With Steam Boxes looming large in the future, game-peddlers-cum-hardware-makers over at Valve have been experimenting with some new ways to control your PC. Yeah, there’s the weird joystick-less Steam Controller, but Valve designer Ben Krasnow has some even weirder stuff: a tongue mouse and a butt controller.
Both experiments — which Krasnow explains in depth in a pair of YouTube videos — aren’t finished products or even intended to be. They’re just weird experiments. For the tongue controller, Krasnow essentially mashed up the bottom of an infrared mouse with a retainer for a mouthpiece that lets you use your tongue to slide around the cursor. Meanwhile the butt controller is very literally a bathroom scale mashed up with a Xbox 360 controller.
Neither of these crazy little gadgets is particularly revelatory for use in games or on the desktop, why would they by? It’s not like anyone has ever designed any bit of software with those particular body parts in mind. But, hey, the only way you can make progress is by thinking way outside the box right? Or in this case, sitting on the box, and then rubbing the roof of your mouth with your tongue. [Ben Krasnow via Polygon]
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