I remember My first time playing a first-person shooter. yes Star Wars: Robbery 22005 version, on the PlayStation 2 in the basement of my friend when I was a kid. I feel like I’m there. The cold wind of Hoth tore on my face and the communication chat leaned against my ears. I felt the heat from the explosion bolts pulling away in the air and heard them snapping on my face. I lifted the range to my eyes, aimed, breathed stably, and pulled the trigger. A commando fell to the ground and I felt like I had a small victory for the rebellion.
When I was a kid, the game was immersed in me. They are as real as I am in that world. A large part of it is my suspicion-I wanted The game is real, I’m willing accept It’s real, so I’m ignoring the low resolution textures, the polygons I can calculate and compressed 32-bit audio. The scan line of the CRT TV in my friend’s basement disappeared, and the controller didn’t feel like a tool, but an extension of myself. This experience slipped away slowly as I grew older and I have been chasing it ever since.
While chasing this feeling, I’ve already made adjustments with a fine-tuned keyboard, open headphones, super monitors, racing wheels and even virtual reality headphones. They help, but they are still the outside of my senses. Razer Freyja, on the other hand, is a $300 tactile gamepad that brings the game closer to a full body experience. The sounds and movements rumbled out in my body, making the game world feel more like the external force I sat inside rather than the windows looking out. It doesn’t pause my suspicion like I did when I was a kid, but it makes all the details of the outside world disappear more easily.
Game seats
Photo: Henri Robbins
Freyja can create body feedback when tying nearly any game or office chairs to the game. The system can be connected directly to certain games or can vibrate based on audio from the computer. This is exactly what you might think of a gaming mat, unlike some of the more expensive alternatives, which means you don’t have to replace your current chair. It all depends on the software it uses and how the developers implement it.
To connect to Freyja, you will need a nearby electrical outlet and a free USB-A port on the system, the Razer’s 2.4 GHz wireless dongle. The cushion doesn’t have any battery, so whenever Freya is connected, your chair loses some motivation. If you need to roll, disconnect the barrel jack connector on the side of the mat.
This is robust and the vibrating area reacts quickly. It can reach the point where I was shaken in the chair without causing a slight rattle or scattering sound. Integrated into Razer’s Chroma software never encountered any problems and worked very well. However, I have come across some ic-playing software, especially using intermediary software such as SimHub. The game I’m playing will lose contact with SimHub and I will have to restart the system or take some time to troubleshoot it to work again. Freyja itself has no connectivity issues, but some of the media in my home don’t want it to stay motivated. I suspect this is a more voltage issue than anything else.
As of publication, Freyja has full support for 12 races and a sim racing app Simhub, which opens it to countless racing games. During the testing process, I focused mainly on racing games: Assetto Corsa,,,,, Forza Horizon 4,,,,, Forza Horizon 5and Dirt Rally 2.0all of which use Simhub’s built-in telemetry to create haptic feedback on nearly every aspect of the automotive side.
