Now, you can play with a cool retro Power Glove VR controller

By Mark Austin October 14, 2017

power glove vr controller — Image used with permission by copyright holder

“I love the Power Glove … it’s so bad.”

So said the evil villain Lucas in the 1989 video game movie The Wizard. The new Nintendo peripheral was prominently featured in the film, but it may have been a few decades ahead of its time. The 8-bit processors of the early consoles were ill-equipped to handle the rigors of virtual reality (VR), and the Power Glove never caught on because it was clumsy, difficult to use, and worked with very few games.

Now the wizards at Teague Labs have breathed new life into this arcane bit of video game trivia by designing a true Power Glove VR controller. With Power Gloves readily available on the secondhand market, the team set about realizing the dream of this often-mocked accessory.

They mounted an Arduino Due and a Vive tracker on the glove where the buttons would normally go, added a custom shield, and interfaced it with the tracker to make it compatible with the HTC Vive VR system. It created a more natural interaction than the conventional controller. “Holding virtual objects, touching mock-up screens, and pointing at things just feels a lot better when using the dexterity of one’s fingers instead of trying to use a fixed wand,” the engineers explained on their site.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

They also got better results with the Power Glove than the Vive controller for on-screen touch interactions. “With the Power Glove and a second tracker mounted to the backside of an acrylic iPad, we were able to simulate more natural interactions with an iPad in VR,” they noted. “The overall experience improves dramatically when using the glove. The acrylic iPad even provides the same haptic feedback as a tablet would.”

If you’re interested in a more technical explanation (or you’d like to build one of your own), all of their files are available for download at GitHub.

In the first application Teague created for their do-it-yourself peripheral, you can shoot lightning by making a fist. Then they made a prototype “game” where you fought off incoming waves of rocks, paper, and scissors. “The game is still in an early stage, but it’s already a lot of fun to play!” they said.

As the advertising tagline for the Power Glove put it, “Everything else is child’s play.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Mark’s first encounter with high-tech was a TRS-80. He spent 20 years working for Nintendo and Xbox as a writer and…

Computing

This Razer 27-inch QHD gaming monitor just got a massive discount

Playing a game on the Razer Raptor gaming monitor.

Razer has a reputation for making some of the best gaming laptops and peripherals on the market and is often viewed as the high-end equivalent of the gaming market, in the same vein as Apple or Mercedes. What you may not know is that Razer also makes high-end gaming monitors, and the Razer Raptor 27 is an excellent example of it, as it has a lot of great features under the hood that any gamer would love. While it usually comes at the steep cost of $800, Razer is offering a massive discount on it of %50, meaning you can grab the Raptor 27 for just $400, which is a steal.

Why you should buy the Razer Raptor 27
Right off the bat, one of the things that let the Raptor 27 compete with the best gaming monitors is the impressive 165Hz refresh rate at 1440p resolution. That means you get a lot of room to adjust whether you want a higher resolution for single-layer games or a higher refresh rate for multiplayer and action-packed games where each frame counts. Or, if you have one of the best GPUs right now, such as the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, you can easily push both the refresh rate and resolution to their limits, even on the highest graphical settings.

Computing

Insane deal knocks $900 off the Razer Blade 17 gaming laptop

Razer Blade 17 on a table.

Razer is known for making some of the best laptops in the market, although they're equally well-known for being a high-end brand that is often quite expensive. Even so, if you're looking for a unique laptop, Razer is probably where you'd look, and in this case, if you want one of the best 17-inch gaming laptops, you'd be hard-pressed to find one better than the Razer Blade 17. Of course, it does come at a pretty penny, although Razer is running a great deal right now that discounts the Blade 17 down to $2,300 rather than the usual $3,200, a significant 28% discount.

Why you should buy the Razer Blade 17
Probably one of the first things you'll want to know about this Razer Blade 17 is what sort of GPU it runs, and we're happy to report that you'll find the relatively powerful RTX 3070 Ti under the hood. That's a card that can provide reasonably good 4k performance, which is good because the Blade 17 comes with a gorgeous 17-inch 2k resolution panel. As such, the RTX 3070Ti will easily run most games on high resolution and graphical settings without much issue. The panel also has a very impressive 240Hz refresh rate, which means that if you're going to be playing competitive or action-packed games where each frame counts, you can get some high refresh rates from the RTX 3070 Ti, with a few graphical compromises, of course.

Computing

How to convert MKV to MP4

A person sitting at a table and watching something on a laptop.

While it’s not as popular as MOV or even FLAC files, you might occasionally encounter an MKV, or Matroska, file. When you’re dealing with subtitles on an audio or video track, an MKV file can come in handy.