The future of hands in VR is absolutely filthy
Touch that cup
Half-Life: Alyx is a fabulous VR game, in which gravity gloves allow you to use items in the environment to fight headcrabs and Combine in myriad ways. Now if only you could caress these creatures, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them... Now that would be interesting.
Hand Physics Lab is a game recently released on Oculus Quest which has no monsters to caress, but it does have a cat to pet and several mini-games and other toys to tinker with. It looks to have hand physics and finger manipulation that are already more impressive than Half-Life's, but a recent video of a future update suggests it's going to be even better soon. And utterly obscene.
Here's the video, which contains nothing but a physically-simulated skeletan hand rubbing and holding inanimate objects such as a cup, a crowbar, and a colourful egg. And yet...
Meet the Smart Hands! 🙌
— Dennys Kuhnert (@DennysKuhnert) April 28, 2021
I'm working on the next iteration of my interaction system for @HandPhysicsLab using the combination of predefined hand poses, dynamic IK-based posing and fully physics-based fingers. First prototype is looking promising! 😃#hantracking #oculus pic.twitter.com/2TXisStwSC
Other commenters under the tweet noticed it, too. Also it turns out there's a Twitter bot that can automatically add Careless Whisper to videos for you.
Dennys Kuhnert, the author of the tweet, is the developer of Hand Physics Lab and also of early access stickman playground Holoception. His Twitter account is filled with other good hand videos - plus this horrible crowbar-in-forearm-bone one that made me physically recoil.
Sadly the Hand Physics Lab is only available for Oculus Quest (which I don't have), but I do look forward to these kinds of hands coming to other games. I want to stroke a headcrab.