Use edge of motioncontroller facebutton?

Development Platform & Builds XR Development
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1

Hi guys,

Does anyone know if its possible to use the edge of the VIVE motioncontroller facebutton?
The standard facebutton nodes don’t respond to an edge press, only to presses a bit more to te center of the button.

2

BdeJong, I’m not able to reproduce the behavior you’re experiencing. Can you tell me exactly which node(s) or exact input names you’re using?

3

Thanks for your answer! I’m using the facebutton 1-4 nodes, facebutton 1 corresponds to the top button and 4 to the left of the motioncontroller pad. I allways have to push 3/4 of the way out to the edge to get the nodes to fire, the outer edge doesn’t do anything for me.

4

I do experience what you’re describing, but only if the center of my thumb is right on (or past) the ridge of the button edge. See the photos below. My thumb position in the first photo works fine. My thumb position in the second photo does not work. As a user, this seems reasonable to me. Are the tolerances you’re experiencing much different from mine?

My guess is that the way those motion controller buttons work is that there is only a single button switch for the big button. The way it translates a button press into 1/2/3/4, Up/Right/Down/Left is by detecting the thumb’s position on it’s touchpad surface. It’s reasonable to expect that the very edges of that touchpad surface - where the rim of the button is - aren’t capable of detecting a touch. But that’s only speculation on my part.

This works (thumb barely inside ridge…

96434-thumb+barely+inside+ridge.jpg
96434-thumb+barely+inside+ridge.jpg640×640 81 KB

But this doesn’t (thumb right on ridge)…

96435-thumb+on+ridge.jpg
96435-thumb+on+ridge.jpg640×640 85.1 KB

5

This indeed looks like what i’m experiencing, thanks for taking the time to take these photo’s!
I was allready fearing it was a limitation of the built in hardware at the moment. In principle it works fine like this, but for new users (at least the people i test with) it sometimes seems that the buttons don’t work, because they tend to ‘look for the edges’.

Use of the finger position as input might be an option, although that has its own disadvantages because my target demographic likes clicking functionality better than touch. I Guess i’ll have to try that.

Thanks again for your elaborate answer!