Here’s a screenshot:

All of the elements in the game—walls, bumpers, vortex, etc.—are “haptified” (in other words, when the ball hits them, you feel it). We call it “high-fidelity haptics” because the touch feedback is incredibly nuanced and varied. The chute on the top right feels like a hollow tube. The ball hitting the metal walls feels sharp and solid. When the ball goes up the xylophone, you hear and feel the pitch of every note. And the vortex feels like—well, it feels like a vortex, even though I’ve never felt a real one before.

This kind of tactile PC game is entirely new, and so is the possibility of high-fidelity haptics inside a notebook screen. As our CTO (who is also my boss) is fond of saying, I believe we have just “taken it to the next level.”

Here’s Immersion’s press release about the technology.

UPDATE: Computerworld has published an article about the demo called “Haptics: The feel-good technology of the year”:

Immersion CTO Christophe Ramstein demonstrated today at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference a breathtaking new generation of haptic technologies he calls “high-fidelity haptics.”

Ramstein called a volunteer onto the stage and invited her to play a pinball game on a specially configured Hewlett-Packard tablet PC. She immediately responded to the haptics, and said that she could actually “feel a metal ball rolling on a hard surface.” She could feel all the motion of the game, the vibration of the whole machine and detailed, super-realistic but subtle tactile cues of the kind that you would feel with a real, physical pinball machine.

After playing for a minute or two, Ramstein threw a switch to turn off the haptics. The volunteer reported, essentially, that the game suddenly became cold and dead, even though all the graphics and sound were still in play.

Read the whole thing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: On CNNMoney, The Touchscreen Goes Ultratactile:

At Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference, Immersion’s chief executive officer, Clent Richardson, and chief technology officer Christophe Ramstein, let me play with the company’s latest innovation: a two-player game prototype that offers touch feedback as a pinball moves between two computer screens.

The game did indeed feel like an old-school pinball machine. The tablet vibrated under my fingers, and there was a tangible change in pressure when the paddle made contact with the ball.

Here’s the highlight video posted on the All Things Digital website:

For more, read the full press release.

UPDATE:
Engadget: Immersion demos new TouchSense multitouch, haptic keyboard at D7.
Gizmodo: Immersion’s new haptic touchscreen tech encourages corny iPhone romance.
Electricpig: Multitouch tactile keyboard demoed

[audio:./interviews/dt_ces_haptic.mp3]

Download (mp3, 8.5 MB)

The interviewer calls it a “genuinely remarkable technology.” My job right now is to develop vibrotactile applications for the phone in the video, so it makes me happy to see that this kind of thing is generating excitement!

I’m excited to announce that, as I write this post, a musical instrument that I designed and built is being shown at WIRED magazine’s NextFest conference and trade show in Los Angeles. The first version of the Rulers came out of a physical interaction design workshop hosted by Stanford University’s CCRMA music technology program. Later I gave it a full version upgrade and it was purchased by the Digital Orchestra at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music. Since the Digital Orchestra is at NextFest, so are the Rulers. Here’s the press release for the exhibition.