All players long for bringing their hands into their VR experiences. Being able to see your hands and interact with objects make VR more personal as opposed to being a floating presence passively observing a scene. Presently, it is possible to use VR controllers such as Oculus Touch or the HTC Vive wands and use them to interact with objects, but interacting with objects of different shape, size and weight can be disappointing. Whether you are picking a gun, a sword or a brick it all feels the same.
 |
| Image Courtesy: mecanoo.nl |
This is where Nyoibo an experimental mod from 3D designer Manuel Rosado shows promise. Nyoibo can be fitted on top of a Vive controller and it consists of several weight configurations that can expand and contract to distribute weights to mimic the centre of mass of the virtual object you are holding. The demonstration shows a pistol, a gun and a sword. Pick up the gun and the mechanism will reconfigure itself to distribute the weights to mimic the weight distribution of a pistol. Press the trigger and the robotic arm will provide a force feedback equivalent of a pistol recoil. Same holds true for a gun. The moment you pick up the gun the arm redistributes the weights to match the weight distribution profile and centre of mass of a gun. The prototype is developed using Unity.
These shape shifting robotic solutions could be an interesting yet useful addition to the current arsenal of techniques that developers are using to make your virtual reality experiences more real and less virtual. This can help in getting rid of the feeling of weightlessness experienced often in VR interactions.
No comments:
Post a Comment