A few weeks ago, G4’s Attack of the Show (AOTS) took a look at the OCZ NIA, or Neural Impulse Actuator for short. The NIA is a gaming accessory, a headband of sorts, that recognizes facial movements and translates those to in-game actions.
I actually had the opportunity to try a pre-production version of the NIA during the 2008 CES in Las Vegas this past January.
I spent maybe 15 minutes working with Dr. Michael Schuette, VP of Technology Development at OCZ. I went through a very brief calibration process then jumped into a UT2004 Deathmatch. The NIA had a pretty big learning curve, but after about 5-10 minutes I was able to control my character somewhat and managed a few frags. I was able to raise my eyebrows slightly to fire a gun which worked surprisingly well, but walking and jumping were a bit more difficult to master. Had I done a proper calibration and configuration, I am sure it would have worked much better.
The moral of the story is that the device did in fact work, and with more time to play with it, it could work quite well.
As I was saying, AOTS took a look at the NIA in their Gadget Pr0n segment recently and well, let’s just say they didn’t give it a fair review at all. A 4-minute TV segment is not enough time for a first-time user to really give a fair opinion.
That being said, I just caught word that Dr. Michael will be on the show today to challenge Kevin Pereira to a gaming contest. Kevin will use a standard mouse and keyboard while Dr. Michael will demonstrate the NIA. I’ve seen Dr. Michael use the NIA both in person and on video, and I’m pretty confident he is going to totally destroy Kevin!
Be sure to tune in and check it out!
