VR Controllers and hand-tracking

General controller use

All tools are primarily used by pointing the laser at the object you wish to interact with and pulling the trigger. Some tools have a secondary action that is triggered by pressing an action button whilst the trigger is held down (e.g., duplicate). When a component is moved, it can also be rotated by pressing the touchpad or moving the joystick left or right.

To navigate around, use the grip buttons on the side of your controllers for panning, scaling and rotating the scene, and the right thumbstick forward will teleport you to 1:1 scale in the scene or back to god scale when pointed up towards the sky.

If you place your grab point (the black dot in front of the controller) within a shape, you can grab the shape or edit its features by selecting its face, edge, or corner.

Undo/redo is on the left controller, activated by moving the joystick left or right, or, on a touchpad, by pressing the touchpad left or right.

There are three ways to use the main menu:

1. Twist the left controller outwards so your palm is facing up to open the menu, twist the controller inwards so your palm is facing down again to close the menu

2. Press one of the blue buttons on the controller quickly to open the menu in front of you in a fixed position

3. Press and hold the blue button - select a tool by simply hovering the 8 main tools in the tool circle or hovering the other tools, and use the trigger to activate those tools or menus

Hand tracking

If you are using Arkio on a Meta Quest, you can also try the experimental hand-tracking instead of controllers. This mode can be activated from your device and allows you to put down the controllers, interact with Arkio objects and UI using hand gestures. You can learn more about the various gestures in the following video. You can learn more about hand tracking controls on this page Hand tracking

Older VR controllers

The following cards contain some older headset controller schemes. The Oculus/Meta Rift and Quest controllers are all similar. Your index finger triggers the main model and selection actions. The grip buttons, situated under your middle finger, control world panning and zooming. The two menu buttons are used for secondary actions and the menus.

Some of these headsets are over 10 years old, so the controllers will feel bulky and less acurate then the latest Quest 3 controllers.

The HTC Vive also uses your index finger trigger for all primary actions. The grips on the sides of the controller (two small buttons that activate when the controller is grabbed firmly) are used for world panning and zooming. The Vive touchpad is used for teleportation and secondary modeling actions in Arkio.

Windows Mixed Reality controllers are similar to Meta Quest controllers and feature both a joystick and a touchpad for quick menus and secondary modeling actions.