LGR Oddware - Novint Falcon Haptic Controller from 2007

I was like "oh man they made this thing work with newer games too" and then I remembered Portal was also from 2007.

Another really weird but interesting bit of the history of the Novint Falcon is that it was actually the first hardware device you could buy via the steam store, and that Novint regularly tried to give them away as prizes as part of various game tournament events and that Valve actually has continued to make minute compatability updates for it in various games over the years, with the most recent of those updates happening in January of 2024. That's right. There's apparently still people actively using these things and people on Valve making them play a little better in their games.

Cons: "Dude, you're considering spending $190 on a game controller" Flight sim fans: "Yeah, haha, that's crazy..."

"The Falcon is the predator of the mouse". That is so stupid and I love it.

I love how in their launcher, there's a spot to just click and get their current stock price. That design decision didn't age well.

This device actually looks perfect for Surgeon Simulator

Hey! I used to work with one of these: Bit of a story time. I worked for a Cyberpsycology lab, and we used all sorts of tech to help people with their phobias, conditions, etc, and I spoke with Novint about what we do, and they were stoked to send us a free Falcon to use. We used this thing to help people who have certain phobias when it came to textures, or even just touching physical objects (like say a Snake or Spider). From what I recall it worked really well for that purpose. Novint was awesome for sending us a device to use for medical purposes that were just starting to get off the ground.

its insane how long youve been showcasing cool stuff and all these years later, theres still something as crazy and unique as this

You know you’ve made a bad bowling game when your bowling ball gains sentience and exits its digital confinement.

HOLY CRAP this is a blast from my past personally! I worked for Novint briefly in about 2007-2008 or so? Half-Life 2 was genuinely so fun with this thing, I was really spoiled by it. It definitely needed a few more cycles of testing & adjustment but it really added so much to the gameplay experience. The texture demo (with the orb that changes material) was mind-blowing on its own, nevermind how much more fun shooters were with the proper kick from firing & impact from enemies. I wish Novint had had just a TINY bit more success, just enough for development to lead to something more usable, because the haptic precision was really something special. Combine these haptics with the feel of the Wii, you get something incredible tbh. (From what I could feel in 1-2-Switch, Nintendo has some incredible haptics in the Switch that have gone massively underutilized, but still nothing as bonkers as what was in the Falcon). It's really no joke that to be sold on it you had to try it, because it was hard to get anyone to check it out at the mall kiosk where I worked, but everyone who tried it was really enthusiastic about it... shame the price & its physical size were both just too much for how little game support it had. The fact that I had to re-calibrate the particular test Falcon I had EVERY TIME I used it? Hard to make me enthusiastic about selling it. (The later models were less problematic in this regard, but it tickled me to see you complain about the calibration because boy was that a common issue lol) (In the end I was fired from Novint because I essentially gave up trying to sell devices at that kiosk and just socialized with other people working at that mall. Actually selling the thing successfully would have involved being dishonest and I just can't do that lol. I work in user experience now, so now I can help improve products rather than sugar-coating them, which is much more for me I think! Honestly I wish I'd been able to do user testing for them back then & get EXACTLY the sort of feedback you're giving in this video, it might have genuinely helped so much.)

A few minutes into this video I remarked "I bet this was a high-end product for serious applications cost reduced to a game controller." Poor Novint learned the hard way that for consumer hardware you also have to have killer software and support to be successful.

“Anyways our ‘toy’ is working perfectly” i love the careful choice of words

bro completely sold me on a 20 year old piece of obscure hardware, I love that HL2 has always been the medium for groundbreaking hardware. The first proto-VR controls, 3D and haptic tech all used HL2 as a showcase. What a wonderful game and wonderful time. We had no idea how good we had it.

This thing would be fantastic for a surgeon simulator VR game. " You can really feel that liver!"

Awesome video! We were lucky enough to get to work with Novint on a few projects in around 2007. They were absolutely lovely people who took a chance on us as a young inexperienced company - I'll be forever grateful to them for that. The Falcon was a unique thing and always got comments from people who walked into our office! If any Novint folks come across this video then I hope you're all doing well.

The nostalgia i felt when you opened the tutorial software almost made me cry it was so intense. That 2000's "we know youre in a dark room" vibe. God i miss it man, everything today is so bright and mood-less.

Penumbra came with my Falcon, it's a first person survival horror game by the makers of Amnesia. It's mostly pitch black and you have to use the Falcon to feel around in the darkness to find things and figure out what you're touching. Was super cool and one of the best haptic experiences outside of FPS games.

I think this would've been a better thing to sell to a big theme park or arcade as a novelty than a "at home" kinda deal

Didn't expect to see a live bear on LGR

These kinds of Oddware videos are the best, someone really went to great lengths of effort to make this thing and maybe in some universe it took off. Here we are still stuck with our dinky mice, when we could have the FALCON