Demonstrating High-Precision and High-Fidelity Digital Inking for Virtual Reality

Pen computing has become popular with tablet and wall-screen computers for digital precision tasks such as writing, annotating, and drawing. Digital pens have been made possible by the developments in input sensing technologies integrated into such screens. Virtual Reality systems, however, largely detect input using cameras, whose update rates are insufficient for capturing pen input with the necessary fidelity. In this demonstration, we showcase a digital pen for VR that accurately digitizes writing and drawing, including small and quick turns. Our prototype Flashpen repurposes an optical flow sensor from gaming mice, which digitizes minute motions at over 8 kHz when dragged across a surface. We demonstrate several use-cases for Flashpen during interaction in VR, including sketching, selecting, annotating, and writing.