- I'm pretty sure there's something wrong.
[laughs]
We're off to a great start.
[piano music]
Greetings and welcome to LGR Oddware,
where we're taking a look at hardware and software
that is odd, forgotten and obsolete.
And this time, we've got this right here.
This is the Essential Reality P5 Glove controller,
I guess you could call it,
and it's sort of a glorified mouse
input device type thing for PCs,
to let you control games and your computer desktop,
and whatever else, through the power of your fingers.
It's quite the experience,
and this was actually given to me,
and the Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 2019.
Forgive me, I didn't write down your name,
but he gave me this T-shirt as well.
I guess he's with Free Geek, Twin Cities.
They do some cool stuff with e-cycling and all that,
thank you for both of these things,
but yeah, he apparently got this dropped off there,
and thought of me, and it's like brand new and everything,
so here it is, thank you very much for giving this to me,
and yeah, let's take a look at the P5!
Alrighty, time to get hands-on with this thing.
This is the Essential Reality P5,
with P5 standing for power of five,
as in your five fingers.
It sold for $150 when it launched
in the latter half of 2002.
A price that immediately drew criticism.
Sure, it came packed with full versions
of the games, Operation Tiger Hunt and Hitman 2,
but 150 bucks?
That was the same price as a brand new
Nintendo GameCube console back then,
so it's little wonder that Essential Reality
quickly dropped the price to $99 for the P5
at the beginning of 2003.
"The future is at hand."
Ah geez, they couldn't resist a hand pun, huh?
On the other hand, you've got to hand it to them,
puns are hands down on the handiest ways
to get a grip on product marketing
without using under-handed business tactics.
So I give it two thumbs up.
Anyways, Essential Reality billed the P5
as the Ultimate 3D Virtual Controller,
providing six degrees of motion control,
the ability to detect gripping and finger movements.
It drew immediate comparisons to the Power Glove
for the NES among gamers,
but the mainstream media really latched onto the idea
of it being a kind of futuristic mouse replacement.
There were all kinds of ridiculous headlines like,
Are Mice Now Obsolete?
and The Mouse Faces Extinction.
Not to mention calling the P5
a device for hardcore video game players
that find joysticks and mice too confining.
[laughs] Because who hates playing games
with traditional controls more than hardcore gamers, right?
Now check out this mock-up of the modern day gamer
in 2002, complete with a CyMouse head tracker,
Olympus Eye-Trek display, and of course, the P5.
Fantastic!
The company also touted this as a potential
input device for 3D animation, CAD modeling,
and sports simulations, stating that
"there's a lot of people sick of the mouse.
It's a limited two-dimensional device.
We want to go above and beyond that."
Indeed, which is why companies like Spacetech IMC
sold their Spaceball devices
nearly a decade and a half before the P5.
Quite successfully too.
So yeah, they were correct that certain people
demanded mouse alternatives.
It's just that they were late to the party,
and professionals had long since decided
on using devices like the Spaceball,
which left the P5 for quote, hardcore gamers,
and their supposed hatred of mice and joysticks.
Unfortunate then, that game support was so abysmal.
Only five games were officially patched for it.
The afore-mentioned Hitman 2 and Tiger Hunt,
as well as Serious Sam II, Black and White,
Air Lock and a demo for Beach Head 2002.
Yeah!
Essential Reality promised more support in the future,
along with Playstation 2 and X-Box versions,
left-handed and smaller-sized models,
and even a fully wireless edition.
Of course, this never happened.
Beyond a software update in 2003,
Essential Reality soon stopped development on the P5,
and massively discounted gloves,
started littering store clearance sections.
As fate would have it, though this was when the P5
finally started forming a proper community
with $20 gloves ending up in the hands of hobbyists,
who saw the potential with its new low price point.
Custom drivers and a new API by Carl Kenner
were a popular upgrade,
soon being preferred by users
over the original Essential Reality software.
But yeah, even that's over 15 years old now.
By and large, what little community the P5 once boasted
has long since moved on,
with recent efforts to add P5 support
to OpenHMD having fizzled out.
However, on LGR Oddware, we're just getting started.
So, let's see how it was to use one fresh out of the box.
This is the special premiere edition from 2002,
bundled with unique P5 enabled CD-ROMs for Hitman 2,
Tiger Hunt and Beach Head 2002.
You also get some replacement plastic
finger-squeezing thingies,
and this towering motion tracker
they call the P5 Receptor.
Kind of looks like a slimline computer speaker
with a USB cable, but in reality,
it's an infrared receiver
that senses movement made by the P5 Glove.
So yeah, unlike the Power Glove's ultrasonic microphones,
this uses infrared.
Kind of like the Nintendo Wii sensor bar.
Finally, there's the glove itself,
held in place with far too many twisty-ties here,
but I guess they really wanted to show it off,
so they did what they had to,
but yeah, here it is!
It's a combination of plastic and rubber materials
that slides onto your right hand,
with eight infrared LEDs around the edges,
and four buttons on the top left hand side.
You know, the P5 Glove is really less of a glove,
and more of a hand harness
that hugs onto your fingers.
Actually, you know those jeweled bracelets
that extend to cover your whole hand?
Kind of like that but for obsolete hardware nerds.
Or perhaps the most ineffective Thanos cosplay,
just instead of Infinity Stones, you have infinity LEDs.
Anyway, the non-glove has a cable,
permanently attached to the rear right of the hand,
which connects to the front of the IR Receiver Tower.
And in return, the tower connects to your PC
via USB one point one.
As for where you place the receiver,
well that's a bit of a thing
that we'll get to soon enough,
but yeah, that's about it for setup.
The rest is all software found on this fourth CD-ROM
tucked away in the bottom of the box.
The documentation is pretty sparse.
All you get is this cheap foldout paperwork
that basically just says to plug it in
and install the software.
So enough of me talking, let's move on
over to more of me talking.
Ahh!
Okay, I've got the Windows XP build going right here,
and we have the thing plugged in.
All that kind of good stuff.
We've got the hand ready to go,
but right now, it is not turned on.
So, I was actually putting it on the wrong way
when I first got it.
Had to do some adjustments,
and actually those other plastic things
that it comes with are not only replacements,
but they're a little bit larger, which is good.
Some of my fingers were getting cut off
with the circulation.
Actually, wait, I still did it wrong.
It's supposed to go like this.
Then the thumb goes in there,
and this goes around and catches onto this bottom part.
Like that? Yeah!
And now this is the power button.
So if we turn that on,
you'll see this little red light starts flashing.
If it's not in view, and now it's solid.
Now it is in view.
As you can see here,
it is actually moving the mouse cursor.
[chuckles] Somewhat.
Actually, I think I'm going to have to
move back a little bit. Yeah.
This is supposedly the optimal distance.
There is however, a calibration
thing that it came with, which is this right here.
And yes, I'm using an actual mouse instead of this thing.
That should give you a clue right there,
but anyway, so if I hit the A button.
Dang it!
This is all part of the experience.
Crap!
Okay, if I hit the A button, it clears that out,
and it's supposed to be
calibrating my finger movements.
Come on now!
There it is!
Okay, now, supposed to squeeze,
and then press A again, and now, it is calibrated.
[laughs]
So index finger is left-click.
As you can see here, I can click like
Click click click clicking around.
That's fine!
And you can switch these around in this menu here,
so index left-click, middle finger...
Or middle click is the thumb.
And right-click is the middle finger,
so dunk, over there!
Click and then, whatever.
Anyway, so this is desktop mouse mode.
However, as you can see,
it is not the most reliable thing.
There's definitely a lot of acceleration
in this crazy weird little dead zone,
and as you can see there,
now it's kind of losing the tracking.
It's constantly losing the tracking.
In fact, let me show a brief little video,
or part of a video that it played
whenever I first started this thing up
and installed the software.
[electronic music]
- [Video Narrator] Congratulations on purchasing your P5!
The red LED on the receptor should be facing you,
and it will blink when the glove is out of range.
Place the receptor to the right
of your monitor or computer.
Facing towards you about one and a half
to two feet away from where you'll be resting your hand.
You can go up to three feet and still get excellent results.
Just move your hand around in the direction you want to go.
The P5 allows you to go left, right, up, down and z,
as well as yaw, pitch and roll.
Point and click, and you're good to go.
[electronic music]
- So yeah, that shows you how it's supposed to work,
and honestly, it seems to be doing what it's supposed to,
it's just not good.
If I were to open up Solitaire here,
okay you kind of have to move your hand back
and come on, click!
Click! There we go!
Clicking is not the most accurate,
not the most reliable thing, but it can be done.
And it's totally possible to play
a game of Solitaire on here.
I actually played one to completion earlier,
and caused some harm to myself.
Take a look at my index finger there.
I've got a bandaid on there,
because look at this footage from earlier.
It actually started wearing off the skin from my knuckle.
Because I was clicking.
Just clicking, maybe 15 minutes worth,
and it just rubbed the skin right off of there,
so that's a thing.
It is just rubber here after all,
I mean it's not like the most abrasive rubber.
It's not super soft, but they should've put
some of the coating on the bottom there too.
Maybe prevent that, but anyway,
that's enough Solitaire.
Let's, oh no, here we go!
Ahh, hitting little buttons and any kind of thing
like that is not what this is made for.
Come on, go down there!
Now see, this is a challenge.
Sometimes getting all the way over to the start menu
is a real big thing.
I just want to go down there.
That time it worked.
If I move all the way back here,
it kind of works.
Actually I'm about three feet away here.
Ahh!
- [Video Narrator] You can go up to three feet
and still get excellent results.
And still get excellent results.
Excellent results.
[audio slows down] Excellent results.
- Anyway, come on!
Figure out where I am, there we are!
We can open up something like Air Lock.
This is a little demo of a thing.
What? P5 authenticate failed?
Oh, that's good!
Let's try that again.
Hey, it worked that time.
All right, so you've got this cage,
and you're supposed to move it in and out here,
and grab these floating objects, and that's it.
Remember glove ball?
Yeah, this is not a very well-made demo,
but it does work just about better than
anything else that I've tried.
Because that's actually made for
this particular P5 in mind,
it's not just some, this works great.
Come on! There we go!
Wow, that was amazing.
And that's all this is, you just try to
[laughs] it's literally a game that
shows off how finicky this thing is.
It's like how quickly can you fight the controls,
and actually make it do what you want?
And it does that every time you try
to knock out the game, or close out the game.
Just donk, and you're knocked back to the desktop.
Anyway, another one it comes with that doesn't work is
Beach Head 2002.
Now the game starts up, usually,
so you can just hit Play.
The thing is, it takes you to this thing.
It's like, thank you for installing.
This game has been enabled with ActiveMark,
allowing you to run the demo
and purchase the full version
without having to download again.
In other words, it's a cut down version of the game,
which we knew, it's listed as a demo,
but just click Start Playing,
and it always just does this.
It goes blank screen.
And yeah, it's just not working.
And then it'll take you back to the main menu,
which is nice, it's oh good!
Now I can check out the controls, like P5 controls.
It is a custom version of the game.
If you can click on anything, dang it!
Come on now!
The clicking seems to be not very sensitive in this game.
Here we go!
So you can look at the mapping.
And look, controls, this is going to be great.
You can shoot with your thumb,
and toggle weapons with your index finger.
Fire missiles with your middle finger.
Dude that's so cool!
Hey, let's just play.
Let's play.
And it takes you back to this screen again.
Okay fine, let's start play.
And you get this, again.
And it's an endless loop of it trying to
activate the game, or let you play the demo,
but it doesn't let you do that.
Every time you hit New Game, or Continue Game,
or whatever, it takes you back to this.
Anyway, it doesn't work, the point being,
that sucks!
And it also crashes.
[laughs] Everything that it comes with, crashes.
Pretty constantly, oh my word!
All right, another one that it comes with
that doesn't really work [laughs] seeing a pattern?
Tiger Hunt.
Let's just open that with the normal mouse.
You can see, the menu looks pretty much the same.
There's a P5 section in the options menu.
So these are your things.
Good luck trying to change any of this though,
with the actual glove, it's so hard to even,
like I'm barely moving my hand.
Ugh!
Why didn't they redo the menus or anything
to make this more optimized for the glove?
I don't know.
Let's just play.
We'll not do the training missions.
Come on now!
Oh my word!
Here we go!
Hit the Play button, again this tiny little button
at the bottom of the screen.
And I'm pretty sure there's something wrong.
You're supposed to be able to control
certain directions and what not by rolling,
and moving around, here we can go into first person.
It does work, to a degree, here I am shooting,
but as you can see, there's graphical glitches.
There's something wrong.
[laughs]
We're off to a great start.
[cracks up]
So there's something going on with the graphics.
But other than that, you can kind of see
how it's supposed to work, sort of.
You know, moving up and down to aim.
Rotating your arm is supposed to move you around.
There's a way you can WASD it too,
and sort of move around, but again,
you can't be too close, well there's that.
You can't be too close to the sensor.
It doesn't work, but yet, you're supposed to also
use the keyboard for a lot of functions.
That's not great.
It constantly thinks I'm rolling.
You can see the steering wheel thing.
It's like it's from an old Toyota or something.
I guess that's what you steer tanks with in this game.
A Toyota steering wheel.
All right, let's get out of here.
Go!
That one at least doesn't crash,
and it goes straight back to the desktop.
That's good!
Now here's one of the more interesting ones.
Or ones that I was most interested in trying, Hitman 2.
Cause I'm like how can they possibly
take this stealth game and make it work with the P5?
The short answer is, they didn't.
Right, so Hitman 2.
We do at least have some finer control over the mouse here.
This is the most promising thing yet.
You see how it's smoothed?
And I can actually sort of move it where I want it to.
Oh no, go back!
This overly dramatic music for this is pretty appropriate.
We'll see if it actually loads this time,
last time I tried to play this, it crashed.
Oh no, it did load it, okay good!
So effectively, you're just controlling
the view of Agent 47 here.
I'm pretty sure that's it.
You can interact with some things,
again you have to do this weird thing
where your hand is back here.
You're controlling the movement like this
with the keyboard.
Okay, I forget what button it is.
It's one of these fingers.
Come on, open the door!
Open the door, Agent!
Tap! Open the door!
There it is!
I opened it, I don't know how, but I did.
There's a person.
How am I doing?
I can't control anything, sir.
Everything else, you got to be doing with the keyboard,
and well, it's uncomfortable to say the least.
Anyway, so we've exhausted everything that it comes with.
That's it!
Actually, let's try Paint.
So there's something that it is not very good with.
That is clicking and dragging.
Like when you hold it down, it doesn't want to do--
There you go!
It doesn't want to do movement anymore.
So you have to move it a lot.
[laughs] And do like, it's the same problem
I was having playing Solitaire.
There we go!
And now for the R, come on now!
That worked better that time.
Yeah, perfect!
There's a learning curve to this, obviously,
but I've been using this thing for hours,
and it's just not getting much better.
Man, you should've see it when I first started this.
I wish I was recording that, but it was so much worse.
So here's a test that should be stupid.
Duke Nukem 3D!
We go around here and control things with the mouse.
Honestly, considering how limited this game is
with the mouse anyway, this is not too bad.
[gun firing]
Now one thing I was kind of disappointed in,
[laughs] was the fact that I saw a lot
of the promo shots, saying you could do this,
Like finger guns.
Which you can, but that also means
you can no longer look around.
[laughs] Because you're not only
pressing other buttons down here to make that shape,
but if you're sideways, it's not going to be
happy to move around.
But I think it's mostly cause you're pressing other buttons.
I think middle finger opens doors.
Sure does.
[gun firing]
Nice!
[laughs] Look this way, other way, other way!
Oh, he's teleporting away.
Come on now, come back!
Uh no! No!
[gun firing]
I got this!
Oh no I don't!
Look the other way, Duke!
Look down!
[gun firing]
Phew! All right!
We got this!
I really did!
Come on now!
[gun firing]
Ugh! Okay!
Come on now!
Look down!
Ugh!
Well, that's the P5 Glove.
Aw man, feels so gross right now too.
I've got glove hand, look at that!
I got the red marks and everything.
Digs in there!
It is definitely made for hands a little smaller than mine.
That is what it is, the P5 Glove everyone.
What a joke!
Well, that's about it for the
P5 Glove by Essential Reality.
It is not the most enjoyable thing to use in practice.
The idea is much more interesting
than the actual experience,
but nonetheless, I'm amused by this thing.
I'm glad it exists and I was glad
to have the opportunity to take a look at it.
However, it is really just disappointing in the end.
Even knowing its limitations going in,
I still somehow ended up disappointed.
Yeah, that's just kind of how it goes with all of these
virtual gloves that I've used.
I've messed with the Valve Index more recently,
it's interesting to have that kind
of a finger tracking thing, but even that's
still not quite where I want it yet.
It's like when is this ever going to get to
a place where this actually makes sense
as an input device?
Gloves, maybe never!
It's neat to see all the steps along the way for sure.
Although I did actually try,
for the sake of completeness,
those custom drivers and API things
that were made for it back in the day.
And they do improve it somewhat with certain things.
It's not really so much a full driver replacement,
such as it is a library, or set of libraries,
that just goes on top of what
Essential Reality provided,
and improves the input on certain things,
like Hitman and Tiger Hunt were a little bit smoother
to look around, and what not in relative mode.
There's absolute mode possibilities as well.
Certain other things though,
like that ball-grabbing game or whatever it is,
that was actually worse, I thought,
with those new drivers,
and it's also not going to affect or improve
desktop mouse movement mode at all,
cause apparently, that's just built
into the hardware itself.
And it relies on Window's input drivers
for mouse USB stuff, and that's about it.
So it really doesn't do much in terms of
improving the experience for when I hoped
that maybe it could do,
but that's just kind of how it goes.
It's one of those devices that was really intriguing,
because of course, you see these kinds
of gloves and what not.
VR gloves were always this thing that seemed
like it could be possible.
You saw it in movies like "Jurassic Park",
that one scene where the scientist is looking around
and messing with DNA or something,
and also "Minority Report",
yeah, there were gloves there.
You know, I guess Spielberg has a thing for VR gloves.
Anyway, this is not that, is what I'm trying to say.
And that's unfortunate, but you know,
I guess I didn't really have any expectations
of that being the case either.
Still, it's an interesting device to mess with,
and the hobbyist scene is kind of one of those things
where it made a little more sense,
once it got cheaper.
It kind of reminds me of the X-box Connect, in that sense.
You know, even the Wiimote and the Playstation Move,
when hardware hackers got a hold of it,
and started writing their own software.
There were some interesting things that were done,
that were actually more interesting
than the official software for it.
There's a couple videos on YouTube of this.
Some people taking them apart and improving them,
or one guy even uses it like a midi,
I think it's an oscillator or something,
he's doing it like a virtual theremin.
There's some interesting ideas.
But it's not the thing you want to actually use,
in your day to day.
It is what it is, and that is the P5 Glove.
And that is LGR Oddware.
[jazz music]
And if you liked this episode of Oddware,
then perhaps you'd like to check out
some of the others that I've done in the past,
as well as who knows what else.
I do a whole lot of things here in LGR,
with new videos uploading every week.
And as always, thank you very much for watching.