Summer Of Glove: The Peregrine Insan-o-Controller
Scanning the hardy Blues News, I initially mistook the headline 'Peregrine Glove' to be a most peculiarly-named videogame. Instead, it's one of those totally, gloriously, ridiculous batshit controllers that occasionally make an inevitably doomed play to replace or augment the venerable keyboard. This experimental hand-wrapping has the autocue-based blessing of one of the world's top DoTA players, so perhaps this time PC gaming controls really will be revolutionised...
(Er. I didn't Photoshop that slogan onto the image, lest you're worrying.)
I can't pretend I've heard of Pu "Whisper" Liu before, but perhaps you have. Who here thinks he's promoting the Peregrine out of earnest love for the product?
That introduction video amuses me highly, because it spends so much time talking about how comfortable the glove is and almost nothing on what it does. I didn't come out of it at all sure why I should buy a Peregrine instead of a nice £5 wollen glove from Marks & Spencers.
Fortunately, some videos uploaded the next day explain things rather better:
The concept is this: the fingers and palm of the glove contain 20 sensors. When tapped upon or otherwise combined, these sensors activate hotkeys in your favourite electric videogame, meaning that you don't really need a keyboard to play. Once you've memorised which sensors you've allocated to what, anyway. Why would you not want a keyboard? Perhaps you have an absurdly tiny desk. Perhaps you have RSI. Perhaps you believe that reducing the distance your fingers need to travel between keys gives you an edge in high-speed strategy games like DoTA. Perhaps you have a phobia of oblong-shaped objects.
More videos here.
Anyone fancy a Peregrine, then? I'm entirely sure I wouldn't find any possible use for it myself, but then I'm not a pro-gamer. If I was, I'd surely own a hat made of gold and a harem containing a thousand Natalie Portman clones. As it is, I only own a hat made of bronze and a harem containing 48 Renée Zellweger clones.
No release date or price seems available as yet, but more about the Peregrine can be found here, including the revelation that it's been in the making for five years. You know what else lasts five years? A £10 keyboard.