Block Swords

Patrick Mitchell

Despite this prototype being very light on the “experimental” part of experimental VR, it prompted a lot of interesting and important questions. How does one handle the sword’s collision? Is that collision different between parts of the scenery and “damageable” entities? How should the player’s hands react to that collision, since they’re holding the swords? When should damage be applied to damageable entities? These aren’t questions with clear-cut single answers, but they’re good to be aware of.

Making this prototype in Unity with SteamVR specifically introduced a few issues as well. One of them is the alignment of the swords when grabbed; each of the SteamVR hands has a strange positional and rotational offset, so grabbable objects need offset objects of their own to ensure they are oriented correctly when grabbed. For example, the sword’s point needs to be pointed toward the outstretched thumb but angled slightly toward the other fingers to feel just right.

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