Octodad

A Character in Your Hand: Puppetry to Inform Game Controls

Puppetry offers a useful framework for designing character controls in virtual reality, argues this study from Georgia Tech researchers Nitsche and McBride.

• Puppetry offers a practical design model for VR character controls because puppets and game characters both sit between imagined and factual worlds, inviting players to project themselves into them.
• VR controllers excel at tracking position and orientation but lack the finger-level precision that detailed puppet manipulation demands, which drove the authors to develop tailored control schemes.
• The authors mapped traditional rod, marionette, and hand puppet control mechanisms, drawn from the Center for Puppetry Arts archive, onto HTC Vive controllers using Kaplin's distance model as their design logic.