
Logitech announces a development kit for using keyboards in virtual reality - haydenlee
https://blog.vive.com/us/2017/11/02/introducing-the-logitech-bridge-sdk/
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veli_joza
Just look at this nonsense [1]. We have brand new technology with unlimited
potential for new abstractions and paradigms. So, what do we do? We make a
virtual desktop workstation, the same one we had since 70s! We limit all
rendering to a 2D surface, make it curved and put a nebula in the background.
Is this really the cutting edge of information technologies?

Also, we need both mechanical keyboard to sense key presses and 3D tracking of
finger movements? I get it, Logitech wants to keep selling keyboards, but for
VR experience I would rather have tracking of facial features and eye
movement.

[1] [https://d201n44z4ifond.cloudfront.net/wp-
content/uploads/sit...](https://d201n44z4ifond.cloudfront.net/wp-
content/uploads/sites/6/2017/11/02095838/Logitech_G_Bridge_VR_Keyboard_Hands_A.gif)

~~~
nwah1
That was the same thinking behind Elon Musk's startup Neuralink, but given
that there really aren't any options that are substantially better, Logitech
isn't being stupid.

Perhaps some combination of voice, gesture, and 3D could be useful
specifically while in-game. But for productivity, I don't think there's
anything better than a traditional workstation.

Voice has privacy issues. Gesture recognition is inaccurate and causes
"gorilla arm" syndrome.

3D doesn't really add much, and in fact for productivity some people think
even 2D Window-based GUIs are cumbersome, and that is the entire motivation
for tiling window managers. From that perspective, 3D is even more chaotic and
cumbersome.

~~~
numbsafari
Voice not only has privacy issues, but could you imagine working in one of
those god awful “open floor plan” offices with a bunch of people speaking in
JavaScript all day?

~~~
nwah1
We'd all need to get the Cone of Silence.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1eUIK9CihA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1eUIK9CihA)

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swalsh
Combine this with the new Pimax, and infinite workspaces start to become a
practical reality. Which could help propgate the technology more which would
lead seamlessly into more teleconferences, which have a feeling of personal
interactions... which is important, even if we as programmers don't always
appreciate it.

The other day I was playing a game of onward. It was the rare instance that a
team wanted to work together on a shared goal. In the 15 seconds before the
match, while planning some tactics... it occured to me how natural the meeting
felt. It was like we were all in the same room. I felt engaged with EVERYONE.
That doesn't happen on conference calls.

I work from home full time, I think the biggest downside are the missing
meaningful interactions with other people. I think VR has huge potential to
bridge that gap.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" I work from home full time, I think the biggest downside are the missing
meaningful interactions with other people. I think VR has huge potential to
bridge that gap."_

VR also has the potential to be way more addictive than current forms of
online interaction and entertainment.

I'm reminded of I think it was a Larry Niven story (maybe _Ringworld_ ) in
which the protagonist has an electrical wire put in to the pleasure center of
his brain and he just sits home and pushes the button that activates it for
weeks on end.

Technology is getting closer and closer to that.

~~~
lucaspiller
Computer games are bad enough now. When I first heard about a certain factory
building game (I won't name it to prevent anyone else becoming addicted), for
two weeks straight I played pretty much every waking hour when I wasn't
working. I ate things that were easy to make and didn't need much attention
like pasta - I'd just set it to cook and come back when the timer went off,
eat, then back to the game.

~~~
graphitezepp
You stopped to eat instead of playing through meals? That's impressive. Were
you able to sleep at all?

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BatFastard
As someone who has been a developer of virtual worlds for 17 years. I can say
that this is a very incremental change, as all of the changes have been since
1994.

Personally I think we need to reimagine interfaces to the world around us,
even the virtual worlds (VR/AR/MR) around us. Voice input, AI, hand sensing
technologies could make for new ways for changing the worlds. The book Daemon
by Danial Suarez and his eSpace holds much promise. I have been experimenting
with those idea in a new VR world I have been working on for a few years.

~~~
gervase
I think motion sensing is probably the way forward; voice control is
intrinsically limiting in most (crowded) environments where computers are used
today.

Considering humans can ride bikes, drive cars, play instruments, etc.
(including typing on keyboards!), I think that indicates that non-verbal,
physical interaction is not nearly saturated as a transmission channel.

Conversely, it's hard to imagine someone verbalizing "navigate to HN" in a
loud open-space office, or "Excel, create a pivot table" or whatever. I think
it's fine in private spaces like your home, but in public spaces, you're
implicitly broadcasting your activity to everyone around you, which I consider
to be a strong negative.

~~~
BatFastard
The Deamon book has some cool motion interaction in it. They call it the
Shamanic interface! I really want to make one of those, too bad tech is not
readily accessible yet.

Is subvocalization a possibility? Mic or EEG setups might need to be slightly
different.

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wwwigham
I'm more impressed by the videos of the hand tracking around the keyboard than
the tracker in the keyboard! Is that fidelity just using the Vive's outward
facing camera? They don't show any tracking gloves in the mockups.

~~~
jayd16
Its actually pretty simple. If you know where the keyboard is, you can clip
out that part of the camera's input. Then you just need some edge detection to
get the hand silhouettes.

And actually...that seems like a portable idea. So I suppose you could do this
for any tracked thing.

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mncharity
If you want to explore this kind of thing, you can mount a camera on your HMD
(Vive's is crippled), use a WebVR stack (simple), track objects using visual
markers and javascript tracking libraries (jsartoolkit5 and/or tracking.js),
and do selective camera pass-through AR. It's crufty, but not hard.

EDIT: You can simply use the Vive's camera, with tracking.js color tracking,
especially with a small minDimension (number of pixels) threshold. Yellow is
good.

[https://artoolkit.github.io/jsartoolkit5/examples/](https://artoolkit.github.io/jsartoolkit5/examples/)
[https://trackingjs.com/examples/color_camera.html](https://trackingjs.com/examples/color_camera.html)
; [http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/](http://www.keyboard-layout-
editor.com/#/) [https://joric.org/keycaps/#GB-Retro-
DSA](https://joric.org/keycaps/#GB-Retro-DSA) etc

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jlebrech
now we can properly have ides and desktops in VR.

but i'd would rather use a wider range of motion (at some point, if someone
makes that) to input to stay active.

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DoctorMemory
I understand Logitech wants to keep selling keyboards and I agree that
keyboards are currently the fastest way to enter text. However, it IS the
wrong direction. The better direction is what will be opened with tools such
as the Vive Knuckles enabling a more complete language of gestures. It seems
to me that the better way forward is to stop clinging to an old paradigm that
requires bulky equipment that can obstruct the user's volumetric interactions
and instead to build off of those volumetric interactions even though there is
a cost of a learning curve. I doubt businesses will implement it since they
run the risk of alienating current gen customers and thus losing money. I
think there will be some VR experiences aimed at younger customers that will
implement it and over the next decade we will wonder why we ever tried to
bring a keyboard into VR/AR instead of just using our hands.

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mlevental
does this just display a keyboard in the field of view of the vive
perspective? why do i need to see my keyboard if i know how to touch type?

~~~
klibertp
A lot of people can't touch-type. I can't, not really, I need to glance at the
keyboard once in a while. My typing speed is comparable to touch-typists',
which is why I never felt the need to learn to properly touch-type. The need
of seeing the keyboard is problematic in very few situations in practice, and
with a back-lit keyboard it's never a problem... as long as seeing my keyboard
is possible at all, which was not the case in VR.

I could invest a lot of time to unlearn my current way of typing and learn
proper touch-typing technique, but that's a lot of work and doing it just to
be able to type in VR feels like a waste of time. With this tech I'd be able
to work in VR without changing my way of typing. To me, this makes using VR
for work practical for the first time. It's actually huge, and if it works
well it's, to me and others in similar situation, potentially life-changing
tech.

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jefurii
I could see the hand tracking being useful for people who don't know how to
touch type (and have to look at their keyboard and fingers) and who need to
type while using a headset.

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ilaksh
How about Logitech makes an affordable effective precise VR glove. Then we can
use that for many things besides just data entry.

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return0
I don't think non-fanatics are willing to go through such painful process for
a large field of view. Maybe it would be more profitable to start working on a
360 projection screen.

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loup-vaillant
Wait a minute, _fine grained hand tracking_?

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joshumax
An I the only one who lost the ability to touch type for a moment after
reading this article?

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giraffee
Seems difficult to type only by touch in dark.

~~~
microcolonel
I honestly don't understand how this is difficult for people. I can touch type
without looking, on a keyboard which is moving randomly. It's not a parlour
trick, it's just what's supposed to happen if you type much at all. If you
can't touch type in the dark, there's something wrong with your skill or your
equipment.

~~~
pmontra
I can touch type but not everybody can. Look at non sw developers using
computers: usually they look for keys and are slow. They are the huge majority
of the market. I'll be like them if I were not using a keyboard all the time.

Btw, this is a VR keyboard from the Dennou Coil anime 2009. Nobody was using
real reality (pun intended) laptops there, only VR ones. I guess they were
running on some AWS like cloud.

[https://giphy.com/gifs/typing-keyboard-dennou-
coil-1337mjZhd...](https://giphy.com/gifs/typing-keyboard-dennou-
coil-1337mjZhdNJWSY)

~~~
hobofan
> Look at non sw developers using computers: usually they look for keys and
> are slow. They are the huge majority of the market.

Citation needed. (Seriously, I was looking for statistics on that recently and
couldn't find any)

