[keville]

It's not well-explained in the article but there's a separate artist "playing" the haptic vests via programming, not unlike how a lighting engineer programs the synchronized light shows for a big touring act.

Instead of a DMX controller choosing entire scenes that control banks of lights in unison, or narrowing down to individual banks of lights to fine-tune things on the fly with faders, the haptic vests use similar commands and controllers to program different intensities and patterns of vibrations across the sub-regions within the vest.

The haptic engineer/artist usually has packs of go-to scenes that work well and provide distinct but complimentary effects from each other scene (just like the lighting engineer), and may have an entire effect chain pre-programmed for a song or mix, or may be choosing and mixing the haptic scenes on-the-fly as they listen to the audio.

This NPR article has a better description: https://www.npr.org/2023/07/17/1186173942/vibrating-haptic-s...