Category: hardlight vr

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The Entire Hardlight VR project is now Open Source

It’s always a sad day when a successful Kickstarter project has to close due to a lack of continued interest. That’s what befell the Hardlight VR team back in September, with the founders issuing a statement notifying backers that the company was closing due to lack of funds. Recently the team updated their Kickstarter page to reveal that the entire Hardlight VR project would be made open source.

Nullspace VR - Hardlight Suit

What does that mean for customers, not a lot really, the company is still shuttered. But for those inventive souls out there who like to tinker with technology in their garages or tool sheds, it means you’ve got all the details to make a Hardlight Suit of your own.

On the update the team notes:

“We have made the entire Hardlight project available under the permissive MIT license. This includes:

  • Our SDK and Windows service
  • Our plugins for Unity, Unreal, and C/C++
  • The Hardlight Engine, used for translating game engine data to haptic events
  • Standalone applications like the Haptic Explorer (used for haptic sequence design) and the Hardlight Diagnostics tool (used for debugging haptic peripherals)
  • Several demo Unity projects, including our motion tracking prototype.
  • All plastics, cables, electronics and firmware used in the Hardlight suit.
  • Accessories like the Wireless Module and Backpack PC Attachment”

Nullspace VR - Hardlight Suit_1

All you need to do is head on over to the HardlightVR GitHub page and download all the required files.

Hardlight VR began its funding campaign in early 2017 which saw the company raise $147,574 USD, easily achieving its $80,000 goal. During the campaign, the Hardlight Suit was available for $499 USD as an early bird offer then $549 USD after that. Once the Kickstarter had ended the regular price for the Hardlight Suit became $630 for consumers and $1,100 for commercial users. That price then dropped in January 2018, with the Hardlight Suit retailing for $299.00. After that everything looked to be going well, entering into partnerships with the likes of Vertigo Games and Source Team to support both Arizona Sunshine and Half-Life 2 VR respectively.

As we now know that wasn’t meant to be, so if you’re looking for full body VR haptics at home you’re going to need to make it yourself, our there’s always HoloSuit. For further full-body haptic news, keep reading VRFocus.

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Haptic VR Suit Hardlight ‘Out Of Money’, Shutting Down This Month

Haptic VR Suit Hardlight ‘Out Of Money’, Shutting Down This Month

Hardlight VR, a haptic feedback suit designed to deliver more immersive experiences, is no more.

Lucian Copeland, Head of R&D at creator Nullspace VR, announced the closure via a Kickstarter blog post last week, stating that the company was “simply out of money” after failing to raise further funds. Hardlight had initially raised $147,574 in crowd-funding in early 2017.

As Copeland outlined in the blog, all of this money was spent during the prototype and assembly phases of the product. In fact, the company even had to spend a further $60,000 garnered from other funding and money from friends and family to help cover the costs. The company also cited a “crippling software issue” outside of its control for the wireless version of the device that has stopped it from producing any physical version of it.

“We’re disappointed that we can’t do more to make haptics in VR a reality, but we’re thankful for the support we’ve received from those who shared our dream,” Copeland said.

Hardlight included a vest with 16 ‘haptic pads’ that covered the user’s chest, arms, shoulders, upper back and abdomen. When in action-oriented VR games, the suit would replicate areas where the VR user gets hit by, say, bullets or arrows though it could also handle more subtle interactions like feeling rain hit your body. Not only that, but the embedded tracking systems allowed users to bring their entire body into VR as a virtual avatar. Earlier this year Nullspace even announced that the fan-made Half-Life 2 VR would support the suit.

The was was expensive, however, with Kickstarter backer tiers including one suit for $549. Units were being sent out in batches.

“While we still love the idea of haptics in VR, it’s clear that the VR industry is moving far slower than we expected, and we have been unable to make our product or our company sustainable,” Copeland concluded. “Thank you all for your help in making the Hardlight a reality, if a short-lived one – I’m sorry we could not bring a more successful close to this project.”

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The post Haptic VR Suit Hardlight ‘Out Of Money’, Shutting Down This Month appeared first on UploadVR.

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Hardlight VR to Close as Funds Run Out

The virtual reality (VR) industry has seen both economic success for some companies while others have failed due to lack of uptake. Hardlight VR has announced this week that it has fallen into the latter category, confirming it’ll be closing its doors this month because it has run out of cash.

Nullspace VR - Hardlight Suit

Having completed a successful Kickstarter funding campaign in early 2017 which saw the company raise $147,574 USD, easily achieving its $80,000 goal, everything looked to be going well entering into partnerships with the likes of Vertigo Games and Source Team to support both Arizona Sunshine and Half-Life 2 VR respectively.

And this isn’t one of those tales where Kickstarter backers have been entirely left out of pocket and empty-handed either, with Hardlight VR’s Hardlight Suit shipping to most customers only last month – the Kickstarter page states 95 percent of suits had been shipped.

Yet the issue does just seem to be lack of adoption and the inability to raise further funding to keep things going. A statement on its Kickstarter page reads: “I have some sad news to share with the Hardlight community today: Hardlight VR will be closing down this month. We have been unable to raise additional operating funds, and so, after two years of operation, we have no options left to us but straightforward closure – we are simply out of money.”

Nullspace VR - Hardlight Suit_1

Hardlight VR then goes into further detail on how the final costs of manufacturing stacked up, showcasing that Hardlight took over 138% of the actual funding total.

  • $8,697 mandatory first-article manufacturing prototype
  • $43,250 plastic injection molds
  • $50,643 electronic parts and assembly
  • $87,945 textiles, plastics and final assembly
  • $22,183 shipping (still counting)
  • Total cost: $212,718

So with official support now gone Hardlight Suit owners will no longer see additional videogame support. That doesn’t mean developers can’t still work with the device as the Hardlight software development kit (SDK) has been made publicly available via GitHub.

The consumer VR industry is still growing yet it seems not enough to support expensive haptic add-ons just yet. As further advances are made in the field of haptics VRFocus will keep you updated.

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Haptic Suit Company Hardlight VR Closes Due to Lack of Funding

Hardlight VR, the Seattle-based company that headed a successful Kickstarter campaign tasked with developing the eponymous haptic suit, is closing down this month due to lack of funding. Hardlight VR CEO and co-inventor Lucian Copeland issued a statement on the company’s Kickstarter page, saying there are “no options left to us but straightforward closure.”

The company’s Kickstarter, which successfully concluded in March 2017, garnered $147,574 from over 300 backers to bring the project to life. Although suffering several shipping delays due to manufacturing, Hardlight VR concluded last month that more than 95 percent of the suits ordered through the Kickstarter have been shipped.

The company’s wireless add-on, the result of a stretch goal, isn’t shipping however due to the lack of funds and a “crippling software issue outside of our control” that forced project creators to redesign the module late in its development. “What we’d expected to be a ~10k project turned out to be $18,451 in development costs alone, 104% of the project earnings without any production done,” Copeland explains, referring to the wireless module.

Image courtesy Hardlight VR

All of this comes with the revelation that Hardlight VR has been working full-time without pay for the last 9 months, searching for additional fundraising and acquisition offers.

Late last year, Road to VR’s Michael Glombicki visited Hardlight’s Seattle offices, where he tried the Mark III version of the haptic vest and even got a look at some of the upcoming research the company was doing, including a ‘butt-kicker’ solenoid for stronger impacts, and a thermoelectric plate that can cool and heat up on demand—all areas of research the company hoped would make it into successive versions of the vest.

The company has published a cost breakdown in their post mortem report, which concludes that manufacturing the Hardlight vest took over 138% of our actual raise amount after deducting credit card processing fees and Kickstarter’s percentage, and that an additional $59,013 required to fulfill orders was obtained from both traditionally fundraised capital and money from family, friends, and their own personal savings.

“While we still love the idea of haptics in VR, it’s clear that the VR industry is moving far slower than we expected, and we have been unable to make our product or our company sustainable,” Copeland says. “Thank you all for your help in making the Hardlight a reality, if a short lived one – I’m sorry we could not bring a more successful close to this project.”

The post Haptic Suit Company Hardlight VR Closes Due to Lack of Funding appeared first on Road to VR.

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Hardlight VR Annouces Partnership With Vertigo Games and Source Team

Hardlight VR have announced a new partnership that will see their virtual reality (VR) Hardlight Suit bringing the sensation of touch and impact to even more titles. Vertigo Games’ Arizona Sunshine and Source Team’s VR port of Valve’s Half-Life 2 are among immersive VR titles that will support the solution.

Nullspace VR - Hardlight Suit_1

Announced back at the start of 2017, the Hardlight Suit offers a new way to experience VR titles with a complete set of haptic feedback senors at work within the suit creating the sensation of touch and impact. After a successful Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign the Hardlight Suit has become closer to release with a permanent price reduction to $299.99 (USD) at the start of this year. Now, with the news of the company partnering with Source Team and Vertigo Games on support for Arizona Sunshine and Half-Life 2 VR the Hardlight Suit has new opportunists to create excitement.

Hardlight VR co-founder Morgan Sinko commented on the announcement by saying: “We’ve always aimed to partner with the best games in the industry, the titles we’re announcing now represent some of the most fun, high-quality work being done in VR and we couldn’t be more excited to be working with them. These are titles our community has been clamoring for since our inception and we’re thrilled to finally be able to say we’re bringing cutting edge haptics to these excellent games.”

Arizona Sunshine LBVR (horizontal)

In addition to partnering with the above titles, Hardlight have also been the exclusive haptics provider for an innovative Game Developer Conference experience in collaboration with VR tracking pioneers Optitrack and Vertigo Games. This is a brand new, fully tracked, four-player co-operative version of the popular Arizona Sunshine that will see players blasting away at hordes of zombies all while the Hardlight Suits provide immersive, location-based haptics to maximize the impact and experience. You can always read VRFocus’ Editor Kevin Joyce’s review of the PlayStation 4 version of Arizona Sunshine here.

VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest on Hardlight VR in the future so make sure to stay tuned for more.

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Hardlight Suit Gets Permanent Base Price Reduction to $299.99

In early 2017 virtual reality (VR) startup Nullspace VR launched a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign for an upper body haptic device called the Hardlight Suit. The campaign proved to be successful and with the first suits beginning to rollout to backers the company has announced a major price reduction.

Nullspace VR - Hardlight Suit

During the campaign the Hardlight Suit was available for $499 USD as an early bird offer then $549 USD after that. Once the Kickstarter had ended the regular price for the Hardlight Suit became $630 for consumers and and $1,100 for commercial users. Not exactly cheap when you consider the expense of VR in the first place, so now the company has reduced that cost of both versions.

So the standard Hardlight Suit will be retail for $299.00 while the Hardlight Suit: Enterprise Edition will cost exactly the same just with an additional license fee for commercial entities of $9.99 per month (or $99.99 for one year).

Explaining the reason for the price change, CEO Lucian Copeland said in a statement: “Making the suit more approachable from a price standpoint has always been a long-term goal of ours. We were able to reach the production milestones that made this possible earlier than expected, and we’re enthusiastic about the opportunity to introduce haptics to a much wider audience with this new pricing.”

Nullspace VR - Hardlight Suit_1

“One of our paramount goals is to keep the Hardlight Suit strong well into the future,” adds Hardlight’s Founder Morgan Sinko. “As eager as we are to get the suits out to people, we know all this effort would be wasted if we couldn’t deliver what we intended: a robust, superior quality haptic suit with a long lifespan. That’s why we’re putting so much effort into making the Hardlight Suit as accessible and robust a platform as possible, and a lower price point will help those efforts immensely.”

Initially conceived by students and members of the University of Rochester’s Robotics Club, the Hardlight Suit features 16 haptic feedback zones aimed at targeting every muscle group across a players chest, abdomen, shoulders, or arms, whilst using inertial trackers to track the limbs relative to the users headset.

As more products come to market that make VR even more immersive, VRFocus will keep you updated.

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Spüre die virtuelle Welt mit dem Hardlight VR Suit

Für die Virtual Reality Industrie entwickelt sich haptisches Feedback immer mehr zu einem schwer erreichbaren Ziel. Viele Firmen versuchen es, das Gefühl, tiefer in die virtuelle Realität einzutauchen, mit Hilfe von Haptik zu erreichen, aber bisher ist es keinem wirklich gut gelungen. So gibt es zum Beispiel den EXOS Glove, mit dessen Hilfe ihr die virtuelle Welt erfühlen könnt und welcher über Waffen verfügt, die mit realem Rückstoß für VR Shooters aufwahrten können. Eine Weste geht aber noch weiter in die Haptik ein und Nullspace VR will per Kickstarter mit dem Hardlight VR Suit den Spielern ein ganzheitliches Gefühl der virtuellen Welt geben.

Hardlight VR Suit als neue Gaming Erfahrung

in 2 Shops
zum günstigsten Shop
129,90 EUR
caseking
Total*: 129,90 EUR Versand*: n.a. s. Shop Preis kann jetzt höher sein.
124,86 EUR
Amazon
Total*: 124,86 EUR Versand*: n.a. s. Shop Preis kann jetzt höher sein.
Abruf der Informationen: 13.03.2017 16:28:48 | Bitte Disclaimer beachten

Der Hardlight VR Suit ist ausgestattet mit 16 haptischen Sensoren und Vibrationspunkten. Mit all diesen Quellen soll die Weste ein sehr genaues Feedback geben, an Stellen an denen der Spieler getroffen wurde. Mehrere Vibrationspunkte sollen nacheinander auch ausgelöst werden, wenn man beispielsweise von einem Schwert quer über den Oberkörper geschnitten wird. Der Anzug bedeckt wesentlich mehr vom Oberkörper als alte haptische Projekte, wie beispielsweise die Kor-FX Gaming Weste, da er Schultern, Brust, Arme, Bauch und den oberen Rücken mit einbezieht. Zudem verfügt der Virtual Reality Anzug über ein Trackingsystem, das die Möglichkeiten einer VR Brille durch die Angabe der Position der Gliedmaßen im Bezug auf das Headset erweitert.

Hardlight Suit

Westen, die haptisches Feedback geben, sind keine neue Entwicklung in der Gaming Industrie. Auf jeder Convention oder Ausstellung in den letzten Jahren fand man einige Firmen, die versuchten, das Gefühl, angeschossen zu werden, oder die Kraft einer explodierenden Granate neben einem zu spüren, haptisch einzufangen. Nichts davon hat sich festsetzen können, da der Markt für solche Produkte nur eine kleine Nische war, wenn man bedenkt, dass es für eine noch sehr wenig ausgereifte Gaming Erfahrung war. Die Technologie ist weiterhin nur eine Nische, jedoch ändert sich dieser Umstand immer mehr, da es nun als Erweiterung für eine Plattform dient und das Eintauchen in die virtuelle Spielwelt verbessern soll.

Auslieferung des VR Anzugs dieses Jahr geplant

Virtual Reality Anzug

Der Hardlight VR Suit wurde mit 127.000$ unterstützt und das bei einem Ziel von 80.000$. Dies wird sich in den nächsten Tagen, so lang die Kampagne noch läuft, durchaus noch weiter steigern. Geplant ist eine Auslieferung im September 2017. Meistens verzögern sich solche Hardware bezogenen Crowdfunding Projekte jedoch ungewollt. Wir werden in den kommenden Monaten weitere Neuigkeiten zu dem Projekt für euch bereithalten.

Der Beitrag Spüre die virtuelle Welt mit dem Hardlight VR Suit zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

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Hardlight VR-Anzug: 80.000 Dollar per Crowdfunding in weniger als einer Woche

Nullspace VR startete letzte Woche eine Kickstarter-Kampagne für ihr Projekt Hardlight VR. Dabei handelt es sich um einen neuen haptischen Anzug. Mittlerweile wurde die erforderliche Summe bereits erreicht und das Team hat nun das nächste Ziel ihres Projekts angekündigt.

Dank Kickstarter konnte der Anzug geschneidert werden

Das Entwicklerteam von Nullspace VR erreichte ihr ursprüngliches Ziel in weniger als einer Woche. Per Kickstarter konnte ihre Kampagne Hardlight VR die anvisierten 80.000 US-Dollar bereits einnehmen. Hardlight VR besteht aus einer Weste für den Oberkörper mit 16 haptischen Pads, die eine Rückkopplung an Brust, Rücken, Armen und Schultern aussenden. Diese Pads können durch jede Software ausgelöst werden, die die Informationen und Schnittstellen von NullSpace VR nutzt.

Das Unternehmen konnte eine Reihe von VR-Entwicklern davon überzeugen, ihre Software mit Hardlight Suit-Unterstützung auszustatten. Mittlerweile werden über 14 Spiele unterstützt, darunter das futuristische Rennspiel Redout und Holopoint, in dem ihr euch im Bogenschießen probieren könnt.

VR-Klamotten für knapp 500 Dollar

Virtual Reality Anzug

Die ersten Hardlight VR-Einheiten sind bereits verkauft, aber wer sich für die Anzüge interessiert, bekommt noch welche für schlappe 499 Dollar. Momentan wird die Kleidung noch mit einem USB-Kabel an einen PC angeschlossen. Noch werden sowohl Strom als auch die Ein- und Ausgabe darüber gesteuert. Ein drahtloses Add-on soll auf der Roadmap stehen, sobald das nächste Ziel der Crowdfunding-Kampagne erreicht wird. Da das erste Ziel so schnell erreicht wurde, bleibt es interessant – wie viel Interesse das Projekt bei Gamern noch generieren wird und was in Zukunft noch möglich ist?

(Quelle: Road to VR)

Der Beitrag Hardlight VR-Anzug: 80.000 Dollar per Crowdfunding in weniger als einer Woche zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

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Hardlight VR $499 Haptic Suit Kickstarter Passes $80k Target

Hardlight VR is a new haptic suit from Nullspace VR that launched its Kickstarter last week. It’s already set to pass its original goal and the team have announced the project’s first stretch goal.

We wrote recently about Nullspace VR’s haptic suit project Hardlight VR and the team’s intent to bring the product to Kickstarter. Well, the company launched their campaign last week and it looks as if Hardlight VR will hit the original $80,000 target in under a week.

Hardlight VR is an upper-body vest containing 16 haptic pads that deliver impact feedback to your chest, back, arms and shoulders. The pads can be triggered by any software integrated with NullSpace VR’s APIs with relative rotational information for your body provided by integrated IMUs.

The company (as we mentioned in our last piece) have persuaded a number of VR developers, including recent Indie favourite Sairento VR, to add Hardlight Suit support. Joining that are 14 other games, including the likes of futuristic racer Redout and room-scale archery favourite Holopoint. The latest announcement for the project is the first stretch

hardlight-vr-kick-games

Early bird Hardlight VR units are already gone, but interested backers can still get their hands on a suit from $499. Note that Hardlight VR is currently tethered, with a USB cable attaching the suite to the PC providing both power and the input / output feed. The team claim that a wireless add-on is on the roadmap, should they reach the stretch goal.

However, if you can live with those, the team certainly have a large enough selection of software for you to sample on delivery. And, with the campaign’s goal met in under a week, it’ll be interesting to see how much more interest the project garners and how much more can be raised in the

The post Hardlight VR $499 Haptic Suit Kickstarter Passes $80k Target appeared first on Road to VR.