The Teslasuit brings Spielberg’s ‘Ready Player One’ to Life

by Brian Mokaimo

I do not know if you know this, but I love playing games. The best are those I can run in a field kicking stuff around, getting chengwad like a small boy and laughed at… followed closely by role playing games, racing games and FIFA. I have lost more games on FIFA than I can count. But then, I can lose all day long. FIFA makes me happy. I also love stories. Stories make you imagine, like, “What if this could really happen? Wouldn’t it be awesome!?” Not the Miz.

Last year, I watched Spielberg’s sci-fi movie: Ready Player One. It is set in the year 2045 when most people use a Virtual Reality software called OASIS. There’s a fantasy game with hidden clues that promises ownership of the whole of OASIS to whoever wins the game. Imagine something like Minecraft with a billion plus users, like Facebook: the worlds you can explore, the things you can do…

Controlling that would mean billions for the person or entity involved. The awesome part of this movie, far from the story itself, was the tech involved: a full-body Virtual Reality suit that you could put on and be fully immersed in the game. Everything (except the dents and death) you experienced there, you could feel in the real world, like someone punching you in the guts with a hammer. I thought, “Damn! What if…?” Kumbe someone was working on it already.

Enter the Teslasuit.

This augmented reality suit is exactly what you see in the movie, with even more capabilities than previously envisioned. Using strategically located electrodes, the suit can simulate your nerves to emulate various environmental conditions such as snow and rain, and even give you haptic feedback when you interact with something in the environment, like the punching I told you about earlier.

Further than that, it allows whoever has control of the system to control you in a manner of speaking: by stimulating your muscles, they can make you do simple things, like slap yourself in the face.

Imagine playing a game like Call of Duty and a chap grabs you and holds your hand in one of those painful locks, or maybe ties you up to a post.

This tech, combined with a lot of other things such as Roy Allela‘s SIGN-IO sign language gloves can make your interactions with virtual objects almost like the real thing, with endless possibilities and applications such as interior design, or playing FIFA (with a treadmill), training military personnel, and even medical simulations.

Software manufacturers also have available to them a vast field of opportunities such as 3D modelling software, rendering software, animations, and engines for so much more stuff.

Things have just got interesting!