Option to remove avatar body

[tellmike]

Hi,

Very interesting game you got going here! As an avid VR user (since DK2 launch days) I’m not all to fond of having an VR body avatar, and would actually prefer to only have my hands visible in the game.

Would it be possible to have a debug option to disable the body avatar so that only the hands are visible?

Cheers

[The Baron]

You are the first person I've ever heard ask for this. :D Might be tricky since everything (weapons and force) are dependent on the player model. That's why weapons have "weight". But maybe if the model was still there but invisible... I'll mention it to kospy because who knows, maybe it wouldnt be so difficult to add as an option.

[tellmike]

Thanks, I totally think that this would be possible by hiding the model and just keep the hands as you say. The thing with the avatar is that it’s distracting to have a body both obscuring the view and also have very disconnected movement compared to my movements. The hands are easily tracked 1:1 to my real movement, but the inverse kinematic of the full body disconnects that 1:1 which is most of the time distracting.

It would be super cool to have this as an option to play around with at least.

Cheers

[Nox Tenebris]

Yeah he basically said in PR language that it is not happening. Most people prefer to see the body and in a game like this it just makes sense regardless.

[tellmike]

Hehe, then we interpret the answer slightly different. ;)

If it’s just the matter of making the avatar body - besides the hands -invisible then it wouldn’t hurt having that option (given that this game is still in very early access). For me it’s almost in line with different movement options (teleport vs full motion, snap turning vs smooth turning etc).

The brain is pretty good at filling the gaps, and that has worked out well in many VR applications. Having joints doing strange movements is so far an immersion breaker in VR, and it won’t be until we get better motion tracking of our limbs until avatar bodies will be fully useful. And in a game like this where there’s a lot of extreme movements (hacking/slashing/swinging/stabing) then the joints can behave very strangely.

Nevertheless, the IK (inverse kinematics) in this game is pretty good but I’ll cross my fingers in case the developer decides to add this in as an option to test it out, especially if it’s a low effort.

...

Or actually, I’m wondering if this would be possible to mod without having to rely on a source code change in the game? Seems like theres a pretty active modding community for this game. Might check in the general discussion section.

[Shy]

Originally posted by tellmike:

Hehe, then we interpret the answer slightly different. ;)

If it’s just the matter of making the avatar body - besides the hands -invisible then it wouldn’t hurt having that option (given that this game is still in very early access). For me it’s almost in line with different movement options (teleport vs full motion, snap turning vs smooth turning etc).

The brain is pretty good at filling the gaps, and that has worked out well in many VR applications. Having joints doing strange movements is so far an immersion breaker in VR, and it won’t be until we get better motion tracking of our limbs until avatar bodies will be fully useful. And in a game like this where there’s a lot of extreme movements (hacking/slashing/swinging/stabing) then the joints can behave very strangely.

Nevertheless, the IK (inverse kinematics) in this game is pretty good but I’ll cross my fingers in case the developer decides to add this in as an option to test it out, especially if it’s a low effort.

...

Or actually, I’m wondering if this would be possible to mod without having to rely on a source code change in the game? Seems like theres a pretty active modding community for this game. Might check in the general discussion section.

Don't know how it's an immersion breaker, at least for me it works pretty great, I'd prefer it to having just hands. I'm not really focusing on my forearms or legs when fending off 6 shieldmen with a blunt object.

I think full body tracking would be great though... just as long as everyone can use it. Right now only vivers can, and it's pretty pricey. Doesn't work 100% either. What we need is a visual system that can take in our whole body, not just the location and direction of our head, hands, and feet.
I'm sure in the (hopefully) not too distant future there'll be body trackers that can then generate a perfect fit avatar in games like these, and give us absolute immersion.

[tellmike]

I was playing some yesterday to try identifing situations that makes having an avatar distracting. I also tried making the avatar as small as possible (i.e no beer belly or anything sticking out :)). It helped slightly but the things that still felt like it’s in need of tuning is when holding a shields/weapons and when leaning forward to pick up things from the ground.

For the shield/holding weapons: if holding the item and twisting the arm then the arm/elbow is going straight through the items or have the looks of very unnatural arm angles. It looks very wonkey. Only having hands would not have this effect. An alternative method to fix this would be for the item to collide with the arm to push it/bending it accordingly.

For picking up items from the ground (something I’m doing pretty often in the game):
When leaning forward the avatar body doesn’t take into account to the spine/bent back, and instead it ends up straight underneth the head. This results in the avatar body obscuring the view down, and a lot of clipping occurs. So when bending down the avatar should arch its back for preventing this to happen.


Nevertheless, I had a blast training some new moves on the ”training doll” on the second floor in the house, as well as using them on the different arenas. This game really starts shining after some practice. :)

[Shy]

Originally posted by tellmike:

I was playing some yesterday to try identifing situations that makes having an avatar distracting. I also tried making the avatar as small as possible (i.e no beer belly or anything sticking out :)). It helped slightly but the things that still felt like it’s in need of tuning is when holding a shields/weapons and when leaning forward to pick up things from the ground.

For the shield/holding weapons: if holding the item and twisting the arm then the arm/elbow is going straight through the items or have the looks of very unnatural arm angles. It looks very wonkey. Only having hands would not have this effect. An alternative method to fix this would be for the item to collide with the arm to push it/bending it accordingly.

For picking up items from the ground (something I’m doing pretty often in the game):
When leaning forward the avatar body doesn’t take into account to the spine/bent back, and instead it ends up straight underneth the head. This results in the avatar body obscuring the view down, and a lot of clipping occurs. So when bending down the avatar should arch its back for preventing this to happen.


Nevertheless, I had a blast training some new moves on the ”training doll” on the second floor in the house, as well as using them on the different arenas. This game really starts shining after some practice. :)

Yep it does kinda suck when you want to crouch or bend over to pick up something, or stab a fallen enemy.

[tellmike]

Yeah, things like that would be no issue with a better spine model, or having only the hands visible. Games like Trickster VR, Onward, Superhot etc don’t have avatars for that reason.

[Slayer Slayerson]

It annoys me when i duck and my avatars body/legs/limbs blocks my vision, can we at least turn it invisible as an option?

[Ceredh]

Interesting to hear such thoughts of some experienced VR users (I'm still not). Anyway, I would never ever buy a game where you could not see your whole body, just for immersion reasons. Otherwise I had long-since bought Fallout 4 and Skyrim VR.

[Nox Tenebris]

Originally posted by Ceredh:

Interesting to hear such thoughts of some experienced VR users (I'm still not). Anyway, I would never ever buy a game where you could not see your whole body, just for immersion reasons. Otherwise I had long-since bought Fallout 4 and Skyrim VR.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/18449

[Asherron]

I too would definitely prefer the option to make the model invisible. Played for the first time last night and crouching was frustrating. Rather than crouch like a normal person the model almost balls up into some upright fetal position. Resting my hand on my knees IRL put them inside of my upper thighs in the game.

Going down a rope in game also putts my feet almost chest level in the game. Maybe if this game were to implement full body tracking with Vive pucks or something it would work better but for now the player model just obscures vision more than our natural bodies actually do in any similar positions.

[GameB]

maybe if you were just glowing outlines of feet, hands, and a VR headset

[BreakfastAtNoon]

I'd love to get rid of the body myself, just have it invisible to me and have floating hands.

[Joy TDK]

I prefer floating hands only.

Everything else from your shoulder to your arms are obstructing vision especially when doing zwerchau with longsword.

The shoulder and arms position doesn't exactly reflects your real body position, so this is kinda distracting.