Haptic Virtual Reality

Haptic virtual reality refers to virtual environments that incorporate touch-based feedback, allowing users to feel virtual textures, shapes, and objects through force-feedback devices. Unlike visual-only VR, haptic VR provides tactile and kinaesthetic information — resistance, texture, shape, and spatial boundaries — that users perceive through physical interaction with a probe, glove, or other haptic device. For blind and visually impaired users, haptic VR offers a potential pathway to accessing spatial information, virtual environments, and 3D content that would otherwise be entirely visual, though research shows that virtual haptic perception differs significantly from real-world touch perception.