Work№ 0052023Experiment

Ninja Academy

Cast spells in VR by holding hand poses in sequence. Fire, earth, ice. No controllers.

Reconstructed from the demo videos. Bill's own account is still to come.

A first-person view in VR: two tracked hands over a spell chart, a ninja, a chicken and a samurai waiting in a courtyard

01

The Curiosity

Hand tracking arrived on the headset. What is the most satisfying thing hands can do that buttons cannot?

02

The Build

Four hand poses. Hold three in the right order and a spell fires. A training yard with a ninja, a chicken and a samurai to practise on. The first test, in August 2023, was just the spell; by November the hand interactions and the pose sequence were working together in the game concept.

fig. 1Hand interactions and the pose sequence working together, November 2023.

VideoNinja trainer spell demoGameology Space · Games, August 2023

03

The Result

It stayed a prototype.

04

What We Learned

Gesture input is easy to demo and hard to make reliable enough to fight with.

MR Pac-Man

You are Pac-Man, in mixed reality, on a real basketball court. You run with your feet. The ghosts get faster as you level up.

№ 007

Zero Art Garden

A VR garden for kinetic sculpture. Place a few blocks with your hands, and they repeat into a spinning ring you can walk around, then print.