Ultrahaptics uses little ultrasound speakers to generate a sense of touch.
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Ultrahaptics shows off sense of touch in virtual reality

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Ultrahaptics had an touching demo at the VRX virtual reality conference last week. It used ultrasound technology so that I could feel things in VR using my own fingers. While wearing a VR headset, I reached out and held a virtual ball. My fingers were in mid-air, but it felt like I was touching something.

The Bristol, England-based company wants to bring “haptics” technology to VR to make it more immersive. VR does a great job of giving you the feeling that you are in a location, but that illusion breaks down as soon as you try to touch something. With better haptics, VR will be in a better position to hit its target of generating $14 billion in software revenue by 2020, according to market researcher SuperData Research.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.