Hand based input list

My concern with visual-based methods like the Leap or Duo is occlusion. Things will get in the way of each other. I've also been looking around at glove-based options, but haven't seen anything practical out there. The VRealities site looks like it was from the last VR craze, and includes such products as the P5 Glove, which were on the right track, but have such limitations as having just one hand. The many products from Cyberglove are nice looking, but have a prohibitive price tag, between $13k and $17k for a single glove, according to http://www.tomshardware.com/news/immersion-cyberglove,1739.html. Granted, they said this cost was due to custom building from the low demand. Once the VR community takes off a bit more around the Rift, demand will rise as people like us desire something like this, and I'm sure cheaper VR gloves will come out once things begin to catch on.

I've made some DIY gloves before. It is pretty easy, but being home built mine weren't very robust and kept stuffing up. I am hoping someone comes up with something commercial that is not too expensive.

Only having one hand wasn't the big drawback of the P5. It was also damn uncomfortable. I've heard of people modding them into real gloves so they could get rid of those damned plastic rings. If you pulled off a side panel there was a big edge connector that was supposedly for linking to a left hand unit in the future, but they folded before they could bring it out.

Also, don't forget the new Myo Armband. It goes around your forearm and can be worn under your sleeve. It looks pretty comfortable. It picks up hand movements myoelectrically and transmits them over bluetooth. It also uses accelerometers to track the rest of your arm. Looks pretty cool.

Assuming, you know, it isn't a scam. I'm not entirely convinced.

Haha, I didn't say it was the only issue, just one that would need to be overcome. And the Myo does look great and would be a wonderful answer if it can be used to convert electrical signals into an assumption of arm position, but I remember reading somewhere that it currently only picks up a set amount of gestures, which makes sense when using it as a shortcut to key combinations, to allow fudge room for users to make similar-enough gestures recognized.

I figured as much, but if they've really come up with a better sort of myoelectric sensor then they should patent it (if they haven't already) and share it with the actual prosthetics community, for a royalty of course. That field could use some new tech.

Of course they should also keep working on the Myo, no reason not to have two revenue streams.

Just updating this thread with the ControlVR. Can pre-order a one-arm package for $350, or a two-arm package for $600. Successfully kickstarted, demo vids look cool, 1st qtr 2015 release.

In my humble opinion, the only hand-tracker currently worth looking into for VR input is ControlVR, with Leap Motion coming in at a distant second.
All other solutions either lack accuracy (we need perfect orientation data for at least the first fingerbone on each finger - bend sensors do not offer this level of accuracy - Myo also doesn't achieve this kind of accuracy), display too high a latency (eg. kinect-based solutions), or suffer from occlusion issues / limited operational area i.e. the Leap Motion.

But now that MEMS IMUs are cheap enough for ControlVR to produce sub-1000 dollar hand-tracking solutions, I think we'll see more entrants into this kind of system, which will drive the price down.

"nsb" wrote:

... but when you're trying to manipulate 3D objects with your hands, I have to believe that some sort of glove or hand tracking is the way to go.

actually I think something like the Hydra is the way to go here. hands are great, but the missing haptic feedback takes away a big portion of the fun. while it looks more natural I personally found it a lot less natural than actually getting the haptic feedback of a controller and seeing that controller represented in VR.
future solutions (like gloves) might be different, but with the Leap I found that full hands are just not the way to go (to be fair, the Leap is really handicaped due to the small interaction range that feels much bigger if you just have one finger for controls).

An alternative are the depth cameras - Kinect 2 seems to be able to do hand tracking, but I think their SDK does not support it (3rd party solutions?). And Intel has the Interactive Gesture Camera - just google RealSense to see their current devices that use it.

But in the end a real controller like Hydra, STEM ... is the way to go in the near future.

"Gerald" wrote:
hands are great, but the missing haptic feedback takes away a big portion of the fun. while it looks more natural I personally found it a lot less natural than actually getting the haptic feedback of a controller and seeing that controller represented in VR.

This is only true for the very limited use-case where you have a virtual controller in your hand.
Because we're all used to playing games with controllers (keyboard and mouse, or console controllers), many current games restrict what the player is able to do action-wise to a set list of actions, or context-specific actions. If you take an FPS for example, the player is able to fire, reload, melee, change weapons, etc, or operate a radio if facing a radio, or hop into a vehicle if facing a vehicle, etc.
For this to work, the avatar that the player associates with has to be plausibly so limited in actions, and the easiest way to do this is to give them full hands. Full of swords, or guns, or steering wheels, or whatever. The important thing is that the hands were full, since people are used to having more freedom when they have free hands.
I agree that it's more immersive to 'feel' a gun-shaped controller in your hand when playing an FPS, or to 'feel' the hilt of a sword that you're swinging around, rather than just use hand-tracking and emulate that shape. But I think the future of gaming will have player-avatars less restricted in what they can do, and when that time comes, a physical controller will be a hindrance rather than a help to immersion.

(And in the meanwhile, we can create 'dumb' controllers to provide that haptic feedback very cheaply. If all the hardcore motion-detection is being done by a ControlVR-style hand tracker, you can just whack a few buttons and a circuitboard or two into any shaped lump-of-plastic you want to get that sense of 'holding' something)

I've been working on my own gloves for a while. Target retail would be at most $300 for a pair.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzMh7GttqXY
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmXeFKzs-HQ

We'll see how cheap I can get them before I run a kickstarter for it. I figure $300 is a safe number (high end cost) based on what I have in them in material costs and such. I'm really really hoping I can get the price down to $150 retail before all is said and done. We'll see on that though.