Garçon

 

Garçon was created as directed research at USC for the Institute for Creative Technologies, along with Thai Phan and Neeraj Agicha. This was created as a “rehab game” — a game built for patients who are in need of physical therapy. Specifically, Garçon was created to help types of patients that need to regain motor skills required to perform a two-handed task. We used two Novint Falcons as input devices to control the tray in the video. The force feedback provided by the haptic devices was the most important part of the game, so we needed to make sure that the feedback matched what was occurring in the game world. This involved adding left/right weight according to the positions of glassware on the tray, and releasing weight gently as glassware is tossed and dropped so as not to surprise players with a sudden shift in force. This was built on top of OGRE for our rendering and physics engine, and we worked closely with Novint to help us understand their drivers and API.