Philips has announced a collection of hardware that works together to enhance the PC gaming experience.
This gear will “blow gamers away: literally,” Philips’ big wig, Stewart Muller, told Games Industry.
“What you have is a wall-washer, which displays 16 million colours behind the computer screen. You have two desk fans which blow at different intensity levels depending on what’s happening in the game. You have two satellite speakers with integrated lights.”
He also added there is a wrist-rumbler and subwoofer but these weren’t demonstrated.
The technology is called Ambient Experience, whose rather hip self would prefer to be called amBX. It seems that everyone is getting on the web 2.0 name bandwagon.
It’s a system which aims to deliver more sensory experiences to games and, in fact, other forms of entertainment.
According to Philips, the amBX hardware works “in harmony with the game to deliver a new sensory experience.”
These brand-new experiences include audio, surround lighting, vibration, and airflow.
It takes what’s pretty much a ‘virtual’ activity, games, DVDs, music and turns it into a far more tangible, immersive experience.
To find out more about this technology, visit the official amBX website.
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Perhaps it would be different if I experienced it myself, but this kind of thing just seems so totally pointless to me, especially that ambient light thing. Again, in real life it may have a point, but in advertisements it just seems to run the gamut from “distracting” to “disgusting” (note the vomit-like color and the emergency pylons in the picture above).
The fans also seem like they would not only be pointless, but also hard to synchronize with every game (either the programmers would have to program their own games to cooperate with it, which seems unlikely to happen on a universal level, or Philips has to make their own software to extrapolate the proper fan speeds somehow; I’m not much of a programmer, I’ll admit, but that seems even more impossible than getting everyone to program fan instructions into their games).
As for a subwoofer, well, I already have one. And the wrist-rumbler? I’d rather not have my hand shaken during a tense level of Tyrian 2k, thank you…
I wonder whether this will have a longer shelf life than “smell-o-vision?”
@FBachofner: It might last longer then smell-vision but with the ever changing world of gaming, who knows.
I still use my original 8-bit Nintendo and my MAME machines, so a system like this is of no real use to me.
If I want to smell something nice, I go outside