LGR Oddware - Novint Falcon Haptic Controller from 2007

Checking out the 2007 Novint Technologies Falcon on LGR Oddware! A combination of haptics and force feedback providing up to 2 pounds of force for everything from recoil, to impacts, to caressing balls. A fascinating input device that never got the userbase it arguably deserved.

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00:00 An Oddware Introduction
00:33 The Novint Falcon
01:45 Novint Technologies
03:48 What happened
06:22 Controller and grips
09:54 Setup and testing
11:39 Ball demo
15:28 Bundled minigames
24:49 F-Gen Manager
28:09 Half-Life 2
31:58 Portal
34:14 Scripts & Crysis 2
36:32 Mouse passthrough
38:11 It deserved better

#LGR #retro #gaming #controller #oddware

[sunderark]

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

[aaronbosen]

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.

[PXAbstraction]

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.

[craigunderhill]

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.

[kookaafa]

Love how he just casually has a red dot ready to slap onto the pistol grip attachment. Truly, a man of many disciplines.

[alfthai]

This device actually looks perfect for Surgeon Simulator

[takochiba]

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

[deliriumzer]

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.)

[TheGrobe]

I hate that I sometimes make presumptions about people, but LGR recognizing a striker fire pistol warmed my heart a little bit.

[BloopsyBloop]

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

[Vostok]

Cons: "Dude, you're considering spending $190 on a game controller"

Flight sim fans: "Yeah, haha, that's crazy..."

[Zarnubius]

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.

[claycook]

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.

[MarkTheMorose]

Haven't heard that LGR laugh since the 'Photoshop Neural Filters' episode. Which I shall now watch again... thanks, I needed that.

[absurdscifi]

Hey lgr, chances you see this are close to none. But from the bottom of my heart thx for the years of great content you have been putting out for what the last 15 plus years now? XD I used to watch you back in the day and just stumble back on your channel. Great to see you are still nerding out with the collective web!

[SeanHH]

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

[megan_alnico]

This thing would be fantastic for a surgeon simulator VR game.

" You can really feel that liver!"

[ShiningRosarium]

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

[Rexdrinksredbull]

I like how the Gamespot clip is supposed to imply "oh he's gonna use the controller to touch hot video game women hahaha" but my immediate first thought was "oh is he a furry or something?" because of the mention of "touching real fur"

[wutzerface]

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