This Vest Lets You Feel Gunshots, Lasers, and Stab Wounds in VR

I stood in the middle of a crowded convention center gripping a beating human heart in my fist, while dozens of people passed by barely glancing in my direction. It felt steady and rhythmic against my palm and fingers, attempting to push blood that was there into a body that it wasn’t in. Soon it weakened before stopping entirely.

For a moment, it reminded me of my own mortality—and the way that, one day, my heart would slow to the same weakened pulse before stopping forever. Before an existential dread could overcome me entirely, though, a voice snapped me out of it saying, “So that was the heart demo. In the next one, you can see what a failing liver feels like.”

Instantly, I remembered that the heart I was holding wasn’t real but rather a virtual heart that only I could see thanks to a pair of augmented reality glasses I was wearing at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The beating I felt was real—but it actually came from a glove I was wearing from Microtube Tech, a Singapore startup focused on creating haptic technologies—or tech that allows you to “feel” things in virtual reality.

Read more at The Daily Beast.