From: sleeper@leland.Stanford.EDU (Nathaniel Bletter)
Subject: Re: TECH: Relevance of Voice Input to VR
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 93 01:01:43 GMT
Message-ID: <1993Mar31.010143.20440@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA



In article <1p4k7iINN1cu@shelley.u.washington.edu>
nestor!benz@uunet.UU.NET (Hartmut &) writes:

>In article <1odvnuINN8b8@shelley.u.washington.edu> John Curtis,  
>Hort+Research CRI, Hamilton, NZ writes:
>
>> [...]  Anyone
>> who's used a dataglove or similar to navigate around a world for more
>> than 5 minutes will have developed cramp in their hand by using the
>> quaint "point your finger and cock your thumb" gesture.  You try holding
>> your thumb like that for prolonged periods of time!
>
>The first time I had the opportunity to experience a real VR application I  
>dicovered (mauch to my dismay) that I am unable to make this guesture at  
>all. My hands seem to be not dexterously enough to cock my thumb and keep  
>my index finger stright. This can beet the joy out of the most eloquent VR  
>application.
>
>Has anyone else discovered any such hinderances? What do you do about it? 

I given VR demos to about a hundred different people and out of them,
about five people have had this same problem with making the "flying"
gesture.  Whenever they try to bend their thumb while pointing, their
index finger bends in also. Then there are of course the other fifty
percent of people who have trouble flying just because one glove
doesn't do too well at reading absolute angles from many people with
many different sized hands.

Obviously, the "point and cock" gesture is not a good solution.

Nat Bletter
SRI International
nat@od.sri.com