Ever wanted to have realistic-feeling jumping in VR? The JumpMod backpack exists

Regardless if you own one of the best AR/VR headsets around or another, cheaper alternative, you know that one thing really makes or breaks the entire experience: immersion. Because nothing feels worse than something feeling different than it looks.

It’s an eerie feeling that can’t really be described to anyone that hasn’t tried an XR headset. But basically, think of it as so: you are walking in the park and you turn around, but there is a tree branch there. You should’ve felt something, but you didn't. It feels really, really weird in VR when something like that happens.

So, as part of humanity’s ever-growing search to make VR feel less like that and more proper — because, for some reason, we want the virtual reality to be very much so like our reality — someone made a backpack that makes jumping in VR more realistic.

Because, of course, someone did.



This innovative contraption is called the JumpMod Haptic Backpack and it basically utilizes an adjustable set of weights. Said weights behave differently, depending on what your VR-self is doing in the VR-world.

In other words, depending on how the weight moves while you move, your jumps and landings may be more difficult, softer or floaty.

Then again, I must ask: how many VR experiences do we have that require the player to jump? Well, not that many, but what if a creation such as this is the reason that we start seeing more of those?

This thing was created by the research team of the University of Chicago, led by PhD student Romain Nith and the team are very much experimenting with the utility of the prototype both within VR and beyond it.

For example, something like this could very well be the next high-end innovation when it comes to 4D cinema experiences, roller coasters and more.

Is it something that virtual reality headsets need as an extra peripheral, though? Well, we can’t really say until we try it. But if combined with the right type of experience, it surely looks like a device which can enrich it. And that’s always a good thing.