The challenges of good hand interaction design in VR

I was watching this the other day. I should warn, it's pretty violent/grim. I'm talking actually stabbing zombies in the face/neck. Intense stuff and not something I'll be trying in VR that's for sure (I think I like my VR at a distance and cartoony). That aside though. It's a really interesting look at the challenges of the design when it comes to hand interaction with a world, especially taking into account that, right now at least, we don't have much in the way of force feedback on hand controllers. Some stuff I don't get how they are doing either. Like, it's all very well having a heavy door move more slowly than you can push your hands forward, but doesn't that produce a disconnect between your actual and rendered hand position? Is this jarring? or does the brain/body compensate. i.e. do people naturally adjust where they put their hands if they sense a disconnect between real pos and game pos?

Anyhow, a fascinating set of design challenges

Wistrel

 

VR has sorta fragmented a little, which in itself is interesting. The Quest2 companion app was the most downloaded on apple and android this Christmas and the Zenith VRMMORPG was the most downloaded game on Steam (of all games - not just VR ones) when it launched recently.

Quest2 is a fully standalone headset, like a games console if you were, so it's graphics capabilities are limited. That said, you can hook it (with or without a wire) to a modern PC and have it act like a normal headset. In this configuration you can have much more graphically rich games. On it's own, graphics are a bit more like early 3D games on the PC. OK maybe a bit better than that as it has modern wizzy things like shaders that I don't think were a thing in the early days of 3D graphics.

TBH the Quest2 is a technological marvel especially for the price*. I heard apple are working on something similar but there seemed to be a rumour flying around that it's getting too hot. This is for sure a problem. Can't have people strapping cups of tea to their face!

 

Surprisingly... the Quest2 does have a small internal fan. Something which surprised me given I don't think it has any intakes/exhausts that I've noticed (maybe they hidden somewhere). It doesn't get especially hot though. A bit warm is the most you can say.