Droplabs Haptic Feedback Shoes Review!

The Power of Haptics: Enhancing Immersion in VR and Home Entertainment

As I float around in virtual reality, using thumbsticks to navigate through the play area, I'm reminded of the importance of sensory feedback. While resistive feedback would be ideal, a simple audio cue with a sensory cue can make all the difference in creating a more immersive experience. This is exactly what I want from my VR shoes – a way to feel what's happening in the game.

I'd love to see developers take advantage of this technology and incorporate more granular control into their applications. Being able to adjust the sensitivity and timing of the feedback would allow for a more precise experience. For example, in a space simulator like Elite Dangerous, I want to feel the engines humming when I increase the throttle. Having the shoes on amplifies this effect, providing a complete full-body vibration and haptic feedback that enhances immersion.

The sensation of being in the game is elevated with every step, every movement. It's not just about feeling the rumble on my seat; it's about experiencing the thrill of flight, the rush of adrenaline as I navigate through asteroid fields or dodge enemy fire. This is what makes VR so captivating – the ability to engage multiple senses and create a truly interactive experience.

One area where haptic technology has already made an impact is in gaming. In racing games, for instance, having the bass shaker tap in my audio enhances the level of immersion. It's not just about hearing the sound; it's about feeling the vibration beneath me, which simulates the rumble of a high-performance engine.

But haptics are not limited to gaming alone. The technology has vast potential beyond entertainment, particularly in accessibility. Imagine having a wearable device that provides haptic feedback for cues like navigation – a smartwatch that uses Bluetooth to enhance the user experience. This metadata layer could be integrated into augmented reality technologies and mixed reality, providing an unparalleled level of sensory information.

The cost is not prohibitive, with prices ranging from $200 to $300. While it may seem steep, I can attest that this technology has become a regular part of my home entertainment experience. It's one of those delightful pieces of technology that I didn't know I needed until I tried it. Now, I find myself actively seeking out haptic-enabled devices and content.

If you're an early adopter or just curious about the world of haptics, I encourage you to try this out for yourself. The Drop Lab series is a great place to start, offering a wealth of information on this cutting-edge technology. Who knows? You might just discover a new appreciation for the power of sensory feedback in your home entertainment and VR experiences.

In conclusion, haptic technology has come a long way since its inception. From enhancing immersion in VR to providing new ways of interacting with our devices, the possibilities are endless. As we move forward into the world of augmented reality and mixed reality, it's exciting to think about what this technology could bring – more than just sensory feedback; an entirely new dimension of human-computer interaction.

In the future, we can expect to see more innovative applications of haptics in various industries. Accessibility is a prime example, where wearable devices with haptic feedback could revolutionize the way we interact with our surroundings. The integration of haptics into our daily lives will be a game-changer, and it's only a matter of time before this technology becomes an integral part of our lives.

For now, I'm content with my VR shoes, knowing that I've experienced something truly unique and immersive. As the world of haptics continues to evolve, I have no doubt that we'll see even more astonishing applications in the future.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody it's norm from tested andtoday i'm going to be reviewinga new product that really is one ofthose gadgets thatto me is more interesting as a piece oftechnologyor demonstration of technology andproduct designthen it is honestly something that thevast majority of you out thereare in the market for and that's becauseit's something that none of us havetried before and that is ashoe with haptic feedbackbuilt into it so these are the drop labsepisode 01s or the epo ones and what'scalleddrop labs and it's from this new companythat was founded by the ex-ceo ofbeats along with the inventor of thistechand their goal is to allow you tobasically feelmusic and sound and all type of auditoryexperiences uhas a sensation through your feet sothose of you and us who love watchingmoviesor listening to music we understand thatmusic and audio is yes primarily anauditory experience but it's alsoa physiological one as well somethingthat we canfeel whether we're going to a liveconcertor watching a movie in cinemas you knowwhen you have the vibrations of thosegiant speakers and subwooferswe can actually feel that that is onepart of thehaptic sensation the sensory experienceofmusic and movies and video games and soshraplabs wants to bring that intosomething that you can experience athomeand also be mobile and so they set outto build a shoethat has essentially a subwoofer builtinto itand you know they've accomplished thatso if you look at theform factor of the shoe here it is youknow looks likea typical sneaker we can also tellthat there's a seam line here that'sbecause in the soulhere is basically all that technologythey had thiskind of constraint this limitation ofdesigning something that we all arefamiliar with which isa sneaker a shoe but then packing inwhat you would need to havehaptic feedback so underneath you canactually seethis red circle represents where theyhave their tactile transducer their baseshaker their subwooferit's underneath here and then the backuh thereyou have the electronics the soundprocessing as well as a batteryrechargeable batteryand then in the back of the shoe hereactually some controlsand a charging port uh as long alongwitha a line in for a direct signaland the user experience is interestingsothere's a companion application that youdownload on your smartphoneessentially you tether your smartphoneto the shoeas a bluetooth device and the shoeitselfbecomes an intermediary uh for then yourheadphonesor whatever uh other speakers thatyou're using to listen tothe actual the high end and themid-ranges because what they're coveringhereis that low end and so it's this kind oftethered effect where you have musicstreaming on your phone or playinglocally on whatever device you havebluetooth then to the shoe and then thatgets connectedto some headphones and you can alsocompensate forlatency for bluetooth latency so you'rematching up the responses between theshoeand the headphones as well ergonomicallyyou know i think they also accomplishfor the most part a really comfortableshoe it's really easy to slip onyou know even though there is a lot ofstuff on the bottom herethere's enough padding here we'rewalking around my houseand my backyard it feels comfortable umright now we're not really going outsideso i've been taking this runningbut this for me feels more like anindoor shoe something that i would wearinstead of slippers around the houseand i kind of want to keep the bottomclean as wellit is uh also heavier than your typicalsneakerquite a bit it's actually one poundeight ounces or so per shoeand so by comparison um umone blendstone for example um isbasicallyalmost a pound about 15 ounces and sothis is abouteight or nine ounces over that and umthat's not that big of a problem youknow what i don't feel like i'm draggingmy feet aroundand for the most part i am using thiswhile sitting at my deskor on the couch uh listening to musicor watching movies and that's theprimaryexperience that they're selling this forso uh that's why first testing waslistening to a bunch of music you knowcould i beworking and being productive on mycomputer while ihave my headphones on and then alsohaving these shoes onwhat would that experience be like and ireally enjoyed that you know listeningto musicyou want to appreciate the full range ofthe sound experience i have my ownfavorite headphones i useuh my noise canceling sony xm3s pairingthatwith this shoe great experience forcompletelywireless my phone in my pocket could bewalking around my officedoing all sorts of stuff and reallyfeel you know a more full bodyaudio experience now it's not going tobe the sameas going to a concert i'm not going tofeelthe vibrations in my chest but i do feelthem in my feet and that is somethingthat ididn't know i wanted at home listeningto musicwhile on headphones uh sitting at mycomputer hereuh my favorite pair of headphones are umthey're planar magnetic headphones andso while they'rereally wonderful for the high ends andclarity they actually have very low bassresponse and so pairing thatwith um you know the tactile transducersthe low end that'sbrought in by these shoes actually madethat a really nice complimentaryexperience ummovies also something that i didn'texpect to enjoy or didn't know what toexpect and i found myselfreally really enjoying it as wellobviously certain types of movies work alot betterso something like 1917 or bumblebeemovies that you're going to want to havea great bass experience a lot of thatsound design is doesemphasize uh the low end when you'rewatching a movie in theatersyou're getting a lot more of that hereand it's not the same of course as goingtodolby cinema or even with a really nicespeaker setup in your living roombut it's it's so hard to explain becausei am feeling more immersed in the movieand it does feel like something that youknow anhour into the movie i'm not noticing i'mjust enjoying the experienceand after watching a couple movies andspending a couple daysusing this uh with music and thennot using it it is something i feel likei'm missing it's totally one of thosepieces of technologythat you know i didn't know i wanted andit's not like i can't live without itbut i do want to go back to it it's notsomething that's been sitting in adrawersitting in the corner of my office i amactually activelyusing it um and you can use it forquite a while uh the battery here lastsfor aboutsix hours and that's gonna depend on howpowerfulyou adjust the uh the feedback to be thetactile feedback to beum and on the strongest setting it doesreduce quite a bituh three to four hours so i do havethese kind of pluggedin uh via these magnetic chargers onboth left and right shoeinto the wall on a maybe uh every otherdaybasis now in terms of whatthat haptic feedback feels likethis is in the realm of haptics it's notforce feedback so i'm not gettingactive resistance uh from the shoephysicsjust won't allow that right they had todesign this where they're sendingvibrations up uh as well asum you know accommodating for differentkind of feet sizes where your arch isand so it essentially it is a compactsubwooferthat they designed to put in here andyou're getting uhvibrations and it is a localizedexperience you know where you can seethis red circle that isunder the arch of your foot where youfeeluh vibrations now of course theamplitude can changeand you feel you know there's adifference between a low vibration and astronger thump um but it's not you knowthe kind of very precise uh linearresonant actuators that you geton something you know like the old likevr steam controllersor even on something like uh your applewatch orthe kind of hd haptics you feel on thenintendo switch controllersthat's not that type of technology hereand part of that is becauseit's using essentially uh digital soundprocessingon any type of sound input you knowit's an analog input essentially thatthey're taking indigital over bluetooth but it's lookingat that waveformit's doing some analysis on thatessentially processing itdoing a low pass filter on itadjusting the frequencies and thenturning that low endinto their base response and in the appyou canconfigure uh different filter settingsand so they have you knowrecommendations for songs that aremore lush or songs that aremore on the high end and so this istheir equivalent of allowing you on apreamp to adjust the frequencyfor the low pass and the high cutwhich for other tactile transducerswe've tested have beena separate configurable unit that'ssomething i wishthey had here as a way to actually tunethe filters the the presets here i donotice a difference between them but iwould love a little more granularityin uh tuning the feedback for myenjoyment now if you set to the maximumfeedback that's actually what theyrecommend for games and that's anotheruh place where this was a reallyinteresting experience soconsole games you can also connect thistothe audio output of a gamepad so theyincludethis cable which is an analog cableand it's a splitter essentially there'sa separate splitter that you plug thisintoand so from your xbox gamepad or yourps4you would then have an output to yourheadphonesand then or if you don't want you canjust go use your speakersuh and then you plug this in and itactuallyplugs into via the same charging portthe shoe as well and there are somegames wherehaving this again it just increased alevelof immersion in a way that i never knewi wanted soone of the games i played this with wasred dead redemption 2and riding a horse gallopingthrough a field the thump and thelanding of the hoovesthat's something that i felt in the shoeuh an interesting really interestingexperience was wadingthrough like a creek or a river anduh filtering through that audio that'snot something you think of as having alot of low end and bass responsebut there's some part of that audio mixthat then gets transferred to the shoeand you feel a little bit of a tinglingsensation as i'm walking throughthat river or that creek now this isn'tsupposed to bea direct one-to-one representation ofwhat it would feel like toride a horse or wade through river andyou knowhaptics abstracts a lot of the signalhere it's essentially it's a dumb signalit's just takingsound and processing sound uh intoa sensation but it's a cue right it's anaudio cuethat lets me connect what i'm seeingvisually tosome type of physiological experiencewhich enhances the immersion and it wassomething that was really fascinatingfor video gamesnow because of the covid lockdown mostof my testing of this so farhas been indoors at home i've done alittle bit of walking outside in thestreet in my backyard like i saidum and i really don't know if this issomethingthat needs to be taken outdoor orsomething you would necessarily rideon the bus or the subway or even gorunning withcertainly if you're going to go runningand you're going to have your footimpacton the shoe as well and likecounteractiveto the sensations that it's trying togive youand even if you're just sitting on thesubway or something or a bus and wearingthis there isa little bit of sound pollution as muchofas they design this to send theuh the feedback and thekind of haptic feedback upwards towardyour footphysics doesn't work that way and youcanhear it if you're standing on a hardwoodfloor or someone andyou're wearing it someone next to you orin your proximity they'll be able tohear it i meanum my housemates told me that i s itsounded likeuh you know the kind of effect that youwould hear if your neighbors had theirtheir subwoofers blasting pretty loudand that's what it felt like when i wasin the same room with themand there is definitely also more travelbetweenfloors too if you're on a second floorand someone's underneaththey're going to actually hear thatbelow the floor depending on how yourhouse is built and so i've been using itreallyin indoors in my office and like i saidwearing it more likea uh slipper indoor slipper thanan outdoor sports shoe the next place ofcourselogically for me was to test this in avirtual realitysetup so once again uh for example foron something like the oculus quest youwould have to split the audioso you take the audio output um and youthen you know thankfully on the questthere's actually two audio outputs soyou don't need to split thatum and you connect that cable uh hereand thenthe other end goes to the shoe and thisis one of the places where i also wishthe cablewas longer it's at 58 inches under 5feetso from where the headset is to yourfeet uh it's a little bit constrictive ihad to use an extendercable 3.5 millimeter extender to get itcomfortable and you know use littleclips of course so i'm not tanglingmyselves myself up while playingbut games like beat saber and especiallypistol whip work really really well withthisshoe and i could see you know againdevelopers don't need to specificallyprogramor audio mix for this shoe but i couldsee games whereuh if you're using a teleport locomotiontechnique where you're you know like inhalf-life alex and you'rewarping from place to place giving sometypeof audio cue so you can feel thequote-unquotesteps that you would have made throughthat teleport or even with smoothlocomotion as i'myou know floating around and driftingthrough the play area just usingthumbsticks in vr i want to maybefeel what it's like to have thosefootsteps again it's not resistivefeedbackbut it's an audio cue and hear a sensorycuethat could let me know what i'm doing inthat game and make it feel a little lessfloaty to be honest um that's somethingi would love to seevr developers take advantage of and iwant to see maybe chat with more gamesto see if i can actuallyget that in the current sound mixes forthis shoe another reason i want thatmore granular controlin the application i also would love forit to be wireless and i think they saidthey are working on some type ofwireless dongle solution so you canaudio outputand then some type of connection to theshoes you're not wirely tetheredbut then they would have to solvelatency issues and vrlatency is a huge concern umdisconnect between what you see and whatyou hear and what youfeel and so that direct connection isthe most idealright now i also have another seatedsetup sohere the length of cable isn't a bigissue ina vr cockpit simulator that i'm buildingand playing simulators like a space gamespace sam elite dangerousor even uh a game a racing gamehaving the shoe again increasesthe sensation of being in that game soum whether it's elite dangerous wherei'm in a spaceshipand i want to feel the engines hummingwhen i increase the throttleyes i have my butt kicker transducer onthe chairand i'm feeling the rumble on the seatbut i'm notfeeling in my foot unless i'm puttingthese shoes on andhaving that more complete full bodyvibrationand haptic feedback increases theimmersiona ton it's something that i reallyreally enjoy usingin a vr simulator and in a racing gameit's one of those cases again if you'redriving your caryou don't feel vibrational feedback onyour footwith the pedals right you feel you knowwhen you drive over gravel or drivingoverany type of speed bump if that's actualum that's that's resistive feedbackright and short of having afull motion simulator that's going togive you andkind of move your body around thisbecomes more againlike an audio cue but it's believable itdoesn't have to be realisticuh it actually enhances the inversionstill in the same way that having thebass shaker tap intomy audio uh from a video game from aracing gamein vr enhances that level of immersionhere again it's a more full-bodyexperience soreally fascinating use cases for thisnot something that i would have thoughti needed butdefinitely something i am happy to beliving with in my day-to-day enjoymentof musicmovies and vr there's a lot i could seethem doing and going with thistechnologyin terms of maybe maybe more speakers inhere iwant more uh granularityin the types of feedback right now it'slocalized that onespot and i could also seea lot of businesses and industries maybeinthe accessibility world tap intowhat it means to have tactile feedbackin applications outside of entertainmentyou knowwe all got our watches our smart watcheswithhaptic feedback we started using them tofor cues like navigationright one tap to turn left two taps turnrightsignals coming up like how could that beintegrated with an app on your phonebluetooth tethered to a shoe to enhancethe type ofextra sensory information that you wouldhave this metadata layerover the real world as we move intoaugmented reality technologies and mixedreality technologies haptics are goingto bea big part of that um this does feelvery muchlike a first generation product andthat's why it'sfor early adopters right this is notcheap it's 300right now uh but the best thing i cansay about itis it's not something that sitsin the closet it's not something thatsits in a drawer it is something i'mactively usingon a regular basis and it's somethingit's one of those delightful pieces oftechnology that ididn't know i wanted and i certainlydon't need but i now definitelywant to be part of my office and homeentertainmentexperience so uh it's if there's anopportunity once we get back into theworld for you to try this out i wouldencourage you to do soum and these are the drop labsepisode ones uh hope you found itinterestingat least as a digest into hapticsand uh kind of what haptics can bringto home entertainment and vr and we'llhave more coverage of interesting techlike thisin the future thank you so much forwatching i'm normand i'll see you next time bye\n"