Has anyone used VR gloves for VaM?

[haroldwithlove]

Just out of curiosity, does VaM (1.X or plans for future 2.X) support any kind of VR gloves? If it works for VaM 1.X, has anyone used VR gloves for VaM?

An example of VR gloves, pretty expensive though...

Hi5 VR Glove Business Edition | Hi5 VR Glove

 

[Jiraiya]

I know for a fact at least one member here is working with a 3D printed DIY glove that provides not only full finger tracking but also force feedback!
It is integrated directly to VaM using a script and seems to work well from what I have seen.
The glove is built with 5 of the tiny cheap 9g micro servos, some small variable resistors and some 3D printed parts that form a "claw" over the back of your hand to follow the movements. Should be cheap to produce if you have access to a printer.

 

[TToby]

Cool thing with the force-feedback glove! My respect to the one who did that!

To answer the question: I didn't have used such a glove, as they are somewhat rare and expensive, but I once have used Leap Motion fingertracking. This was surprisingly NOT very enjoyable, because if you grab with your own fingers (instead with a tool like a controller), you will expect to touch something. Not feeling anything was more illusion-breaking like using the controller for me, and the Leap Motion went to the dusty drawer after one single week. Tracking wasn't very exact, too.
So, if I ever would like to use such a glove, it definitely should have such a force-feedback at least.
Just my two cents about using hands vs controllers, that may not be that obvious.

 

[LooksHunter]

I have seen a YouTube video of DIY gloves with motors allowing to hold onto 3d objects, that would be a huge immersion boon for sure. You won't feel the warmth or smoothness of the skin or material, and probably no pressure on the palm and fingers but it's a step forward. If I could get gloves properly simulating holding things (or other assets if you know what I mean), that would maybe give cold/warm sensation depending on what you touch, I would be saving money to buy them.

 

[Jiraiya]

TToby made a good point about holding "nothing" being worse than holding a controller. I tried the Quest2 hand tracking and noticed a similar thing. I went back to using the controllers as having nothing in my hands at all actually felt weirder than holding the controllers.
There are touch gloves that use air bladders to push multiple points on your hands. Colliders in VaM might get complex trying to do many of those but it's another option for haptic feedback with gloves that is little explored in the DIY space.

 

[enigma]

I agree about "holding nothing", I myself haven't used the leap much since buying it and trying it out. As far as VAM itself goes, the situation is worsened by how the fingers react with colliders. There's no real ability to squeeze or apply pressure with 1.x

 

[rernat]

I tried leap motion too but wasn't that satisfying due to tracking issues. If the controllers disturb me a attach vive trackers with wrist bands to my hands and yous plugins for predicting finger motion.

 

[Nexel]

I've made custom VR gloves myself, and used them in Virt-A-Mate. I found them to be pretty immersion breaking, I still find it like 3 times better then a controller, but you absolutely need the haptics for immersion. I didn't have haptics, and not feeling anything touch my fingers while touching things in-game is just breaking the immersion.

 

[Jiraiya]

I've made custom VR gloves myself, and used them in Virt-A-Mate. I found them to be pretty immersion breaking, I still find it like 3 times better then a controller, but you absolutely need the haptics for immersion. I didn't have haptics, and not feeling anything touch my fingers while touching things in-game is just breaking the immersion.

That is the exact issue I was worried about. I don't think I am prepared to build a pair unless it's with full haptic feedback.

 

[svanir]

Well there are gloves with haptics now that provide feedback for each finger individually as you interact with objects in VR. The only thing we would need to do on our end would be to create a Plugin in VAM that can gather and then send positional data to the app called "Open Gloves" which then does all the rest of the work. So if you guys know someone who can create Plugins and read positional code for VAM, then we could totally achieve this. But that would be completely necessary to make as a starting point for ANY VR haptic gloves that would be workable in VAM so we need to figure out how VAM codes positional data that's all

 

[UmbraAtrox]

Well i can't create plugins but i am highly interested in this.

I found this https://github.com/LucidVR/opengloves-driver/wiki/Integrating-Force-Feedback and this https://github.com/LucidVR/opengloves-driver/wiki/Game-Compatibility-List