I saw this presented at CHI, and I think it's a ingenious and elegant sensory illusion that could make jumping in certain VR games actually feel immersive with haptic feedback and the ability to more closely match the height the avatar jumps to the perceived sense of physically jumping. Very neat. Of course, the funny thing is humans don't jump in real life anywhere near as much as they do in video games, and this has seemingly affected VR with few having purpose-built jumping mechanics (and many just using a button press instead), so maybe things like this closes the gap somewhat and make it something explored more in design.
On another note, there was another presentation by what I believe was the same research group, which was haptic feedback on the hands without covering the palm or underside of the fingers (and non-invasively). That was a particularly interesting, as the XR possibilities actually open up when you don't have bulky gloves covering that highly sensitive region (palm, finger tips, etc), and instead only have electrodes on the back of the hand, meaning you can overlap the sensations without damping by gloves. And this is not just for VR stuff (though they showed things like climbing in VR), but with AR/XR utility too! Need to do precise soldering work? This would let you have the full physical feedback, and then overlay it with helpful haptic feedback so you get nudged towards the right area and then don't stray (so you don't accidentally knock something off, perhaps). So this would be actually useful XR without any headset. Given the bulky setups that existing approaches use, I found it surprising this wasn't covered in the article, especially as part of a "here's other stuff the research group is working on for VR/XR" shortlist.
On another note, there was another presentation by what I believe was the same research group, which was haptic feedback on the hands without covering the palm or underside of the fingers (and non-invasively). That was a particularly interesting, as the XR possibilities actually open up when you don't have bulky gloves covering that highly sensitive region (palm, finger tips, etc), and instead only have electrodes on the back of the hand, meaning you can overlap the sensations without damping by gloves. And this is not just for VR stuff (though they showed things like climbing in VR), but with AR/XR utility too! Need to do precise soldering work? This would let you have the full physical feedback, and then overlay it with helpful haptic feedback so you get nudged towards the right area and then don't stray (so you don't accidentally knock something off, perhaps). So this would be actually useful XR without any headset. Given the bulky setups that existing approaches use, I found it surprising this wasn't covered in the article, especially as part of a "here's other stuff the research group is working on for VR/XR" shortlist.