Sense of touch!!

That is a good idea. A great idea.
The airbag is a good idea, but hard none the less. Could you do something for the whole hand like as such:

Three ideas:
You could go the way of a glove, which is a good idea, and have hundreds of electrodes on the inside. That emit like a slight electric shock, then when you grab something in game, it feels like a tingle in your hand. Not like real tactile feel, but would be easy and cheap to do. Could be precise also.

You could have a glove that has a similar vibrator to a phone in it, only dulled down, and have multiple vibrating points, and when you touch something in game it activates these, but again, that's not too real.

OR, you could try and find something that contracts when electricity is applied (like a muscle), and put this on the glove, but that would be hard. This is similar to your airbag idea, anyone have suggestions for something like this?

Yes, interesting ideas. I was also thinking of a cog or a teardrop shaped roller that would roll pressure onto your primary finger pads. I still think the airbag and manipulation of the air into pockets would be the way to go.

There is not much out there in this department but I did stumble upon this idea which is similar. http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/26/y-combinator-hardware-hackathon-winner/

I really expected more of a response on this idea. I think touch or feel can help create more of a presence sensation. I've not seen much out there of anything giving touch sensation. Hands, fingers, cheeks, lips, a punch in the chest even a tap on the shoulder to alert you that someone or something is trying to get your attention could affect the sensation of actually believing you are there. What is the old cliche' ? Pinch me I must be dreaming.

Have you guys seen this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uEVNtgOcm4 it's a pretty interesting approach and it may simplify the problem of touch in VR.

That's interesting, but it seems fairly limited to things that are generally the same size and shape as the physical object. You can convince the user that they're touching a somewhat concave or convex cup, but you're not going to convince them they're touching a dinosaur or a turkey sub. I don't think there is a lack of interest in this area, it's probably the most important aspect to attaining truly immersive VR outside of the visuals (perhaps even more than sound, certainly more than taste or smell) I just don't think anyone has come up with a really good way of making it work yet. Inflating airbags may be the answer, but it seems like regulating the airflow and keeping the pressure within acceptable limits might be unwieldy for a consumer device.

I f you've got a solid plan for how this would work, please, make a prototype and put it up on Kickstarter, I'm sure you'll get the VR community's attention then.

As far as touch goes, I thought about making a whole bunch of very small solenoids that you could then embed side by side some sort of flexible mesh to hold them, and you could probably create patches large enough that programing texture might be possible....but that is a project long down the road:O)

yeah...I know....nice idea, now go and make one right? lol

Good idea but thats only one part of the challenge.

Touch is made of
_Compression of skin (your idea)
_Resistance to movment. (when you try to press an apple with your finger, they are blocked.)

Or you could actually, you know, talk to a woman once in a while :P