At the Digital Life conference in New York City a few months back, the wonderful Sabrina Cook walked me through the Novint Falcon, a computer mouse used to bring a tangable feel to PC gaming. The video above is from that meeting.

Since then, Novint has traveled around arranging deals with different companies like EA and Valve, assuring that anyone who buys the Falcon will have plenty of different games to play with their $150 device. Games like Portal, Team Fortress 2, Battlefield 2142, and the upcoming Left 4 Dead all work with the mouse, and at E3 I had a chance to mess around with it again and see what progress Novint has made.

Not much has changed since the last time I pushed my hand through sand or felt the rattle of a machine gun in Half-Life 2, but I was able to try out the Pistol Grip Attachment to see if it actually added to the experience like they had promised it would. Sadly, it didn’t, and there still isn’t a great grip attachment for the controller to make it easier to use while maintaining the utterly amazing tangible  feel it provides.

For me, the Falcon is still far from perfection. The gun grip was cool, but it was more like the tennis rackets attachments for the Wiimote than anything else. It definitely enhances the PC experience in some ways, but makes the games harder at the same time, so there is a tradeoff that I don't think is really necessary. Hopefully with some work they will be able to make it more accurate and precise, turning it into something that can be used in every game. That said, I can't wait to try it out again.

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