Integration of DIY VR Haptic Gloves in VAM

[gehtsienichtsan1]

Hello dear Vam community,

ever since i knew about these cheap DIY VR Haptic gloves (lucidgloves) i tought that it would be really cool if they worked with Vam.
To clarify, i am talking about this:

https://github.com/LucidVR/lucidgloves

It is an open source project and a pair of these gloves can be build for about 60-100 dollars.
The special thing about these is that they support force feedback. That means that are not only tracking your exact finger position, they can also restrain the movement of the fingers so that it feels like you are actually holding a reallife object.

I think this would be a great addition to Vam and increase the immersion by a lot because you could actually touch and feel a person.

I personally am a fan of Vam for some years now and i am motivated to take effort to implement this feature the Vam.
Tough i know about programming to a certain degree i dont really know anything about the technical stuff about Vam.
If someone is out there that has the knowledge and motivation to create a plugin like this, please do so. Me and propably many other people in the community would really apprechiate it.
But i also want to help as much as i can.

So i read trough the docs of lucidgloves and there are some things i found out.
I have to say that i dont really know how anything about this works. I just want to provide an overview of information about what it takes to impement this.


To use the haptic gloves you need to install the opengloves driver: https://github.com/LucidVR/opengloves-driver. This communicates with SteamVr to send and receive input and outputs.

In order for the gloves to send the finger position to the game they use the SteamVR Skeletal Input System. I dont really know about how Vam is receiving the controller input but as far as i know it is possible in Vam to use the finger tracking of the valve index controller and for this they probably use the same system.
https://github.com/LucidVR/opengloves-driver/wiki/Game-Compatibility-List
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr/wiki/SteamVR-Skeletal-Input

The second thing is how to to the force feedback. As far as i understand it is done using a SteamVr's named pipe.
You have to send a number from 0 to 1000 to each finger of each hand trough this named pipe. 0 means no restriction and 1000 means the hand cant be moves at all.

Integrating Force Feedback · LucidVR/opengloves-driver Wiki

An OpenVR Driver for VR Gloves. Contribute to LucidVR/opengloves-driver development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

.

There is actually a unity demo project which has this already implemented. So maybe it is actually possible to just adapt the scripts.
https://github.com/LucidVR/opengloves-force-feedback-unity-demo

There are also two libraries which seem to be helpful:
https://github.com/LucidVR/opengloves-driver/wiki/Libraries-and-Examples


I am very interested in everyones opinion about this so please let me know what you think.
And i want to note that english not a first lanuage to me so i hope you dont mind too much about some mistakes.

 

[lilbug]

Any progress on this mate.
Was about to dust off my parts that I bought and put them together, then remembered it probably isn't supported on Vam.
Pretty sure tracking should work, but force feedback is the real goal.

 

[RiftWind]

Just as an add on to this - possible to have support for haptic vests / feet / arms products? Recently tried these in skyrim and they are pretty neat - enemies hitting you or brushing against things when you walk trigger haptic feedback.
So far they only support profiles specially written (i cannot code to make my own) or audio haptic (any noise above certain range triggers general feedback) but be neat if you could have some sort of support that sent haptic feedback to the devices based on collision.
I was aware of a driver SPQR (or plugin?) that gave haptic feedback via steam but cant find anything for these devices.
Regarding the haptic gloves, probably going to build my own re the above posts because it doesnt look like we are getting any commercial release anytime soon :/
(why are we skipping the fun stuff and moving straight to ai chips in the brain, we went from vr wands to brain chips and missed the cool suits and haptic gear)

 

[Blaspheratus]

Just as an add on to this - possible to have support for haptic vests / feet / arms products? Recently tried these in skyrim and they are pretty neat - enemies hitting you or brushing against things when you walk trigger haptic feedback.
So far they only support profiles specially written (i cannot code to make my own) or audio haptic (any noise above certain range triggers general feedback) but be neat if you could have some sort of support that sent haptic feedback to the devices based on collision.
I was aware of a driver SPQR (or plugin?) that gave haptic feedback via steam but cant find anything for these devices.
Regarding the haptic gloves, probably going to build my own re the above posts because it doesnt look like we are getting any commercial release anytime soon :/
(why are we skipping the fun stuff and moving straight to ai chips in the brain, we went from vr wands to brain chips and missed the cool suits and haptic gear)

Try this Plugin from MacGruber, In theory you can make a haptic vest, or any haptic device, or control in real life lamps, fans, etc., only if you have basic knowledge of electronics and Raspberry Pi.

 

[RiftWind]

Now this i might attempt

 

[Solstice]

I've read of certain gloves in the market that allow users to FEEL VR/AR and not just a series of preprogrammed vibrations. I'm hoping we can finally leave the STARFOX 64 rumble pack thing in the past.

I hope it's not just marketing by these companies and the gloves, vests work as advertised. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a current demand for it (as far as I'm aware) and they're also very expensive. Hopefully within the next 5 years we get to FEEL up on our ladies.

 

[RiftWind]

Still nothing commercially available - lots of promise and very little else. Skyrim with haptic gear is fun, but no rumbley fingertips for melee combat or VAM related activities
On related side note - haptics player and coding for personal profiles is so much harder than it looks. How DO they make those game specific mods ...

 

[Nawen]

Any updates on this? Since its SteamVR compatible and emulates an index controller I would think it could work, what about other devices like the Senso gloves? they would work right? or no?

Senso

Break the walls of VR

senso.me

 

[gehtsienichtsan1]

Any updates on this? Since its SteamVR compatible and emulates an index controller I would think it could work, what about other devices like the Senso gloves? they would work right? or no?

https://senso.me/[/URL

In short, not really.

While it is possible for the gloves to send the positional data of your fingers to VAM via the SteamVR inputs, it is not possible for the game to send the required data back to the gloves.

Because what i was talking about is force feeeback. That means for example, if you grab something in game, the game needs to calculate how much the fingers are curled and then send this data to the glove so it can restrict the movement on your fingers in reallife.

I hope that makes sense to you.

 

[0perfectlookalike]

this has forcefeedback and more and you dont need gloves

 

[Nawen]

But the gloves would be usable for Motion capture and general gameplay, would just be touching ghosts? or they wouldn't work at all, and would fail because of the lack of haptic return data?

 

[Blaspheratus]

But the gloves would be usable for Motion capture and general gameplay, would just be touching ghosts? or they wouldn't work at all, and would fail because of the lack of haptic return data?

If I remember correctly Lucas (the creator of the haptic gloves) has a demo on steam, to show the feedback with the servo motors, however to implement it in a game requires a lot of programming and to do it inside Unity (MeshedVr needs to be implemented in a Vam update).

I have an idea to make a feedback system with MacGruber's connect plugin.
Connect the raspberry Pi to an ESP-32 via the GPIO pins, and the ESP-32 to the servos for feedback (PWM output).

I haven't tried it because I don't have an ESP-32 or a microcontroller, and I don't know if the Connect plugin lets you use Python on the Pi at the same time.

It would be a bit complicated to program the Connect plugin in vam, because it only gives digital outputs, if you could use the PWM pins it would be much easier to indicate the force.

Maybe an anti-stress ball can help you not to feel like touching a ghost when interacting in VR

Maybe someone can make a plugin to use arduino ide together with Vam, it would be much easier to make devices.

 

[gehtsienichtsan1]

If I remember correctly Lucas (the creator of the haptic gloves) has a demo on steam, to show the feedback with the servo motors, however to implement it in a game requires a lot of programming and to do it inside Unity (MeshedVr needs to be implemented in a Vam update).

I have an idea to make a feedback system with MacGruber's connect plugin.
Connect the raspberry Pi to an ESP-32 via the GPIO pins, and the ESP-32 to the servos for feedback (PWM output).

I haven't tried it because I don't have an ESP-32 or a microcontroller, and I don't know if the Connect plugin lets you use Python on the Pi at the same time.

It would be a bit complicated to program the Connect plugin in vam, because it only gives digital outputs, if you could use the PWM pins it would be much easier to indicate the force.

Maybe an anti-stress ball can help you not to feel like touching a ghost when interacting in VR

Maybe someone can make a plugin to use arduino ide together with Vam, it would be much easier to make devices.

Yes, I looked at the unity demo previously and it is like you say. To implement this, you basically need direct access to the game/engine.
As far as my research go, it currently is not possible to do this in VAM with plugins. As it seems to me, VAM is quite limited in that way.
It may not be necessary for the VAM developers to program the integration of haptic gloves like this themselves, but they would have to give modders/plugin-creators the possibility to actually alter or add things to the game itself.

But that is just my understanding of it. I am not an expert in vam or game dev.

 

[gehtsienichtsan1]

But the gloves would be usable for Motion capture and general gameplay, would just be touching ghosts? or they wouldn't work at all, and would fail because of the lack of haptic return data?

I currently dont have gloves like these, but they should work fine for things like motion capture and general gameplay. The game would register the input of your fingers correctly. Altough your fingers wont be limited in their movement at all so yes, it would be like touching ghosts.