Disney is calling it the "force jacket". Its long, less sexy description: a pneumatically actuated jacket for embodied haptic experiences.
So yeah, a force jacket.
It's a garment designed to make virtual-reality experiences more immersive. Here's how it works in action.
This is insanity. It was put together by Disney Research, alongside MIT. It's essentially a jacket stuffed with airbags and sensors that can be calibrated to simulate a number of different physical experiences. Disney highlights a few: the feeling of being punched, hugged, or having snakes slither all over your body.
Uh... I'll just stick with the hugs, thanks.
Many of Disney's properties have featured in VR video games in the past -- most notably Star Wars. It wouldn't be too grand a leap to see this technology applied to future VR games, but like much VR technology it seems a little gimmicky, possibly inaccessible to normal human beings.
It's a prototype for now, but who knows? Maybe in a dark, dystopian future you could be wearing this thing on the bus.
Use the Force Jacket Luke.