I have been working with the Vive for a bit, and I am trying to figure out which hand rotation is a better experience for the player. I have it down to two rotations, and I was looking for some feedback!
When you start in the experience your left hand is going to be orientated a bit more to the controller, and your right hand is going to orientated more to your actual hand. Once you got a good idea of how each hand feels, pick which one you want to continue with first. You’ll then be loaded into another scene with some activities to do in VR to get a feel for the hands. Then you have the option to swap hands, and test out the other set as well. At the bottom of each hand there is an identification number to distinguished between the pairs.
If anyone is willing to take a second and try them out, then post which hand they think feels best, I’m happy to share the data and an explanation! Thank you for your help!
I’d say your hand orientation doesn’t matter for any of the tasks / activities you put in that demo, as everything you interact with moves relative to your hands. It will matter if you choose to orient things to your hands. e.g. when you pick up the guns they move to fit into your hands, or they become your hands.
Also I wouldn’t use the grips for picking things up, the triggers are a lot more intuitive and easier to press. It’s difficult to hold the grips for any length of time, and to release them to throw things is a bad idea as you have to loosen your grip which can lead to throwing the controller We learnt this the hard way.
Those are some good points. Did you feel there was a disconnect between how your hand was in game and how the object was represented? Thinking of things more so for the Racket. Where if you pick the Racket up as if it was real, it would be misplaced in the virtual hand. I’ll try to add more snapping points to see how those feel with the two different orientations.
Should always wear your safety strap! Also learned that the hard way by watching some one try to place my controllers on a virtual desk.
I do agree that the triggers are more intuitive from a playing a video game perspective, but I think the grip buttons are more intuitive from a grabbing motion perspective. I am also keeping Valve/HTC’s new controllers in mind.
These things are definitely going to be focused on using the actual motion of grabbing to grab objects. They will definitely feel better when you can completely release your hand, 100%.
Your second hand example definitely feels more natural and lines up with my hand better. It matches what we’ve done regarding holding guns and using laser pointers. We angled them by about 50 degrees.
Personally, based on I have two different types of objects: some you can grab and they ‘become’ your hand, like a gun or a bat, then you press another button (Menu at the moment) to drop it; and some you can grab and drop by pressing and releasing a button.
The attachable ones I have orient to your hand to a fixed position and angle. The others stay where they are and move relative to the hand until you drop them. The latter is how your objects work at the moment. I’d suggest you do something similar to the first option for things like bats and guns, but stick to what you have for balls and the stack-able cubes.
I agree that with the new Vive controllers that ‘gripping’ will feel more natural, however people will still have the older controllers and I wouldn’t alienate those users.
We learnt this the hard way.