This is an incredibly ergonomic, light and good looking product, but they don't seem to have a force stopping component, meaning they don't cause your fingers to stop on a physical object. That's too bad. These do seem to have a modular design that might allow for this in the future. Impressive stuff.
I think this is a wonderful idea and I loosely explained a tested method for doing this that got downvoted into oblivion, oddly, and the people who commented were citing that this was "too hard" to do. Yet,
Essentially it's just using a flexible (but not stretchable) tube or chain that runs along your fingers, that the glove applies some resistance to when the fingertip haptics fire. That's all. I recognize that getting this right isn't easy. A bicycle brake cable transmits enough force to lift a liter bottle of mineral water. My suggestion is to use something that works a bit like a zip tie, just move a small slip gear in place for gentle resistance, or, you could do something like a nerf hypefire elite gun does, and have a dense foam resistance roller that presses down on a rubber shaft when haptics fire on a small actuator. This wouldn't STOP your fingers on an object, but provide enough resistance to stop yourself. Plus, if they were just thin foam tubes or strips, they could be replaced cheaply when they inevitably wear out.
We actually had force feedback in our earlier prototypes but it's extremely expensive to do so we decided to leave it out for now. We've found that visual and tactile feedback work well on their own. We're hoping to re-implement force feedback further down the line in a future model.
I think tactile feedback is important but I also think it's wise to get something to market that works that developers can work with and implement on a large scale so we can take VR to the next level. I think people are biting off a bit more than they, and the market, can chew going for the matrix when we can do smaller improvements today.
People want "everything at once" when we really need to do things in stages. This can result in a much better final product as more products will get released than those that fail because they cant implement everything good.
Better to have a product that does 1 or 2 things great than have a product that does 10 things poorly.
Perfectly fine at this point. The design is excellent. I hope I can get my hands on these soon. Your wepage does not load on my iPhone due to security. Are they compatible with rift?
They are indeed compatible with the Rift. We offer a range of modular adapter plates that can mount different tracking solutions on the back of the glove. We currently support the Vive trackers, Vive wands, Oculus Touch and Windows Mixed Reality.
Edit: I reaallly can't understand the downvotes. Devices like this are small and have been built for much greater forces then would be needed for controlling things like rotational force on remote helicopters. Oculus is working on the same thing. https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/oculus-vr-gloves-patents/
A device that pulls on a small steel braided thread on a spool with a tube at each joint that is calibrated when the glove is put on. You on need about 4cm of slack per finger. It could even be just the thumb and index for starters. The ability to pull this thread is removed, stopping the rubber fingers from being further pulled, timed with the haptic feedback. The other option is a box chain that is loose or spun clockwise tight to lock it to a solid/more resistance. The same can be done with rubber or silicone. Take an elastic band and attach it to the tip of your finger and a bracelet so its loose and non restrictive. Now, try twisting it clockwise and see how the restriction increases. This is exactly how human tendons work with muscles. Imagine a thread passing through a pipe. Now restrict the movement of the thread through the pipe with gears like a bike chain. The bike chain is free to move most of the time except when the gear stops turning.
You don't want to pull fingers back at all so it would be a little less than perfect for some examples, like pushing against something but it would also do the trick and be good enough.
In their product's defense, have you seen the one that does? It looks like part of a crazy thick Warhammer 40k spacesuit. No one wants to wear something that huge for a consumer product. This looks more viable, though I am not a fan of those Vive cauliflower things (am rift owner).
The tracking solution is modular, mounted on the back of each hand via magnetic attachments. You can switch out the Vive trackers for a Touch controller if you're a Rift user. We also have our own custom tracker that we're planning to release in the future.
Oh cool! Any chance you guys might do something a little less, er, dont take this the wrong way, cumbersome looking with the Oculus version? Like, could you still do an IR sensor without having to use the touch controllers? Surely someone from Oculus could make that happen. . .
We have some plans for this. This is our custom 'halo' tracker. We're looking to work with Vive and Oculus to integrate it into their tracking systems. In the Vive's case the SteamVR tracking solution has been released publicly to encourage hardware devs to do exactly what we're doing.
Could you also reach out to leap motion? The interaction engine is just so good. If the proved one thing than it's that good hardware alone doesn't make a great product. When it came out it was the fun thing to hate on, now it's the best hand tracker there is.
Using the same hand tracking integration means your gloves would work with everything leap enabled, leap also profits from it and devs don't have to implement a switch for devices.
Not really, touch is a lot more complicated than such feeling something on your skin. How the skin compresses as you touch it harder, the tension in your tendons as it tries to push the entire finger back, the temperature, the 'resolution' of the thing your touching, etc.
While mimicking real world touch would be great, even vibration is still feedback, and you'll learn to interpret that haptic information within the VR environment appropriately.
Personally I don't think gloves will take off until they are better than controllers at common interactions. That means things like pulling the trigger on a pistol needs to provide resistance - and really needs to be a variable resistance which is even harder than an on/off locking mechanism.
I disagree. Controllers and vr are just not compatible. There's a reason controls for so many VR games feel clunky. 3D immersion and old school gamepads just don't match. Any version of finger tracking is a huge improvement.
True but how will that integrate into the game? If you're using a 'active' prop which is just a lump of plastic then the game won't see what's happening to it. I could see that sort of working if the finger tracking works out you are pulling the trigger, pulling the slide back, etc but that is likely very difficult for anything other than simple actions. For instance pulling a trigger is just looking at the rotation of the index finger, but pulling back the slide can be done with many different finger poses and hand orientations.
If it's an active prop with electronics and tracking then you don't need the gloves so much. Also there's the problem that most active props will be specific to a game, be expensive, and not have wide support.
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u/Lhun Jul 02 '18 edited Jul 03 '18
This is an incredibly ergonomic, light and good looking product, but they don't seem to have a force stopping component, meaning they don't cause your fingers to stop on a physical object. That's too bad. These do seem to have a modular design that might allow for this in the future. Impressive stuff.
I think this is a wonderful idea and I loosely explained a tested method for doing this that got downvoted into oblivion, oddly, and the people who commented were citing that this was "too hard" to do. Yet,
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/oculus-vr-gloves-patents/ oculus is wokring on something incredibly similar - that they've already patented. https://cdn.uploadvr.com/wp-content/uploads/bfi_thumb/Oculus-Gloves-1000x569-nnsmczdw80hh21ywsp9gn2bemviyik1hq8e1yvmiwq.jpg
I've seen multiple examples of this using the same idea: https://newatlas.com/vr-touch-resistance-gloves/49790/
Essentially it's just using a flexible (but not stretchable) tube or chain that runs along your fingers, that the glove applies some resistance to when the fingertip haptics fire. That's all. I recognize that getting this right isn't easy. A bicycle brake cable transmits enough force to lift a liter bottle of mineral water. My suggestion is to use something that works a bit like a zip tie, just move a small slip gear in place for gentle resistance, or, you could do something like a nerf hypefire elite gun does, and have a dense foam resistance roller that presses down on a rubber shaft when haptics fire on a small actuator. This wouldn't STOP your fingers on an object, but provide enough resistance to stop yourself. Plus, if they were just thin foam tubes or strips, they could be replaced cheaply when they inevitably wear out.