Cargo VR is a physics-based game where baggage has to be checked for illegal items. The player achieves this by grabbing the illegal items and putting them inside a drawer. The controls are very natural as the player uses his own body as a controller.
The technical aspect of this game is quite innovative. The player wears an HTC Vive headset with the HTC Vive controllers strapped to the players arms to track arm movement. Manus VR gloves (http://www.manus-vr.com) are used to track the flection of the individual fingers and rotations of the wrist. Hand-based interactions were limited to gesture-based input, but we have found a way to make the virtual hand physical. The result is a big step forward towards natural interaction in a virtual world.
Category Best Technical Achievement motivation
We made great progress in making the virtual world more natural to the player. This makes interaction with your surroundings more logical and satisfying. Before this project hand-based interaction was almost solely gesture-based. This means that the hand will not interact with the environment in a natural way. We free the player of interaction restrictions by giving them full control of the virtual hand.
We achieved this by designing and prototyping many ways to make the virtual hand physical. With each iteration we came closer to making the hand act and react in a more natural way. We started off translating the bones of the virtual hand to the location of the actual hand. The current implementation uses force to move the bones to their desired destination.
Our biggest challenge was the balance between applying force to objects and clipping through the environment. We found an equilibrium that enabled us to pick up objects naturally and prevent the hand from clipping through objects.
The final version is very valuable for projects that strive for realistic hand-based interactions. There is interest in this development from external parties such as virtual reality developer Enversed (http://www.enversed.com). This project will also be used in research towards a more natural way of interacting with the virtual world.