I’m curious about VR gloves. They seem like the perfect blend of controller consistency and hand tracking immersion. However, all I see are tech demos, and they seem stuck in a phase of uncertainty. Is there any actual progress being made on the consumer level? Or are they still a niche within a niche? It seems like they’ll likely remain expensive.
Early next year, several VR gloves are set to release. I pre-ordered the UDCAP ones, but there are more coming out. The price has finally dropped enough for consumer viability.
Are there any games that actually take advantage of them?
The UDCAP gloves emulate the Index controller, meaning all Index games should work with them. We’ll see how effective the emulation is, but I expect the thumbpad and buttons will work universally.
The issue with making them consumer-friendly is accommodating all hand sizes. Controllers are just more cost-efficient for that.
I don’t see them as viable. For many games, controllers are better for triggers and shooting. Naked hand tracking works for some scenarios, but not for games.
I tried Job Simulator with hand tracking and found it worse than using a controller. Without tactile feedback, controllers are still better.
Unless gloves provide full force feedback for each finger, they’ll always be inferior to controllers.
There’s a prototype of force feedback VR gloves for $60, but they’re still in the prototype phase.
VR is still pretty niche.
I doubt they’ll hit mainstream. They seem too niche and complicated. Controllers and camera hand tracking are likely the way to go for now.