movements and button presses. The end result is a device that lets you play first person shooters with minimal use of your hands. The NIA demoed at CeBIT is as close to final as it's going to get and we had a try at it. First off, the air in Hall 21 is particularly dry so you need to lotion up a bit:

http://tweakforce.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=99

Doomulon

I think the quote at the bottom of that article sums it up for a lot of us, it's just too different for people used to the keyboard and mouse setup. That isn't to say I wouldn't try it. I think it would be awesome, but the idea of blinking and making funny faces at my computer to frag online just seems a bit silly. They do say with practice you don't need to do quite so exaggerated expressions, so I wonder how quick gamers could adapt?

The real killer here is the price tag, though. Unless this system could give a decided advantage over other control schemes, the price is a bit steep. Also, I could see this thing interfering with a headset comfort wise.

Veegeezee

I don't speak German, but

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-mZxIhlVAUY&feature=related

At about 3:20 they do a calibration test, and if I'm reading right, it looks like there's a response time on the order of 10-50 ms, but I really can't tell what they're measuring there. There's also some Serious Sam at the end.

At any rate I would probably develop mad facial tics using something like this. It would be cool to see it coupled with eye tracking for point-and-click type user interfaces though.

Lucky Cynic

You know, has anyone gotten a link on this one thing. It was like a reflex test, and they found to blink was like 3 times faster in reaction time to using your finger to click, or something. I remember it being in some gaming blog and then I saw it again in some science blog. They had a really nicely done table too, for response times for offhand reflex clicking, true hand clicking, blinking, foot tapping, and a few other things. It was really interesting to see how different motions had drastically different response times in the body. Hardware and software taking the back seat in the test.

Anyone know which test it was or might have a link, I cannot find it anywhere.