[stephc_int13]

I agree that for AR/VR or motion based "experiences" and games, the controls always are the weakest point, and I think this is crucial to understand the slow adoption.

This is also more fundamental and difficult to solve than it seems.

Beating the seemingly low-tech but widely successful existing control systems is not a given.

Most alternatives are inferior.

[Melatonic]

There are places like Two Bit Circus in Los Angeles that do this beautifully - they have odd VR games that you could never play at home because they have a crazy unique controller setup.

One in particular that I feel like is critically underrated (mainly due to the game itself being a bit boring) is a flying game. You lay down in this bird like giant controller with your arms at your sides and there are multiple fans blowing in your face. You can tilt the whole thing, move the "wings" to change your speed and angle / elevation and do lots of other movements. The game itself is basically just cruising around a virtual world (they have a few different types) but I thought it was super cool. The fans even change speed and direction based on how you are flying.

If the game itself was more engaging (like say it was multiplayer and maybe you were piloting a mechanical "bird" with lasers and whatnot) I think it would be pretty freaking awesome. But the "controller" of course must be very expensive and takes up a ton of space so it is really not useable at home unless you have a ton of extra space and disposable income. And of course it is a bit of a one trick pony.

[rabf]

Build an Exit Suit!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_uLksv-x4E

[rolenthedeep]

There is a lot of work going into hand tracking and natural interactions these days. People seem to feel much better and more immersed when they can use their hands to manipulate virtual objects.

Oculus has this very neat trick with their controllers. Most of the buttons and sticks have some type of sensor that detects if you're touching it, even lightly. They use that information to alter the pose of the virtual hand. When the controllers are visible, your virtual fingers mostly match where your real ones are on the controller.

At least one company builds unique user profiles that make your virtual hands the same size and skin tone as your physical hands, as well as adjusting for height and other parameters. Personally I find it gimmicky, but some people like it.

Unfortunately, the technology isn't quite robust enough that we can fully get rid of controllers. Ultraleap is working on a system with multiple 3D IR cameras to track hands from multiple perspectives. I think this is the most likely path forward. There's some really crazy alternatives like strapping dozens of electrodes to the forearm to record muscle impulses that get fed to an ML model which extrapolates hand and finger movement.

You're right, there's a lot of fundamental problems we have to work around, and it's far from easy. Even with Facebook's ridiculous resources, the oculus hand tracking is hot wet garbage for anything even slightly abnormal, like wearing a jacket.

But, the industry as a whole is really picking up steam. It won't be too much longer before we solve most of the big problems.

[Eisenstein]

The Wii did it easily. Racing simulators and flight simulators do it all the time. Gamepad controls exist because they have been iteratively refined to be the best way to play a game sitting on a couch.

Existing VR controls are great now that the Quest Pro controllers can self-track. The problems have been that you either had to setup lighthouses around your room to track you or have your hands always be in sight of the headset cameras. However, the QPro controllers can track independently like the headset itself by using SLAM and the difference is huge.

I don't see why you would think that the controls are difficult to solve. The problem isn't the controls -- the problem is that people don't realize how tiring it is to actually physically do the things you do in a video game, even on a very basic level. This makes VR great for getting physical activity -- but it makes for a very bad 'lazy day gaming' or 'after work gaming' recreation.

It sounds awesome to think about being in VR and being in the FPS until you realize that people who fight wars as infantry for real have to be in amazing shape.

[JohnFen]

> It sounds awesome to think about being in VR and being in the FPS

Yes. This is one of the things that leads to the counterintuitive truth that if you want a fully immersive and fun game (defining "immersive" as "the player is no longer aware that the game world is not their actual reality), you don't actually want too much realism.

What you want is an "effortlessness" -- the ability for the player to trigger an action without effort or conscious thought.