My uncle was one of the founding members of novint. My father was one of the software developers. I have about 10 falcons still laying around my house. What made the falcon special was that it was an affordable haptic feedback device. Their competition would cost 10s of thousands of dollars and needed a very large and heavy external control box. The device was very gimmicky for gaming and did have support for major titles at the time, but it never really caught on. The falcon was quite practical was in the medical field and novint developed custom grips and applications for medical companies to help train doctors for the use of certain medical devices in surgeries.
The main problem with it... is that you have to hold your arm up in the air, for extended periods of time.. and that would be extremely Fatiguing. I had written a comment on one of their Videos about this... and suggested they alter the design, so that your hand rested on top. Sort of like facing the falcon so that it was facing the ceiling.. but a little more streamlined than just that. Someone from the company replied with a very Harsh response.. as they clearly felt personally attacked, from pointing out the major design flaw (which was exactly the main reason why it wasnt heavily adopted). If the thing was mounted vertically.. you still would have all of the Axis control, and Force Feedback. However, you would have even Better physical control, and superior Comfort levels. It could have been both fantastic for Sculpting, as well as potentially used for Digital Artwork... such as simulating an Airbrush far more Realistically. Obviously, the cost might have had to rise a bit... but, when something is hands down Fantastic... people will pay for it, and it will continue to sell for a very long time... rather than quickly fading into obscurity. I feel that a vertical version of it, still has excellent potential, today.
@@toxacid124 speaking of that seems like a dope idea for a racing sim (or really anything else that simulates driving) if it was fully implemented. Imagine the hardware being able to automatically adjust the boundary for movement based on the kind of gearbox your car has, giving you force feedback for poorly timed shifts or grinding gears, or just clicking in to place unless a button is held to simulate and automatic. If oriented that way this could literally be the premium S tier racing sim shifter.
The Felix was one of the devices NASA tested for use in zero-g, during development of the space station NASA conducted studies on the best input devices for zero-g. Mice obviously had problems due to their habit of floating around, but on top of that the ball based mice and trackballs really relied upon gravity to hold the balls against the sensors. They were all tested on a Mac Portable which had the best support for pointing devices at the time. This is the origin of the famous zero-g floppy videos ua-cam.com/video/lLodBpV3No0/v-deo.html
I remember using the Falcon in a demo at a trade show and that texture demo was genuinely as astounding as Linus was reacting. You REALLY feel the textures of the objects so the sandpaper felt gritty, the gooey felt goopy, etc. I was genuinely amazed at the time. Dunno if that effect translated to better control with modeling software but still cool tech
My grandfather had MS. He had very limited ability to do fine manipulation tasks with his fingers. But the easy ball mouse made it so he could learn to use a computer. My parents then got me one as a 4 year old. It was my first mouse! I grew up to have a career designing and programming computers. Pretty cool input device
Nice! Do you have a recommendation for a trackball mouse? If you are using one of course, I am looking for one that replaces my old Logitech Trackman Marble but looks like everybody have abandoned a designed that already worked perfectly
I use a Kensington orbit with scroll ring, it works pretty well if you want the ball in the middle with a button under your thumb and under your fingers. My only issue is the scroll ring isn't "clicky" so some it can be hard to use in some games.
@@AvithOrtegaI have a Logitech M575 as my main mouse for about three or four years now. I like it. Of course it took me a moment to get used to it, but it’s really comfortable and after getting used to it very intuitive. For shooter games I prefer a normal mouse, so I have one on my desk too, but for anything else the M575 works well for me.
Still have my Falcon and pistol grip. When it was relevant it really was fantastic: the range of sensations it could replicate and the amount of force it could put out was very impressive. Also kinda scary when it falls out of calibration! The support staff were great when the inevitable compatibility problems crept in. Every now and again I consider donating it to a cause with accessibility needs but given the current state of the company/software I feel like it's more of a liability. It's a shame the company tanked because the idea was fundamentally sound. Being able to spin on the spot like a joystick/gamepad player while having the fidelity of control of a mouse user was genuinely an advantage, even if you discount the fancy haptic feedback.
A friend of mine had it, remember playing halflife with it (1 or 2 not sure) but was fun. Maybe ahead of its time. These days it would be prettt cool with gun force back
I remember this yellow ball mouse being kinda sought after by people with disabilities. My neighbor had polio and she wasn't able to use things that required strong movement or things that required precise finger movements and these mice were an absolute game changer for her, (she also was an absolute RTS beast playing with them)
Honestly, I saw the Ball Mouse and I thought of my disabled son. As I Type this, I think I can use an older optical mouse and then print a frame where I can use a larger ball rolling on a smaller ball which rides on the optical mouse to easily achieve a similar experience. If I were to use a single ball both X and Y axis would be inverted. Edit: Looks like there is a Big Track 2.0 meant for disabled children, its 100 bucks. I'd rather spend 20 bucks on a spool of filament. Time to start modeling.
I still have my Novint Falcon (with the pistol grip also). I used it in Maya and for Half Life 2. It’s was awesome. The coolest feeling was when you picked up a cinder block in HL2 to do the first little seesaw puzzle and you suddenly felt the weight of it in your hand. Like, just that thing was mind-blowing.
@@alexdavis9324 there’s a curve while you get used to it but once you do it was actually really fun. The grip is modeled after a Walther P99 series and it’s very ergonomic. As you can imagine, it sucks as a normal mouse. Even the ball grip isn’t great as a normal mouse. The whole thing isn’t really a normal mouse replacement, more an input device for modelling and shooters.
it sort of reminds me of the custom Razer Hydra/Sixense integration Valve did in Portal 2. wacky input stuff in the time before 6DOF VR controllers took hold
@@MegaphonixI still have that. It is ironically the only way I can do anything decent with the Sniper in TF2. As for Portal 2, it's integrated so well, it's almost broken and lets you do some insane tricks.
I still have mine! I got it in a TF2 tournament. The Novint falcon did a tournament that it was pros (using the falcon) against Steam community members and our team won. EDIT: Should have done PORTAL, where you felt the weight of the cubes when lifting them. TF2 was widely supported too. It was really just very fun to use. I got the impression Valve was really helping with their open APIs
I’ve seen the Novint used for a lot of surgeon training tools, especially with VR - and there’s even a mod to make it work with HL2, as well as a gun-handle shaped grip accessory. Surprised this didn’t make it to the video, it was a big part of recent editions
I think Novint actually cut a deal with Valve to get first party support for several titles. I definitely remember that being the case for TF2 but I can't remember if HL2 needed modding or not.
We use a haptic wand similar to the Falcon in my research. It is used to simulate tactile information to improve control in certain applications. For example, in ultrasound, radiologists often feel around (or palpate) with the ultrasound probe. A haptic wand can be used to re-introduce this information when the probe is remotely controlled by a robot. This technology is being used to improve accessibility to healthcare when manpower is lacking.
honestly if a modern version of the novint falcon came out today for vr shooters i would GLADLY buy it. Imagine a force feedback/recoil system like the one that has been used in guns like the vector but in a full sized and weighted accessory that you can play simulators with
I remember seeing videos of the falcon and being super interested to try it. I loved the idea of force feedback for an FPS, it's honestly something I'm waiting for in the VR space. Proper feeling of weight and texture.
Words cannot express how sad I am that the Novint Falcon never caught on in the mainstream, because that looks both awesome and useful. I can only wonder how it would improve with modern tech including materials and production methods.
Honestly! It does seem like it would add an extra layer of depth to your thinking if you were designing something. Feeling like your manipulating the structure sounds incredibly useful in certain worksets
Left for Dead owned with the Novint Falcon. I believe L4D2 had support for a hot minute and they patched it out for some reason. After the lack of support in Source games (I believe Valve was starting down their own hardware line at that point...) it crashed and burned. Sucked because the novint with the gun stock and a pair of VR goggles would own some VR.
I used my Novint Falcon to play through the entire Penumbra trilogy and it was honestly one of the coolest gaming experiences I've ever had. Every item had weight, picking up and manipulating things was really immersive, and the difficulties of the controller only heightened the tension of the game. Loved it. Put it away after that and haven't touched it since 😂
I just remember poking the mattress in the beginning of Black Plague and running my hand along the concrete walls, what a surreal experience the falcon was
I still have my Novint Falcon with a pistol grip. It was so nice to use for Portal, and fun to use in CS Source, and set force feedback to 100%.. that big LMG shaked the entire table with ease! :P Linus, hit me up if you want to try it out with a pistol grip, it changes alot.
the pistol grip was unreal. i got to try the prototype for it when they were demoing it. i wish i had the money to buy one at the time! i still think about getting one lol
21:54 you would have to pause it after he hit the ball but there was so much spin on the ball and there's wind graphics that show this that it landed and changed angle that much
I love watching Linus try to guess the original MSRP of old weird products. He's actually kinda good at it lol. A Price Is Right style video would be fun to watch I think
I ran a Valve fansite for a number of years and worked with Novint to promote the falcon when Valve started helping them by supporting in their main games like Half-life, Portal & TF2. TF2 the Falcon was fantastic - I don't know if I would really think of it as just a gaming mouse given it has that Z axis style input too, it creates it's own category. I recall they made generic input drivers for most FPS's , it was really fun in things like Penumbra and you could feel different textures, open / close drawers etc. The best addition was the gun-grip which made it much more fun to use. I'm not sure if it still works but one of my best experiences was using it in TF2 with the Sniper's bow (Huntsman), you got the full pullback and release of the bow which felt super satisfying. I still have mine somewhere, sadly Novint didn't last long but the team were amazing to work with and our community loved their innovation, as did Valve and no doubt inspired other hardware input devices Valve have gone on to produce!
The shooter was at peak performance for this one too. Great overhead shots when needed, and the editor did so going cutting from recording the screen to a actual screen record in software without even noticing trasnitions. Definitely a great tech video. with cool novelty stuff . Also great video concept. Very classic LTT
Years ago I did a day at a forensic anthropology lab where a PhD student was using something like the Novint Falcon to design a computerised cadaver hand with realistic resistance depending on tissue, tendon, bone etc for medical training. There was/is a lack of cadavers for students to train on, so a detailed computer model with a 3d force feedback device and a scalpel like grip would give them a chance to train freely without using up a finite learning resource.
12:40 Seeing Vcop again is so nostalgic man. In my school days my father's office had a computer running Windows XP. I used to play Vcop and Roadrash on it. Those days were good.
The Easy Ball reminds me of those adaptive Xbox controllers we started seeing a couple years ago. The ones with the oversized buttons that are designed for people with fine motor skill deficiencies. I work with a lot of kids with developmental delays and fine motor skill issues. I know it's a super niche user base. But I think it would be awesome if LTT would spend some time reviewing and discussing adaptive controllers and adaptive access tech.
I remember using my novint falcon with those nvidia 3d vision glasses back in the day. All dead tech now but playing portal with it truly felt like the future and it was incredible how immersive it was especially at the time.
I really like the MX Vertical, it is not the most precise - but precise enough for things like photoshop, RTS games, etc. and fixed an issue where my hand was getting sore after a few days of “crunch time” to finish a project
Holy shit I remember the Falcon! We had it on display when I worked at Micro Center about fifteen years ago. We had the demo software up and running where you could push it through molasses or around a ball, things like that, and the motors would push back against the arms as you manipulated it through space. God damn, this takes me back. The Novint Falcon just sort of disappeared off the face of the planet.
3:52 Not 48 hours ago I suggested someone get their kid Freddy Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds to play as an introduction to PCs and gaming, no way, what are the odds!?
That last 3d mouse made me think of the 3d connexion space mouse, which is still produced to this day. The space mouse is more for navigating 3d scenes and then paired with a normal mouse for interacting with the scene, but I wonder how well it would work in conjunction with the 3d mouse shown here.
I’ve used both, the space mouse way more than the novint. My university actually had a few in labs for talking about stresses in members of a truss structure. The space mouse already has 6dof which is all you need to successfully navigate 3d space. I think they would be a bit pointless together, unless you had some sort of voxel/volumetric display and were absolutely hell bent on using it despite how challenging/pointless it might be.
I liked using trackballs for many years. In some games they were superior because they combined the range of motion of a joystick with the precision of a mouse. Playing games like "TIE Fighter" was great with a trackball. You could just give the ball a good spin when you wanted to do large changes of course and still have pin-point precision as soon as you put your thumb on the ball again. I would still use trackballs today if it wouldn't have become so hard to find a proper one.
I grew up using my mouse in cramped spaces and developed a claw grip where I only need to move the mouse 1 inch to move from one corner to the other with a 1440p resolution. Those miniature ones would've been right up my alley. And yeah, for this type of grip I need my elbow to be lower than my wrist or it is uncomfortable. I've tried several times now to use lower DPIs and move my whole arm but just can't get used to it.
I've managed to ammass three Novint Falcon's over the years, they are impressive. I've also got the gun attachment for it which was designed for Half-Life 2. Feel the weight of the guns and kickback Etc.
I love my Falcon! I think it's still in storage somewhere. I spent a lot of time making game scripts for it with F-Gen, in particular I got some copies of oldschool games like quake and doom working with it. The Falcon was a lot of fun! Playing TF2 with it was also a blast, while it took a lot of practice to get used to, using it for games felt like getting a taste of the future. Like Linus shows, the ice ball really did feel slippery! I kinda hope we get an exo-arm like they were working on. It'd be cool to see that for VR.
14:05 That's me... I just measured and my full left to right movement on a 34" ultrawide is about an inch. A modern mouse is more than accurate enough to get near pixel perfect accuracy with that little movement. High DPI usage isn't for everyone, but I've also never had an issue with my wrist or arm before.
I had some friends who bought Novint Falcons with the pistol grip for FPS games. The force feedback wasn't very strong so they both sold em for like 2x the msrp. (Also at the time they sold it, it was the advent of VR so people made attachments to mount "personal health" toys so the market demand for them also spiked)
Curious Would that have been an override or a driver setting? Cause of course you can just tell any motor to do what you want if you juice it, but the barrier of liability on manufacterer's part n such.
I cannot comprehend how and why would you use high DPI in a day-to-day use scenario. I mean, how do you even select a single character in the text when your cursor jumps all around from a smallest movement with like 15000 DPI? I find it hard to use personally with anything higher than 1250 DPI.
@@Chipsaru I daily above 3500 DPI at 2560 pixel wide screen and despite working with less than 1 inch of space side to side I'm easily precise to edit text in Word at size 6.5 below which the indicator is too big and text unreadable without zooming.
14:05 😬 I'm the person who uses a high DPI modern mouse, I have about 2" of travel of my mouse to span the entire width of my 2560px display. I find precise small movements to be more comfortable than moving my whole arm and mouse. I'll probably regret it when I'm 50 and riddled with arthritis tho lol
I have two Novint Falcons. It is still my favorite mouse alternative for gaming when there is haptic feedback. TF2 was insane when you could feel the direction the bullets were coming from or if you bumped into a cloaked Spy.
I would love to see how the 3D force feedback thing plays Descent. Sliding 360 degrees was always tricky to set up with a keyboard and mouse. Not sure I ever really found good way. Friend on mine had a device called the Orb. It accounted well for movement on all 3 axis, though I was never proficient at using it, like my friend.
Yeah that would be interesting. I found two axes via keyboard to be enough for most gameplay, but if you're really clever you can make use of a Bluetooth receiver and PS3 controller. Lots of fun!
14800... Man, that's a lot, I usully use a DPI of 8000 for everything, plus Windows sensivity at max, and that's normal for me, when I move the mouse it hardly looks like moving, but those are statue movements right away
The Easyball was used by a lot of children and adults living with disabilities. I know you weren’t trying to dunk on them but that was a huge advantage at the time when input was mostly limited to a mouse.
The Easy Ball actually had a great use case for computer access for people with motor control issues. We supplied several to our patients back in the 1990s and they worked very well
15:40 I tried a Novint Falcon at a friend's house in like 2009. just like this. they just had the demo onscreen of a 3d ball, and you could change its texture and rub the mouse thing around it and feel its texture through the mouse. even a goo ball one you could push the mouse through, feeling friction like pushing through honey. it was unique and really cool tactile feedback. oh and a gun piece you could attach and fire, feeling really believable recoil. i wish linus had tried the gun attachment thing/demo, because it's pretty legit, too.
The Novint was meant to be used in games. So you can feel the door your opening or holding something heavy vs something light. It had specific games built just for it.
Penumbra had support for the Novint Falcon and it was actually great. You could open drawers and doors and swing around physics objects and feel the weight.
I am SO glad you linked the Mother of All Demos. I got to visit Doug Engelbart's house and ACTUALLY use the worlds first mouse. Carved Mahogany. It was magical.
That demo for that weird force feedback peripheral reminds me of the software demo for my Logitech forced feedback joystick I had back in the day. It was so eery how realistic the feeling of certain textures were.
I had the novint falcon, with pistol attachment, and actually had a huge amount of fun playing left 4 dead with it. Was it really hard to use? Yes. Was the force feedback really fun in an arcadey kinda way? Yes. Was it a waste of money, yeah kinda.
I remember a haptic one at university like the novint. They had a demo where you could move an atom around a molecule and get real pushback where it did or didn't fit.
Watching Linus mess around with all these old Mouse options makes me want to see him run through all the Microsoft Force Feedback enabled flight games from the 90's.
Yeah it's just like having a modern mouse and only moving it a tiny amount. I just measured it takes me 90mm (3.5") to go across 3 monitors, or 30mm 1 3/16" to go across 1 screen, I've given myself a 200mm wide area for my mouse. I have my DPI set to 1750
My step-grandaughter did just fine with a regular mouse when she was 3-4yo (back in the Win98 days.) She started out sitting in my lap and we'd go through it but then I made her a small desk, complete with keyboard drawer, and she knew which icons to click on or what CD to put in, etc for several games we got for her.
wrong game for the falcon 3D mouse. try half life 2. it has individual recoil on each gun. I played portal with it, it doesn't make gaming 'easier' but it definitely adds to the immersion.
i could see something like the novint being good for controlling some sort of vehicle with the force feedback giving you a more "intuitive" sense of what the vehicle is doing
I really like your recent content since stepping down as CEO, I think it's allowed Linus to have a lot more fun in the videos and they seem less rushed and more natural, he appears much happier too
My uncle was one of the founding members of novint. My father was one of the software developers. I have about 10 falcons still laying around my house. What made the falcon special was that it was an affordable haptic feedback device. Their competition would cost 10s of thousands of dollars and needed a very large and heavy external control box. The device was very gimmicky for gaming and did have support for major titles at the time, but it never really caught on. The falcon was quite practical was in the medical field and novint developed custom grips and applications for medical companies to help train doctors for the use of certain medical devices in surgeries.
The main problem with it... is that you have to hold your arm up in the air, for extended periods of time.. and that would be extremely Fatiguing. I had written a comment on one of their Videos about this... and suggested they alter the design, so that your hand rested on top. Sort of like facing the falcon so that it was facing the ceiling.. but a little more streamlined than just that. Someone from the company replied with a very Harsh response.. as they clearly felt personally attacked, from pointing out the major design flaw (which was exactly the main reason why it wasnt heavily adopted).
If the thing was mounted vertically.. you still would have all of the Axis control, and Force Feedback. However, you would have even Better physical control, and superior Comfort levels.
It could have been both fantastic for Sculpting, as well as potentially used for Digital Artwork... such as simulating an Airbrush far more Realistically.
Obviously, the cost might have had to rise a bit... but, when something is hands down Fantastic... people will pay for it, and it will continue to sell for a very long time... rather than quickly fading into obscurity.
I feel that a vertical version of it, still has excellent potential, today.
As I was watching this video I thought exactly that, why isn't it vertical like car's gear sticks? @@johndough8115
I feel like with VR this could be really neat.
@@toxacid124 speaking of that seems like a dope idea for a racing sim (or really anything else that simulates driving) if it was fully implemented. Imagine the hardware being able to automatically adjust the boundary for movement based on the kind of gearbox your car has, giving you force feedback for poorly timed shifts or grinding gears, or just clicking in to place unless a button is held to simulate and automatic. If oriented that way this could literally be the premium S tier racing sim shifter.
This product was so ahead of its time.
The Felix was one of the devices NASA tested for use in zero-g, during development of the space station NASA conducted studies on the best input devices for zero-g. Mice obviously had problems due to their habit of floating around, but on top of that the ball based mice and trackballs really relied upon gravity to hold the balls against the sensors. They were all tested on a Mac Portable which had the best support for pointing devices at the time.
This is the origin of the famous zero-g floppy videos
ua-cam.com/video/lLodBpV3No0/v-deo.html
Hey it's Scott Manley! Fly Safe!
Just make the mouse magnetic NASA. How hard is it?!
Fly safe and always check yo staging!🚀
Ps: You should have talked with Elon about this before his first starship flight test😂
Hullo! From Fife.
Thankyou scott
I remember using the Falcon in a demo at a trade show and that texture demo was genuinely as astounding as Linus was reacting. You REALLY feel the textures of the objects so the sandpaper felt gritty, the gooey felt goopy, etc. I was genuinely amazed at the time. Dunno if that effect translated to better control with modeling software but still cool tech
Linus should've tryed Half Life 2 on it with the pistol grip, it feels so different
I got to use two of them with pod racing in vr. It was pretty cool
@@AltonV Now This ls Podracing
My grandfather had MS. He had very limited ability to do fine manipulation tasks with his fingers. But the easy ball mouse made it so he could learn to use a computer. My parents then got me one as a 4 year old. It was my first mouse! I grew up to have a career designing and programming computers. Pretty cool input device
Nice! Do you have a recommendation for a trackball mouse? If you are using one of course, I am looking for one that replaces my old Logitech Trackman Marble but looks like everybody have abandoned a designed that already worked perfectly
I use a Kensington orbit with scroll ring, it works pretty well if you want the ball in the middle with a button under your thumb and under your fingers. My only issue is the scroll ring isn't "clicky" so some it can be hard to use in some games.
@@AvithOrtega I have the m570 and i like it, it's discontinued but logitech made a succesor called the m575.
@@AvithOrtegaI have a Logitech M575 as my main mouse for about three or four years now. I like it. Of course it took me a moment to get used to it, but it’s really comfortable and after getting used to it very intuitive. For shooter games I prefer a normal mouse, so I have one on my desk too, but for anything else the M575 works well for me.
We had one in my school as a kid and they're MUCH easier to use when you have small child hands and can basically palm the entire ball.
Still have my Falcon and pistol grip. When it was relevant it really was fantastic: the range of sensations it could replicate and the amount of force it could put out was very impressive. Also kinda scary when it falls out of calibration! The support staff were great when the inevitable compatibility problems crept in. Every now and again I consider donating it to a cause with accessibility needs but given the current state of the company/software I feel like it's more of a liability. It's a shame the company tanked because the idea was fundamentally sound. Being able to spin on the spot like a joystick/gamepad player while having the fidelity of control of a mouse user was genuinely an advantage, even if you discount the fancy haptic feedback.
Up till last year when they changed the anticheat and excluded ppjoy I used mine to play star citizen. It worked ok but took a lot of getting used to.
A friend of mine had it, remember playing halflife with it (1 or 2 not sure) but was fun. Maybe ahead of its time. These days it would be prettt cool with gun force back
I remember this yellow ball mouse being kinda sought after by people with disabilities. My neighbor had polio and she wasn't able to use things that required strong movement or things that required precise finger movements and these mice were an absolute game changer for her, (she also was an absolute RTS beast playing with them)
Was thinking that it probably would have been great for people with disabilities!
Honestly, I saw the Ball Mouse and I thought of my disabled son. As I Type this, I think I can use an older optical mouse and then print a frame where I can use a larger ball rolling on a smaller ball which rides on the optical mouse to easily achieve a similar experience. If I were to use a single ball both X and Y axis would be inverted.
Edit: Looks like there is a Big Track 2.0 meant for disabled children, its 100 bucks. I'd rather spend 20 bucks on a spool of filament. Time to start modeling.
MS is doing a really good job with these helpful devices for the disabled people.
Can confirm my school in the 90s had these for all us wheelies
@@Guardian_Arias that's SO COOL! Are you going to document the process?
I still have my Novint Falcon (with the pistol grip also). I used it in Maya and for Half Life 2. It’s was awesome. The coolest feeling was when you picked up a cinder block in HL2 to do the first little seesaw puzzle and you suddenly felt the weight of it in your hand. Like, just that thing was mind-blowing.
Does the pistol grip make it more or less fun than a light gun?
@@alexdavis9324 there’s a curve while you get used to it but once you do it was actually really fun. The grip is modeled after a Walther P99 series and it’s very ergonomic. As you can imagine, it sucks as a normal mouse. Even the ball grip isn’t great as a normal mouse. The whole thing isn’t really a normal mouse replacement, more an input device for modelling and shooters.
it sort of reminds me of the custom Razer Hydra/Sixense integration Valve did in Portal 2. wacky input stuff in the time before 6DOF VR controllers took hold
@@MegaphonixI still have that. It is ironically the only way I can do anything decent with the Sniper in TF2. As for Portal 2, it's integrated so well, it's almost broken and lets you do some insane tricks.
still pretty cutting edge even by todays standards
I still have mine! I got it in a TF2 tournament. The Novint falcon did a tournament that it was pros (using the falcon) against Steam community members and our team won.
EDIT: Should have done PORTAL, where you felt the weight of the cubes when lifting them. TF2 was widely supported too. It was really just very fun to use. I got the impression Valve was really helping with their open APIs
First
second
Wow. They actually had support for this weird thing in Portal?
Do you still have the original dvd with some game demos? I have access to a unit but I'm really looking for the software
Whaaat, that product was supported for that long? Are they still around doing stuff today?
I’ve seen the Novint used for a lot of surgeon training tools, especially with VR - and there’s even a mod to make it work with HL2, as well as a gun-handle shaped grip accessory. Surprised this didn’t make it to the video, it was a big part of recent editions
I think Novint actually cut a deal with Valve to get first party support for several titles. I definitely remember that being the case for TF2 but I can't remember if HL2 needed modding or not.
Yeah shocked they didn't show the HL2 integration, that was the best (well at least most interesting) part of the Falcon
That isn't a mod, friend. Basically the entire Orange Box had native Novint Falcon support in-engine.
Not just a mod but a real release for it
Yeah I tried one at a science show demonstrating intubation training. My gamer sensitivity was complimented. 😂
We use a haptic wand similar to the Falcon in my research. It is used to simulate tactile information to improve control in certain applications.
For example, in ultrasound, radiologists often feel around (or palpate) with the ultrasound probe. A haptic wand can be used to re-introduce this information when the probe is remotely controlled by a robot. This technology is being used to improve accessibility to healthcare when manpower is lacking.
Stuff like the novint falcon is actually still in use in a lot of dental practices that are scanning and adjusting models for 3D printing
honestly if a modern version of the novint falcon came out today for vr shooters i would GLADLY buy it. Imagine a force feedback/recoil system like the one that has been used in guns like the vector but in a full sized and weighted accessory that you can play simulators with
Now imagine sword fighting with that. No more swinging in the air.
I remember the Novint Falcon and how you could feel the weight of objects in hl2 when you use the gravity gun
as a major half life fan that is freaking sick
I remember seeing videos of the falcon and being super interested to try it. I loved the idea of force feedback for an FPS, it's honestly something I'm waiting for in the VR space. Proper feeling of weight and texture.
I got to use two of them with pod racing in vr. It was pretty cool
Words cannot express how sad I am that the Novint Falcon never caught on in the mainstream, because that looks both awesome and useful. I can only wonder how it would improve with modern tech including materials and production methods.
Yeah, several times I almost bought one, and kinda wish I had.
Honestly! It does seem like it would add an extra layer of depth to your thinking if you were designing something. Feeling like your manipulating the structure sounds incredibly useful in certain worksets
Left for Dead owned with the Novint Falcon. I believe L4D2 had support for a hot minute and they patched it out for some reason. After the lack of support in Source games (I believe Valve was starting down their own hardware line at that point...) it crashed and burned. Sucked because the novint with the gun stock and a pair of VR goggles would own some VR.
I have the LE sitting in my attic, basically new in box. What a time...
I used my Novint Falcon to play through the entire Penumbra trilogy and it was honestly one of the coolest gaming experiences I've ever had. Every item had weight, picking up and manipulating things was really immersive, and the difficulties of the controller only heightened the tension of the game. Loved it. Put it away after that and haven't touched it since 😂
I just remember poking the mattress in the beginning of Black Plague and running my hand along the concrete walls, what a surreal experience the falcon was
I still have my Novint Falcon with a pistol grip.
It was so nice to use for Portal, and fun to use in CS Source, and set force feedback to 100%.. that big LMG shaked the entire table with ease! :P
Linus, hit me up if you want to try it out with a pistol grip, it changes alot.
the pistol grip was unreal. i got to try the prototype for it when they were demoing it. i wish i had the money to buy one at the time! i still think about getting one lol
Honestly I don't know man
Idk either man
I also don't know man
We dont know
Couldn’t know less
Thought I knew. But nope
I would love to try that Falcon texture demo. Looks fascinating.
Novint Falcon is honestly a cool idea, if only they made it more ergonomic.
8:01 “Maybe she was a little gripper back in the day” you can say that twice. 😂
18:33 glad to see big papa supporting his little boy
Okay, the Novit Falcon sure was an insane device.
21:54 you would have to pause it after he hit the ball but there was so much spin on the ball and there's wind graphics that show this that it landed and changed angle that much
I love watching Linus try to guess the original MSRP of old weird products. He's actually kinda good at it lol. A Price Is Right style video would be fun to watch I think
I ran a Valve fansite for a number of years and worked with Novint to promote the falcon when Valve started helping them by supporting in their main games like Half-life, Portal & TF2. TF2 the Falcon was fantastic - I don't know if I would really think of it as just a gaming mouse given it has that Z axis style input too, it creates it's own category. I recall they made generic input drivers for most FPS's , it was really fun in things like Penumbra and you could feel different textures, open / close drawers etc.
The best addition was the gun-grip which made it much more fun to use. I'm not sure if it still works but one of my best experiences was using it in TF2 with the Sniper's bow (Huntsman), you got the full pullback and release of the bow which felt super satisfying. I still have mine somewhere, sadly Novint didn't last long but the team were amazing to work with and our community loved their innovation, as did Valve and no doubt inspired other hardware input devices Valve have gone on to produce!
It stills works im using w10 a quest 2 and the novint falcon with gun grip and a 3d fps vest
Whoever edited this video in particular, deserves a promotion. Absolute genius.
First 9:42
The shooter was at peak performance for this one too. Great overhead shots when needed, and the editor did so going cutting from recording the screen to a actual screen record in software without even noticing trasnitions.
Definitely a great tech video. with cool novelty stuff .
Also great video concept. Very classic LTT
stop complimenting your own work, zhang
@@ThyCorruptorstill the editor, each camera is always recording, the editor chooses which shot to use
Unlike Linus with Billet.
Years ago I did a day at a forensic anthropology lab where a PhD student was using something like the Novint Falcon to design a computerised cadaver hand with realistic resistance depending on tissue, tendon, bone etc for medical training. There was/is a lack of cadavers for students to train on, so a detailed computer model with a 3d force feedback device and a scalpel like grip would give them a chance to train freely without using up a finite learning resource.
12:40 Seeing Vcop again is so nostalgic man. In my school days my father's office had a computer running Windows XP. I used to play Vcop and Roadrash on it. Those days were good.
Oh man. Yes. I had played Vcop in an arcade. That was a fun experience. Beats playing on a computer.
Same. I only played it on arcades and it was absolutely BRUTAL. Me and a couple of friends probably paid for that machine in a single summer.
You both played it in an arcade. I believe it must be a famous game in the arcade scene. Coz I thought it was a Windows game only.
The Easy Ball reminds me of those adaptive Xbox controllers we started seeing a couple years ago. The ones with the oversized buttons that are designed for people with fine motor skill deficiencies. I work with a lot of kids with developmental delays and fine motor skill issues. I know it's a super niche user base. But I think it would be awesome if LTT would spend some time reviewing and discussing adaptive controllers and adaptive access tech.
I remember using my novint falcon with those nvidia 3d vision glasses back in the day. All dead tech now but playing portal with it truly felt like the future and it was incredible how immersive it was especially at the time.
Oh wow, 3D and force feedback in Portal must have been a trip. With as many mentions as the Novint is getting, hopefully they'll revisit it.
This sounds like something out of an 80's sci-fi, so freakin cool
I really like the MX Vertical, it is not the most precise - but precise enough for things like photoshop, RTS games, etc. and fixed an issue where my hand was getting sore after a few days of “crunch time” to finish a project
The Falcon actually looks awesome. The fact that they had support for some of my favorite games like TF2 and Portal makes me wanna pick one up lol
It is awesome, I still owned one having done so since release.
"maybe she was a little grippier back in the day" is my new favorite thing ive heard linus say
hahahaha omg right?! I had to pause the video xD
2:54 I am playing this on my home stereo.
Never before has ear mutilation sounded so well driven and precise.
Holy shit I remember the Falcon! We had it on display when I worked at Micro Center about fifteen years ago. We had the demo software up and running where you could push it through molasses or around a ball, things like that, and the motors would push back against the arms as you manipulated it through space.
God damn, this takes me back. The Novint Falcon just sort of disappeared off the face of the planet.
I'm intrigued with the products but even more intrigued by the inflation comparisons. Mind-blowing!
0:35 That being pixelated makes it so much worse
3:52 Not 48 hours ago I suggested someone get their kid Freddy Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds to play as an introduction to PCs and gaming, no way, what are the odds!?
I didn't even know these weird "mouse"s existed. And they are expensive too.
That last 3d mouse made me think of the 3d connexion space mouse, which is still produced to this day. The space mouse is more for navigating 3d scenes and then paired with a normal mouse for interacting with the scene, but I wonder how well it would work in conjunction with the 3d mouse shown here.
I’ve used both, the space mouse way more than the novint. My university actually had a few in labs for talking about stresses in members of a truss structure.
The space mouse already has 6dof which is all you need to successfully navigate 3d space. I think they would be a bit pointless together, unless you had some sort of voxel/volumetric display and were absolutely hell bent on using it despite how challenging/pointless it might be.
@@CaptainGockblock right, it's pointless, but half the fun of this channel is watching Linus struggle with pointless tech.
I can't see this even competing with how useful my space mouse is for CAD work. It just looks so awkward to use for extended periods
if someone wonders can you use the 3d mouse for games, apparently kerbal space program 1 still have support for it to this day/last version
19:56 yoooo, my mind is corrupted..
Yep, also me
I liked using trackballs for many years. In some games they were superior because they combined the range of motion of a joystick with the precision of a mouse. Playing games like "TIE Fighter" was great with a trackball. You could just give the ball a good spin when you wanted to do large changes of course and still have pin-point precision as soon as you put your thumb on the ball again.
I would still use trackballs today if it wouldn't have become so hard to find a proper one.
I miss removing the fluff from the ball compartment.
Now the only joy in the world I have is bellybutton fluff 🤨
I play Armored Core 6 on trackball and it’s oddly effective. Not quite HOTAS or stick-level but still cool.
my daily driver is a kensington expert mouse, love it!
@@00Clive00 Buy cheap socks and spend 10 minutes every day pulling the lint out from under your toenails.
check out aball and ploopy
We finally found what they used to record the Counter Strike announcer.
i feel like a lot of these could be used as adaptive controllers. its super cool to see all the different ideas people tried
I grew up using my mouse in cramped spaces and developed a claw grip where I only need to move the mouse 1 inch to move from one corner to the other with a 1440p resolution. Those miniature ones would've been right up my alley. And yeah, for this type of grip I need my elbow to be lower than my wrist or it is uncomfortable.
I've tried several times now to use lower DPIs and move my whole arm but just can't get used to it.
man i remember looking at the novint falcon when i was a kid it sounded so damn cool to play fps games with lmao
The Novint could work really well as a FFB device for sim racing for gear shifting to add a extra dimension to the shifting
I've managed to ammass three Novint Falcon's over the years, they are impressive. I've also got the gun attachment for it which was designed for Half-Life 2. Feel the weight of the guns and kickback Etc.
I love my Falcon! I think it's still in storage somewhere.
I spent a lot of time making game scripts for it with F-Gen, in particular I got some copies of oldschool games like quake and doom working with it. The Falcon was a lot of fun!
Playing TF2 with it was also a blast, while it took a lot of practice to get used to, using it for games felt like getting a taste of the future. Like Linus shows, the ice ball really did feel slippery!
I kinda hope we get an exo-arm like they were working on. It'd be cool to see that for VR.
Honestly the Novint Falcon was a good idea, perhaps not the best execution, but still something that has real world uses.
The Novint Falcon might be interesting for space sim spaceship translation movement like Star Citizen
Looks like the Esperia Talon pilot controls!
Can't wait to put these in my gaming setup
Short idea: get sarah and maria to try the mousepen and put their reactions in a short. would love to see that!
14:05 That's me... I just measured and my full left to right movement on a 34" ultrawide is about an inch. A modern mouse is more than accurate enough to get near pixel perfect accuracy with that little movement. High DPI usage isn't for everyone, but I've also never had an issue with my wrist or arm before.
same lol my poor g102 is on like 3400 dpi
Same it just feels natural for some reason
I had some friends who bought Novint Falcons with the pistol grip for FPS games.
The force feedback wasn't very strong so they both sold em for like 2x the msrp.
(Also at the time they sold it, it was the advent of VR so people made attachments to mount "personal health" toys so the market demand for them also spiked)
Wait, wat?! So people were bolting fleshlights onto them? That's fantastic 😂
Not true you can manually adjust the force feedback and break your wrist if set to high
Curious
Would that have been an override or a driver setting? Cause of course you can just tell any motor to do what you want if you juice it, but the barrier of liability on manufacterer's part n such.
Linus will not stop until he finds the greatest quirks of technology and I love it
here he is bois
bro post a video also second herebeforebotscame
As a high DPI user - the Felix and Atom Mouse look like great ideas - especially compared to ball mouse.
I couldnt agree more. They may even have more range of motion than I need.
I cannot comprehend how and why would you use high DPI in a day-to-day use scenario. I mean, how do you even select a single character in the text when your cursor jumps all around from a smallest movement with like 15000 DPI? I find it hard to use personally with anything higher than 1250 DPI.
@@Chipsaru I daily above 3500 DPI at 2560 pixel wide screen and despite working with less than 1 inch of space side to side I'm easily precise to edit text in Word at size 6.5 below which the indicator is too big and text unreadable without zooming.
In college we used two Falcons as throttle for a home made PodRacer Sim in Unity
14:05 😬 I'm the person who uses a high DPI modern mouse, I have about 2" of travel of my mouse to span the entire width of my 2560px display. I find precise small movements to be more comfortable than moving my whole arm and mouse. I'll probably regret it when I'm 50 and riddled with arthritis tho lol
I have two Novint Falcons. It is still my favorite mouse alternative for gaming when there is haptic feedback. TF2 was insane when you could feel the direction the bullets were coming from or if you bumped into a cloaked Spy.
This was a real blast from the past!! I owned the Fellows mouse pen...unfortunately, lol. It was terrible and pretty useless....more of these please ❤
I would love to see how the 3D force feedback thing plays Descent. Sliding 360 degrees was always tricky to set up with a keyboard and mouse. Not sure I ever really found good way. Friend on mine had a device called the Orb. It accounted well for movement on all 3 axis, though I was never proficient at using it, like my friend.
Yeah that would be interesting. I found two axes via keyboard to be enough for most gameplay, but if you're really clever you can make use of a Bluetooth receiver and PS3 controller. Lots of fun!
The part in the old star trek movie where Scotty picks up the mouse and tries talking to the computer doesn't seem so crazy anymore
This video was hilarious. this reminds me of the older LTT videos because it’s just classic Linus ! keep it up
2:46 XBox Live 2006 Voice Lobbies be like:
:D
My normal DPI on my mouse for gaming and for just general browsing is 14800… I felt attacked at 14:10 lol
14800... Man, that's a lot, I usully use a DPI of 8000 for everything, plus Windows sensivity at max, and that's normal for me, when I move the mouse it hardly looks like moving, but those are statue movements right away
i'm at 800... how???
But what's your pixels per inch of movement?
I need a mic that sounds exactly like the mouse phone
Same
The Easyball was used by a lot of children and adults living with disabilities. I know you weren’t trying to dunk on them but that was a huge advantage at the time when input was mostly limited to a mouse.
Guys, when is it you open your museum of forgotten-and-vanished (for a reason) technologies??
at 5:08 Linus plays with his big ball.
@19:48 "ewww, it's like putting your hand in the shmoo", I laughed way too hard at that, shmoo hahahaha
someone needs to gif this, its meme level funny
Are you sure this video is in 2024 and not 2004?
The Easy Ball actually had a great use case for computer access for people with motor control issues.
We supplied several to our patients back in the 1990s and they worked very well
15:40 I tried a Novint Falcon at a friend's house in like 2009. just like this. they just had the demo onscreen of a 3d ball, and you could change its texture and rub the mouse thing around it and feel its texture through the mouse. even a goo ball one you could push the mouse through, feeling friction like pushing through honey. it was unique and really cool tactile feedback. oh and a gun piece you could attach and fire, feeling really believable recoil. i wish linus had tried the gun attachment thing/demo, because it's pretty legit, too.
10:09 Linus Bed Tips
8:00
so was your mom.
😂😂caught that too
I miss Emily, she'd have been great for this video!
The Novint was meant to be used in games. So you can feel the door your opening or holding something heavy vs something light.
It had specific games built just for it.
Penumbra had support for the Novint Falcon and it was actually great. You could open drawers and doors and swing around physics objects and feel the weight.
Those were cool af. Wish I had finished those.
I remember working on that mod. There was an old soiled mattress in there somewhere that we made squishy it was kind of disgusting :-) Fun times
Linus isn’t pregnant but he never fails to deliver us videos.
Lmao 😂
Whatever happened to Emily? You don't really see them on here anymore since they transitioned.. do they still work at LTT?
The Microsoft Easy Ball would actually be incredible for MAME emulation in games like Super Monkey Ball or Golden Tee.
14:53 I like how Linus tries to use the scroll wheel which is not there XD
I am SO glad you linked the Mother of All Demos. I got to visit Doug Engelbart's house and ACTUALLY use the worlds first mouse. Carved Mahogany. It was magical.
I still have my Novint Falcon! I played a ton of TF2 with it. It's such a wild piece of kit.
That demo for that weird force feedback peripheral reminds me of the software demo for my Logitech forced feedback joystick I had back in the day. It was so eery how realistic the feeling of certain textures were.
I had the novint falcon, with pistol attachment, and actually had a huge amount of fun playing left 4 dead with it. Was it really hard to use? Yes. Was the force feedback really fun in an arcadey kinda way? Yes. Was it a waste of money, yeah kinda.
I remember a haptic one at university like the novint. They had a demo where you could move an atom around a molecule and get real pushback where it did or didn't fit.
Watching Linus mess around with all these old Mouse options makes me want to see him run through all the Microsoft Force Feedback enabled flight games from the 90's.
Yeah it's just like having a modern mouse and only moving it a tiny amount. I just measured it takes me 90mm (3.5") to go across 3 monitors, or 30mm 1 3/16" to go across 1 screen, I've given myself a 200mm wide area for my mouse. I have my DPI set to 1750
3:52 I remember playing Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds when I was maybe 3-5 years old. That was a banger!
That was a great "on the spot" Owl! Nice work.
My step-grandaughter did just fine with a regular mouse when she was 3-4yo (back in the Win98 days.) She started out sitting in my lap and we'd go through it but then I made her a small desk, complete with keyboard drawer, and she knew which icons to click on or what CD to put in, etc for several games we got for her.
3:21 Linus' excitement when he guessed the price right is hilarious
3:13 It sounds kinda like a cheap AM radio, even with that "Chpp!"at the end XD
wrong game for the falcon 3D mouse. try half life 2. it has individual recoil on each gun. I played portal with it, it doesn't make gaming 'easier' but it definitely adds to the immersion.
That tripod looking mouse seems amazing to play with. I can't believe it has force feed back as well, at least a primitive feed back
i could see something like the novint being good for controlling some sort of vehicle with the force feedback giving you a more "intuitive" sense of what the vehicle is doing
I really like your recent content since stepping down as CEO, I think it's allowed Linus to have a lot more fun in the videos and they seem less rushed and more natural, he appears much happier too