Jacket to Add "Feeling" to Movies

I've written before about gaming helmets and vests that let you feel game impacts. But why limit it to games? How would you like to feel the impact of an on-screen explosion? This week Philips presented research called "A Body–conforming Tactile Jacket to Enrich Movie Viewing" at the IEEE-sponsored 2009 World Haptics Conference 2009, in Salt Lake City.

The jacket contains 64 independently controlled actuators arrayed in 16 groups of four and distributed across the arms and torso. The arrays are linked along a serial bus with each group if four sharing a microprocessor.

But the actual purpose for the jacket, according to the researchers, isn't so you can feel the pain when say, Wolverine gets slammed by Sabretooth, but rather, to investigate emotional immersion.

No, they want you to feel fear, anxiety, and other emotions during the movie. The jacket is capable of "causing a shiver to go up the viewer’s spine and creating the feeling of tension in the limbs." It can even simulate an elevated heartbeat.

Wait, but can't a good movie do that? I remember the first time I saw Aliens, I was on the edge of my seat, with my heart racing through several of the scenes. Don't tell me: this means even lame movies will be able to get my heart racing.

At any rate, there is an obvious use for this technology, that might require actuators in say, the nether regions of your clothing. The AVN, at least, might look favorably on this. When asked about possibly creating pants with the same features, Paul Lemmens, a Philips senior scientist said:

... no, but that the possible applications of this technology are limitless and that the emotion-inducing actuators could go anywhere.

Movie Releases Direct to DVD and BitTorrent Simultaneously

Don't consider this movie to be the quality of say "Titanic," but it does have an interesting twist. In addition to being direct-to-DVD, it's also direct-to-BitTorrent. The movie, Blank, written, produced, and directed by Rick L. Winters, released Saturday via DVD, streaming, and P2P.

According to the movie's site:

The concept behind the torrent sites is that people will watch the movie and if they like the film that they will go to a designated website or the official myspace website and donate or pay what they thought the film was worth to them.

At least on the movie's website (I didn't check MySpace), payments go through PayPal.

The DVD costs $14.99. The movie is described as follows:

Johnny (DAngelo Midili) is a young boy witnesses the violent death of his parents and older sister. Twenty years later he finds himself involved with organized crime with his adoptive father a small local crime boss. While watching a poker game with men who work for his adoptive father he overhears who murdered his family and the wheels start turning in his mind set on revenge. Over the next twenty hours he plans his revenge making it up as he goes through his day. He picks up his adoptive father from prison, solicits assistance from his stoner friend. On his journey he becomes unwittingly involved with a pair of serial killers JACK (Jason Adkins) and JILL (Darlene Sellers). Throughout his day he meets an array of characters living separate lives until their paths cross in a bizarre and shocking end.

It's nice to see a company embracing, rather than vilifying, P2P and BitTorrent. Winter was offered some distribution deals, but he turned them all down. He told TorrentFreak that when his first film was released, cast and crew didn't understand why the distribution company made all the money:

"I have seen firsthand the greed that lurks in the Hollywood corporate circles. This time around the fate of the cast and crew getting paid is in the hands of the audience who watch the film. No Hollywood bank accounts being filled to turn out more crappy remakes. The future of film is in the home market, through peer to peer distribution."

The Pirate Bay has the torrent here. Watch the trailer: