gamers have always looked for ways to be more immersed in their games vibration
inducing body suits omnidirectional treadmills headphones with pinpoint
location accurate sounds these gadgets promise to take us deeper into the
worlds we love but there has never been
something quite like the vortex 4d environmental simulator
wow i mean look at this it's actually blowing air at him like in
the game so how is it riley are you immersed
my eyes are kind of dry
okay yeah let's talk about that
so this curious device comes to us courtesy of a company called whirlwind
fx and it's called the vortex it's supposed to increase game or video
immersion by blowing air at your face which
may not be quite as stupid as it sounds
so to differentiate their product from just
a usb powered desk fan the airstream
actually changes in intensity and even
in temperature depending on the audio and video playing on your pc with the
basic idea being that if you see like a
snowy scene you'll feel blustery gusts of wind and if there's a fiery explosion
you'll feel a hot blast so uh riley
how'd that work well so there's an intake fan at the back air is deflected
with a plate to either pass through a heating element inside or to avoid it
before exiting through this beautiful front nozzle now the vortex has a
desktop app that uses what whirlwind effect calls the ex algorithm to monitor
and analyze the audio waveform which informs the intensity of the wind blast
the video meanwhile informs how hot or cold the air will be
the orange and red in fire and explosions translate to heat while
bluish colors translate to cold i mean
that's really cool but you didn't actually tell me does it work um i mean
sort of you uh you should probably try for
yourself to be honest okay yeah get in here all right i'm
ready to get immersed oh yeah get em well okay so this is just kinda smells
like electronicsy or rubbery yeah i thought that would go away
or it smells like really it smells like one of those cheap heaters you know so
this is not a great first impression
all right i'm gonna i'm opening up my mind okay i'm closing these earphones
and opening up my mind so so this is their demo video this is the demo video
and it works like as soon as you make something full screen then the ex
algorithm will start like okay now it's analyzing okay so this is best case
scenario this is best case scenario according to the makers of the vortex
i've got to give credit where credit is due yeah it does feel more like i am
outside right right and so watch this part watch this part
that slows down when it slows down in slow motion and it gets going again
oh oh wipeout sort of there is definitely
a legitimate difference in in feeling yeah
this should be
blasting past your head yeah hugely like
a kind of uh and it's just kind of a gentle breeze i mean
a gentle breeze is better than nothing that's true
very true in much the same way that you know force feedback through a controller
was considered revolutionary for gaming even though obviously you know
a slap shot feels different from right in your hands
it's like it's blowing only at one side of my face though
yeah that's yeah part of the problem
okay okay so clearly the solution is two
of them i'm my eyes are drying out though
and i've only been here for like three minutes yeah how does batman fight
superman that's stupid okay batman has and he's dead now he's human
yeah again it's not really picking up on the correct intensity because it just
kind of relies on the movement of the screen itself
and it's just kind of going yeah you're outside there's probably a breeze
do we here can i can i try an actual game yeah okay so i'm getting air blown
at me getting some warm air blown at me yeah
lots of warmness yep i'm running along there's some air
blowing at me okay i'm standing next to fire standing in the face standing
don't kill yourself getting a little hotter do you feel like you're actually
fighting demons on a hell-infested mars the smell is kind of
distracting i mean it kind of smells like burning
i don't feel like there's a strong connection
between the air bursts right the action
on the screen and that can almost make it feel like you you're reminded that
you're not in the game world you're sitting at a desk
pretending to be the doom guy you're not actually the doom guy you
know what do you know what's in my mouth i am the doom guy okay hey that's fine man
you live your life so is this the part where you make fun of my rocket league skills no
ah there was some wind
wow see that's kind of interesting when when the the explosion when you get to a
goal it's like it blew a thing at me watch this watch it a little bit
yeah love the vortex embrace the vortex
now it's time to really enter the matrix
immerse yourself that that matrix reference is so
so now and edgy well what are you ready player ready player one i was just gonna
ah i've actually never played this game before um yeah throw it yeah um grab
that that grab that
you gotta go slower man go slower why would i go slower cause time moves as
fast as you do so i could just
there you go
i can't believe i've never played this game i know it's awesome
the doodad is not contributing in any meaningful way whatsoever
maybe part of it is that i'm standing further than you were yeah it's not it
might be but also you said you felt it it's not super or hot and this is this
is consistent with what so in response to my own question does
the vortex increase immersion
well it does something does something um the first
time you watch a video or play a game there's you're gonna have a
whoa cool moment or like maybe a whoa
warm breeze moment um and it's at its
best when there's a sudden change in scenery that's accompanied by a blast of
air and there are more than one
moments when it actually works pretty well but the issue is that we found that
while actually gaming like not just watching the vortex demo reel 2018
whirlwinds detection engine just isn't smart enough to tell the
difference between stepping out of a cave into the icy air
and flipping on a light switch so it mostly
translates into bursts of air being sent at your head every time you
move your view from side to side which
makes a little bit of sense there's like a little bit of wind on my face when i move my hair the issue is that for every
time the wind syncs up with what's happening on screen there are three to
17 instances where it doesn't like an event will occur where you would expect
to have a corresponding blast of warm or cold air and it's not there and then
other times you'll feel air on your face when you shouldn't like when you're
driving a car flying an aircraft also i should hope
that you don't feel air on your face when you're in a starfighter because
then something is definitely wrong because you're in space
yeah so yeah for the most part it just feels like gaming with a fan on like an
oscillating fan that's blowing at you from one side which can actually cause a
bit of cognitive dissonance
when the explosion is happening over on the other side since the vortex
is supposed to make gaming more immersive i guess one thing we haven't
addressed yet is motion sickness so the feeling of motion sickness is apparently
caused by a mismatch between what a player is experiencing in game and in
real life so edzel one of our editors here gets motion sickness from using vr
normally so we had him playing a racing game with the vortex and his verdict
it might be a little better and then for comparison's sake we had him play the
game again with a regular fan blowing at him and he said that that was just as
good bummer looks like they probably could have saved themselves some r d
now for the sake of science since the vortex apparently uses colors to inform
the wind temperature to a certain degree we wondered whether we could game the
system by displaying full screen solid colors so what we did what is just
bring up a full screen
you know light blue solid color but switching between light blue and orange
didn't consistently change the temperature instead like before
we simply got a burst of air whenever the screen changed
so air temperature does change between hot and cold when an actual scene is
displayed so there does seem to be some aspect of the algorithm that informs
that change other than just color so maybe that's whirlwind fx's
actual end game to use the vortex as a
development tool to continue to refine their sensing technology something that
does have potential like um i've done this bird simulator thing in vr where
the changing fan blowing in front of you really affects the way that you perceive
your rate of movement through the air but it should be noted that that's with
a custom built experience like there's a whole rig that you strap yourself into
with a game that's specifically built for it and it's unlikely that we're
gonna see that kind of integration with mainstream games any time soon so should
you get this for me i'm gonna say no
not unless you've got 120 bucks burning a hole in your pocket and you just
desperately need some kind of air ejection device to put it out
riley do you have any closing thoughts no sorry i can't talk i'm too immersed
right now i'm very immersed so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this
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computer like a big one gotta fix this bug asap
hi hey