How do you physically grab a drink while wearing an Oculus Rift headset that has you immersed in virtual reality? Figuring out how to navigate smoothly between the physical and virtual worlds could greatly improve virtual reality experiences as VR headsets become more widespread in both entertainment and workplaces. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign decided to test out several possible scenarios that would allow people to see just enough of the physical world to take a sip of coffee or soda without removing their virtual reality headsets.
Researchers figured out how to create “renderings” of the physical world within virtual reality experiences by using two cheap webcams to capture the real-world action. They then recruited 10 participants who tried out each of the renderings under various virtual reality scenarios: watching a movie, playing a first-person shooter video game, and playing a car racing game. While wearing an Oculus Rift, participants engaged in a total of 300 grasping trials that involved trying to physically pick up a cup, take a drink of water and put the cup back down, according to the paper published on the arXiv preprint server. They also rated each of the renderings based on factors such as how easy it was to take a drink or how distracted they were from the virtual reality experiences.
“While being engaged with the virtual world, people naturally perform small tasks like picking up their game controller, looking for their mouse or drinking water from a cup which require awareness of the real world,” said Pulkit Budhiraja, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and lead author on the new paper. “Currently, the only existing solution is removing the head mounted display, which is disruptive to game play and breaks immersion.”
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