Hand-based interactions in Virtual Reality: No better feeling than the real thing!

Manipulating tools or crafting objects using one's bare hands is a recurring activity in many immersive training applications. Yet, high technical challenge and costly haptic hardware confine such tasks to surgery training and specialised simulators of the like, while more general immersive applications settle for less natural experiences using standard game controllers and/or relying on more abstract interactions. We designed a low-cost prototype were a physical object is used to provide a natural haptic feedback to a barehanded virtual manipulation task, hypothesising that nothing better than a real object would provide an accurate feeling of touch and control. With VR and AR high-end technologies now reaching out to broad audiences, we wondered if it was yet possible to design a compelling experience using only consumer market products and APIs. In this paper we demonstrate indeed that these technologies are mature enough to build a working prototype, but we failed to reach a level of quality suitable for more widespread usage.