OC3D Exclusive Review: OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator (nia) - The Log

[exiledduke]

Meh... Either more accurate, or only one sensor/hid per node, or sensors for other things...

OCZ seems to have a rather accurate device as far as the EEG parts are concerned... emotive must traks many more things than the NIA.

 

[Jaster]

yeah...watching the video's not only muscle actions in the head are registered but throughout the body...watch the stonehenge demo...tbh I think there are gonna be numerous attempts...time will tell if any translate well enough to compliment traditional methods...wondering when week 2 on the log will be put up...i have faith in the reviewers on here to give it a good go and be open minded about it being the first of its kind...it was interesting to see the new emotiv vids reducing the expected price from $400 to $300...I'd read that somewhere else a whist back...suppose its good to have 2 competitors on the market to keep prices within the reach of the average consumer..

 

[K3T]

yay i managed to play UT3 and CSS lol with only mouse to aim xD right click as well took me 4hours to get use to this thing lol

oh yeah no more pong for me guys <3 NIA lol worth every penny

 

[quoc]

how many keys can you bind if you're able to control everything?

 

[K3T]

no idea lol im using the "easy" profile for ut3

 

[SuperRoach]

Quoc, earlier stuff said upto 16 actions.... the idea is that you can map certain parts of the "Axis" to be a button when your in that zone. So the more things you map in one axis, the more careful you have to think about that bit...

at least thats what I've picked up, not having one.

 

[Jaster]

your right roach...8 axis in total each with a positive and negative axis which means 16 in total...but its real sensitive...so the degrees of seperation between positive and negative and all the cross variants means you could easily map a full keyboard and macros...but you'd have to be bordering on telepathic or some other paranormal extreme to control it ...

 

[Sylvr]

would that mean the more buttons you add the easier it would be to 'misclick' a button in your brain?

also...Jaster, any chance your company could ship to new zealand?

 

[Jaster]

defo with the misclick thing...its not the sort of thing you'd want to do in any team based game....I could envisage one wrong move leading to another and another...domino effect...the software mimics the joypad config in windows ..which I think is good as its attatching it to something weve all used...

Yes we will ship to NZ but I'm not sure when the next batch are out...last time I spoke to OCZ they said the second batch would follow in approximately a month after the first shipment...however one of our suppliers said this week...however that is not the same supplier we actually got the first load from...I'm sure I'll get a better picture this week...

 

[JN]

yeah...watching the video's not only muscle actions in the head are registered but throughout the body...watch the stonehenge demo...tbh I think there are gonna be numerous attempts...time will tell if any translate well enough to compliment traditional methods...wondering when week 2 on the log will be put up...i have faith in the reviewers on here to give it a good go and be open minded about it being the first of its kind...it was interesting to see the new emotiv vids reducing the expected price from $400 to $300...I'd read that somewhere else a whist back...suppose its good to have 2 competitors on the market to keep prices within the reach of the average consumer..

Hi Jaster,

We should hopefully have the 2nd part of the review ready to go live on monday. I spoke to our reviewer on friday and I think he's made a bit of progress, but in the early stages its quite hard to know if you are actually controlling the inputs or if its all randomness.

I've asked for someone "in the know" from OCZ to give him a call, so hopefully it'll help a bit.

 

[Jaster]

yeah it did feel random at some points...I didnt really have enough time with it to make a full comment on it....but the alpha and beta readings did just seem haywire...until we collaborated it with a pure relaxed normal breathing chilled 30 seconds...then we noticed with that suddenly glance controls and muscle controls seemed to be alot more intune then our first attempt...which left me with the question is 30 seconds really long enough to calibrate a base line setting....

 

[JN]

Just to keep you all in the loop:

We was due to publish an update to our review of the nia on Monday, but as new software was released yesterday, we've held off just a little longer to test things again.

By this avo/evening, update #1 should be live on the site :worship:

 

[Hyper]

Nice one Jim,

Look forward to reading it!

 

[JN]

Day 12 - The first instalment of Chris (ins) Buer's experiences with the device has now been posted.

Check it out

 

[Jaster]

sounds like the new software changes the experience....it was really hard to basically act like you were brain dead to get a good baseline...sounds promising though...the glance feature though is seeming a bit elusive...how bigs yer brow line...I remember reading in the manual that this could effect the reading on glance...so cromagnum man hasnt got a chance...does that mean that people with a protruding brow line are less evolved...wow the NIA is evolution-acist, its a new kind of persecution....one up to OCZ for possibly creating a new kind of hate crime

 

[Kerotan]

Not bad, looking forward to the next bit of the log- lol at blue on blue in CSS that can't of been to good- the more you tried to stop it the more frantically you'd be running and gunning- a prime example of positive feedback lol.

Keep it coming!

 

[FarFarAway]

Good update chris and some interesting stuff there. I like the way you control the character, although did you not find that playing 'un-relaxes' your mind? Just wondering

 

[Chipzilla]

I'm really curious if this device helps lowering reaction times for trained people. I'm an avid FPS gamer and currently I get a 0.13 second average which gives a noticable edge in-game:



I'd be quite happy if this thing could shave a something off that structurally. I'd remap melee/trigger/grenade-esque buttons to it immediately!

 

[Jaster]

the problemis with most reaction tests though is that you know that your being tested and so your actual response time will be less then within a game, where you have to realise the situation then react accordingly, i dont think these tests can be accurate compared to a situational reaction time which is more real world and game world accurate, a good example is that on the NIA reaction time I scored a perfect zero (no joke), but thats because I was sat there and just guessed when the symbol was going to appear. Based on the physical mechanics of how your body moves and the speed in which a computer can read an electrical impulse then it will shave reaction times by the 60% it claims but thats just the maths talking, wether that actually translates into the real world is something to be seen.

 

[Chipzilla]

I know what you mean by situational context, but it helps when you have your cursor on a place you know someone is going to pop up. Could be with a sniper, but also just watching a doorway, you just click faster when practised.

Scoring a zero happens often in these kinda games by guessing yeah, that's why you should use a variety of tests to see if the results are consistent. Some people show me this test with a single 0.05 result or something and brag, until I tell them the human reaction time limit is around 0.11 second and they just guessed xD

BTW with certain mice, the "click" is just slower making me score lower on these tests I score consistenly faster with a deathadder when compared to an mx510/mx518. Scores on missionred.com etc are lower with the mx518 too. I'm just very curious how quickly the NIA can make your clicks.

(other thing -completely unrelated to the NIA- is that those reactions arent just theoretical ingame stuff only, measured them "offline" too & use them for competing in sports)