A re-think of the GUI in VR mode?

#1

I’ve been sampling a number of VR worlds since I received my oculus touch controller, and thought it pains me to say it, the GUI in hi-fi is the most frustrating to use with my controllers. I’m not sure if it’s just a matter of touch integration not fully worked out or just a clunky GUI in general. I have tremendous difficulty trying to select any menus with the alternating red/blue lasers. Half the time it ignores my selection altogether and often shoots through the menu I’m trying to interact with. Sometimes it seems to give up altogether and the lasers do not appear at all for a few moments.

Unrelated to the controllers, it would be nice to make the menus disappear entirely when not in use. Having a floating icon in front of you breaks immersion for me.
A good example of a GUI done well in VR would be RecRoom. A very simple solution where if you rotate your arm (as if checking a watch) and a menu appears. It gets out of the way during normal movement without any real effort and is easy to navigate as well. I realize this is VERY different from what you currently have working and probably won’t go in this direction but I’m really hoping for some serious tweaking to fix this issues. Hi-fi has a lot going for it but I’m too frustrated to keep trying to do much of anything with my HMD on. I’ll probably be using in desktop mode more than anything for now.

#2

I do have to honestly agree, even after being here since the Alpha.

It just happens to be that the qtWeb window interface is easy to dev for (as its consistant between the HMD and the desktop mode) and easy to implement across desktop, but it honestly isnt the ideal solution for when one is in the HMD.

Though from my experiments, the Overlay system seems robust enough to actually work with to create better interfaces for the HMD, but thats something that would require alot of time from someone to recreate some of the interfaces that HiFi already has.

#3

I gree that in HMD mode the hud can be a pain with interacting on inwrld objects. Like a trigger n the hud when you point to something in complete different direction.

I have the hud always full open, a hud that ho open and close when you move so you not see the settings is more annoying. . it does not break immersion for me.

The best HMD hud i have seen is in tiltbrush.

No experience with oculus controllers. Is the ocolus controller mabye less in tracking ? compared to the htc vive controllers @judas ?

I nticed anyway that the beams can make bigger steps when you move them around and there’s nothing to touch or something in that direction. So there’s mabye something wrong anyway.

But the better spend a bit more time n getting desktop things right. especially edit.js

#4

Unfortunately, nonVR mode (desktop) is not much better. In fact it is much worse because you lose the ability to grab things. The use of hand controllers should be independent from HMD face hugger mode. I’ve said this in so many different ways and it seems to not get through, but the entire UX in HF is quite messy. If it were somehow innovative, I would tolerate the learning curve but it’s just different than Blender, Maya, Space, or SL. And the difference is not better. What it appears to me as is a set of ad-hoc incremental development bits and pieces. I urge a re-architecture proceed soonest.

#5

Hi @Aitolda , We are working on a project for a Tablet GUI https://github.com/highfidelity/hifi/projects/4 that you could check out the progress by going here: https://github.com/highfidelity/hifi/tree/tablet-ui It is specifically targeted towards the HMD user with hand controllers.

#6

Ask and ye shall receive… Thanks for the heads up.

#7

When I first started using HF. I had allot of trouble with the UI.

What I realized was my instinct was to reach out and try to push the button. And in that situation the lazer would shoot right through the UI.

These days I ‘shoot from the hip’. Instead of trying to reach out and press the buttons. I instead keep my hands close to my hips and just lazer point to the UI. Much like the quick draw cowboys of old. This seems to work much better.

#8

Check this out Tablet UI for HMD :- Looking for some feedback