Development of Namako, a Game-Engine Plugin for Haptic Rendering of Soft Objects

Abstract

The spread of game engines has enabled many engineers to efficiently create VR applications. However, development tools for VR applications with force-feedback application development. In particular, there are few tools for presenting haptic sensation of touching soft object for force display of soft objects. Namako supports physical simulation based on finite element method and force display using virtual coupling. Furthermore, it provides a GUI for mesh importing and physical parameter setting to help efficient application development. Using Namako, we were able to design the haptic sensation including the stiffness and friction of game engine such as high quality graphics rendering, interactive scene editing, publicity available assets developed by the game engine community, and so on. This paper presents an example of development workflow using Namako, performance evaluation of implemented physics simulator and force display controller, and several haptic VR applications developed by the authors.