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The start-up is working on a metaverse wristband to be used alongside a VR headset. The wristband aims to allow users to move around in the virtual world but feel sensations like pain and the weight of objects. It works by electrically stimulating a wearers arm muscles. A user is said to be able to feel sensations like their skin being pinched or a weight in their hands. Emi Tamaki, the CEO of H2L Technologies...told the FT: "Feeling pain enables us to turn the metaverse world into a real [world], with increased feelings of presence and immersion." Tamaki is a...

Computers, long used as tools to design and manipulate three-dimensional objects, may soon provide people with a way to sense the texture of those objects or feel how they fit together, thanks to a haptic, or touch-based, interface developed at Carnegie Mellon University. Unlike most other haptic interfaces that rely on motors and mechanical linkages to provide some sense of touch or force feedback, the device developed by Ralph Hollis, research professor in Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, uses magnetic levitation and a single moving part to give users a highly realistic experience. Users can perceive textures, feel hard contacts and...

Cyber women test what's real By Jo Twist BBC News Online technology reporter Software cyberbabes, created by powerful computers, sophisticated modelling packages and active imaginations are getting extremely human-like. Rene Morel's 3D model has a very human face Virtual cyberbabes are used in advertising campaigns, hit shoot-em-up games, and the pop industry, from Lara Croft to virtual pop idols, T-Babe and Diki or DK-96. Some of the best 3D models around are currently on show at an exhibition which has just opened in London called Perfectly Real: Women in Bits and Bytes. But they raise questions about what people...