CeBIT 2008 Day 2 - OCZ's Mind Controllable Mouse, ASUS' HDMI Sound Card, Intel and more
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 5, 2008 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
OCZ's "Brain Mouse" Officially Launched
For as long as I can remember, OCZ has been showing off its "brain mouse", now much more professionally titled the Neural Impulse Actuator (NIA). The NIA can measure brain waves and respond to triggers from muscles in your face, translating them into mouse movements and button presses. The end result is a device that lets you play first person shooters with minimal use of your hands.
The NIA demoed at CeBIT is as close to final as it's going to get and we had a try at it.
First off, the air in Hall 21 is particularly dry so you need to lotion up a bit:
Manny lotions up his forehead
Next, you simply place the NIA around your head and tighten the lanyard:
Manny dons the NIA
OCZ rep Dr. Michael Schutte just threw us into a game of Unreal Tournament 3 without any additional training or configuration, he just told us to play and within seconds we were at least moving around and shooting.
Manny is arguably just as good at UT3 with the NIA as he is without it
Initially it's tough to get a hang of exactly what you need to do to control your character. You still use a mouse to look around, but all movement including shooting and jumping is controlled using your head. I found that blinking tended to make me move forward, while raising my eyebrows would make me jump and shoot.
Watching Dr. Schutte use the NIA was a far more seamless experience:
The more novice you are the more you have to use exaggerated facial expressions to get the NIA to react, but Dr. Schutte manages to play UT3 with a stoic look on his face. We only spent a few minutes with the NIA but it performed far better than expected.
Dr. Schutte frags with his mind
This is how Manny fires
OCZ lists the MSRP as $199 and the NIA does admittedly work far better than expected, although it may be a tough sell for those who are too used to a keyboard and mouse.
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AmberClad - Thursday, March 6, 2008 - link
Thermaltake Armor IVThermaltake Xaser IV
DigitalFreak - Thursday, March 6, 2008 - link
Thanks for the info. Gotta say those cases are F'GLY though.DigitalFreak - Thursday, March 6, 2008 - link
Found this one too, but it's VERY expensive -DigitalFreak - Thursday, March 6, 2008 - link
Dammit - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...cjsketchy - Wednesday, March 5, 2008 - link
Pandas everywhere are cursing this latest 'innovation' from Asus... what a waste of effort. Never understood why anyone would want to enclose a computer in such a poor conductor of heat.7Enigma - Friday, March 7, 2008 - link
Uh, and plastic is so much better?rudy - Wednesday, March 5, 2008 - link
I am interested in the NIA. But my main question is what else can you do with it. To reduce CTS it would be great if you could just type with it. I have never been happy with voice recognition so far and it doesnt work well in an office with other people. But if these products could be made with enough input recognition to at least get the letters numbers and punctuation of the keyboard I would buy it in a hearbeat. Imagine taking notes in class without bothering people with the keys and writing documents and emails quickly and silently.augmentedreality - Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - link
I just picked an OCZ NIA up.. I know this is an old thread.. I haven't spent hours training it yet but I am anticipating some interesting hacks out soon and maybe some firmware hacks since this is a pretty cheap item now. Anyway, I will review further on my own site as I play with it, you can catch that at http://automatedhome.ca">http://automatedhome.ca and soon at augmenting-reality.com where I intend to try out all these devices to put together a good William Gibson style portable computer complete with Vusix 920AV glasses and some Nvidia or android or Iphone device at the center.. anyway, more to come son on what I can get this toy to do..;)Craig - http://automatedhome - http://augmenting-reality.com
DigitalFreak - Wednesday, March 5, 2008 - link
Could you please find out if the Asus Xonar HDAV card will output TrueHD and DTS MA bitstream, or only LPCM?strafejumper - Wednesday, March 5, 2008 - link
coool a device that can sense when i move my eyebrows