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Beyond Touch?

EarlGrey
Expert Protege
I'm thinking about if VR controllers like Touch (or Vive wands) are going to become the primary interaction method in VR for the near to mid-term future, or even long term?

However gloves or hand tracking are currently being worked on and I wonder if using your hands without any physical controllers would be better?

Or maybe they will play together? Like you have your hands fully tracked, but you also have controllers to simulate swords and guns and such.
10 REPLIES 10

JakemanOculus
Heroic Explorer

EarlGrey said:


However gloves or hand tracking are currently being worked on and I wonder if using your hands without any physical controllers would be better?


I don't see how.

Touch:
- full positional and gestural tracking
- haptic feedback
- controller inputs

Naked hands:
- full positional and gestural tracking

Greyman
Superstar
Something I have noticed, when I use the Rift, is that you tend to notice more things that stand in the way of total immersion.  That ranges from something as simple as your seating position in ED to the lack of physical feedback when you crash in DiRT Rally.  If I had the space, the money and perhaps a more understanding wife, I'd have a fully adjustable cockpit setup, for flight/space and racing sims with full motion simulation, but I can but dream.

I'm expecting that peripheral manufacturers will increase the range of VR accessories and that should make the pricing more competitive.

If money is no object however, a full exoskeleton would be the way to go.  You could move your arms and hands to interact with the virtual world and get appropriate feedback depending upon exactly what you are doing.

for home use, this might possibly never happen, but for that full "holodeck" experience, it would certainly get you a lot closer.


Jose
Heroic Explorer
The best user experience would probably be the user not having to put anything on (except the HMD). So I think eventually it's going to be full body tracking using multiple optical sensors, with haptics being provided by air bursts. Just my opinion.

HiThere_
Superstar
Holding a hand controller allows for haptic feedback and reduces the issue of camera occlusion for finger tracking : Putting a Leap Motion tracker on a desk and facing upwards to track what your fingers are doing from bellow your hands when working on a 2D display makes sense. But those headset mounted cameras placed above your hands and facing downwards are going to need x-rays to track what your fingers are doing through your hands when tracking them from above.

I'd say the next big step after Touch is going to be solving locomotion in first person mode : There's the motion sickness issue, and also the unlimited movement issue to tackle. Because using room scale tracking for VR motion is as limited using a 2D gamepad for VR input, and in the long run you don't want a bigger room size as much as you want access to unlimited room space.

So beyond Touch (the virtual hands), would be solving the virtual legs.

shadowfrogger
Heroic Explorer
I also think motion controllers will be put on minor upgrades after touch. Controls wise I think facial and eye tracking for cv2, Full body tracking without putting anything extra for cv3.  Unlimited Movement will be worked on from now till probably forever

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zork2001
Heroic Explorer

Think we might see bracelets next  for are wrist and ankles for full body
tracking.

twisteklabs
Heroic Explorer
What if the camera (for tracking information) was plugged into a breakout box per camera or one for 2 cameras, and the positional tracking information is synced with the main computer on wifi or bluetooth.
This will let Rift be connected to a powerful laptop making users tether free (laptop in backpack).
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vlodato
Adventurer
It's probably been beaten to death but has anyone experimented with a Xbox kinect? That would give full body tracking. Maybe not just the Kinect but mix the Kinect and touch controllers could be interesting. I'm sure at that point with head tracking and controller tracking plus a Kinect it would start to tax the cpu pretty bad.

KennyJennings
Protege
I think we'll also start to see some more innovation in different kinds of haptic feedback besides just vibrations. I was reading an article the other day about some gloves that let you feel different temperatures for if you put your hand near a fire, etc.