High-Tech Jacket Makes This More Vivid

Moviemakers have a new tool to make your viewing experience more intense: a jacket wired with devices that use touch to stimulate the wearer, Fast Company reports. But the jacket is more than just the latest incarnation of smell-o-vision—rather than reproducing sensations being experienced by characters on screen, it uses touch to interact psychologically with the viewer.

The jacket might be programmed, for example, to send a shiver up your spine at the right moment, make your limbs feel tense, or simulate a pounding heartbeat at the most climactic moments. Only in the research phase now, the hardware is cheap enough that rentable touch jackets may be featured at theaters before long. (More virtual reality stories.)