VR Reticles

How to represent your hands in VR? That is the critical question. Often we see our hands as the most natural ‘pointing’ devices available, however when hand tracking is limited and often error-prone, how do you represent your hands in a crude yet useful manner? We tried various iterations, from lidar based hand tracking projected as simple silhouettes, to converting the hand into an actual pointer with corresponding reticles to a combination of the two.

The challenge with realistic hand representation is the uncanny valley. Many technologies available today are not yet mature enough to fully capture the hands in their full fidelity. This can result in a disconnect between what is expected and what is actually projected in the virtual environment. To address this limitation, we proceeded with a solution that provided 80% of the result with only 20% of the computational effort.

Combining 4DoF, including XYZ and Roll was sufficient in providing most of the necessary capabilities to manipulate virtual objects. This made pressing, grabbing, rotating all possible with one hand while allowing special gestures to be performed with both hands in combination. The visual representations seen here are all variations of hand abstraction - the more realistic the hand the higher the expectation of interaction fidelity.