OCZ Neuro Pulse Activator

The coolest OCZ product on demonstration was, of course, their Neuro Pulse Activator. It was revealed at CeBIT back in March '07 but only went into mass production a year later in March '08.

The OCZ team set up a demonstration in their suite and Jessica kindly showed me how it worked. Believe it or not, she's the best player in their team!

It is a tech geek's dream. You start off by calibrating it to the electrical impulses from your facial muscles. The key to a proper calibration is to stay calm and try to keep it down to the same level as the baseline. The software can even shows you the levels of your brain's alpha and beta waves although I'm not sure how accurate it is. However, I can attest that it can really detect when you are excited. They should make a Windows Vista desktop widget for it!

I even had the opportunity to give it a whirl. Note that I only used the mouse to change my heading. By using subtle facial movements like clenching or unclenching the teeth, I could move reverse my movements and fire the gun. Within a minute or two, I actually got the hang of it. Alex and Jessica said that I was actually better than Fatal1ty who tried it out earlier, but I'm sure they were just trying to be polite!

Although I only had a few minutes trying it out, I can attest that it really works. It was easy enough to learn although the OCZ team told me that the learning curve varies from one user to another. Also, the "neural commands" may be wrongly interpreted when users get stressed. So, whether it can replace the keyboard remains to be seen. I certainly did not try it out long enough to know that for sure, but I can tell you that it sure was fun to play with it!