‘Final design’ of P5 gaming glove debuts this week

Essential Reality LLC has announced plans to reveal the “final product design” of its P5 glove peripheral at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif. later this week. The company showed off the P5 to attendees of last July’s Macworld Conference & Expo in New York City.

Designed to recognize discrete movements of the fingers and hand, the P5 provides users with the ability to control images, computer 3D graphics and on screen graphics. It also makes an unusual gaming peripheral, of course. The P5 uses Essential Reality’s own proprietary bend sensor and tracking technologies to help users interact with a virtual 3D space. The P5 is USB-based and sports compatibility with various flavors of Windows; the company also expects Mac OS X to be supported soon.

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David Devor, Essential Reality vice president of marketing, explained that the company plans to move towards a full commercial release of the P5 in the third quarter of 2002. Major game developers are already supporting the code in their systems, according to Devor.

The P5 Glove will be shown off at Essential Reality’s booth at the Game Developers Conference at the San Jose Convention Center. Look for them at booth 440.