Lunar Design Partners With Novint Technologies and Force Dimension to Introduce The Novint Falcon

August 18, 2006 – Lunar Design, a 21-year-old world leader in creating successful, memorable products is proud to announce its work on the Novint Falcon in collaboration with Novint and Force Dimension.  Lunar spearheaded the industrial design and engineering to help bring this innovative product to the gaming market.

The Novint Falcon is a groundbreaking high-fidelity interactive 3D touch controller that lets users feel weight, shape, texture, dimension and force effects when playing touch-enabled PC games.

The Novint Falcon was a media standout this past May at E3, the highly acclaimed electronics  entertainment expo. The Falcon was recognized with the IGN Best of E3: Gear Award, besting the Nintendo Wii-mote, the Sony PlayStation 2 controller, and the Sony PlayStation 3 controller.

"Sophisticated 3D touch technology is currently only used in high-end markets, such as medical training, perceptual research and virtual CAD assembly," said Jeff Smith, CEO of Palo Alto, California based Lunar Design. "The Falcon makes this high performance 3D touch technology available to the video game industry."

Lunar and their project partners successfully met the challenge of designing a product specifically for the video game industry. To bring the Falcon's sophisticated level of 3D touch technology to this consumer market, Lunar applied their creativity and ingenuity to solve key technical, aesthetic, and cost challenges. Based on the existing engineering Novint licensed from Force Dimension, a leading Swiss developer of high-end haptic devices, Lunar reinvented the technology's robotics to be produced within cost efficient manufacturing processes that met Novint's aggressive cost targets.

Aesthetically, Lunar designed the device to engage the video game industry with an appealing form and look.  They created a vortex-like configuration and appearance to minimize size and also make the device visually distinctive.

The compact and visually unique configuration creates flexibility for the customer. The final design works well within a variety of environments, such as the living room, the home office or a gaming enthusiast's bedroom. Lunar's design for the Falcon's appearance can appeal to those with a taste for sleek design or it can also take on the personality of a more radical gamer look. This capability to manifest a variety of appearances helps the design take on the character of the differently branded manufacturing and marketing partners that will likely license the device from Novint.

A final goal for Lunar was to design and engineer the Falcon to accommodate a variety of controller grips, called end effectors. These end effectors allow users to more accurately engage with the experience of the game they are playing, such as feeling their stroke when they hit the golf ball on screen, or gauging how much edge they get on their snow boards as they fly down the slopes.

Walter Aviles, CTO and Vice President of Engineering for Novint said, "Lunar has done a remarkable job leading the industrial design and preproduction engineering efforts on the Novint Falcon. Their work, together with the contribution of our other partner, Force Dimension, has resulted in a truly innovative and remarkable product that lets Novint bring high-fidelity 3D touch to the consumer market for the first time. It is a pleasure working with Lunar Design, who brought incredible experience and insight to the project. We look forward to our ongoing relationship."

About Lunar Design

Lunar creates what's next in successful design. The firm's clients come to Lunar to get serious about applying design value to business. With a portfolio of highly successful products that have generated tens of billions of dollars in sales, Lunar is consistently ranked among the top 10 award-winning industrial design firms by Business Week magazine. Founded in 1984, Lunar provides full-service product development with offices in Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Hong Kong. Lunar's current and past clients include Apple Computer, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft Corporation, Motorola, Philips, Oral-B, Palm, Pepsi, and Sony. For more information visit: www.lunar.com.

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Amy Cunha
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