[Update: This article originally mistakenly listed Sony's patents as trademarks. We regret the error and have updated the story accordingly.]
As discovered by a hawk-eyed NeoGAF user, Sony filed patents for “a glove interface object” and “thumb controller” designed to work with PlayStation VR.
The glove interface is described in US Patent and Trademark Office records as a hand-mounted sensor complete with support modules. In short, it outlines a glove which would feed “flex sensor” and “contact sensor” data to a device which would calculate the glove’s (that is, its user’s hand’s) position. Clearly, haptic feedback and pressure sensors are integral to the device.
More damning evidence is buried deeper in the patent: “… applied for rendering a virtual hand in a view of a virtual environment on a head-mounted display (HMD), the virtual hand being rendered based on the identified finger position pose.” In other words, the glove turns your hand into a virtual hand in PlayStation VR.
The independently filed thumb controller, it seems, is merely a component of the glove. With that said, there are hints that it will function differently than the glove’s fingers and instead act as a central control point. Perhaps we bend our thumbs to click on highlighted items in the virtual space, but move our entire hand for bigger motions.
As seen in the image above, a camera is also listed as part of the glove system. Moreover, the prominent mention of cloud computing suggests that the glove, and potentially PlayStation VR, will require a constant Internet connection.
A third patent for miscellaneous supporting software sheds further light on the possibility of a dedicated camera:
“In some embodiments, a motion controller includes one or more cameras, which captures images of a fixed reference point," it reads.
If PlayStation VR is reliant on 3D positioning, as these patents suggest, its price point may not be as low some players hope. After all, 3D positioning was part of what drove the price of HTC’s Vive to $800. Perhaps we'll find out if, as GameStop suggests, PlayStation VR releases this fall.
