A couple of haptic input options

A couple of haptic interfaces are being worked on to give designers a better way to translate their ideas directly into the computer. The University of Buffalo's Virtual Reality Lab uses a glove with force and position sensors (like a vastly more useful Powerglove) and real clay (to provide accurate feedback) to manipulate Virtual Clay on a computer. This one won't be available for quite a while. A system that is available is the Phantom Haptic Interface, which uses a force feedback stylus which is apparently quite good, and quite expensive (a few thousand dollars). Eventually the goal is to be able to pick up and mold an object and have whatever you do exactly mimicked onscreen (in Alias or whatever) for further tweaking.