Force feedback over the last year has been a hot topic as it moves from the rough-and-tumble movements of the arcades and onto your desktop. Immersion, the company behind the I-Force force-feedback technology, dropped by the GameSpot offices to allow us a chance to play with the new Logitech WingMan Force, a small multiplayer game, its new I-Force Studio 2.0 software, and an upcoming force-feedback mouse.

　　Last year, GameSpot News looked at a prototype of the Logitech WingMan Force joystick as it sat in a special casing so we wouldn't be able to tell what was new for the design. This time, the casing was off, and we saw that the new WingMan joystick has an evolutionary design incorporating softer edges and a curvy shape. The handle for the joystick for the most part stays unchanged; the only difference was a light sensor built into the handle that activates force-feedback when your hand is wrapped around it. While the feedback in the stick felt great, it didn't feel as strong as the prototype that we played with previously. But it definitely is a great contender against Microsoft's current offerings. The final version of the WingMan Force is built for either a serial or USB connection. And although the device is USB, gamers will still have to plug the WingMan into the wall to get the best feedback from the stick. It will work without being plugged into the wall, but Immersion says that adding the extra current makes a big difference in the feedback effects.

　　To show off the I-Force effects, Immersion has come up with a small game called Slimeforce, which looks a great deal like Pong but with more movement and a hockey rink layout. You control a small line with two dots at either end. As a puck moves on to the playing field, the lines become rubber bands shooting the puck at walls in an attempt to get a goal. Immersion says that the game will ship with the Logitech WingMan Force and will be enabled for multiplayer mode by chaining USB joysticks together. Although the game is simplistic and meant to show off what the technology will do, it could push air hockey games out of business once you get used to it.

　　I-Force Studio 2.0 is the company's force-feedback editor where you can alter how the stick will operate while driving, shooting at enemies, or taking bullets yourself. The newest addition to the tool is the option to add wav files to your customized force-feedback files (the program does not include wav-editing tools). You could take the sound of a gunshot from a program off the Web and build the forces behind it. If you haven't used editing tools before, Studio 2.0 is self-explanatory, and you could create your own custom settings in just a few minutes. One big bonus is that you can alter the forces in an I-Force-supported game with the editor in case you find that something is missing. There are almost 100 games that currently support I-Force through DirectX drivers including Flight Simulator 98, Monster Truck Madness 2, Andretti Racing, and Redline Racer

　　Lastly, we played with a prototype version of the FEELit mouse. The prototype looked much like the version on the Immersion site, but the mouse portion of the device was a Logitech MouseMan complete with the little thumb button. The mouse itself is physically attached to an arm on a small platform (a tad smaller than a standard mousepad) that limits you from making any big swoops with your mouse. It feels easy enough to adapt to. Going beyond the technology incorporated into the Logitech WingMan Force, the FEELit mouse allows its user to feel textures like rough cloth, sand, and other surfaces. For gamers, imagine feeling the bricks of a wall, explosions as they happen, water as you swim, the edges of a road, and hundreds of other effects. Immersion said that 3D Realms has been watching the force-feedback mouse very carefully for possible uses in the next Duke Nukem game. For Windows users, the FEELit mouse also has force feedback so you can feel your cursor riding over an icon or a spring effect as you make a window larger or even feel shapes in the desktop or publishing programs. Immersion may have an ambitious goal with the FEELit mouse, but since many gamers use their mice to control their movements, we expect gamers to be the first generation of feedback mouse users when it arrives sometime in the middle of next year. Using the force-feedback mouse won't eat a great deal of memory either when using either Windows 95 OSR2 or Windows 98.

　　The FEELit mouse will be USB-only when it arrives, and we wondered why the joystick supports both serial and USB while the mouse only supports USB. It appears that Logitech wants to continue its support for legacy products in case gamers haven't upgraded their machines to a newer PC with USB, while it seems that many other hardware developers may begin to leave the serial and joystick ports in the dust as USB begins to take over.