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[alway]

This morning for Christmas I got an NIA for Christmas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Impulse_Actuator). So far I am really finding it enjoyable. I haven't yet mastered WASD movement, but so far I have been able to play a Mount & Blade battle w/o clicking and without WASD keys. Will add more as it comes... next up, I'm going to attempt DF with it. After all, the only thing more entertaining than controlling semi-sentient beings is controlling semi-sentient beings with your mind. 

Edit1: it seems to be unaffected by me wearing a headset overtop of it.

Edit 2: DF definately not a good idea yet; can't do much more than blink commands reliably yet.

Edit 3: TF2; 17 kills, 31 deaths. Not bad, all things considered. Forward and backward motion is starting to feel a bit more natural.

Edit 4: More Mount & Blade, I can now control forward/backward movement quite nicely; and I can now conciously turn right! If ony I could figure out how to go left >_>

Edit 5(day 2): Continued training with Mount & Blade; the controls in Mount & Blade when using mounted archery seem to be the best of any game I own for training with, due to fairly lax movement (you don't need to hold forwards to keep moving, just to accelerate and occassionally speed up again as well as slow rate of turning). After realizing the glance controls aren't working that well for me, I switched A and D keys to "Beta 1" brainwaves; this resulted in much higher ability to turn, both controlling and keeping it in the range requried to turn.

[Toady Two]

Thats pretty awesome. How much does something like than cost?

[alway]

$80 IIRC. Here it is on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-OCZMSNIA-NIA-Impulse-Actuator/dp/B00168VU4U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1261759402&sr=8-1

From what I've heard though, it may be best to hold off, since the NIA2 is supposedly coming out in a few months.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

whoa... i didn't knew this existe...want it so bad

[alway]

It actually uses muscle movements more than brainwaves, although it does let you configure to alpha and beta waves*. Muscle movements also are much more controllable, and as such you will likely use them more. It isn't at the level of reading thoughts or anything like that. What I found fun was configuring me blinking to my WoW mage's spell "blink." 

*For clarifications, there are 3 types of beta and 3 types of alpha which can be detected.

[Muz]

Heh, I think Atari (the old one) tried to do something like this. They scrapped the idea after people got headaches from using it. Not because it's a side effect of radiation or anything, but of scrunching your head in a desperate attempt to dodge bullets and stuff.

This thing hopefully works more better than it did the last decade... kinda reminds me of 3D glasses

[alway]

I think this one is a bit more sensitive than the old one. For one, you have to either ground yourself to the NIA box or keep a hand on it since otherwise your room's background EM will overwhelm its ability to detect anything. And according to the install manual, the biggest mistake of new users is actually trying to hard.

[deadlycairn]

Wait. You say it mainly works by muscle movement? Does that mean you could play a game (say TF2 for example) by miming out pushing the buttons on the keyboard and the mouse you'd normally use to play the game, just for the heck of it?

[KaelGotDwarves]

Yeah, call me when the mind readers made for paraplegics become $80. Those things are straight out of scifi 

[alway]

Wait. You say it mainly works by muscle movement? Does that mean you could play a game (say TF2 for example) by miming out pushing the buttons on the keyboard and the mouse you'd normally use to play the game, just for the heck of it?

No, not really. it is mostly eye movement and a more general "tenseness" of your body as far as the muscle controls go.

[Virex]

Hmm, I can't find anything about the upcomming NIA 2. Got a link? Because if it's close I'll hold off buying this, but if it's just in the pipeline for a few years later then I might buy this instead.

[alway]

Heres the thread I read about it in, second post is dev reply. http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=61249
Sounds like there isn't a specific date, but it is in the pipeline, and by the sounds of it is fairly close. I would be very suprised if it wasn't out by summer.

[Leafsnail]

I'd like to have a go... hm... I should get one.

I'd probably start with something like Pacman or Tetris and work my way up .

[Virex]

Hmm, I think I'll put this off untill summer, or my birthday (which is 11 months from now), depending on how long it takes them to get V2 out (if it's out early I'll ask for something to play with this little piece of tech ). Lack of mouse support is also putting me off a bit.

Also, I've been looking around their forae a bit and it seems that if you want to use the EEG your best bet is to take a game where you can focus on something else besides simple movement and let your subconscious handle moving. When you focus to much on moving your conscience takes over but your conscience isn't capable of realy controllong your movement, so you end up failing in a non-spectacular way. Also, practice times needed to get any reliable movement seem to be up in the 5 to 10 hour range for fast learners, but this varies wildly. Just remember to relax and let your subconscience handle things though

However if you do manage to get your subconscience to handle movement, it appears you have all the advantages of reflexive movement right there in the game, which could potentialy make you faster then most "normal" players. You'll have to fiddle with the settings to get a good feeling though. Your brain apparently handles bad settings pretty well, but good ones do help. Another interesting observation some players have had is that things seem to go much better in tricky situations (being surrounded by enemies for example) again indicating that once your subconcience takes over things get more in controll (though you'll need to learn how to steer your subconscience)

Edit: Some more on EEG
Most people seem to have succes controlling RPG characters by EEG, like WoW or LotR online. Apparently, thinking of your character as a seperate entety and inducing some sorty of reward feeling for correct actions seem to help a lot. At first there'll be a lot of random movement, but sooner or later, some form of controll will emerge, where the character's going precisely for the intended target and later on even takes the correct action sometimes. For most people this takes 5 to 7 days of a few hours per day. At that point it's usualy not realy reliable, but at least it's clearly working part of the time.
Also, fatigue seems to set in pretty fast, though this increases with practice.

[alway]

The muscle control I am seeming to get the hang of fairly quickly; within a few hours... However, I think the "glance" controls based on eye movement left and right don't work to well for me. I have yet to try the alpha and betas yet, but there is one thing I have noticed: if you sort of scrunch up your forehead (tensing the muscles there) the signal from that is strong enough to basicly overwhelm all the controls, sending them all up to maximum until you loosen those muscles.