Hand presence is an essential element of truly compelling VR. That’s why we developed our Image Hand asset to bring your real hands into virtual reality. While there are a number of different configuration options available within our Core Assets for Unity, there’s one approach in particular that unlocks a better user experience.
Persistent Thresholded Overlay
With Image Hands, you have two choices when tracking confidence is low. You can choose to have the hands fade out, or keep them visible. We recommend the second option, as this greatly enhances hand presence and prevents distracting fades in and out.
Basically, this setting works by making any bright objects seen by the infrared cameras remain visible, even if they’re not fully recognized. This is also the same setting we used for our hybrid reality demo VR Cockpit, where you can see the optional throttle and joystick controls.
In today’s featured video (above), we walk you through the steps of configuring Image Hands for the best possible user experience.
How to Activate This Feature
Our Unity Core Assets include two different modes for Image Hands, depending on whether you’re using augmented reality (AR_WORLD_AR_HANDS) or virtual reality (VR_WORLD_AR_HANDS). You can see which one you’re using in the HMR config manager component of the LMHeadMountedRig prefab. Depending on which one you’re using, here’s what you’ll want to do:
Steps for VR_WORLD_AR_HANDS (Virtual Reality)
- On the QuadBackground child object:
- Enable the MeshRenderer component
- Enable the Leap Image Based Material component
- Change the material on the MeshRenderer component to the ThresholdOverlay material (located in Assets/LeapMotion/Materials/Passthrough)
- Apply an Alpha Fade from .5 to .6 (you can adjust later to best fit your project)
- Rename the QuadBackground object to QuadOverlay
Steps for AR_WORLD_AR_HANDS (Augmented Reality)
- Duplicate the QuadBackground object and rename it QuadOverlay
- Change the object material to the ThresholdOverlay material (located in Assets/LeapMotion/Materials/Passthrough)
- Apply an Alpha Fade from .5 to .6 (you can adjust later to best fit your project)
That’s it! With just these few changes, you’ll see a marked improvement in your demo’s user experience, as hand presence becomes more robust. Future versions of our Core Assets will make this feature the default configuration.