Disney has come up with a way for people to ‘feel’ flat objects on touchscreens.
Researchers at the studio found a technique in which tiny vibrations are sent through the touchscreen display that mimic the contours of the image onscreen.
The legendary film powerhouse is responsible for colouring in most Western people’s childhoods, so maybe it will look at ways to apply this technology to the cinema, and move the concept of interactive movies a step closer to becoming real?
Cinema is in the middle of a strange period, with studios looking for ways to innovate without having really been that successful.
The arguable failure of the 3D experiment (turns out most people prefer to pay to see 2D, where they avoid odd-looking cutouts floating around at the front of the screen like they’re at a puppet show suffering 30% colour loss) suggests it’s not the way to go to make films feel more ‘real’.
While most cinema lovers might say it’s the story that sucks a viewer into the world onscreen, the idea of being able to interact with a film by feeling things as if they’re corporeal objects is a pretty exciting one, and it’s not long before we start talking about virtual reality – and how much closer to an afternoon of escapism can we get than that?
