The integration of force feedback with a complete real-lime virtual environ
ment system shows some more difficult problems than those found in building
a typical force feedback system. Particularly, bulky computations for grap
hics or simulation require decoupling die haptic servo-loop from the main a
pplication loop if high-quality forces (realistic) are to be obtained. As a
n approach to this problem, a control system is developed here for a force
feedback joystick (Impulse 2000 -Immersion Corp.) along with its integratio
n to a virtual environment. Technical issues on the development of stable c
ontrol architectures for Internet-based exchange of haptic information are
discussed. Some experiments were developed to show the performance of both
the force feedback joystick and the virtual reality system.