New D-Box motion-control chair does games, movies

Meet the latest shake, rattle & roll chair from the motion-control experts at D-Box: The hybrid GPH-120, good for adding a few bumps (and maybe even a bruise or two) to your games, DVDs and Blu-rays.

Stopping by the D-Box booth on my last day at CES (farewell, Sin City) has become my personal tradition in the past few years, and this time, instead of plunging into the ocean with Tom Hanks in "Cast Away," I got a few turbulent minutes of "Crysis," with a side order of racing courtesy of "Grid".

The D-Box motion control chairs are a world apart from the standard "boom-boom" gaming chairs—instead of just having a subwoofer built into the seat, D-Box builds two to three pistons (or "Activators," as D-Box calls them) into their chairs (two pistons for left-right motion, and an optional third for pitch). About 850 DVD movies and 30 Blu-ray discs with custom-programmed D-Box motion codes are available, and about ten PC games (including Crysis, Grid, Need for Speed Undercover, iRacing, rFactor, Nitro Stunt Racing, Battlefield 2, and Microsoft Flight Simulator X) are supported, with more on the way.

The result, as I found during my movie demo last year, can be surprisingly immersive—subtle, even (the sensation of floating in choppy water during my "Cast Away" demo was especially uncanny)—and gaming with the two-piston GPH-120 wasn't any different. The grenades exploding around me during Crysis tossed me back in my chair, and I felt every curve, spin, and dirt clod as I tore through a digital race track. My only complaint about the GPH-120 is that it's missing that third "pitch" piston, which would have helped when my car hit a jump and went sailing through the air.

Of course, D-Box's motion-control chairs don't come cheap—expect to cough up $2,999 for the GPH-120 (slated to arrive in the first half of this year), plus another $799 (for a DVD/Blu-ray deck controller box) if you want to use the chair for watching movies.

If you'd rather spend three grand on, oh, rent or something, keep this in mind: D-Box may soon be coming to a theater near you. The company is in talks to install its motion-control chairs in Hollywood's Mann Chinese 6 Theater, and with any luck, more screens will be coming soon.