1 - An Ambient Experience

amBX - Definitely more than a few lights

Today, my shiny happy Guru3D readers, we're going to have a chat about external stimuli. And nope nope no! I'm not talking about anything bad here. See, you are a Guru3D.com reader, this means you play games on a regular basis with your pumped up PC. It also means that you are somewhat of a more extreme PC user, seeking extreme things. Yes face it, you are just like us :)

External stimuli... it's growing and it's coming. What am I talking about? I'm talking about the fact that you want more out of a gaming experience other than one hand on a keyboard, one on a mouse or joystick and your eyes at the screen. Our brain needs more stimuli, if anything the Nintendo Wii proved exactly that thesis. And where there is money to be made, the industry will always try and get a piece of that pie. Years ago we were all thrilled by a concept called Force Feedback. When you were flying a flight simulator and were pulling some negative G's the joystick would apply pressure so that it felt heavy. The same concept was applied to force feedback wheels for racing games. After that there really wasn't anything new in terms of external factors that could weigh into the gaming experience, until Nintendo's Wii was released; if anything it's the biggest selling console at this time, thanks to unique features like the Wiimote, it changed the way we think.

That's where we land at Philips. A year or three ago they released Philips Ambilight high resolution TVs. Pretty much a HDTV with LEDs mounted at it's rear. LEDs which are organized in bright RGB colors (Red, Green and Blue). If they are powerful enough, three LEDs organized in RGB can cover the entire color spectrum. White light is in fact RGB combined and as you have learned... you can create all colors of the rainbow with this combination.

Philips uses this technology to illuminate the surroundings of the TV, and though skeptical at first, it's one hell of an invention.

That's phase one of the product we are talking about today, amBX. Philips figured, how cool would it be to implement that feature into the gaming experience. Tickling the senses is what they want to achieve. So then they figured, good lights, then good sound. So they designed a speaker set to go with amBX. But what other tricks can they do to activate more stimuli... fans. So to the kit they added two separately controlled ventilators. And then... rumble. A device that reacts to sound and starts shaking. All these factors combined Philips placed into a kit called amBX. Which of course is short for Ambient Experience.