Philips has announced this week that two more major publishers/developers have been signed up to produce games which are 'amBX-enabled' – allowing for realistic in-game wind, temperature and ambient lighting effects.
The company will partner with Codemasters and Introversion to amBX-enable TOCA Race Driver 3 and the upcoming titles DEFCON and Darwinia (all on PC).
The Philips release we just received informs us that the company, "...will utilize a special scripting language in Codemasters and Introversion titles that will redefine the experience of playing games by extending the game world out of the screen and into the real world."
What is this amBX, then? It's basically a bunch of wind and lighting effects which are created by a number of add-on peripherals including satellite lights, wallwasher lights (both offering 16 million different colours), twin-bladed desk fans (that can drop the ambient temperature on the skin, or on full-blast at 5000rpm can represent strong wind and almost blow your hair off!) and rumbler effects (via rumble wrist-rests and mouse mats).
The idea being that the combination of ambient lighting, sound, vibration and air movement at the correct moments in a game serve to increase the sensual and immersive feel of being in the game.
In TOCA for example, racers will feel the wind in their hair through the amBX fans and see the flash of lighting through tree lines, tunnels and landscapes via the amBX LED lights all in the real world around them.
