Hardlight VR, the haptic vest designed to offer more immersive experiences, will cease to exist due to lack of funds.
Lucian Copeland, director of R & amp; D at Nullspace VR, announced the closure through an article on the Kickstarter blog last week, stating that the company had run out of money after not having raised more funds. Hardlight had initially raised $ 147,574 in the crowdfunding campaign in early 2017.
As Copeland explained in the blog, all this money was spent during the prototype and assembly phases of the product. In fact, the company even had to spend another $ 60,000 raised from other funds and money from friends and family to help cover the costs. The company also cited a software issue beyond its control, for the wireless version of the device, which has prevented it from producing any physical version of the device.
“We are disappointed that we cannot do more to make haptics a reality in VR, but we are grateful for the support we have received from those who shared our dream,” Copeland said.
Hardlight included a vest with 16 haptic pads covering the wearer’s chest, arms, shoulders, upper back and abdomen. In action-oriented VR games, the suit would replicate impacts in areas where the user is hit by, for example, bullets or arrows, although it could also handle more subtle interactions, such as the feeling of rain hitting their body. Not only that, but the integrated tracking systems allowed users to enter their entire body into the VR as a virtual avatar. Earlier this year, Nullspace even announced that Half-Life 2 VR would support the suit.
“While we still love the idea of haptics in VR, it’s clear that the VR industry is moving much more slowly than we expected, and we haven’t been able to make our product or our company sustainable,” Copeland concluded. “Thank you all for your help in making Hardlight a reality , albeit for a short time. I’m sorry, we couldn’t achieve a more successful closure for this project.”
