Full Index Finger Tracking Support Poll! (Patreon)

Hey Everyone, today our weekly development blog is also a community poll! Also, we have a second post today as well showing off an animated GIF of some hand mechanics/animations we have been playing with for this poll using what we do know about the Index controller.

We have had a lot of people asking us for "In-Game Hands/Gloves" instead of "In-Game Controllers" for Nympho Trainer VR. It was to far along in the development process to add them in that game, but we wanted to make it a high priority in our new Nympho Creator VR title!

Before tackling this project, we thought we would do a poll to see what kind of hand mechanics we should be focusing on. Every controller has it's own limitations... for instance, the original Vive controllers have no "pre-touch" sensors and limited buttons... the Oculus Touch remotes have some sensors, and the new Index controllers have full 5 digit Finger Tracking! You can see how designing a game for all of these possibilities can be a challenge. Now obviously we would love to make a custom system for all the controllers (and that is an option here...) but that will take SIGNIFICANTLY more time to do so right! 

Although we don't have Index Controllers yet, we are reserved and waiting for them to get here! Luckily there's enough online documentation of the Index controller that we should be able to get coding for them without having the hardware to test haha!

We thought the best way to figure out where we should be investing time/resources, would be to take a VReleased community poll!

Lot's of games that support "Index controllers", don't do "The Full Monty" approach option you will see below. A great example is "Poker Stars VR" (you can jump to 3:53 time in this Youtube video to see this). This would be a good example of being able to use the controller... but not take advantage of the fun new hardware capabilities. 

Here is a great video we found showing some different schemes games use for the Index Controller currently. 

Index Support Video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZnEJKFRf8Y 

So It's time for options now!

Option 1: "Universal Basic"

This would be the fastest option, but would also take the fun out of new hardware (like the Index finger tracking). This would be a couple poses for the hand in different situations. Open Hand, Closed Fist, Index Point, and Gripped Item Hand Poses (A bunch of custom hand poses that fit around what ever item it might be holding). This would be button mapped to work with all controllers, but we would not be taking full advantage of Oculus Touch, and Index Controllers hardware (although gameplay would work fine with those controllers).

 Option 2: "The Full Monty"

This would be taking full advantage of everything each controller has to offer. This would be time consuming, but would create an awesome product! We would have to create custom control schemes for each controller and switch them out depending what one you are currently using.

We are pulling for "The Full Monty" finger tracking, but don't want everyone to think we are slacking on updates because of the time involved for such a task! We think the future of VR controllers are heading for this full finger tracking feel... so this will also set the foundations for the support of future controllers that don't exist yet.

If you have your own idea for an option, that's great too! Make sure to leave a nice long comment below explaining your idea for us and we can brain storm it's possibility, and it's pros/cons. Everyone else can comment in on it too to start a cool discussion!

If we do "The Full Monty", we will also be experimenting with the possibility of adding full hand and finger collision system so it will bend and react to whatever you are touching. Now we don't know how we will accomplish this yet... but we have some really good ideas and it will be fun to figure it out haha!

No matter what choice, we should have at least basic hands/gloves integration in our next build release. Obviously if we go "The Full Monty" approach, we won't probably have that completely set up until the following build (but we'll still get something in there for this up coming build release!)

That's all for now, we are excited to see the poll results and get some great input on the matter! 

Thank you so much for your support, and have an awesome weekend everyone!

-The VReleased Team