Suggestion: better controls for picking up objects in VR

[OhItsMiya]

In most VR games, picking up objects works by holding your hand to an object and pulling the trigger buttons. The object then stays attached to your hand and animates smoothly when you move your hand around. The best implementations also have the object attached to your hand not exactly, but using dynamic forces such that physics doesn't break when the object hits other objects. In Skyrim VR, on the HTC Vive, you have to press and hold in the middle of the trackpad awkwardly (and it kind of hurts to do this for long). Then the object is typically attached to a point far away from your hand, which looks silly. It also animates really roughly when you move your hand around. Sometimes you drop objects even if you keep pressing the trackpad (or else it's just too sensitive and it's loosing the "pressed" state).

This was one part of SkyrimVR I was looking forward to, in particular because moving objects around precisely makes it easier to customize player housing and can be immersive when picking things up out in the world to look at them, etc... But the current implementation is just too rough and cumbersome to use. I'd like to see a "pick up objects" mode, maybe when you put away your weapons, that works more like a native VR game. Use the triggers to pick things up, make them attach to your hands at the point you clicked the triggers to allow for more precise movement of objects. Remove the "dropping" mechanic from the original game and keep the item in your hand until you release the triggers (or else reduce the sensitivity). And make the object animate smoothly when you move your hand with the item gripped, but still "physics based" so it doesn't break the physics engine when the object collides with other objects.

[OhItsMiya]

Just to clarify, when you "pick up" the object, the attachment point of the object to your hand should be relative to its position and your hand and not a fixed point relative to the hand. Thus, when you pick something up, it shouldn't "snap" to a particular attachment point but stay in place until you move your hand. This makes it possible to make small adjustments to the object without sending everything on the table flying whenever you pick something up.

[hyperion]

I think the issue is that this game was not built from the ground up for VR. But honestly, pointing at an object and pressing a button is not so bad, considering that this is a full scale open world RPG with potentially a couple hundred hours of content. And it's the only one outside of Fallout 4 and in my opinion this is far better.

[ChevyNoel]

One thing you could try, that might help a bit in the mean time, is setting the physics to 90 steps per second, to match the framerate:

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimvr/comments/8aw28l

[OhItsMiya]

Originally posted by hyperion:

I think the issue is that this game was not built from the ground up for VR. But honestly, pointing at an object and pressing a button is not so bad, considering that this is a full scale open world RPG with potentially a couple hundred hours of content. And it's the only one outside of Fallout 4 and in my opinion this is far better.

That's true, but this is just a suggestion to do a minor tweak to the controls for picking up and manipulating objects in the world. I've played too many other VR games that do this MUCH better. Try picking up and moving objects around in Rec Room, Job Simulator, Vive Home, The Lab... pretty much any relatively recent VR game that lets you pick objects up and move them around does it better than SkyrimVR. I'm not asking for perfection, but what's there now in SkyrimVR is just not very good, honestly. Which, I get it, they're focused on combat and most players don't bother picking up objects in the world except to put them into their inventory, but it's something I love to do and is super immersive.

I mean, I hate to say it, but with how flaky and juddery it is in VR it's almost better moving objects around in controller mode. It's a lot smoother at least.

[OhItsMiya]

Originally posted by ChevyNoel:

One thing you could try, that might help a bit in the mean time, is setting the physics to 90 steps per second, to match the framerate:

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimvr/comments/8aw28l

Thanks for the tip! I'll try that. Does this improve the smoothness?

[Scorrp10]

From what I can see, titles built for VR have following:
1. Each item has a pre-programmed definitions on how your hand holds it. I.e. in I Expect You to Die, try holding the gun by the barrel.
2. Number of manipulable objects in these titles is not that large.

Skyrim has thousands of various items. And while they do have hitboxes for physics purposes, precise placement of stuff using in-game means is a rather clumsy affair. On PC, with all the precision of a mouse at my disposal, I find it easier to kill a dragon than to place a cup on a saucer without said saucer shooting off across the room. I suppose this is more of an engine isssue than VR problem....

[xunlaiAgent]

Originally posted by Scorrp10:

From what I can see, titles built for VR have following:
1. Each item has a pre-programmed definitions on how your hand holds it. I.e. in I Expect You to Die, try holding the gun by the barrel.
2. Number of manipulable objects in these titles is not that large.

The model of the object is not related to this matter. The problem is that the game does not properly take into account the relative location of your hand and the "center" of the object when you pick something up. It would be trivial to code this properly.

So there are two possibilities:

1. They did not care about this.

2. The code related to picking up objects is located deep in their engine and is difficult to change because their code is a mess.

[xunlaiAgent]

I think the issue is that this game was not built from the ground up for VR. But honestly, pointing at an object and pressing a button is not so bad, considering that this is a full scale open world RPG with potentially a couple hundred hours of content. And it's the only one outside of Fallout 4 and in my opinion this is far better.

Of course, almost anyone who is interested in rpgs has already played through that content a few times... It's kind of like those old movies that have been remastered to 3D or whatever. It's nice, but it's still the same movie that you have seen 100 times.

I'm personally rather disapointed that you don't have proper interaction with objects. It's things like this that I'm more interested in since I already know all the content by heart.