Haptic feedback has been more and more important of a feature being added to controllers these days. With the Nintendo Switch and JoyCons, we saw some very realistic haptics that made it feel like you were really there. With the new DualSense controller that will be used with the Playstation 5, we will also see some amazing haptic features. Mike Bithel, developer of “Thomas Was Alone”, said that DualSense haptics will even let you feel the weather in a game.
Haptic feedback is very important in video games as it allows the player to feel more immersed, such as the controller rumbling when the ground begins to shake, or in the case of the DualShock 4 controller having a speaker where audio can be played through. Some things besides haptics, like the lights that show if you're being chased by police, all bring you closer and more immersed into the world you're gaming in.
With Unreal Engine 5's presentation last week, the engine, and many other pieces of video game technology in the future, will have the process of foley entirely changed. Foley being the process where sounds are recorded to be put in appropriate spots. Unreal Engine 5, for instance, would only need the sound sample of a single raindrop, after that, each raindrop would become its own event, with the game scaling up the raindrops and the sound of rain accordingly. These are things we will likely see within the new DualSense Haptics.
Although we haven’t seen had any information in regards to the games that Playstation will be showing us on the PS5, there is lots of speculation and sneak peeks being given about the sort of technology we’ll be seeing when Playstation does decide to show us things. We don’t know exactly how the DualSense haptics will work, we can only hope they live up to expectations.
