October 07, 2024
We've already built them. The tech isn't actually that complicated. The problem is the user experience sucks. So much so that no one's willing to risk bringing one to market.
The biggest issue with the concept is the compromises you need to make in order to build something rugged enough for regular use.
Someone wearing a haptic suit is likely going to be moving around a lot and probably sweating a fair bit in the process. Both are very bad for conventional electronics, which means they need a waterproof protective layer to separate them from the wearer and serve as strain relief. This does save the electronics, but at the expense of user comfort.
The waterproofing means the suit can't really breathe, so you tend to overheat a lot more easily, and when you do you end up bathed in your own sweat. And the added thickness significantly reduces your mobility, making it very hard for you to feel fully immersed.
There have been attempts made to get around this using methods that don't require as much electronics, such as filling the suit with inflatable air bladders, but for these kinds of approaches to really work the suit needs to be fairly precisely tailored to the user.
That's simply not economically feasible for such a niche product, and in truth, it's not significantly more comfortable to wear either. And even if we could get around this, there is still the question of how much resolution you can expect to get.
As a result, companies have largely abandoned the idea of a full-body suit and shifted focus to more limited and modular solutions like haptic vests, gloves, and other wearables. These offer a bare minimum of feedback (though, truth be told, not that much less than the full suits) but virtually none of the issues of mobility, ventilation, or sizing that serve to prevent mass production. And, as anyone who has followed the market can tell you, they are still a niche within a niche rather than a must-have VR accessory.
The conclusion this points us to is that people like the idea of full-body haptics, but not enough to actually spend money on anything that falls short of the perfect solution they have imagined. And this is an extremely bad sign for the market as a whole. If people aren't buying the best we can do right now there isn't much money available to reinvest into improvements. And there aren't a ton of outside investors looking to pour money into a product that isn't selling. This leads me to the conclusion that we cannot expect to see mass-produced full-body haptics suits any time soon.
