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Madaras
Up and Coming
June 10, 2013

Virtual Hands

We have all seen the Razer Hydra, and I admit this appears to be a great device and may be what most of us end up using, however I envision a controller more natural for VR. Gloves, to me, would be an ideal solution. The Peregrine Gaming Glove http://theperegrine.com/product/is a great example of what I think would be great for VR. Say you're playing Spider-Man you could web sling just like Spider-Man, using your middle two fingers to your palm. The gloves I'd like to see could be used to pick up in game items and utilize them. You could pick up any object in your home and use it as your weapon in game. Say you are holding an umbrella and hold it forward and press your trigger finger against it. It would fire when you have a gun equipped in game. To me this is an ideal solution without having a multitude of different controls which the game may or may not be designed for. Let me know what y'all think.

    5 replies

    ftarnogol
    Up and Coming
    June 10, 2013
    It doesn't seem to have positional tracking
    MadarasAuthor
    Up and Coming
    June 10, 2013
    If you're referring to the The Peregrine Gaming Glove, I'm not advocating that as the gaming device to use, I'm saying they have good a design in many ways that provides a decent foundation to creating a "new" controller meant for VR.
    ftarnogol
    Up and Coming
    June 10, 2013
    copy that!
    ncwolf
    Up and Coming
    June 10, 2013
    I don't know, that seems rather bulky and although they advertise that it has "ventilated cool spots" after 30+ mins I imagine that it would be overloaded and you would have a heavy sweat soaked glove. What I was imagining is using a MYO with a fishnet glove with electrodes on the fingertips (and possibly wires running along the fingers, but that always gets more and more restricting) if the gloves are even needed. Supposedly the MYO detects even the small movements of the fingers (like for typing), so it would only need something on the hand for position tracking. The MYO has partial positional tracking, although that can always be more updated in the programming as it goes forward. Sure this isn't ideal right now, but I think it has a better chance than the Peregrine. Either way, I agree with Madaras (magyar vagy?) about the potential for using gloves for controlling games.
    Nyroc C. Wolf
    JAAdventurer
    Participant
    June 10, 2013
    The Peregrine is powered by just touch points. For a VR glove, you'd probably want something that uses flex sensors, like the P5 or 5DT. Granted, the former has been mentioned as very uncomfortable, and the latter gets quite on the pricy side. But I believe that if flex sensors, usually $12 or so apiece, would be brought together with the position/rotation tracking of the Hydra in a comfortable, two-handed format, it could be perfect for VR applications.

    One issue with the Hydra that I've noticed is the effect of a person's body position moving relative to the base station. An idea was mentioned on these forums to mount the base station on the player's chest, which would keep the glove/controllers within the Hydra's range, and the virtual hands would stay placed relative to the avatar if used with any form of locomotion controller.

    Link to the discussion of Hydra mounting ideas: viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1243&p=15419&hilit=chest#p15419
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