[laughs]

We're off to a great start.

[piano music]

Greetings and welcome to LGR Oddware,

where we're taking a look at hardware and software

that is odd, forgotten and obsolete.

And this time, we've got this right here.

This is the Essential Reality P5 Glove controller,

I guess you could call it,

and it's sort of a glorified mouse

input device type thing for PCs,

to let you control games and your computer desktop,

and whatever else, through the power of your fingers.

It's quite the experience,

and this was actually given to me,

and the Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 2019.

Forgive me, I didn't write down your name,

but he gave me this T-shirt as well.

I guess he's with Free Geek, Twin Cities.

They do some cool stuff with e-cycling and all that,

thank you for both of these things,

but yeah, he apparently got this dropped off there,

and thought of me, and it's like brand new and everything,

so here it is, thank you very much for giving this to me,

and yeah, let's take a look at the P5!

Alrighty, time to get hands-on with this thing.

This is the Essential Reality P5,

with P5 standing for power of five,

as in your five fingers.

It sold for $150 when it launched

in the latter half of 2002.

A price that immediately drew criticism.

Sure, it came packed with full versions

of the games, Operation Tiger Hunt and Hitman 2,

but 150 bucks?

That was the same price as a brand new

Nintendo GameCube console back then,

so it's little wonder that Essential Reality

quickly dropped the price to $99 for the P5

at the beginning of 2003.

"The future is at hand."

Ah geez, they couldn't resist a hand pun, huh?

On the other hand, you've got to hand it to them,

puns are hands down on the handiest ways

to get a grip on product marketing

without using under-handed business tactics.

So I give it two thumbs up.

Anyways, Essential Reality billed the P5

as the Ultimate 3D Virtual Controller,

providing six degrees of motion control,

the ability to detect gripping and finger movements.

It drew immediate comparisons to the Power Glove

for the NES among gamers,

but the mainstream media really latched onto the idea

of it being a kind of futuristic mouse replacement.

There were all kinds of ridiculous headlines like,

Are Mice Now Obsolete?

and The Mouse Faces Extinction.

Not to mention calling the P5

a device for hardcore video game players

that find joysticks and mice too confining.

[laughs] Because who hates playing games

with traditional controls more than hardcore gamers, right?

Now check out this mock-up of the modern day gamer

in 2002, complete with a CyMouse head tracker,

Olympus Eye-Trek display, and of course, the P5.

Fantastic!

The company also touted this as a potential

input device for 3D animation, CAD modeling,

and sports simulations, stating that

"there's a lot of people sick of the mouse.

It's a limited two-dimensional device.

We want to go above and beyond that."

Indeed, which is why companies like Spacetech IMC

sold their Spaceball devices

nearly a decade and a half before the P5.

Quite successfully too.

So yeah, they were correct that certain people

demanded mouse alternatives.

It's just that they were late to the party,

and professionals had long since decided

on using devices like the Spaceball,

which left the P5 for quote, hardcore gamers,

and their supposed hatred of mice and joysticks.

Unfortunate then, that game support was so abysmal.

Only five games were officially patched for it.

The afore-mentioned Hitman 2 and Tiger Hunt,

as well as Serious Sam II, Black and White,

Air Lock and a demo for Beach Head 2002.

Yeah!

Essential Reality promised more support in the future,

along with Playstation 2 and X-Box versions,

left-handed and smaller-sized models,

and even a fully wireless edition.

Of course, this never happened.

Beyond a software update in 2003,

Essential Reality soon stopped development on the P5,

and massively discounted gloves,

started littering store clearance sections.

As fate would have it, though this was when the P5

finally started forming a proper community

with $20 gloves ending up in the hands of hobbyists,

who saw the potential with its new low price point.

Custom drivers and a new API by Carl Kenner

were a popular upgrade,

soon being preferred by users

over the original Essential Reality software.

But yeah, even that's over 15 years old now.

By and large, what little community the P5 once boasted

has long since moved on,

with recent efforts to add P5 support

to OpenHMD having fizzled out.

However, on LGR Oddware, we're just getting started.

So, let's see how it was to use one fresh out of the box.

This is the special premiere edition from 2002,

bundled with unique P5 enabled CD-ROMs for Hitman 2,

Tiger Hunt and Beach Head 2002.

You also get some replacement plastic

finger-squeezing thingies,

and this towering motion tracker

they call the P5 Receptor.

Kind of looks like a slimline computer speaker

with a USB cable, but in reality,

it's an infrared receiver

that senses movement made by the P5 Glove.

So yeah, unlike the Power Glove's ultrasonic microphones,

this uses infrared.

Kind of like the Nintendo Wii sensor bar.

Finally, there's the glove itself,

held in place with far too many twisty-ties here,

but I guess they really wanted to show it off,

so they did what they had to,

but yeah, here it is!

It's a combination of plastic and rubber materials

that slides onto your right hand,

with eight infrared LEDs around the edges,

and four buttons on the top left hand side.

You know, the P5 Glove is really less of a glove,

and more of a hand harness

that hugs onto your fingers.

Actually, you know those jeweled bracelets

that extend to cover your whole hand?

Kind of like that but for obsolete hardware nerds.

Or perhaps the most ineffective Thanos cosplay,

just instead of Infinity Stones, you have infinity LEDs.

Anyway, the non-glove has a cable,

permanently attached to the rear right of the hand,

which connects to the front of the IR Receiver Tower.

And in return, the tower connects to your PC

via USB one point one.

As for where you place the receiver,

well that's a bit of a thing

that we'll get to soon enough,

but yeah, that's about it for setup.

The rest is all software found on this fourth CD-ROM

tucked away in the bottom of the box.

The documentation is pretty sparse.

All you get is this cheap foldout paperwork

that basically just says to plug it in

and install the software.

So enough of me talking, let's move on

over to more of me talking.

Ahh!

Okay, I've got the Windows XP build going right here,

and we have the thing plugged in.

All that kind of good stuff.

We've got the hand ready to go,

but right now, it is not turned on.

So, I was actually putting it on the wrong way

when I first got it.

Had to do some adjustments,

and actually those other plastic things

that it comes with are not only replacements,

but they're a little bit larger, which is good.

Some of my fingers were getting cut off

with the circulation.

Actually, wait, I still did it wrong.

It's supposed to go like this.

Then the thumb goes in there,

and this goes around and catches onto this bottom part.

Like that? Yeah!

And now this is the power button.

So if we turn that on,

you'll see this little red light starts flashing.

If it's not in view, and now it's solid.

Now it is in view.

As you can see here,

it is actually moving the mouse cursor.

[chuckles] Somewhat.

Actually, I think I'm going to have to

move back a little bit. Yeah.

This is supposedly the optimal distance.

There is however, a calibration

thing that it came with, which is this right here.

And yes, I'm using an actual mouse instead of this thing.

That should give you a clue right there,

but anyway, so if I hit the A button.

Dang it!

This is all part of the experience.

Crap!

Okay, if I hit the A button, it clears that out,

and it's supposed to be

calibrating my finger movements.

Come on now!

There it is!

Okay, now, supposed to squeeze,

and then press A again, and now, it is calibrated.

[laughs]

So index finger is left-click.

As you can see here, I can click like

Click click click clicking around.

That's fine!

And you can switch these around in this menu here,

so index left-click, middle finger...

Or middle click is the thumb.

And right-click is the middle finger,

so dunk, over there!

Click and then, whatever.

Anyway, so this is desktop mouse mode.

However, as you can see,

it is not the most reliable thing.

There's definitely a lot of acceleration

in this crazy weird little dead zone,

and as you can see there,

now it's kind of losing the tracking.

It's constantly losing the tracking.

In fact, let me show a brief little video,

or part of a video that it played

whenever I first started this thing up

and installed the software.

[electronic music]

- [Video Narrator] Congratulations on purchasing your P5!

The red LED on the receptor should be facing you,

and it will blink when the glove is out of range.

Place the receptor to the right

of your monitor or computer.

Facing towards you about one and a half

to two feet away from where you'll be resting your hand.

You can go up to three feet and still get excellent results.

Just move your hand around in the direction you want to go.

The P5 allows you to go left, right, up, down and z,

as well as yaw, pitch and roll.

Point and click, and you're good to go.

[electronic music]

- So yeah, that shows you how it's supposed to work,

and honestly, it seems to be doing what it's supposed to,

it's just not good.

If I were to open up Solitaire here,

okay you kind of have to move your hand back

and come on, click!

Click! There we go!

Clicking is not the most accurate,

not the most reliable thing, but it can be done.

And it's totally possible to play

a game of Solitaire on here.