A lot of people can't touch-type. I can't, not really, I need to glance at the keyboard once in a while. My typing speed is comparable to touch-typists', which is why I never felt the need to learn to properly touch-type. The need of seeing the keyboard is problematic in very few situations in practice, and with a back-lit keyboard it's never a problem... as long as seeing my keyboard is possible at all, which was not the case in VR.
I could invest a lot of time to unlearn my current way of typing and learn proper touch-typing technique, but that's a lot of work and doing it just to be able to type in VR feels like a waste of time. With this tech I'd be able to work in VR without changing my way of typing. To me, this makes using VR for work practical for the first time. It's actually huge, and if it works well it's, to me and others in similar situation, potentially life-changing tech.
I thought the same thing so I disabled the backlight on my laptop's keyboard. After accidentally turning it on in the dark a month later I will never go back to a non back-lit keyboard.
It's hard to place your hands on the keyboard in pitch black or when you're in a weird position like lying on your back with the laptop on your chest. If you've ever partially closed your laptop so that the monitor would shine on your keyboard so you could find 'f' and 'j', you know exactly what I'm talking about.
And also TFA says "for a true typing experience you need to see your hands, and we’ve created a way to use the Vive’s existing tracking to do that".
The way I know where to place my fingers on a dark keyboard is by feeling for some raised bumps which are on the f and j keys on my keyboard. As long as I've got those, I can always easily put my fingers in the default position on the home row, and from there it's easy.
As long as I can use such markers to position my hands in the proper initial position, I really don't like to have a lit keyboard in the dark. It's distracting and annoying.
If your keyboard doesn't have such bumps it's easy enough to make them either using some craft materials you can stick on the keyboard (like some tape even) or by cutting small notches in to it using a file or a dremel tool.
My dad had a keyboard with those bumps rubbed almost completely off. Occasionally I would need to use the computer attached to it and found it really hard to use. I'm so accustomed to unconsciously placing my fingers correctly using them that without them I was really ineffective with the computer and found it frustrating.
A few ideas mentioned in the article sound interesting:
“But VR can transform and augment that trusty keyboard – so easy to disregard – into a contextually aware companion for whatever application you use, becoming a palette for your creative workflow, dynamically providing you with any commands and shortcuts you need.”
I touch-type in the dark without seeing the keyboard just fine.
But that's on a physical keyboard that has something which virtual keyboards lack: tactile feedback.
Tactile feedback is one of the missing pieces of today's VR devices. Without it typing on a fully virtual keyboard is just not going to be nearly as accurate as on a physical keyboard, and providing visual feedback is just about the only thing you can do about it.
If you are playing a VR game where you are using a joystick or some other peripheral, you still may need to use your keyboard for some actions, in-game chat, or simply to pull up a browser and google something while in-game.
If you primarily have your hands on a joystick or game controller, you would have to take your VR headset off just to figure out where your keyboard/mouse are.
strictly off-topic, but has anyone else noticed on the Yoga Book (the 'Halo' Keyboard') that they screen printed the physical locator nibs from the F and J onto the flat keyboard :)
This could be done, but I expect it to be usually pretty annoying. Most of the time when I type I don't want to be looking at my hands or the keyboard. Instead, I want to be looking at either the text I'm typing or something else (like some other text, or a video, etc). Having a silhouette of my hands and a keyboard superimposed over what I'm looking at will just be distracting.
That said, I don't really have a better suggestion. Typing in VR is just going to be plain painful for anyone who can touch type with any speed on a physical keyboard.
I could invest a lot of time to unlearn my current way of typing and learn proper touch-typing technique, but that's a lot of work and doing it just to be able to type in VR feels like a waste of time. With this tech I'd be able to work in VR without changing my way of typing. To me, this makes using VR for work practical for the first time. It's actually huge, and if it works well it's, to me and others in similar situation, potentially life-changing tech.