People play Beat Saber a lot of different ways but I don’t think we’ve seen someone using a “bionic” arm before.
Beat Saber player Joey Durbin posted a video to Twitter showing him wearing the ‘Hero Arm’ prosthetic to play the game. I contacted Durbin via direct message seeking to understand how he plays VR while using the device, made by UK-based Open Bionics, and he offered some answers.
@openbionics The arm is working really well for playing games in VR!
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–#beatsaber #heroarm pic.twitter.com/HLed3s3InV— Joseph Durbin (@the_joe_dubbs) November 12, 2019
The 18-year-old from Pennsylvania wrote that he “got a WMR headset about a year ago and I played everything from Beat Saber to Gorn to SkyrimVR. I just had to get really creative for some of those games because of my lack of a left hand.” In recent weeks he started using the “Hero Arm”, as it is called, which is a myoelectric prosthetic with different grips.
“One of them has three of the fingers closed and locked in place. In this mode, I still have control of my index finger so I can pull the trigger,” Durbin wrote. “I’ve had the arm for a few weeks now and I just tried it with VR for the first time a few days ago. So far the experience has been pretty good. Being able to pull the trigger with my left hand is a huge improvement over just strapping a controller to my left arm and pressing the buttons with my right hand. I’m still working with it and I’m always finding better ways of using the arm in VR. . . Besides Beat Saber I have only tried Pavlov and the Lab with the arm. The added functionality is really obvious in those games like grabbing the bow in Longbow or grabbing a new clip and reloading a gun in Pavlov.”
Durbin explained the device “works by picking up the electrical signals from the muscles in my arm” and he can change the grip by pressing a button on the back of the hand and then flexing his arm muscles to hold “an open signal.” He described it as “kind of like doing a long press on a smartphone.”
Do you know anyone else that’s tried VR with prosthetic arms before? Let us know what you think of Joey’s skills down in the comments below!
The post Watch Beat Saber Played With ‘Hero Arm’ Prosthetic appeared first on UploadVR.
