Woojer, the company behind the haptic belt Strap, launched a Kickstarter campaign late last month for a new haptic vest, dubbed Ryg. Initially targeting a $50,000 funding goal, the campaign has seen strong support, not only claiming successful funding in the first three hours, but also garnering over $270,000 when the campaign closed last Friday.

Update (October 29th, 2018): Woojer has closed its Ryg campaign successfully with a total of $274,524. Since the Kickstarter was treated mostly as a pre-order campaign, there weren’t any stretch goals as such. The device is said to ship to backers between November and December of 2018. Further pre-orders are being handled on the company’s IndieGogo page.

The original article detailing the campaign follows below:

Original Article (September 28th, 2018): Using Woojer’s patented oscillating frame actuators, called Osci, the company says Ryg is three times more powerful than their earlier haptic products, which include the haptic belt Strap, and a Kickstarter funded haptic unit using the same technology.

Wading past some of the hypetastic bro-speak that permeates the Kickstarter itself, it appears Ryg, presumably like its forebears, can turn in-game sounds into body shaking haptics out-of-the-box, sort of like a ‘buttkicker’ for your entire torso. Unlike the single-actuator units that came before it however, the vest itself packs in eight actuators that are said to provide “silent, harmonic and powerful tactile sensations.” Developers can tune the vest’s actuators with both Unity and Unreal SDKs for greater immersion in VR, as the vest can hypothetically simulate things like gunshots and raindrops, so not only sound-based haptics.

Connecting via Bluetooth, Ryg is said to last up to eight hours of playtime on a single charge, although it can draw current from additional battery packs for longer play sessions. An optional mounting bracket will also allow backpack-style PCs to integrate with the vest, something that location-based facilities tend to use in larger warehouse-scale VR environments.

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Early backers of the Kickstarter campaign can receive a Ryg starting at $550, something the company says is around ~35% off the suggested retail price. Ryg is slated to arrive at some Kickstarter backers’ doors as early as November 2018, although the glut of backers will receive their units a month later.

You can check out the Kickstarter campaign here.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Luke

    is it compatible with oculus quest?

    • Marco Dena

      Thats likely to be.

      • jj

        uh where are you getting that info from? don’t just assume this will work with mobile vr device. As someone who has made devices for the GO, i can tell you its not as easy as just hooking it up over bluetooth or wifi.

        • Omerion

          Its Bluetooth and -additionally- works using sound, while I am not familiar with the product it does not seem an SDK is required either..

          • vtid

            Yeah it sounds like sound/bass is the important factor; not the HMD or anything else.

        • G-man

          you plug an audio jack into it. and guess what the oculus quest has two of… audio jacks, one for headphones, one for things like this.

  • R3ST4RT

    I’ve been in the contract design field for about 10 years now and the rule of thumb that our team goes by is this:

    Budget a minimum of $500,000 for any consumer ready first revision and if you want it to be good, budget for $1,000,000.

    It looks like they have the majority of their design and tooling costs already finished and this kickstarter is more for marketing than anything else. However, whenever a company asks for $50,000 it makes me worry as it’s almost always not enough to successfully produce a product.

    • Roddeh

      I think you just countered that last worry with your previous sentence, no? ;)

      • Daban

        Design and tooling is probably the easiest of the bunch. Try manufacturing, general contracting, shipping, etc.

      • R3ST4RT

        You got me there, If it’s they are using kickstarter for just marketing, I would worry about funding goals but rather how they are handling their sdk. But if this money is for actually manufacturing and shipping, we have reason to pause and wonder if they will fully ship to backers.

    • Zachary Scott Dickerson

      100% agree, I do the same job, and it’s a solid $500K for an order with revisions and R&D etc. We just saw the other haptic vest go under like a week ago.

    • impurekind

      Well, they’re probably get close to those kinds of numbers by the time the Kickstarter ends, if the start is any indication, so I wouldn’t worry too much.

      • Kev

        Yeah but the $1,000,000+ is all your engineering. The kickstarter requires you deliver the perks for that money. The low volume will drive up your per unit cost so your cost as a percentage of your shown sell through price will be really high.

        So therefore if they have to deliver a perk for example at $700 and their hard cost is ~$600 that a small margin per device to spend on engineering. If your kickstarter ends up being say $1,000,000 the actual money you have for tooling and a myriad of other things would be like $150,000 – or maybe 15% of the total money you would require.

        KS is a difficult business model. For most of them they 100% require considerable additional investment to be able to ship the perks.

        • impurekind

          Well, some other companies on Kickstarter have managed it in various ways, be it additional external funding or whatever, so I guess we’ll see how these guys manage it in due time.

  • Marco Dena

    I own the little sister of this beauty, the ‘strap’ (a belt like model with 2 actuators) and i can tell you it works. Just be aware that its haptic is based on sound (bass shakers) so it works best with an equalizer and downing the in game music. But overall it was one of my best buy accessories for VR and definitely an overlooked product.

    • Marco Dena

      I also would like to mention the smart design and the amazing quality of the materials composing the device (always describing the Strap). Personally i am quite excited about this evolution.

    • FriendlyCard

      But, The Strap was $99 last year, then $130, then $169, and now $199. I would have purchased but the pricing is getting out of hand.

  • $50000 to produce hardware? doubt

    • In their defense, their Osci has been in development since 2013. Integrating into a vest (or backpack) is trivial in product development terms.

    • G-man

      they already made the hardware. the kickstarters is just a way to sell the product. albeit an annoying dodgy way that companies shouldnt use in place of actual sales contracts with customers.

  • impurekind

    Looks slick.

    • G-man

      wear it backwards if you want. one side needs to have adjustable straps.

  • mellott124

    This was just good marketing. After overhead and profit you can’t do much with $50k.

  • Roger Bentley

    i would have backed it if ossics x didn’t kick me in the balls so hard.

    • G-man

      i could have told you ossics was a scam, absolutely nothing they said made any sense, it was all complete lies

  • Raphael

    Retail will be $742. This hardware has no hope of selling to your average vive or octopus rift user. The only viable market for this hardware is location-based VR.

  • Jistuce

    “the company says Ryg is three times more powerful than a normal Zaku.”

  • Mateusz Pawluczuk

    Subpac is £349 in the UK so anything above this price point will be a tough sell. Sure Subpac isn’t a VR only accessory but so far it seems to be the most successful one anyway. It’s basic £299 version is actually sold out at the moment :)

    • Raphael

      Yup, £349 is about the upper limit. It amazes me this kickstarter was fully funded based on the intended retail price. Unless the majority of backers are in the pro entertainment area.

    • G-man

      the subpac is good, but having it just on your back is a big limitation for immersion. the way they designed t you also have to pretty much have the thing on half volume all the time otherwise it peaks and may damage itself. rather than having some sort of hardware slution to solve that problem, you just have to keep thinking about whether its on too high based on the game youre playing.

      its good, but it needs improvement, this seems to fix some of those problems.

  • I’m thinking people here are RADICALLY OVERESTIMATING what this is. It’s a couple of transducers on a plastic vest. That’s got to be about $30 in parts. A cost of $750 is like pure profits!

    It sounds like their patents are on the mount the transducers are using to help spread the vibration, but that mount is most likely just more plastic, setup to act like wave guides. This is like the 5th or 6th one of these I’ve seen floating around. It might be the cheapest of all of them though, considering their Kickstarter started at $50,000. Considering how simple these are, it’s just a super-low-bass sound system you wear, I wonder why Chinese companies are cranking out tons of these?

    Oculus has been big on audio in VR. They really should start an open standard for vibration vest audio in games, like a single low-end channel game developers can purpose for solely for player vibration. Then we can pick up these simple audio vests for $75, which is what they should be worth.

    • flamaest

      I could not have said it better myself. Absolutely On Target. I saw this vest myself at Consumer Electronics Show and even tried it on. Considering what it is supposed to do, and the amount of Technology included, It is not worth the price they are asking.

      • G-man

        make a cheaper one then? you’ll be rich.

  • VRgameDevGirl

    Im so tempted to get one.. looks amazing. Wish i could try it first.

  • Kenji Fujimori

    Why fund more shitty Chinese shit, they just pay American actors to pimp their garbage and steal your money basically.. for SHIT devices

  • kimdacosta

    Must be good for virtual sex!

  • impurekind

    The device is cool. The price is utterly absurd.

  • Kenji Fujimori

    Why do you keep giving the limelight and attention to these two bit Chinese sweatshop shitty companies for?

    • jj

      I kinda of agree.

      I have also been censored on this sight in the past over thing that weren’t even controversial just a different perspective, and i think thats pretty shitty of RtoVR to do. Even though theyll claim they didn’t, its pretty obvious to the writer when they posts are getting blocked.

      • Kenji Fujimori

        Left wing media propaganda comes into tech journalism now too, sadly. In Japan it is a different story.

  • Kenji Fujimori

    Only focus on American and Japanese mostly and eurotrash companies to a lesser extent

  • Kenji Fujimori

    Why are you giving the limelight to another shitty Chinese two bit company?
    Why magically VR is dominated by Chinese crap?

  • Kenji Fujimori

    FUck you moderator, why deleting my posts bitch?

  • Kenji Fujimori

    FUCK CHINESE REVERSE ENGINEERING AND THEIR STOLEN IP

  • Kenji Fujimori

    FUCK THIS FAG SITE

  • Kenji Fujimori

    Wooshiter, fuck China

  • Kenji Fujimori

    roadtovr is leftwing propaganda, they delete posts if it hurts CHINESE SHIT

  • domahman

    this is just a transducer right? why is it so expensive?