AWE misc hands-ons: Surreal Controllers, Scentient, Senmag Robotics, and more!

At AWE Europe in Vienna, I have been able to go hands-on with some very interesting XR solutions. I’ve already written for you my impressions on XPANCEO contact lenses, Snap Spectacles glasses, MeganeX Superlight 8K headset, and Gracia volumetric videos. But there have been a few other cool things I’ve tried, and since I can not write an article for all of them, I want to summarize some other highlights from the event in this comprehensive article.

Surreal Controllers

Surreal Interactive announced a few months ago the Surreal Touch, the first (3d-party) controllers for Apple Vision Pro. The controllers are meant to be used mostly to let you play SteamVR games on a Vision Pro wirelessly connected to your PC (e.g. via ALVR), but the company also plans to release an SDK for interested developers who want to release a native title for Apple Vision Pro that should work using controllers. These controllers got some interest from the community when they were announced, so I was pretty happy to see I could go hands-on with them at AWE Europe.

When I took them in my hands, I noticed that the build quality seemed not bad at all. The design was also pretty ok. As for the comfort, it was ok, but it could have been better: I had the sensation the controllers were slightly too big and this made them fit not perfectly the shape of my hands.

It was interesting to learn that the whole tracking of the controllers is inside-out with cameras installed inside the controllers. Since the Vision Pro has no support for controllers, they are on their own for what concerns tracking and so they have to track themselves via onboard cameras. They are a bit like the controllers of the Quest Pro and this explains why the price on Kickstarter was around $370 for a pair of controllers. There is quite a bit of technology there.

I would like to tell you how the tracking quality was, but the Wi-Fi quality in the AWE venue was not good enough to guarantee proper PCVR streaming with low tracking latency. In the demo I had on the show floor, I could only use the controllers to point and click at 2D interfaces. Then I sneaked into a relax room because I’d been told the Surreal guy was trying to do demos there because the Wi-Fi was better and I was finally able to try Beat Saber on the Apple Vision Pro streamed from a PC. But even here the streaming quality was not good, so there was lag, stuttering, etc… so I could not evaluate the performances of the controllers. The only thing I can say is that the tracking worked, meaning that the controllers were able to follow my hands regarding position and rotation and I could play a bit of Beat Saber. This proves that the product is real and is not a scam. But I can’t tell you anything in detail about the tracking quality because the conditions were not ideal to make a reliable benchmark.

If you want to get to know more about the Surreal Touch, you can head to the Surreal Interactive website.

Scentient

Scentient is a device that you put around your neck and that connects via Bluetooth to your headset to make you feel the scents of the XR experience that you are playing. They made me try a demo with a Quest headset connected to the device. The demo was a modified Unity XR Interaction Toolkit sample, because the device has already an SDK for Unity (while the Unreal one is still in the works).

The demo was clearly a tech demo because it involved grabbing cubes, clicking on spheres, etc… and feeling some smells associated with them. This was good, but I would suggest the team to have also a more immersive demo where for instance the smell of an apple is associated with a 3D model of an apple, because as Grigorea Burdea taught me recently, the brain also uses the information from the eyes to make us feel the smells.

Anyway, I’ve been told the device supports 4 cartridges of different scents you can put inside and the demo made me feel these perfumes: I clearly remember that there were for instance one about chocolate, another one about burned wood. The scent emission was pretty fast: when I grabbed the cube associated with chocolate, I was able to perceive the chocolate quite immediately. As for the quality of the scents, I would say the four ones that were showcased at AWE were good as well: I could clearly guess what they were without the team telling me. I mean, the chocolate smelled like chocolate. Of course, like with the other similar products, the scent didn’t feel completely natural and my brain could somehow perceive that they were “chemically recreated”.

But the biggest problem of this solution, and that I experienced with almost all the other scent simulation products, is scent saturation. When you start emitting too many scents too fast around you, the air around you gets filled with scent particles of various types, and so it is hard to feel a new perfume unless you really spray a lot around you. Plus with all the air filled with scent particles, the nose starts getting “tired” of perceiving so many sensations and you start wanting to take a break. Not to mention the fact that after the demo, my suit still smelled a bit like the experience I had tried!

This is one of the main reasons for which I think that scent simulation is not ready for consumer adoption yet. But it could be used in other dedicated settings: for instance, Scentient is marketing this product for training and simulation. Training firefighters using the smell of burned wood or plastic can for sure improve the efficacy of the training experience, for instance.

Scentient should be available at the beginning of next year (hopefully January) for around 750£ (pounds, not dollars). If you want to have more info about it, you can head to the company website.

Senmag Robotics

My demo with Senmag Robotics has been one of my favorites at AWE. Senmag was showcasing a force feedback device shaped like a pen, a type of device I was already told about when I was at university many years ago, but I had never had the opportunity to try before. Basically, imagine a 3D pen, but connected to a little robotic arm with various joints that can give you the sensation of force feedback. This can be useful especially for training tasks where you need to use a tool in your hand, like for instance surgery.

My initial sensations with the device were not fantastic: the 3D pen did not have great ergonomics and was especially uncomfortable for my pinky finger. The team at Senmag said they have solutions for different hands, but they were not available at AWE. I started to move the pen a bit, and I could feel that the pen was not freely moving exactly as I wanted, but it was like the robotic arms and its joints, even if they were not applying any resistance, they were somehow altering my movements a bit.

Then I was given a headset and a demo application, which seemed to me made in Unity, started. At first, I was taught how to use the pen, and the controls on it: two buttons (one to “click” and the other to open the menu), and a little wheel. Then the demo to showcase the force feedback started and then was the moment when I got to love this device. I lifted a little virtual ball grabbing it with my 3D pen and then I moved it onto a table. In that moment, I noticed that there was no way for me to make the ball go beyond the table. The force feedback applied by the device was strong, so I really had the sensation of hitting a hard surface. Another cool demo was about lifting balls of different weights: I could feel the pen being dragged down by the robotic arm with different strengths depending on the weight of the balls, with the last one being so heavy I had difficulties in raising it.

I was amazed because it was the first time I could feel believable force feedback in XR. I tried many gloves offering force feedback, but as much as they try, the sensation they offer is not very good, yet. In this case, thanks to the fact that the little robotic arm is attached to an external surface (the desk), it can apply quite a big force, and also be reactive, so the sensation of having a force applied to the tip of my fingers was real. I was sincerely amazed by it.

Of course, a pen has more limited use cases than haptic gloves, but for the niches where this device can be applied (e.g. surgery training), I think it’s great. You can learn more about it at Senmag Robotics’s website.

Magos gloves

After my speech, I had a quick run on the Magos gloves, which are haptic gloves that look like an exoskeleton for the hand and that can give you finger tracking and haptic feedback. The test I had was very short and not even in VR, so I can just tell you that they seem interesting and nothing more.

I leave you the website link in case you want to investigate them more: https://www.themagos.com/

Trip The Light

I had a quick run with Dark Arts Software’s upcoming game Trip The Light. I just entered AWE when my friend Patrick Ascolese stopped me and asked me to try its product. I asked him what I had to do and he told me to just put on the headset and dance.

The experience put me in a virtual room with a beautiful virtual woman and I had just to dance with her, with no rules at all. I could dance alone, or I could take her hands and dance with her, also making her spin. It was a fun way to start my day at AWE, just having fun letting my body follow the music, and also making some stupid moves like twerking. I guess that if Dark Arts doesn’t make enough money selling this game, it can still increase its revenues by blackmailing me with the video it shot at the event.

This demo also reminded me of the power of the emotions that VR can make you feel: even if the demo was not meant for that, dancing so close to a virtual woman, so close to her, felt a bit… intimate. I wonder how many people will develop a connection with their dance companions while playing this application.

A Chinese MR headset

I visited the booth of a Chinese headset manufacturer and when I asked what they had there, the hostess told me that they were showcasing their VISION PRO COMPETITOR.

Wow, I was pretty stoked by this Asian company wanting to challenge Apple, so I asked more about the device. She started telling me that the display was the same as Vision Pro. I was even more impressed now: “Oh, so is it the Sony display headset that the Vision Pro mounts?” and she said “No”. Let’s say I was a bit confused.

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After she explained that was a display with similar characteristics, she invited me to try the headset and gave me a random unit she had on the desk. She proceeded to tell me how this headset is even better than the Vision Pro because it has a flip-up display. I wore the headset and tried to flip up its display and in fact, it flipped up. But then when I tried to flip it down, it was not stable on my eyes. Probably this was an over-used demo unit, so the hinge of the flip-up was already ruined. The result is that the display was not stable on my face, but moved a bit when I moved my head: more than a flip-up display, this was a swinging display. For sure this is an innovation the Vision Pro will never have. And, I would say, luckily.

As soon as the display turned on, I could see that the resolution was high and the colors bright, but then the passthrough kicked in. While the kind girl was still telling me how they compete with the Vision Pro, I could see that the passthrough was incredibly noisy. Unless the application “White Noise Simulator” was running on the headset, I guess there was some problem with the passthrough sensors. Some people use white noise to relax, so it’s great that they have integrated it into the headset. In fact, I came out of that demo with a very bright spirit. The Vision Pro never gave me these sensations. Take this Tim Cook.

I removed the headset, impressed by such a marvel of technology. And the price is a steal: just something more than $1000 to bring at home something like the Vision Pro, with the screen that-is-the-same-but-not-the-same and innovative features like the swinging display and the incorporated white noise simulator. I would advise you to buy this headset immediately. I guess the rumors about Apple releasing a new Vision Pro in 2025 are because of this fierce competition on the market.

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You may wonder why I’m not mentioning any brand name here. Well, first of all this let me tell you this story in a pretty ironic way without hurting anyone. And then, because I guess the girl at the booth did not see my media badge and just gave me a bad demo experience without caring much about me. She also gave me an overused unit that was clearly faulty, so it wouldn’t be fair to write a serious hands-on opinion about this product…

This article concludes my series about AWE Europe. I hope my reporting from there was informative for you. If this is the case, please reshare this post on your social media channels to help me with outreach. Thank you!