🏅 Honorable Mention Award
Virtual Reality experiences, such as games and simulations, typically support the usage of bimanual controllers to interact with virtual objects. To recreate the haptic sensation of holding objects of various shapes and behaviors with both hands, previous researchers have used mechanical linkages between the controllers that render adjustable stiffness. However, the linkage cannot quickly adapt to simulate dynamic objects, nor it can be removed to support free movements. This paper introduces GamesBond, a pair of 4-DoF controllers without physical linkage but capable to create the illusion of being connected as a single device, forming a virtual bond. The two controllers work together by dynamically displaying and physically rendering deformations of hand grips, and so allowing users to perceive a single connected object between the hands, such as a jumping rope. With a user study and various applications we show that GamesBond increases the realism, immersion, and enjoyment of bimanual interaction.
Neung Ryu, Hye-Young Jo, Michel Pahud, Mike Sinclair, and Andrea Bianchi. 2021. GamesBond: Bimanual Haptic Illusion of Physically Connected Objects for Immersive VR Using Grip Deformation. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 125, 1–10. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445727
GamesBond on the Microsoft blog.