Two things make CES an incredible experience. First, of course, are all the new products announced at the show, but there are all the cool things you get to try for the first time, even if they're not necessarily new. For me, a highlight of CES 2024 was trying out the virtual reality haptics experience bHaptics had on display. Before this show, I had no idea this company existed, but it's supported in around 200 games and with many devices.

Still, it was my first time experiencing this kind of thing, and I got to try the Tactsuit X40, the Tactosy for Arms, and the TactGlove, which is not publicly available yet. These haptics devices vibrate on different parts of your body to correspond to events in a game. In short, this was the most enthralled I've been by a VR experience, and I didn't even try it out with a proper game. The demo software was enjoyable because the tech itself is so cool, and it might finally convince me that VR can be fun.

Getting to know the vest

Before I jumped into a complete demo, I tried the Tactsuit X40 at one of the stands and played around with the software to manually test the different effects. The Tactsuit X40 is a vest with a whopping 40 vibration motors: 20 on the front and 20 on the back. This demo allowed me to activate any of the motors individually, combine them, or even draw a pattern to move the vibration around, and it was super impressive feeling all of it move so accurately throughout my torso.

I was also able to try out some special effects, such as simulating being punched or using a healing item in a game. It even allowed me to play music and automatically translate the audio to vibrations on the vest. I could then use an equalizer to adjust the volume of different bands and, in turn, customize the haptics experience. It was all really cool, and I hadn't even jumped into the full demo yet.

Making VR more immersive than ever

Afterward, I went into a room to try a proper VR experience using these haptic motors. I got to try out the Tactosy for Arms, a pair of arm bands with a couple of motors each, as well as the TactGloves, which are currently only available as a dev kit and have six motors (one for each finger and one for the wrist). There was also a special visor for the Meta Quest 3 that vibrates on your head, making it even more immersive. Most of the demo had me holding some kind of gun in a virtual scenario, and I could feel vibrations in my hands when pulling the trigger.

There was also a demo where I shot at an avatar that was a duplicate of myself, so I could really feel where I was being hit by different kinds of weapons. A typical shot would have a small area of effect from the collision point, but there was also a shock gun that sent smaller vibrations around my torso when I got hit. It was also cool that I could put my arm in front of my torso, and it would take the hit, so the vibration would be on my arm instead. I can imagine a game implementing this feature to its full extent would feel incredibly immersive.

Most surprisingly of all is that the whole setup is very clean since it all works wirelessly over Bluetooth. But I appreciate the TactGlove most of all, especially because I saw a couple of other VR gloves at the show and they all had a bunch of cables that made them look like prototypes. This solution was really elegant and worked very well.

Aside from the TactGlove, which should be launching later this year, everything I tried at CES 2024 is already available to buy, and there's a big ecosystem of games that already support these devices. Currently, only gaming PCs with SteamVR or the Meta Quest and Rift are supported, but bHaptics tells me it's planning to add support for PlayStation VR games soon.

If you want to make the most out of your VR experience, I'd say this is something worth looking into. I've never been a huge fan of VR, but having this haptic vest really made the experience a lot more fun, and I could see myself engaging in VR a lot more if it included all of this.