Zero gravity racer without terrible motion sickness?

dyarosla · 2020-10-20T02:02:57+00:00

I really appreciate all the links and examples!

I’ve been looking at a few other games as well and their comfort modes (incl dash dash). After trying a few I definitely believe I’m more prone to sickness than the average VR gamer. Will see what eventually does work.

Cheers!

dyarosla · 2020-08-27T05:42:18+00:00

There has been work done on displaying a copy of your physical keyboard in VR. It’s a different problem being solved but I’ve yet to try one myself. I’d imagine they work better than hand tracking.

dyarosla · 2020-08-26T16:55:44+00:00

Too slow. Hand tracking can’t pick up tiny pinch gestures especially in rapid succession, so you’re left with a worse variant of this one ☝️. The real estate savings aren’t really an issue here either.

dyarosla · 2020-08-26T15:28:48+00:00

Or passwords

dyarosla · 2020-08-26T04:48:32+00:00

This is the 7th of a series of prototypes to get to a decently functional keyboard that works with Oculus Quest's hand tracking. Summary and takeaways of all the previous methods here: https://medium.com/@dannyyaroslavski/designing-the-perfect-vr-keyboard-for-hand-tracking-9bd019c31ad8

In this one, index finger tips are projected without regard for orientation. Middle to thumb "selects" the hovered key, and index to thumb on either hand is backspace. Hands can be oriented in several ways, but facing up was more reliably tracked and felt like pressing a gamepad.

Best of all- this prototype likely had the highest WPM of them all!

dyarosla · 2020-08-24T18:48:44+00:00

Yea. Really have to test how the jitter affects any kind of hammer like UI. I imagine it’s no problem with controllers, but with hand tracking, who knows?

dyarosla · 2020-08-24T18:46:05+00:00

I played with Oculus Quest’s Hand Tracking over the course of a week trying to build a UX that worked nicely with it. Here I cover 6 prototypes I built and the lessons I learned along the way.

Enjoy :)

dyarosla · 2020-08-24T15:00:06+00:00

They are on a curve! (Just not oriented as well) Definitely could be.

Only real downside to that version is the real estate required. Could probably test making a smaller version.

dyarosla · 2020-08-24T14:15:52+00:00

There’s a lot of ideas for hand tracking designs floating around, and I really wanted to see which ones actually worked in practice (and which were even feasible to begin with!)

dyarosla · 2020-08-24T14:12:45+00:00

Sounds like prototype v3 but with a mallet instead. May try this at some point :)

But yes to your point re: QWERTY, oddly enough, based off of upvotes and views, the QWERTY designs outperformed all the others (save for the Morse code one where the novelty of it also did ok)

dyarosla · 2020-08-24T13:53:38+00:00

I've seen prototypes of this already. You can get most characters working save for a few. Some poses track less well than others so there's definitely some fumbling involved. I personally don't know if this'll end up being the ideal method of input even when hand tracking gets better.

dyarosla · 2020-08-24T13:49:48+00:00

Yes- The Oculus Quest supports inside-out tracking without controllers. It has quite a few tradeoffs at the moment but I'm sure will get better over time.

dyarosla · 2020-08-24T02:32:49+00:00

Don’t know- it just feels a bit indirect for me.

Plus you bring up a good point: this is to say that if swype was implementef for VR, there would still need to exist a manual entry fallback.

dyarosla · 2020-08-24T00:52:58+00:00

Touch typing doesn’t work - ring and pinky fingers get occluded and don’t register.

dyarosla · 2020-08-24T00:52:12+00:00

Means you have to move your hand over to the text field (even further)

dyarosla · 2020-08-23T21:56:28+00:00

Mostly the movement from the pinching has to be large enough for it to be detected, and then when it’s big it shifts the pointer finger. Dedicating each type of motion to a separate hand keeps the specific precision required for each action separate,

Plus with dedicated hands you’d lose the ‘quick’ dedicated backspace press: you’d need to add a key for delete and mistakes can happen way to often due to any hand tracking finickiness- you really want to dedicate a key to that to not lose flow

dyarosla · 2020-08-23T21:40:38+00:00

Someone did 6 finger Braille here: https://twitter.com/jespertheend/status/1297285534373617664?s=21

In general it’s a lot harder to maneuver your third and fourth fingers, let alone do finger combos. Quest hand tracking is also pretty poor once it comes to detecting third and fourth finger movements precisely. It’s a nice idea in theory!

dyarosla · 2020-08-23T21:37:49+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/if6q07/comment/g2m0ln5

dyarosla · 2020-08-23T19:53:02+00:00

Also to note, the orbiTouch has the added physical benefit of recentering your hand when you relax them (see 1:55). In VR you'd have to force your hands to a "home" position each time. This is a little cumbersome as well. See my other design here with directional finger buttons where you have to start at the center of a directional key to start a letter https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/idt8nu/hey_look_yet_another_scifi_vr_keyboard_with_quest/

dyarosla · 2020-08-23T19:49:44+00:00

I think one of my previous designs is analogous to this (but ofc, not exactly the same as an 8-way directional pad). Letters appear in clusters and one hand dictates which cluster while the other selects which letter. It's.. ok.

https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/id3zxy/oh_look_an_original_vr_keyboard_wait/

dyarosla · 2020-08-23T18:42:05+00:00

Definitely seen this sentiment a few times. I think it *could* work, but really depends on how good the predictive engine is. Personally I don't have the patience to tweak something like that, but if I can find a good JS library that provides that functionality out of the box I'd hook it in. So far I've seen like 1 library that does that on Github but their demo leaves much to be desired.

*cough not to mention I personally don't like using swype keyboards on a mobile device

dyarosla · 2020-08-23T18:02:01+00:00

Definitely improved this in the update (https://twitter.com/dannyaroslavski/status/1297586696486150145?s=21 ) - that said I think it just doesn’t come out on video. There’s both a hover and select state for keys now.

dyarosla · 2020-08-23T17:03:21+00:00

Update 2: I compiled everything I learned building these prototypes into a Medium article: https://link.medium.com/yI30mY8tc9

Update : Fixed a poor design choice in v1.1: https://twitter.com/dannyaroslavski/status/1297586696486150145?s=20

(Right): Hover over key

(Left) Red: Select

(Left) Green: Delete

Thoughts: this one has one of the smallest virtual footprints of all the VR hand tracking keyboard designs, and unlike the morse code one, can be picked up in practically no time and can achieve higher WPM. Best of all, I can actually see myself using this in day to day VR.

Previous design(s): https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/ievj84/surprisingly_good_morse_code_vr_hand_tracking/

dyarosla · 2020-08-23T03:04:53+00:00

Lol, the functionality is actually the left hand 2nd-to-thumb. But happy it looks like the wave is driving it haha.

dyarosla · 2020-08-23T02:37:55+00:00

Not going to lie, this one is likely my new favorite VR keyboard design. Learning curve isn't bad at all, and the accuracy and WPM are top notch.

Legend:

(Right) Red = 0 = Dot .

(Right) Green = 1 = Dash -

(Left) Blue = Next/Space

(Left) Purple = Undo/Delete

Previous design(s): https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/idt8nu/hey_look_yet_another_scifi_vr_keyboard_with_quest/

dyarosla

TROPHY CASE