I think its more important for the body parts that are there to move correctly than to have them visible and not match. I remember trying a vive game that had arms but sometimes they would contort into impossible poses and it was extremely jarring.
Having spent many hours in both vive and rift, while I prefer vive in general, the visible hands on the touch controllers on rift is just fantastic.
I think its more important for the body parts that are there to move correctly than to have them visible and not match.
A laser-hatchet hand and a disembodied floating mecha-claw that respond snappily are ultimately more real than a "realistic" arm that moves like a cartoon.
BTW. I recall an experiment that found that to get someone to associate a virtual hand with their real one, the researchers had to prick the real hand at the same time as the person see the virtual hand getting a prick.
By the same token, if you want someone to associate a virtual elbow with their real elbow, you'd better not be having it do stuff your real elbow isn't doing. Better off just not having the elbow.
One interesting aspect is the difference between displaying yourself and others in VR.
For yourself you do not want to show body parts that cannot be tracked correctly because of the jarring effect of the mismatch, as you say. But for showing other people you can get away with more, so for example you can show full arms even if the elbows are not exactly in the right place (as long as they are not unphysical of course.)
> I remember trying a vive game that had arms but sometimes they would contort into impossible poses and it was extremely jarring [.....] the visible hands on the touch controllers on rift is just fantastic.
Neither of the things mentioned here are specific to Vive or Rift.
A Rift game can give you arms that contort into impossible poses, just like a Vive game can give you visible hands. It's just software and whatever the author of whatever game you're playing decided to do.
Did you play a game worked in both Vive and Rift, and the versions were different or something?
You're correct about the arms, but I believe the Rift has additional sensors on its touch controllers [1], allowing it to record your thumb position and update the hand model accordingly.
If you try both the vive and the rift you'll see that the default for the rift is fake hands that mimic yours. It's cool but I personnally couldnt get fooled. I prefer the vive controllers.
Having spent many hours in both vive and rift, while I prefer vive in general, the visible hands on the touch controllers on rift is just fantastic.