Category Archives: hands

We accept this Truth…

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…to be self-evident:

If it performs wonderfully on GearVR:
then it will be a dream on the Oculus Rift,
and take little or no effort to port, other than input harness*

If it performs adequately on the Rift + PC,
it may or may not work well on GearVR.
In fact, it may take both a massive re-factoring as well as a
total re-thinking of graphics, models, textures and code.

Conclusion?

gear-vr-vs-oculus-rift

Be smart : Mobile First.

Develop for the Gear. Port to the Rift. WIN.

 

 

* a few words on input harnesses:

Designing input mechanisms for the GearVR touchpad is a tricky business… its a VERY limited input surface, and we tend to use both gestures AND a lot of “gaze detection” combined with taps…

for the Rift, we often take the easy way out : keyboard input. At dSky, we are especially fond of the following, which are easy to “find” for “blind” VR users:

  • space bar (easiest to find… big and central and edge)
  • cursor arrows at lower right (2nd easiest to find blind)
  • ESC key (far upper left, also “feelable”)

Truth be told, we should ALL be designing for
a) gamepad, and
b) natural hand tracking devices,
c) with keyboard as a “fallback”
d) oh, did i fail to mention the venerable mouse? ooops!

as the long-term goal for natural and intuitive VR input streams.

 

First person VR lightsaber : the design intent

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We’ve helped pioneer first person VR lightsaber control in-Rift with our ScenePlay demo app. This is what happens when you take that vector and extend it towards its logical conclusion: just add photorealistic rendering, VR cinema backplates, AI stormtroopers, laser bolts and explosions… voila.

Consider this advanced pre-viz of the experiences coming down the pipe in the next 3 years. Start practicing up your swordplay skills, and Enjoy.

What’s a lightsaber look like, you might ask? Well, this:

Mark Zuckerberg tests out the new Oculus touch hand controllers as Brendan Iribe observes

Mark Zuckerberg tests out the new Oculus touch hand controllers as Brendan Iribe observes

And this;

Testing out the Sony Move hand controllers paired with the Sony Morpheus VR HMD for the PlayStation 4

Testing out the Sony Move hand controllers & Sony Morpheus VR HMD for the PlayStation 4

Or, if you prefer the dark side, go ahead, play Vader:

We don’t always use hand control at dSky, but when we do… we choose Hydra

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Madame Hydra

Yes, Marvel did have video long before the Avengers re-start. Oh, good ole G.I. Joe…

With Hydra, we get to use BOTH our hands in VR,
just like Madame Hydra here…

Keeping it simple... because the best part of the hydras is... you move your hands, and your VR hands... well, they move precisely where they should.

Keeping it simple… because the best part of the hydras is… you move your hands, and your VR hands… well, they move precisely where they should. Buttons not included.

and here are the hydras at play:

 

we made it: your avatar awaits…

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Well, its been a hard month of headbanging on the issue of inverse kinematics, first person head cameras, and 1:1 perfect hand calibration.

And today, we made it:

head-and-hands-finally

As with many things, it took going back to square one.

Instead of trying and continually failing to integrate multi-player full avatar control + keyboard + mouse + gamepad + oculus + hydra all at once into our working game prototype, we created a barebones scene:

1 avatar, 1 wall, 1 light.

simple avatar solve

And went about tracking heads and hands, and making the avatar move along with the inputs. Finally, late tonight, everything came together, and we got it working. Thank the VR Gods. Now onto more important things. Like eating, drinking, sleeping, and… yes, that.

All Hands on Deck

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So last night, for the first time, I got my calibrated hands into the VR world. First I had only viewed them on a 2d screen, which was a sort of detached amusement… it felt like operating a robot through telemetry.

seeing your properly calibrated hands appear in VR is a consciousness expanding experience.

seeing your properly calibrated hands appear in VR is a consciousness expanding experience.

Last night, though, I got them in real 3d space, in VR, with perfect calibration… so that I perceived my hands to be precisely where they were in real space, in a virtual environment. I brought my hands right up to my face, and there they were… The effect was similar to my first dive into modern VR… utterly profound.

All night I dreamed about hands, and virtual hands, and virtual keyboards and virtual iPhones. Today, I place the hands into the worlds I’ve been building for the past year, and we see what we can do…

 

finally… HANDS

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and finally, we have hands… in VR land. Tuscany, to be precise. coming soon to an HMD near you…

the first time seeing my hands in VR on our own development rig.

the first time seeing my hands in VR on our own development rig.

Thank you so much to Sixense, and Razer Hydra, for making this possible. And to BitCoin, without which we wouldn’t have obtained the hardcore PC to drive this sim.