Ombrellaro formed a team of friends, family and engineers to work on the project, and everyone agreed the device seemed buildable and workable. He obtained the necessary patents, and the team got together after hours and on weekends to chip away at building the unit. "As we're talking about it, originally it was for healthcare," he says. "At the same time I'm telling my wife and kids, and talking to these guys, everybody uniquely said, 'Well, what about gaming?'"
It's a cool concept, but a little hard to get one's head around, he recalls. The team decided to focus first on building the medical device - the more complicated of the two ideas - to make sure it worked. Ombrellaro and his team began working on the project in 2000 and had the medical vest prototype up and running by the end of 2005. Almost immediately afterward, they began developing a gaming prototype.
"Around July of 2006 I got a phone call from one of my engineers who goes, 'You're not going to believe this ... get up here.' So I came up to the office and there's this thing that looks like a vest, but it kind of has a Borg look to it with hoses and wires added on," recalls Ombrellaro. After suiting up, he tested the Borg-like vest using an open-source FPS called Cube and was completely floored when he felt the unit respond when he was hit.
He looked around the room; everyone was laughing. "Is this what I think it is?" he asked. The signals causing the vest to react were coming from within the game.
"It was one of those moments where I just knew that this is like ... amazing. For the first few times I was playing it, I was so caught up on what this new information I was getting was that I forgot about concentrating and got killed in the game," he says. "Then I started figuring out what the cues mean and how they can help me. I began to play the game a lot faster, more aggressively and actually trying to dodge and get away from things."
It only took a short time playing with the gaming prototype for Ombrellaro to realize he had something with immense potential on his hands.
Fast forward to the present. After a soft launch in November 2007 and a full-package release earlier this year bundled with copies of TN Games' own Incursion and Activision's Call of Duty 2 for $169, the 3rd Space Vest has enjoyed healthy sales in the U.S. and abroad. Ombrellaro expects sales to continue picking up as distribution expands through newly inked arrangements with several major online retailers. Both pack-in titles were designed with the 3rd Space technology in mind, but the vest also works with a growing number of other games thanks to mods and the downloadable 3rd Space Driver software. At present, the vest driver supports Unreal Tournament 3, Crysis, Clive Barker's Jericho, Half-Life 2: Episodes One and Two, Medal of Honor: Airborne, F.E.A.R., Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Quake 4 and Doom 3.
TN Games is working with developers to expand the number of upcoming titles that feature the integrated 3rd Space coding and other games that support use of the driver. "Our goal is to have more titles with direct integration for the deeper experience, as our company continues to add to the driver to pick up the tail end of things," he says.
