Cool stuff is all the time popping out of the choice controller group. From rhythm video games the place you wiggle round on a real skateboard to video games the place you smack a giant stuffed animal cat butt, the world of bizarre controllers is superior and underrated. Fortunately, a model new sort of alt management is getting some well-deserved love.
Streamer Perri Karyal is known for making alt controls that enable her to play video games utilizing her mind—however what if it have been the opposite manner round? What if a recreation might management a participant?
On Thursday, Karyal posted a video exhibiting off precisely that. Utilizing a course of referred to as galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS), which mainly sends indicators to the a part of your ear canal that’s liable for your sense of steadiness, Karyal was capable of hook up her personal physique to a controller.
I can management your steadiness
I made a tool that sends DC present via my head to stimulate my vestibular nerve (referred to as galvanic vestibular stimulation or GVS) and, in doing so, could make me really feel fully destabilised. By altering the course of the present, it might probably make me… pic.twitter.com/XNH0EtRow6
— Perri (@perrikaryal) February 12, 2026
“By changing the direction of the current, it can make me fall in that direction,” she explains. The video exhibits Karyal operating in a straight line — till an individual shifts a joystick to the left, which causes her to veer to the left, too.
Karyal proceeded to make use of the tech to simulate G forces whereas taking part in Ubisoft’s 2020 racing recreation Trackmania. Within the video, she sways backward and forward in tandem together with her digital automotive, to dizzying impact. She additionally studies seeing “flashing lights,” which doesn’t sound too good. The official Trackmania Esports account took notice of Karyal’s experiment, calling it “awesome.”
The know-how that makes this doable is definitely fairly outdated. In an NBC article from 2005, journalist Yuri Kageyama tries out GVS: “I found the experience unnerving and exhausting: I sought to step straight ahead but kept careening from side to side. Those alternating currents literally threw me off.”
Perri Karyal stresses to not replicate this experiment at house, as GVS isn’t very well-researched and might trigger antagonistic results. It’s very cool to look at another person do it, although!
