London, June 27 (ANI): A game controller that can twist, deflect and vibrate could bring a new level of realism to virtual video-game tennis by simulating the impact of a ball.

In reality, when a player hits the ball, the racket recoils with an equal and opposite reaction in accordance with Newton's third law of motion.

Video games that simulate tennis have become popular with the advent of motion- and gesture-based controllers, but they have mostly ignored the physical interaction of the ball and racket.

Now Fong Wee Teck and colleagues from the Institute for Infocomm Research at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore have developed a haptic controller that looks a lot like a normal tennis racket.

The head of the racket moves and twists, creating opposite forces on the handle that make it feel as if a ball is actually hitting the head.

Two actuators that can push and pull each side in different directions, generating up to 60 g force connect the head to the handle.

This is a bit less than the 100 g force routinely generated during a tennis match.

The vibration element enhances the feeling of realism by changing its frequency depending on how the virtual ball strikes the racket.

According to Fong, the human sensory system can discern the variations in these vibrations in a real game.

Maybe the ball was hitting harder or maybe your racket string is of different quality. We can simulate this, New Scientist quoted Fong as saying.

The study will be presented in August at the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles. (ANI)