A newly spotted PlayStation patent describes adding an elastic material to controllers to help simulate in-game temperatures.
The haptic feedback feature of the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller made a strong impression thanks to the Astro’s Playroom demo, simulating sensations from the game for a more immersive experience.
However, it’s one of those features that’s neat in practice but woefully underused, with most PlayStation 5 games rarely bothering to use it properly.
Sony is at least interested in doing more with it, as it has filed a patent that talks about DualSense controllers emulating temperature, essentially making it hotter or colder depending on what’s happening in-game.
Usually, gaming hardware getting hotter would make players nervous. If you’ve not experienced it yourself, you’ve likely heard horror stories of peoples’ consoles breaking down due to overheating.
Fortunately, Sony is very aware that making a controller randomly hotter would risk damaging it. That’s why the patent mentions replacing the current plastic (at least partially) with a more elastic, gel-like material.
This material would improve haptic feedback in general, since it’s more malleable. Using an electric signal, it’d be able to detect how much the material has been deformed by a player’s touch, which in turn could be used to affect the temperature further.
‘The temperature control apparatus may be controlled such that the larger the amount of deformation, the higher the temperature becomes,’ reads the patent. ‘This allows the user to feel the temperature change corresponding to deformation.’
Sony does acknowledge that a controller partially made out of elastic has potential drawbacks. If it’s malleable, then any deformations could become permanent and it’d be difficult to return to its original shape and position, which could potentially render it useless.
It suggests making the elastic parts elliptical so it ‘becomes easy to recognise the up and down directions of the controller,’ displaying them around the controller’s handles.
Sony applied for the patent back in March 2020 and it was published a week ago on March 30. Although as with any patent there’s no guarantee they’ll use it.
It’s a novel idea but it could prove more trouble than it’s worth, since Sony would have to convince people to buy a whole new controller and convince developers to incorporate new features into their games to justify its existence.
Also who wants their hands to be cold the whole time if you’re playing a game set in an icy environment?
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