Tag

Interaction

How WEART’s TouchDIVER Pro Transports Workers into Immersive Spaces

WEART highlights its seamless approach in optimizing valuable immersive applications for businesses

The TouchDIVER Pro haptic glove represents a significant advancement in haptic technology, by empowering workers with more realistic training simulations thanks to sophisticated haptic feedback fitted into a small form-factor.

WEART leveraged its extensive network of expert partners to ensure the TouchDIVER Pro is engineered and optimized for seamless integration into professional workflows.

WEART designed the most recent device based on a clear user need for full finger tracking and haptic actuation to truly transport workers into their professional virtual spaces through feelings of touch.

Connecting Workers with XR Simulations

TouchDIVER Pro enhances the connection workers feel with a virtual world, thanks to its unique technical features.

Unlike typical VR gloves that focus on basic vibrations or movement tracking, TouchDIVER Pro co-localizes force-feedback, texture rendering, and thermal cues via its six actuation points, covering all five fingers and the palm simulating the sensation of resistance or pressure, transporting users to a VR environment by creating a truly immersive and convincing sense of touch when interacting with digital objects.

Another key feature of the TouchDIVER Pro device is its advanced hand tracking, which offers deep precision and finger accuracy (less than 1 degree), enabling users to perform complex gestures.

By combining all these elements, TouchDIVER Pro creates a strong sense of realism for virtual experiences, reproducing objects and material-specific properties.

Creating Seamless Connections Between the Real and Virtual World

The primary goal for wearable haptic solutions is connecting workers with virtual worlds, however disruptive form-factors can ruin this, hence why WEART designed a lightweight product to keep workers immersed. The TouchDIVER Pro has a much smaller form factor than similar products on the market, allowing for a seamless transition into a virtual space. Other haptics products could be intrusive compared to the TouchDIVER Pro; as other devices can be a large-scale glove or a device which a user wears on their body, for example.

The TouchDIVER Pro form-factor can be perceived as overlooked elements of a successful immersive peripheral; however, once implemented, it becomes a crucial design consideration.

ROI and Tangible Outcomes

While enabling a seamless transition to the virtual world is innovative, what does that look like regarding a return on investment?

By recreating a sense of feeling in virtual spaces, businesses can save money. Haptics allows for a more reliable virtual environment, which companies can use as valuable training spaces.

TouchDIVER Pro-based ROI also involves not wasting resources or time when putting people in real spaces for training procedures; while at the same time not disrupting busy or dangerous working environments for training needs.

WEART’s approach is supported by industrywide recognition of its hardware and workplace abilities, with WEART winning countless awards, most recently including AWE’s Auggie Awards “Best Societal Impact” 2024.

The tangible outcomes of enterprise haptic solution solutions are still emerging, much like the technology. Although, as increasing use cases emerge, the haptic market will grow and become defined by sector leaders like WEART.

Quelle:

https://www.xrtoday.com/mixed-reality/how-wearts-touchdiver-pro-transports-workers-into-immersive-spaces-weart/

27. März 2025 0 comment

Examples

Exploring XR User Interface Interactions in ‘Idea Engine’

Idea Engine allows you to create and share VR and mixed reality experiences. Building such a general-purpose tool requires complex user interfaces. In this Guest Article, developer Brett Jackson shares his approaches to UI interaction.

It’s common to present a UI through 2D interactive panels in XR. It’s not an exciting prospect, but it’s familiar and efficient. However, even if we accept this 2D intrusion into our XR worlds, there are still new considerations and opportunities to break free from 2D paradigms.

I quickly grew weary of laser pointers that exaggerated my hand movement on distant panels, along with their inconsistent target vectors and intermittent pinch detection. My preference is to reach out and interact with the world. I want the panel right in front of me so I can position it comfortably and use it like a real-world device.

My latest project, Idea Engine, is developed using StereoKit, an open-source, OpenXR library. It has a hands-first philosophy and provides out-of-the-box hand tracking support as well as controller support. It allows for the efficient creation of dynamic windows with typical UI controls. It’s an excellent tool for quickly creating XR projects and has many other benefits.

Panels

So my starting point is a UI panel that we can grab at any point (no special handles or edges to find) with a nice aura displayed when we are in grabbing range. Now, let’s add more XR considerations.

In XR, it’s easy for a user to end up behind a UI panel. Rather than show a blank rear or reversed UI, I flip the UI to the side the user is looking at—simple. It sounds trivial, but it’s worth considering XR specific scenarios. Another approach is to auto-rotate the panel to constantly face the player, but this removes control from the user. If they want the panel at a strange angle, let them, they may have a good reason.

An individual panel should be kept to a small size (page size / monitor size) so the user can easily absorb the contents without having to turn their head, but XR provides us with an abundance of space. I like to look for opportunities to break out of the page boundary. My scrollable areas have a handle to grab and move the content. While grabbed, you see a greatly expanded view of the content area, and you can drag and drop while in this mode, providing a greater placement range.

I show tips to the side of panels, with a line to the UI component they describe. This reduces the amount of text on the panel. Users can cycle through tips and hide ones they are familiar with.

In another project, I prototyped a 3D Gantt chart that scrolled off the page horizontally and faded into the distance. The user’s main focus was still on the normal-sized central panel, but they were able to optionally take in the wider context.

While panels are convenient and familiar, we shouldn’t feel constrained by their bounds and it’s fun to look for ways to break out.

Menus

StereoKit introduced me to the radial hand menu, which I then expanded on. I like this idea because you operate it with one hand, so it’s convenient, accessible. I make the same menu system available on both the right and left hand and use the same approach for popup menus on panels for consistency.

My volumetric menu takes things a step further and was driven purely by a desire to make use of that 3rd dimension. I use it to select teleport destinations (with a pointer to each destination) and to select nearby nodes to edit. I also use it for keyboard input when browsing metaverse addresses. This is quite experimental. It has the advantage that all symbols are equidistant from the centre, and you see your input without having to look away (a common issue with virtual keyboards). The drawback is that it’s unfamiliar to users, so I expect some resistance to it. Notice in the video, the letters spiral away from front to back in alphabetical order, so in a short while, their position should become familiar.

You’ll soon be able to add menus like these to your own Idea Engine projects.

3D Widgets

A colour picker offered an ideal opportunity to experiment, having three values (hue, saturation, and value) that could be mapped to 3 dimensions. In my 3D colour picker, you can change all three values at once or individually set the hue, saturation, or value. I feel it’s more interesting to interact with than sliders on a 2D page.

Similarly with locomotion, I want to move in 3D, so I made a 3D joystick for smooth hand-tracked movement. Simply drag the sphere in the direction you want to travel and roll your wrist for snap or smooth rotation. It operates in walking or flying mode and the rotation can be disabled if the user finds it too much to think about all in one control. I still support traditional controller-based movement, but this single handed control duplicates the functionality of multiple joysticks / buttons and is an interesting example of how 3d hand movement can meet requirements in new ways.

Hands

In all of my example videos, you’ll see I hide the user’s hand as soon as they start interacting with the UI. Many developers invest effort into carefully creating grab poses for different purposes, and that looks neat, but for me, a well-posed hand that doesn’t reflect my own hand position is more distracting than no hand at all. A hand can also be a visual obstruction once the interaction has started.

With the hand gone, I’m also free to dampen or exaggerate hand movement without any visual conflict. I dampen hand movement in the colour picker to lower sensitivity and exaggerate hand movement when scrolling when there is a lot of content.

Text

While Idea Engine supports Sketchfab to download 3D models, AI to generate images, and photo / audio importing, it’s hard to beat the ease and accessibility of text and the spoken word to convey complex narratives. With this in mind, I needed decent support for text so users could merge all available formats to tell their stories.

Text generally doesn’t look great in VR, so I fade it out as you walk away to remove unsightly artefacts and close down text panels too. Users will be keen to explore the environment rather than read text, so I have the option of having a narrator automatically read out any block text you encounter.

Text input was a challenge without a great solution. I created mobile-style text input with cut and paste support and auto pagination using a virtual keyboard. When I finished, I thought, that’s OK, but I wouldn’t want to type a long passage in XR. Then I added voice-to-text support. That helped, but I found that I needed to do a lot of editing after my dictation and that was still slower than using traditional means. Now I allow users to connect to their headset from a browser on any devices they own and import text via a web page. I regularly use all three techniques, with the browser used for long text entry.

My lesson here was that you don’t always need to solve everything in XR. Sometimes it’s preferable to use more suitable devices and then import the results.

Try it Out

From educational mind maps, to interactive stories and games, you can leverage CC assets and import your own photos, sounds and text to build your idea. Then, bring it to life by adding states, events and high level scripting and share it on our X82 metaverse. A feature-packed, end-user tool to explore the possibilities of XR.

The public alpha is now available and free to download on App Lab, so you can come and try out any of the features discussed and give me your feedback.

Quelle:

Exploring XR User Interface Interactions in ‘Idea Engine’

8. Januar 2024 0 comment

Knowledge Research

Potential & Impact of Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is the interface between users / people and computers. HCI can be put in simpler terms as the medium through which we communicate and interact with computers. Computing has evolved over the years to various different form factors and platforms.

HCI is the process through which Humans / Users interact with the computing devices which act as the primary interface for interaction. These actions constitute not just the technological part, but also the other different cognitive, psychological behaviors of the users and the ergonomic principles as well.

It is the bridge between cognitive abilities of Human Beings with computers through different interface possible.

For instance, two most popular interfaces used for interaction points by users are Keyboard / Mouse in computers & Touch UI in Smartphones. Apart from these two few other interfaces which are claiming wider adoption among mainstream use case are facial interaction, voice recognition and gestures etc.

HCI has evolved over the years leveraging different sensory components and advancements in various complementary technologies, paving way for interdisciplinary practices across the spectrum of devices and form factors.

Even people who doesn’t own a computing device like a PC or a Smartphone also interact or benefit out of HCI’s technological advancements like ATM Machines, Food Vending Machines, Smart Ticketing Systems etc. HCI has evolved beyond the leaps and bounds of average computing devices.

Thanks to advancements in the terrestrial technologies of HCI like IoT, VR/AR, Eye Tracking, Cloud Computing & Speech Recognition etc. a tremendous amount of digital transformation has been enabled across our daily life.

Internet of Things is transforming the entire Industrial front by offering unique solutions for enormous no. of age old problems faced by the segment. IoT is one such technological component that’s at the fore front of the entire Digital Transformation and Industry 4.0. All our smart meters to smart parking systems have all been made possible thanks to IoT.

#VR/#AR on the other hand is playing a crucial role both in the consumer and business verticals across Industries and Sectors. For instance, we at GRAHAs VR ® are leveraging eye tracking in VR with our Headset. The entire input tool and the control mechanisms in our device happen through Gaze Interaction which is made possible by eye tracking. In our device you don’t have to separately operate anything or even need a controller, all that you have to do is just look at the specific object or selection item in the menu for a couple of seconds and the action gets completed automatically.

Through our partnership with IIT Mandi iHub and HCI Foundation & IIT Mandi Catalyst, we are taking these experiences and leveraging the full potential of Human Computer Interaction to give products and services of next gen today.

The input format and tool will form a crucial factor in wider adoption of VR in our daily use. For VR/AR to become an integral part of our day to day activities, we need non-intrusive input mechanisms which doesn’t disconnect the user from his social being. We strongly believe the advancements in HCI will pave way to large scale implementation and adoption.

For VR / AR and Metaverse to take the role of a smartphone in our average technology consumption of close to 8+ hours, we need strong non-intrusive form factor and device category.

We are leveraging the combination of these technologies under Human Computer Interaction to give the best user experience and also be democratic in our approach viz giving access to the devices across the spectrum of users. We are constantly working in this end and can’t wait to share more updates regarding our device and platform using HCI soon.

Quelle:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/potential-impact-human-computer-interaction-hci-yagnanarayanan/

21. Dezember 2022 0 comment

Knowledge Software/Apps

VR Studio Releases Free Unity Development Framework for Building Rich VR Interactions

Veteran enterprise VR studio VRMADA has released a public version of its VR toolset for quickly building immersive interactions for VR within Unity. Called UltimateXR, the studio says the tool is free and open source.

Our Guest Article by VRMADA CTO Enrique Tromp remains one of my favorites to this day because of how it shows the power of rich VR interactions. The problem, however, is that building rich interactions in VR (ie: interacting naturally and enjoyably with objects in the virtual world) is a painstaking process.

But VRMADA wants to make it easier and to that end has released UltimateXR, a development framework to build rich VR interactions in Unity.

Based on the studio’s own internal framework that’s been driven by the production of various VR projects, UltimateXR is free and open-source, allowing Unity developers of all stripes to more efficiently build rich interactions into their VR content.

UltimateXR supports Oculus, Pico, SteamVR, WaveXR, and WMR SDKs, and is comprised of 70 documented modules to do much of the heavy lifting required to build rich interactions in VR.

The framework primarily deals with creating avatars that can interact with the scene, interactive objects, and hand poses for realistic interaction with those objects.

Interactive objects in the UltimateXR sample scene | Image courtesy VRMADA

For instance, developers can use UltimateXR to create a full-body avatar with IK, define various points at which a single object can be grabbed, specify how an object can be manipulated once grabbed, and create the specific shapes that the user’s hand should make when grabbing the item in different ways.

Doing all of this from scratch can be painfully time consuming—and only grows in complexity as the number of interactive objects increases—which is one reason why rich object interactions in VR are rare.

The framework is available now at the UltimateXR website and the company says it plans to continue to evolve the framework as time goes on.

Quelle:

VR Studio Releases Free Unity Development Framework for Building Rich VR Interactions

20. Juli 2022 0 comment

Knowledge Software/Apps

Review: Painting VR

Painting VR leaves out some of the customisation options, but it has all of the fun.

Despite painting, in reality, being reliant on tactility, VR developers keep trying their hands at creating the perfect art app. With every art-based app, it’s increasingly difficult to produce a masterpiece, but Painting VR gets pretty close.

Not that this new entry to the market does much differently – there’s a canvas, plenty of paint colours and mediums to try out. If you fancy being a graffiti artist, there are sprays and fat drippy markers, if building up layers of paint is more your bag, then there are a variety of brushes to slap on big, splotchy brushstrokes.

The paint, whether dolloped with a brush or slathered with a roller, has a great feeling of fluidity. Everything drips and runs with the application of water, or more paint. Mixing colours is a simple affair, but also plays into experimentation. Usually, I’d be mixing paint on a palette, which can be done, but after messing around with open cans of paint, I found you can simply pour one into the other, gradually changing the hue. It’s a simple pleasure.

As is becoming the norm, the canvas can be accompanied by a web browser, positioned to the side. Here you can follow your favourite artists on YouTube or a website. This feature may be common but it never stops being a great addition, allowing for proper learning or step-by-step guides.

While Painting VR strives on authenticity, it does fall down in studio customisation – there’s no quick and handy way to change canvas size, nor the size of your tools. Also, the canvas is situated within an indoor skate park, yet you cannot break away from the canvas to paint random walls, so this seems a little pointless.

Of course, your success with Painting VR is only as good as your skills, but this app supplies enough materials and easy shortcuts to achieve that. Being able to pick up brushes from a distance means it’s easy to paint while sitting, and the ability to move through the studio space with the left stick allows for proper manoeuvrability.

The difficulty Painting VR or any other painting app has is the moment the brush, or any other tool, touches the canvas. The motion controls will nearly always cause a bad brushstroke or a daub of unwanted paint and it’s here where Painting VR needs an ‘undo’ action – far too many of my projects were ruined by overly sensitive motion controls.

‘Fun’ is a very simple word to describe a game or app. It’s a bit too simple, but here, it fits. Painting VR is just simple fun. It doesn’t feature all the bells and whistles of other apps, but the devs are focusing on enjoyment. Want to throw your paint at the canvas, then do it. Attach your paintbrushes to a drill and swirl your art, then go for it. This is painting as you remember it from your childhood.

It feels as if any painting app is going to suffer a markdown in a review because it will never compare to creating in reality, however, Painting VR gets the closest, despite a lack of customisation options. Why? Because the paint acts like paint, rather than a disjointed liquid which creates a disconnect between you, the tool and the canvas. If you’re looking for perfection, it’s still in the distance, but for something that feels genuine, and honestly, great fun to experiment with, give Painting VR a try.

Quelle:

Review: Painting VR

16. Mai 2022 0 comment

Hardware Knowledge

Are Human-Powered Motion Simulators The Future Of VR?

Sometimes, less is more.

A new VR motion simulator from a company called Kinerse is making waves online thanks to its human-powered design that removes the need for external power. Instead of relying on motors or electronic actuators, this “passive motion platform” uses your own weight to simulate physical movement via a simple lever system.

The device is completely open-source, which means anyone can download the project files and start working on their own modifications. Kinerse hopes that by making its designs publically available, the community will feel encouraged to implement their own improvements and help perfect the original design. Designers can even sell their creations without fear of the company taking legal action.

The design is surprisingly straightforward. The user sits on a flat base equipped with two large levers. By pulling forward and back on these controls, the user can adjust their orientation (pitch & roll). The Touch controllers are used to identify the location of the controls and the base in relation to the user. While the current iteration only supports 2DoF (degrees-of-freedom), the company hopes to eventually provide 3DoF functionality (pitch, roll, and yaw) to provide an even more realistic experience.

Obviously, a motion simulator with such a unique design will support a very limited number of VR games and apps. To help showcase how its human-powered motion sim can be used, Kinerse developed its own original VR game, Andromeda Sports. Available now for the Meta Quest 2, this fast-paced racing experience has you navigating futuristic environments using your very own hoverboard.

You can gain a better understanding of the controls in Training Mode and then put your newfound skills to the test in MIX mode, which combines racetracks to create an infinite number of possibilities. You can also race against other players asynchronously in ASYNCH ONLINE mode.

Moving forward, Kinerse hopes its open-source human-powered motion simulator will be adapted for use with a wider range of games and apps. The device is still in its early stages of development. As a result, the company’s passive motion platform may not work comfortably with all body shapes and sizes.

Those interested can download the project files for free via GitHub. The device only works with the Meta Quest 2 VR headset at the moment, though Kinerse has expressed interest in expanding to additional VR platforms.

Quelle:

Are Human-Powered Motion Simulators The Future Of VR?

Image Credit: Kinerse

15. Mai 2022 0 comment