I was thinking about my 3d glasses/screen and how the screen adds a lot to games, which are mostly a screen, audio, input devices, and even a little tacticle feedback on my 360 usb gamepad in the form of vibrate/rumble in games where I use it, it's pretty nifty in both sf4 and in need for speed shift when the motor rumbles the pad, or the bumps/dirt on the sides or in a slide, adds a lot to the game.

I've been building a lot of stuff with power tools also, which is a very hand-oriented task, especially free-wheeling on the grinder, basically a 10,000 rpm spinning rock (a hard rock, very dense and rough in a wheel shape, electric powered) and pushing/sanding a second rock against the wheel, usually into a pipe shape, since that's what I've been selling for fun and physical exertion.

I should note a lot of people I've offered to pay to help me make pipes are afraid of the wheel. This seems reasonable, since it cuts metal and a pinch situation would take a finger right off, even through most gloves, including my neat kevlar gloves with the rubber nitrile coating...in fact I don't wear them since I'm worried the gloves will catch between the wheel and housing and pull my hand in with them! I do wear some safety glasses, but I was thinking that since people don't use dangerous tools freehand very often, and people don't gunfight very often, and gunfighting is a popular video game activity, maybe freehand tooling would be a fun game too!

So my idea is about the controller. Sure you could try it via keyboard/mouse or 360 controller, but shaping a chess piece or statue is really about fine hand movements, and it would be hard to do it right on a mouse or 360, maybe unless it was tracked or scripted, making it a lot less neat.

So my idea was to add a force feedback input controller, basically a pair of glove shaped controllers mounted to a punch of rods and motors and pistons, so that each part of the hand has a piece of metal against it to push against with a motor, piston, and sensor. This system acts as both input and feedback, allowing the player to feel the virtual objects and also press them into the tool in a variety of natural ways and observe the results. This could then be paired with an xbox & tv, computer, or even 3d glasses and a 3d screen to do anything from pottery, welding, metalworking, weaving, carving, sanding, sawing, drilling, drawing, writing, painting, or even simulated controller holding, for example you could simulate a virtual 360 controller and 'feel' it through the gloves, which may have a large number of 'dpi' pressure pusher points in order to increase tactile resolution.