The Buddy System on Steroids. Or should I say, C-S-O? It's a little hard to believe that they're still in the infancy of C-S-O, that they've only sold a thousand units. Of course, it took Microsoft 14 years to go from its first mouse to the Xbox 360. But a small business can develop the technology needed for an industry giant. It takes ingenuity, perseverance, and a little luck. Of course, the technology has its drawbacks. Its high sensitivity—you can almost feel the molecules move when you bump the box—is only one drawback. The other is that, in a game like Quake or Unreal, your brain must contend with a much faster refresh rate. The latency is so great that you almost always feel you're chasing the ball after it bounces. This isn't good, unless you're already so into the action you feel like you're in there. Then it's great. But it's also a problem for those of us who like to look at the game, or pause for a second to think before we jump in. The first question you ask in any new technology is, how does it affect a game? In this case, though, how do you change one? The best answer is that it can't. A video game that incorporates C-S-O is not a video game. It is a game engine. It renders, it displays on your screen. But a game is an experience—a combination of the sensory inputs and the player's anticipation of what will happen. You can't remove any of those components. All you can do is render the most realistic possible virtual experience. But realism and reality are not the same. In terms of input, that is. It's easy to know when a ball bounces and when you feel a bump and when you see a new scene on screen. But what makes this technology unique is that it creates the closest approximation to real physical interactions—the tactile feel of a rock, or the sensation of a water droplet on your skin. You will want to see the game when you're playing. If you're playing Quake, you will look at the monitor to see if it's raining and if there's water dripping onto your head. But the truth is, the game—or games, plural—and the video display are what makes the experience. The game engine and the human nervous system simply present you with inputs and reactions—feelings. The game is in your head. It's very important to know what your enemies and what your teammates are doing; not how they look or where they are on the screen, but what they can do to you. That is, what they have done, or might do. That is what creates the excitement of the game. Not what they look like or where they are, but how they move and what they do. Of course, the way you see these things—the resolution, the framerate—is just as important. But your brain's processing is going to be affected by the resolution, frame rate, latency, and field of view. More on that in a bit. One way the technology will have to change games is the way in which players will interact with the game. The interactivity in a game is made possible through the visual and auditory feedback. The faster you can receive it, the more responsive and real your interaction with the game becomes. The less latency there is between the input and the response to that input, the more direct your reaction will feel. When you feel the game, you want to know exactly where it is. You want to feel like you're there with it. In terms of input, C-S-O has to deal with other issues. First of all, there is the latency. Your fingers have to travel to the mouse and stop. As you move your fingers, the cursor on the screen moves in a parallel fashion. This means that your cursor moves on your screen as fast as the ball in the ball game. That doesn't sound so bad. But consider this: when you're trying to move the cursor, you don't see the cursor move. The only way around this is to know exactly how many milliseconds you've moved the mouse before the cursor moves. If you're too fast, and you have been for some time, you will notice that your cursor seems to be moving one step in front of the ball. That's because the mouse moves the cursor at a faster rate than what's expected. So, what is expected? The latency is determined by the physics of the device—the mouse is not a precision machine—and then, a little bit, by the display system—how much time it takes for it to update its image. Now it gets tricky. Because, if the latency goes too high, a lot of information gets lost. If the latency between the movement of the mouse and its perception by your brain goes beyond a few milliseconds, you won't be able to feel the exact point where you touch the mouse. The first time you try to move the mouse to the bottom right of the screen, you'll get distracted by a visual glitch that's caused by your brain not getting the message that it needs to move. Your eyes are tracking it, but they didn't get the message, and instead of going to the bottom right of your screen, your cursor goes to the left. That happened to me! Your brain will tell your hand to go, and it will go one pixel away. This is actually not too bad, because you can recover from that. In general, if it happens often enough and consistently, you will adapt. But what you're really looking for is some amount of delay in between the actual movement and the reaction of the cursor. But let's look at some of the technical requirements. A user wants the cursor to move at a rate that is as close to the real movement of a cursor as possible. But the latency has to remain consistent from the time you move your finger and release the mouse until the time the cursor actually moves. The closer to real time, the better, but there is a threshold. On the low end of latency, there's no lag at all. It's called "low-latency," and it's a real plus. At a low-latency, the cursor moves in perfect synchronization with your finger movement. This gives you great precision, but is hard to implement. If you want high precision and low latency, you need a very quick mouse, probably one that can track at over 100 inches per second—the human eye can do between 1,000 and 1,500 dots per inch. But there's a problem. Most people, when moving their mouse at a reasonable rate of speed, move from one side of the screen to the other in 3 to 5 seconds. That's not bad at all, if you think of a fast game such as Quake. Now if you increase your framerate, which means a high-definition output, this latency can jump to a few milliseconds, which is very bad. The closer you get to being able to use the mouse as a keyboard, the more severe it gets. There are no shortcuts here. One way to eliminate the low-latency requirement is to have an invisible cursor. You could use a laser pointer, for example, which can give you a very precise sense of position. Unfortunately, that is also extremely jerky and imprecise. It will give you an accurate sense of where you are, but not how you're getting there. It will take some getting used to. The cursor will disappear after it's moved far enough from its last position, just like it does on most computer games. But you'll have to be able to react to where you want to click the mouse. But when you begin using your game, you'll get very frustrated. One of the problems of C-S-O and virtual reality is that it feels like watching television, except it's the future. But unlike television, it isn't live. It's like watching a playback of a live TV show that is recorded for some future audience. So, you think you can respond to what you're seeing. But you can't. And that's why some people feel intimidated by interactive game experiences. Of course, you don't know how good a game is until you play it. If it is well made, it will feel good. But if not, the latency will become a terrible problem and the game will seem even more impenetrable. And for some reason, this latency is not as visible or offensive in the arcades and the theaters as it is in the home. The reason is that we've spent hours watching the game; we've become accustomed to it. But when you're trying it at home, if it doesn't work, your first reaction is to think it's broken. Or maybe it's your system. The other problem you encounter when you play a game that uses C-S-O is motion sickness. This happens to some people who suffer from chronic motion sickness or simply the feeling that a game might make them sick. Sometimes the fear that you're going to get sick causes motion sickness. And maybe you will. For those of you who suffer from motion sickness, C-S-O may not be good for you. The reason for this is that the eye movements that play a role in motion sickness have nothing to do with the actual direction of movement of a person's head or body, but rather the rate of movement of the image on the screen. The faster the eye movements, the more