35. An Application for Interaction Comparison Between Virtual Hands and Virtual Reality Controllers

This paper presents an application for Virtual Reality (VR) interfaces for virtual hands which will allow us to compare interaction between virtual hands and VR controllers in Virtual Environments (VEs). Development for human-computer interaction in VEs needs improvement to accommodate the growth and need for applications inside VR. Virtual hands are growing more prevalent with many devices detecting the location and mimicry of the user’s own hands inside the VE. Virtual hands can also be implemented via VR Gloves to more precisely pinpoint the movements of hands. This work also implements interaction mediums that can be used by virtual hands or VR controllers to directly manipulate and control virtual objects and virtual interfaces. Unity was used to generate the VE and to render the input mediums and interactable objects. SteamVR was used to connect the input mediums to Unity. The HTC Vive Pro Eye was used to connect the user to the VE. The two input mediums that were compared are the HTC Vive Controllers and the HI5 gloves. All of these components come together to form an immersive and consistent means to compare input mediums in different kinds of interactions.