Gravity Gloves

Ever since its inception, the popular video game development company known as Valve has always been passionate about pushing the boundaries of industry standards by going above-and-beyond with the available hardware and software technology of the time.

From the story-driven first-person experience that forewent the need for cutscenes in Half-Life 1 to the advanced physics engine and expressive facial movements of Half-Life 2, culminating with the incredibly immersive VR-powered Half-Life: Alyx, Valve’s flagship titles never ceased to amass new members of its dedicated fanbase that seek to emulate what made the games special with projects such as Gravity Gloves.

As versatile and impressive as the company’s Source 2 engine can be, the ease of use behind its Unity counterpart sometimes makes it a more compelling choice for getting started with video game development, especially when it comes to those who want to experiment with the Virtual Reality world after gathering enough experience with regular 3D titles. As a result, instead of getting accustomed to a different platform in an attempt to enjoy certain features, members of the open-source community decided to port them instead, leading to the creation of the Unity extension at hand.

In order to showcase the impressive interaction between the player and environmental objects in real-time, Valve added a new tool in Half-Life 2, known as the “Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator”, or the Gravity Gun, which can grab objects from afar and throw them with enough force to hurt the player’s enemies, akin to the force-sensitive Jedi powers of the Star Wars universe. To make the usage more comfortable in the VR realm, the developers of Half-Life: Alyx embedded the same functionality directly in the players’ hands, thus letting them trigger it more naturally.

This resulted in the ability to point the VR controller to the virtual object to highlight it before raising it up and catching it, making the process of reaching vital items during combat more comfortable for players. With the extension implemented in the Unity project of your choice and SteamVR ready to go, users can then tweak a multitude of parameters to adjust the gesture intensity, ideal distance between the target object and the player’s controller and the hand equipped with this particular ability.

Whether you want to simplify the process of gathering pivotal resources in the Virtual Reality title you are currently developing, or you wish to replicate the natural gestures introduced by Valve in the Half-Life series’ latest installment, Gravity Gloves may be the right tool for the job, given the amount of flexibility the settings panel provides to the end-user.