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Valve's new controller has capacitance sensors

We've seen showcases already of grip sense, which means that if you ungrip the back area while in gyro motion it stops gyro movement, think of it like moving a mouse and lifting the mouse, moving your arm and putting it back on surface again.

It has thumbstick/trackpad/buttons capacitive sensors too, kind of like the above in feature so far in demos

But what if I told you that Valve has other ideas? Patented even.

one or more physical biofeedback sensors, in operation, the at least one processor: provides game play to a video game player via a user interface that provides functionality for a video game, the game play comprising a plurality of individual components; receives, from the one or more physical biofeedback sensors, biofeedback measures for the video game player while the video game player is playing the video game; processes the biofeedback measures to determine responses of the video game player to the plurality of individual components during the game play of the video game; and modifies or augments the game play of the video game based at least in part on the determined responses of the video game player.

Now, ECG, Capacitive Electrocardiogram basically use capacitive sensors and the change in blood flow will change the capacity so they can monitor your heart rate.

Valve researched a lot in brain-computer interfaces years ago, they hired neuro specialists to figure out how to implement this for games and Gabe is even a co-founder of one of Neuralink's competitor, Starfish Neuroscience

But tech is not there yet for the whole vision they want of the patent, here's an extract :

The plurality of individual components may include at least one of a game character, a chat message, a weapon, a character selection, an action of a character, an event associated with a character, or a characteristic of another video game player. The one or more physical biofeedback sensors may include one or more electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes, and the biofeedback measures may include EEG signals. The one or more physical biofeedback sensors may include one or more electrodes, and the biofeedback measures may include nerve signals. The biofeedback measures may include at least one of nerve signals, EEG signals, EMG signals, EOG signals, fNIR signals, signals indicative of blood flow, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIR) spectroscopy signals, force-sensitive resistor (FSR) signals, facial expression detection signals, pupil dilation indication signals, eye movement signals, or gestural motion signals. The at least one processor may determine relative weightings of the contributions of the individual components on the determined responses. At least one of the one or more physical biofeedback sensors may be incorporated into a head-mounted display (HMD) device.

Everything in bold is supported in steam frame. The other ones are more related to brain activity or fancy sensors for eye muscle movement but most eye tracking algorithms are already pretty damn good at predicting just from your eyes what you'll do next before you even press a button.

If they wanted to support the rest of the brain activity, while this was a prototype, clearly we're not there yet or the costs would be sky high

But with blood flow, pupil dilation, eye movement, grip sensing, you already have a lot of parameters to change how the game will change based on your emotions.

What valve thought of for BCI in games :



Again, not fully there yet and certainly not into editing your mood, but the jist is how a game can change based on your emotions

Now a ton of stuffs have been datamined from HL:X

• Mood Systems: Non-player characters (NPCs) will likely have a mood system that influences their facial expressions, gestures, and movement. For example, sad characters might walk with their heads low, or injured characters may struggle to walk.
• Advanced AI and Procedural Animation: The game is reported to use advanced AI that allows NPCs to react more realistically to the player's actions, with procedural animations enhancing the realism of character interactions and speech.
• Adaptive Difficulty and Enemy Tactics: Beyond character emotion, the game's AI is rumored to adapt to the player's gameplay style in real-time. If a player repeatedly uses a specific strategy, enemies may learn to counter it, creating a unique experience for every playthrough.
• Physically Based Reactions: There are indications of extensive use of systems that result in detailed, physics-based reactions to damage, such as enemies stumbling realistically when shot in the legs.

HL3 is rumoured to have procedural open world design, what if the game changes as you go depending on how you react to it? Maybe you're in panic, your character is low on ammo and low on health, what if the game throws you a bone like a crate around the corner to have some relief / dopamine hit? What if the game balances this fine line of being difficult but still rewarding? Or if it sees you are enjoying the difficulty, it starves the map of help more than usual?

Though I don't know how that would play out with mouse and keyboard, I guess there would be a default "no sensor" mode, controller would be level 1, and VR Frame would be level 2.