Google Cardboard: extend time to activate objects?

carlfink

When viewing a scene in the Cardboard mode, you select by putting the reticle on the object and holding it there. The problem is, on Apple devices that my boss and I have tested, you get about 1/3 of a second before the object is selected. That's too short for both our tastes.

(Thanks, John Blackmon, for teaching me the word "reticle" in this very forum.)

Is there a way to extend that time? Not to anything outrageous, but maybe to a full second?

Thanks.

t_johnb

It's not adjustable, and it should be 3/4 of a second. Gaze to select is definitely not the perfect interface, it does allow for use without a controller or mouse though.

carlfink

It's certainly usable, it just requires more attention from the user (and thus distracts more from any learning) than I would prefer. Thanks, John.

Hmm ... some newer Cardboard headsets have a button, I found out yesterday. Would CVR work with a headset having an external button?

t_johnb

Gaze to select is the method used by CVR for Cardboard style devices, not the button that is on some of the cardboards, but not all.

carlfink

Thanks, John. I was just wondering if it was supported. I have done no work on programming for Cardboard, so I have no idea how difficult it would or would not be to support both.

I've found that I got used to the gaze-to-select interface pretty fast. The big minefield is that I had built my scenarios with buttons right in the default sightline, meaning the student would accidentally gaze at things and trigger them. I had to move all my hotspots up or down 30 degrees or so. Also, several places had popup images/videos that were closed by click/tap. Of course, in Cardboard this meant you couldn't actually watch the video without closing it. I had to switch to closing them with buttons that were near, but not inside, the media they closed.

fprieto3143

AndrewTownsend said:

Is there a plan to allow for cardboard button select rather than hover select?

We haven't discussed it, but one problem would be that the scenarios can't know which cardboard you are using. With gaze to select we can support all cardboard headsets.

One way that it could work is as a setting in the scenario.

carlfink

The quoting is really scrambled in the new forum software, but I think I'm responding to fprieto3143.

There is no reason that CVR can't support two ways to select in the same scenario. It does that now! You can select either with tap or gaze. Why can't JavaScript just trap the external-button-press event and forward it to the tap-on-the-screen event? I am not a JS programmer, but in languages I have used that would literally be one line of code.