Punch Power solved

[davidmi58]

Ok, I spend some time with the bag really experimenting with different punches and measuring their effects and changes on the way I swing and I found out something very interesting.
When I started, I was getting my usual pattern. Quick, snapping jabs were devistating (for me, at least). Getting scores of 2200-2500, regularly. Roundhouse was weak. Coming in around 700-900N, no matter how hard, fast, or far my glove traveled. Uppercuts around 1000-1100, as a rule.
So, I started experiementing with the angle I was holding the touch controllers and was amazed at what happened. If I held my controllers at right angles from their usual grip, (Basically, with my gloves pointing toward each other in the game) all of a sudden, my roundhouse punches are way up there. As fast or faster than my jabs. (Of course, holding the controllers that way and jabbing was terrible, so I can't play like that.)
So, I go into the ring with Joe and I start angling in with my wrists to mimic that angle when I roundhouse and the poor guy's head looked like a mushrooom at the end of the fight. My wrists hurt from punching at that angle but it worked.
Note: This had nothing to do with the way my gloves were aligned in the game but was definately the result of the physical angle of the Touch controllers.
Now, I am wondering. Is this some strange effect based on how the cameras and the game see the Touch controllers as compared to the Vive controllers or is my basic roundhouse punching technique really bad? When I throw a roundhouse punch, should my wristed be bent at at 90 degree angle to my forearm? What is the story here?
Note: I use a 3 camera, 360 setup with my Rift and, since the 1.4 Oculus update, it seems to track really well.

[Ian (Sealost)]

For some background, here's what the game is doing. This might be an issue of how you're connecting with your punches, but ideally you shouldn't have to think about that.

In 15.6, the game took the direction your fist was pointing (the side with your knuckles, as if you were drawing a line from your wrist to your knuckles) discarded all movement not going in that direction before reading the velocity.

That's changed in 15.7, but it should actually be less strict than before. Now, the game takes the direction of the incoming hit and finds the angle between that and the direction your fist is pointing. If the difference is more than 45°, the game starts to reduce the effective mass behind the punch, down to a minimum of 33% at a 90° or higher angle.

It's going to be harder to get a good reading for uppercuts, but I think I'm comfortable with that. In-game, you'll be connecting with the enemy's chin, so the hit will be more square. On the heavy bag, you'll be connecting at a pretty big angle, so the force reading will be reduced a little. From my research, uppercuts tend to be slightly slower and less forceful punches anyway, with their power coming from knocking the head back. The game does have vertically upward hits to the chin as a weak point that does increased damage, so the end result in an actual match should be what you'd expect.

Hooks are a different story, though, and it should be pretty easy to get those to read higher than your straight punches. When you hit the back, are you connecting with your knuckles? If you're turning your controllers inward and it's reading out higher then it sounds like maybe you're connecting closer to your palm than your knuckles. Give that a look and let me know. If that's the case, but you feel your hits are knuckle-y enough to still be doing full damage, I can look into increasing the angle a bit. If that doesn't seem to be what's going on, we'll try out something else.

Thanks for helping me get to the bottom of this.

[davidmi58]

Thanks for your reply.
I have some martial arts background so I am much better at short, straight punches, close to the body. I do think that I need to work on making sure that I am working some better angles into my hooks but I am not sure that I should have to be angling in as far as I am to get good damage. I am pretty short (5-7) so my longer hooks certainly might be more "palmy" than they should be. However, my vote would be to increase the angle a bit. I think that, if I were to angle my wrists as much as I am having to to get a solid hook in real life, I would probably break something.
Perhaps some other Rift/Touch players can take a look provide some input.
Again, thanks for the reply. This game is great!

[Diabolic]

What would you break and how? I have no issues throwing hooks with Touch, and the wrist angle of a proper hook should not be an issue with Touch. Why are your hooks palmy? That sounds like bad technique, unless you are throwing palm strikes, which still doesn't make sense in boxing.

[Ian (Sealost)]

I'm going to be messing with this at least a little bit in the next update. At the very least, I'll be upping the allowed angle very slightly before the drop-off occurs and smoothing the drop-off a bit longer so it doesn't reduce damage quite so fast. Ideally, though, the game is looking for solid hits landing on the front edge of your fist with the direction of the force behind your punch driving into where you've made contact.

Also, I have some plans for using headset movement to guesstimate how much force the body is imparting into the punch, which will make the hand angle stuff a little less important, so depending on how that goes, everything could get changed pretty drastically. I haven't started on that implementation yet, so it may turn out that what I'm planning for this might not work out, though.

[davidmi58]

Wow! All of those ideas sound fantastic! I can't wait to try them out if they come to fruition.
Thanks for your dedication to the game and responsiveness to you users.