The new glove can be used in combination with the suit or separately, and Teslasuit says it integrates “haptics, motion capture, biometry and force feedback” to enable users to feel virtual textures. It could potentially be used for tele-control systems or for medical rehabilitation, and the company claims it can gather real-time data so could even be used to monitor users’ stress levels or heart rate.

The Teslasuit first came to prominence with a Kickstarter for its full-body VR suit in 2016, although as noted by The Verge, that project was eventually abandoned which is never a good sign. However, the body suit somehow came to fruition anyway and was presented at CES 2018.

Though there are plenty of videos of the suit in action, it’s only available to business customers, not regular people. The suit was demoed again at CES 2019, where the company said it was to be used for tasks in dangerous environments including astronaut training, fuel loading training and emergency evacuation training.

The suit and gloves will be on display at CES 2020, so you can check it out for yourself at the Teslasuit booth.

Other projects are more clever than pragmatic, but they could still have their uses. The Voice of Netflix uses a neural network to grab dialogue from streaming shows and turn them into new sentences on demand. If you want to hear characters from The Crown recite something silly, you can. TerraVision helps show producers find locations by matching one of their photos to a library of location shots. And no, Get Out! isn’t a Jordan Peele nod — it’s a tool that plays awards show walk-off music in any Netflix meeting room to let people know when they’ve overstayed their welcome.

As with other Hack Days, we wouldn’t expect most if any of these efforts to become part of Netflix’s service. Project Rumble Pak does show that the company is interested in experiences beyond sight and sound, though, and we could see it happening if Netflix wants to drive more viewers to its mobile apps.

While the patent is explicitly for gloves, Sony mentions that the haptic feedback tech could be used in “a hat, footwear, pants or shirt.” The company is considering variety of systems to make the haptic feedback work, such as heating and cooling elements, a motor, compressed gas and liquid. The systems would of course work in concert with PSVR to give you the right kinds of touch feedback at the right time, though it’s unclear whether the current headset would be compatible.

According to the patent, you’d be able to feel the texture and shape of a virtual object, the pressure you place on it, movement from the item and how close it is to another object. The tech would also be able to provide touch feedback when things happen to your character, including being held, moved, crushed, tossed, dropped, felt, rubbed, squeezed or pressed, which seems only slightly terrifying.

It’s not the first time Sony has experimented with a haptic feedback suit, having demoed one a couple of years ago for Rez Infinite. The only information we have about the gloves for now is the patent, which is no guarantee by itself that Sony will actually make them, or indeed clothing with haptic feedback. However, when Sony demoed some PS5 tech at a strategy meeting last week, it said the next-gen console (which is at least a year away from being revealed) would offer “immersive” gameplay. And what could be more immersive than a VR headset, gloves and body suit?