Engineers at the University of Utah have unveiled a new game controller prototype with a new form of haptic feedback, reports Physorg.com, saying this "delivers directional cues to the player by stretching the skin of the thumb tips in different directions." They offer a trailer showing off the design, and say they hope this will be ready for the public by the time the next generation of consoles arrives (here's hoping we've come up with a better term than "next generation" by then as well), and here's an outline of how this works from William Provancher, an associate professor of mechanical engineering:

"We have developed feedback modes that enhance immersiveness and realism for gaming scenarios such as collision, recoil from a gun, the feeling of being pushed by ocean waves or crawling prone in a first-person shooter game," Provancher says.

The latest game controller prototype looks like controllers for Microsoft's Xbox or Sony's PlayStation but with an addition to the controller's normal thumb joysticks, on which the thumbs are placed and moved in different directions to control the game. In the new controller, the middle of each ring-shaped thumb stick has a round, red "tactor" that looks like the eraser-head-shaped IBM TrackPoint or pointing stick now found on a number of laptop computer brands.