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Myo wristbands let you use your hands with the Oculus Rift

Myo Thalmic Labs

The Oculus Rift VR headset does a fine job of putting your head into a game’s world, letting you look around freely as though you weren’t sat in front of a computer. It does it so well in fact that it’s held back by other computer devices. When you think you’re in a game, using a keyboard and mouse is disappointing. It doesn’t match up to the experience.

The Myo wrist band’s been developed to counter that.

The armbands sit high up on your wrists and translate their position in real life into the game world. The bands also monitor which muscles are tensed and, from that, determine what your hands and fingers are up to.

Combining those bits of information produces this:

The technology’s not yet finished but developer kits are available for purchase. The video’s impressive, and certainly is a stab at fixing the problem of virtual reality interaction, but it doesn’t look like the Myo can pick up fine motor controls. There’s a great difference between detecting opening and closing your whole hand and playing a piano, for instance.

That criticism aside, this style of controller is a lot less intrusive than wearing wired gloves, or other skin-covering clothing, and, if it can be made more sensitive in time, it could well be the thing we’ll be using when the Oculus Rift is finally released.