Leap Motion in game hands?

[smartroad]

I have been playing Elite with my Vive and have been wondering about all the equipment around me. In my Anaconda there is a console/keyboard to my left, it would be great if that could be useable in game. With somwthing like the Leap able to track actual hands could it be used to actually interact with the keyboard for things like the galaxy map etc?

Just a passing thought that could help with data entry while in VR rather than having to take helmet off

 

[TorTorden_VR]

It's all eye candy for the moment but who knows down the line.

The keyboard featured is an easter egg for those who remember playing on a BBC micro back in the day

 

[JerryLove]

I'm not sure leap will deal with fingertips that precisely/rapidly when the hand is basically turned away from the sensor.

 

[dogbite]

I'm not sure leap will deal with fingertips that precisely/rapidly when the hand is basically turned away from the sensor.

Ya, it's not very accurate. More of a novelty in it's present form. Perhaps when we get one of the gloves in the pipeline, we will have something worth playing with. Sorry I wasted money on Leap. I haven't really used it since day 2.

 

[smartroad]

The keyboard featured is an easter egg for those who remember playing on a BBC micro back in the day

I noticed Still have my BBC Model B sitting in my parents loft LOL

 

[prometh]

I'd want this so that I know where my hands are in VR, like if I have to take my hands off the controls. The game could calibrate where my controllers are and move them inside the ship. If those are supposed to be my hands, they'd better look and feel like it. I don't care too much for tapping the holoscreens, but if it were easy enough it could be cool.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

Hands would be 'handy', but any hand-tracking controller will need to be able to work with a HOTAS in Elite.

That mans a glove-type (and not interfering with your fingertips) and able to be tracked around/through the HOTAS itself. Difficulty 9.5. A while away methinks.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

What I question mostly is the will to implement.
The manus VR glove should launch this year most like.
Let

And as for hotas, you should be able to calibrate or lock that in similar as we reorient our HMD'S.
In short you calibrate in your position for using the HOTAS, and that locks the arms like now to the stick and throttle, you move out a certain zone from the sticks and hand tracking start up again.

Now if you table mount your hotas,you would get a snap from in game hand position to actual, most like.
But you really should get closer to a chair mount for a HOTAS, that alone makes almost as much difference in immersion as the HOTAS itself.
And it improves ergonomics by a thousand fold.

Having a table mounted stick caused me shoulder pain in a week, 24/7. Mounting in a similar fashion as in game sorted it almost immediately and provided a better gaming experience long before I got VR.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Idea is great, however the reality of that idea is grim, because that's nightmarishly expensive development time for a very very very small userbase. I mean there are ~ 600k Rift/Vive headsets sold out there in total, Vives around 420k, Rifts around 250k. How many of those also have leap motion? And with delay on Horizons there is even less incentive to spend that much amount of money (you know, developer payrolls, office expenses etc., basically all costs of running a business) to a feature which while very cool in theory would be used by a handful of people out there.

Simply put, we're not there yet. And I have yet to see any successful glove implementation. So far there is talk about it but it seems there are some problems with the tracking and whatnot.

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But you really should get closer to a chair mount for a HOTAS, that alone makes almost as much difference in immersion as the HOTAS itself.
And it improves ergonomics by a thousand fold.

Having a table mounted stick caused me shoulder pain in a week, 24/7. Mounting in a similar fashion as in game sorted it almost immediately and provided a better gaming experience long before I got VR.

This DIY simulator chair looks sweet. I will most probably try to build it when my headset returns from repair...

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Idea is great, however the reality of that idea is grim, because that's nightmarishly expensive development time for a very very very small userbase. I mean there are ~ 600k Rift/Vive headsets sold out there in total, Vives around 420k, Rifts around 250k. How many of those also have leap motion? And with delay on Horizons there is even less incentive to spend that much amount of money (you know, developer payrolls, office expenses etc., basically all costs of running a business) to a feature which while very cool in theory would be used by a handful of people out there.

Simply put, we're not there yet. And I have yet to see any successful glove implementation. So far there is talk about it but it seems there are some problems with the tracking and whatnot.

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This DIY simulator chair looks sweet. I will most probably try to build it when my headset returns from repair...

Agreed, in fact I hope FD doesn't bother with hands and feet, walking in ships, although a pedal yaw animation would be nice, since I use pedals..


I would much rather have FD give us more toys
More fighters, more buggies, maybe a fighter launched from a buggy.
Or hover bikes, like skimmers are hovering, wouldn't you want to strap a seat to a goliath, and ride that bad boy into battle ?
And other mechanics, like hot dropping buggies without having to actually land (anyone who as played with geysers could easily land a buggy from a 2km drop, if you don't it would be hilarious)

This would be fun for all players, and truly awesome for VR

 

[Captain N]

I'm not sure what use would they be in the cockpit but support for motion controllers like the Vive wands and Oculus Touch would really help with the user experience in the galaxy map.

I guess the ability to wave and gesture at crewmates in the Multicrew expansion would be amusing and would add to the social presence.

 

[Baggy MacDouche]

Man, just had a flash of what it would be like to use the coming VR gloves and the galaxy map. Would be like something out of Minority Report. I'd take that in a New York Minute!

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Man, just had a flash of what it would be like to use the coming VR gloves and the galaxy map. Would be like something out of Minority Report. I'd take that in a New York Minute!

While that would look amazing, you'd quickly find out that this way of interacting with an user interface is tedious. Maybe not for the galmap where you don't spend so much time, but physically reaching out and clicking all those distances they did in Minority Report simply would be tiresome for the arms. Mouse is SOOO MUCH MORE EFFICIENT... And it's nothing new, we had that discussion with Kinect previously ;-)

Maybe 2nd gen of headsets will incorporate eye tracking, so you just look at your target and confirm via a button press, or a small gesture. But like said we're not there yet.

 

[Captain N]

A mouse is just a 2D pointing device. It works inside a flat rectangle but it's in no way comparable to a motion controller in VR.

Somewhere like the starmap where you have to accurately select something in 3D space its limitations become painfully clear, at least if you're already spoiled by 3D controllers like the ones that come with the Vive.

Clicking on stuff on a floating 2D menu is not the most "VR" way of doing things, but many VR games use that and even there a motion controller isn't at least any worse than a mouse. Although it's usually a "laser pointer" shot out of the hand rather than physically reaching and touching the screen like they did in Minority Report. That would probably indeed get tiresome in the long run, aside from being pointless.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

A mouse is just a 2D pointing device. It works inside a flat rectangle but it's in no way comparable to a motion controller in VR.
Somewhere like the starmap where you have to accurately select something in 3D space its limitations become painfully clear, at least if you're already spoiled by 3D controllers like the ones that come with the Vive.
Clicking on stuff on a floating 2D menu is not the most "VR" way of doing things, but many VR games use that and even there a motion controller isn't at least any worse than a mouse. Although it's usually a "laser pointer" shot out of the hand

What I wanted to say is that mouse-type control is more efficient that "aerobic exercises" a'la Minority Report Also, the laser pointer thingy is still cumbersome, especially twisting your hand to point all the way down to Steam settings in VR Raw data does it a bit better, treating the ViWand like a gun of sorts.

Regarding galaxy map in Elite, yes, touch controls would work there but then you would need to switch from HOTAS to ViWands / OTouchs everytime which would be a nightmare, actually. I find the HOTAS / gamepad controls for galaxy map sufficiently effective, not saying it cant be better though We're still in VR infancy, developers are experimenting with different control schemes, there is no "clear winner" yet. If we will have fully functional and accurate haptic feedback gloves someday, we could design an interface where you for example rest your hand comfortably on the desk and call "steering" area in which you finger-point where you want to steer. The possibilities for such interfaces are limitless, the tech just needs to catch up.

Of course, these things require balancing and are not so obvious, for example star citizen had used trackIR to track gimballed weapons in the past, and there was an uproar that its "unfair" to other players and they caved and removed that. Being a trackIR user I fail to see how is it more unfair than using a mouse+kbd vs using a HOTAS but oh well . Anyhow you need to tread even more carefully with VR interfaces because majority of players simply don't have it

 

[Captain N]

Sure, something like Leap Motion or a glove type hand tracker of some sort would play better together with HOTAS. The current Vive/Touch type controllers wouldn't really work for anything inflight, but they'd still be plenty useable for the starmap and station interfaces while docked/landed/stationary and not using the HOTAS, and I'd like to see them supported.

Tracked controllers are also easier to find with the goggles on than a mouse.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Tracked controllers are also easier to find with the goggles on than a mouse.

I play elite using my hotas + driving force gt pedals (which has the nice side effect of having the wheel to drive my srv ;-) ). I don't use mouse at all, except for the nested options menu interfaces because I am too lazy to remember the "toggle nested ui" binding Still I'd think that taking hands off the HOTAS (which I use [hat] to navigate UI, mind you) to take my "special galaxy starmap interface controllers" would be tedious in the long run.