A comparative study of virtual reality hand-tracking and controllers

In recent years the popularity of virtual reality has grown immensely and with it have come some interesting technologies such as hand-tracking. Even though the virtual reality genre is still dominated by the standard input system, the controller, whether it is for entertainment or educational purposes, there seems to be a growing desire for alternatives. The goal of this Bachelor’s thesis was to find and compare the advantages and the disadvantages of the controller and hand-tracking. The theoretical part of this paper includes topics such as what is virtual reality, hand-tracking and what devices can utilize it and the requirements for the practical part. The practical part includes topics like the implementation, the player interview analysis and the in-game data analysis. For the purposes of this thesis, two identical games were created, one supporting controllers and the other one supporting hand-tracking. The game takes place in a ship’s control room and the player is given a set of tasks that need to be completed. While the participants were playing, their in-game actions were video recorded and once they finished playing, the participants were interviewed. According to the data, hand-tracking has a competitive advantage over controllers. Out the of nine participants, close to 90% of the players felt one of the positive experiences of hand-tracking is the freedom and the natural feeling of it