Michael HoldenITGM 705

Tuesday, February 22

Art Review 2: The Novint Falcon

3D movies, 3D televisions, 3D video games,

the consumer world is on the verge of a 3D binge.

Enter the Novint Falcon, the 3D touch gaming

device, that actually arrived on the scene before the

current flurry of 3D related product. Novint, is a

company that was determined to be the first to

create a consumer 3D touch product – at the time

they started in 2004, the average price of 3D haptic hardware was over $10,000! But by summer 2006,

Novint had succeeded and created the Falcon, so named as falcon's have a diet of mice, which currently

retails at about $250, quite the successful price change.

So what does the Falcon offer over a typical mouse? It allows for full 3D navigation, similar to

a mouse and a joystick combined, small precise movements move your focus on the screen, while

larger movements rotate like a joystick. It also allows for force feedback in three dimensions, in

gaming terms: you will not only feel that you have been shot, but which direction the shot came from.

The Falcon is basically a robot capable of constantly updating multiple times a second based on weight,

texture, movement, or just about any other variable a game could throw at you. This allows for a new

level of immersion and interactivity for a gaming peripheral.

At release the Falcon had a good hardware product, but needed support from games. Through a

series of agreements almost all Valve Source games now fully support the falcon including Portal,

Team Fortress 2, and Left 4 Dead. These days, most PC shooters ship with or eventually get Falcon

support.

One benefit of the Falcon is similar to how recently the tech savvy have been particularly

enamored of the Xbox Kinect, namely that the technology involved functions very favorably compared

to its very expensive commercial predecessors. Novint is also working on more applications for the

Falcon in professional applications and products. In December 2009, Novint released the beta of F-

Gen, a program that allowed full functionality as the primary controller in windows, opening the door

to the Falcon theoretically working with any application. If the technology continues to evolve and the

price continues to decrease, there may eventually come a day when we all have Falcons sitting on our

desks rather than mice.

Check out the Link Below to watch Novint's CEO play Team Fortress 2 with a Falcon, with picture inpicture of him using it.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa9H1P-K89s

Website of Novint Technologieshttp://home.novint.com/