Forum Discussion
Necessary Enhanced Abilities for Virtual Reality
I want to share a few ideas I had about the best way to handle communication, locomotion, and interaction in VR. The concepts are simple, and most are obvious, but I thought it was worth sharing. Some...
Thanks for reading! Does the "action orb" idea assume a certain input method? If you were just wearing gloves and had limited buttons, I could see the need for a floating menu like you describe, but for the most part I feel like you want to make these actions as seamless and natural as possible. Just brainstorming implementation based on various inputs...
Telekinesis should probably be an always-on fuction. Whatever you are using to aim, when you hover over the item, it gives you an indication (or not if that is part of your game design). Your "use" function would fly the object into your hand (trigger, A button, whatever would be on a glove). This is used enough that it should be a primary function.
Telepathy is a bit more complicated. It probably will require a menu system. You can link from a friends list or have saved group chats in the menu. Like Teamspeak, these could basically be channels. When you are in your "guild channel", using the voice comm will communicate with any guild member also in that channel. If you want to link to a specific person, it could be like a phone call where they get a notification and accept. It could get more complicated in terms of having one button as a whisper button and one as a group/general button. Certainly for group telepathy, you would want push-to-talk, so again you would need another button. Voice activation could be toggled on for one-on-ones. I think this menu/friend/group system will vary widely from online game to online game. The important thing is that voice communication is available, as text chat is not ideal in VR.
In Firebox, Flight is a toggle mode. Hit spacebar or F and you switch. This is pretty convenient. If affordable, it should be something that can be assigned to a button rather than having to go into a menu to toggle on and off.
Teleportation could be pre-implemented into the experience ("here's the teleport back to the start"). If you wanted to give this control to the user, implementation would largely depend on your system of addresses/coordinates. For Firebox, you hit tab, type in the address, and then enter. The portal then appears directly in front of you. If we're trying to avoid the keyboard, your system might would need some sort of map or database that could be pulled up easily.
So Telekinesis and Flight should be quick and accessible. Telepathy should be easy to access once it is set up, but linking with someone else or with a group will probably need its own system. Teleportation (in a large online experience) will require a lot more thought to develop an intuitive system if you want to avoid the keyboard.
In truth I think assigning the menu to a button or gesture would work better than staring at the orb. The orb would either require an odd enough neck angle so that it is out of your way when you don't want it, or it would be easy to look at but would constantly get in the way and result in accidental menu opens. That's my thought, anyway.
Telekinesis should probably be an always-on fuction. Whatever you are using to aim, when you hover over the item, it gives you an indication (or not if that is part of your game design). Your "use" function would fly the object into your hand (trigger, A button, whatever would be on a glove). This is used enough that it should be a primary function.
Telepathy is a bit more complicated. It probably will require a menu system. You can link from a friends list or have saved group chats in the menu. Like Teamspeak, these could basically be channels. When you are in your "guild channel", using the voice comm will communicate with any guild member also in that channel. If you want to link to a specific person, it could be like a phone call where they get a notification and accept. It could get more complicated in terms of having one button as a whisper button and one as a group/general button. Certainly for group telepathy, you would want push-to-talk, so again you would need another button. Voice activation could be toggled on for one-on-ones. I think this menu/friend/group system will vary widely from online game to online game. The important thing is that voice communication is available, as text chat is not ideal in VR.
In Firebox, Flight is a toggle mode. Hit spacebar or F and you switch. This is pretty convenient. If affordable, it should be something that can be assigned to a button rather than having to go into a menu to toggle on and off.
Teleportation could be pre-implemented into the experience ("here's the teleport back to the start"). If you wanted to give this control to the user, implementation would largely depend on your system of addresses/coordinates. For Firebox, you hit tab, type in the address, and then enter. The portal then appears directly in front of you. If we're trying to avoid the keyboard, your system might would need some sort of map or database that could be pulled up easily.
So Telekinesis and Flight should be quick and accessible. Telepathy should be easy to access once it is set up, but linking with someone else or with a group will probably need its own system. Teleportation (in a large online experience) will require a lot more thought to develop an intuitive system if you want to avoid the keyboard.
In truth I think assigning the menu to a button or gesture would work better than staring at the orb. The orb would either require an odd enough neck angle so that it is out of your way when you don't want it, or it would be easy to look at but would constantly get in the way and result in accidental menu opens. That's my thought, anyway.