The consumer applications of VR today are centred around the entertainment industry, but has anyone ever thought that they wanted to be immersed in their work for a change? Apparently, Tap has for the past three years. And it has demonstrated a wearable that is keyboard, mouse and controller for a virtual desktop environment.
The company’s eponymous wearable sits at the base of your fingers, registering finger taps as inputs. All you need to do is connect it to any device via Bluetooth and you can use this one wearable as your productivity peripheral. Most importantly, this wearable is also compatible with virtual desktop environments via Ovulus Rift and HTC Live.
There’s a demo video of Tap in action, and it shows that, very impressively, that you can type entirely with one hand. That said, every key on the keyboard is mapped to specific tapping patterns using your five fingers. Most of the keys can be remapped, for what it’s worth.
Either way, it’s going to take a long re-learning process before you get used to using this setup compared to your usual keyboard typing. You’ll also have to memorise every tap pattern mapped to the keys of your choice, so it’s like learning the alphabet all over again.
If this is something you find interesting, then you can buy it for US$179 (~RM739), excluding shipping costs from the US. Before you do that, we do advise to check if the company does ship to Malaysia.
