Integrating Mid-Air Gestures into an Extended Reality Application: A Methodological Approach

Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly being incorporated into people's everyday lives as well as professional applications, science and research. Therefore, the question arises whether there may be interaction modes that are more suitable than the standard controllers with which these devices are typically equipped. To address this question, it is necessary to conduct human-centered studies, which are typically applied in the field of human factors research. To facilitate similar research approaches we present a framework to integrating mid-air gesture interaction into VR so that users can perform gestures without touching a button, a surface or a device into an HTC Vive VR Headset. For gesture recognition, we use a Leap Motion device, which is mounted at the front of the HTC Vive. We built a basic application using virtual 3D blocks that users can rotate and move. We used Unity to implement this application. This paper describes our methodological approach to building the setup.