VirtualBricks: Exploring a Scalable, Modular Toolkit for Enabling Physical Manipulation in VR

Often Virtual Reality (VR) experiences are limited by the design of standard controllers. This work aims to liberate a VR developer from these limitations in the physical realm to provide an expressive match to the limitless possibilities in the virtual realm. VirtualBricks is a LEGO based toolkit that enables construction of a variety of physical-manipulation enabled controllers for VR, by offering a set of feature bricks that emulate as well as extend the capabilities of default controllers. Based on the LEGO platform, the toolkit provides a modular, scalable solution for enabling passive haptics in VR. We demonstrate the versatility of our designs through a rich set of applications including re-implementations of artifacts from recent research. We share a VR Integration package for integration with Unity VR IDE, the CAD models for the feature bricks, for easy deployment of VirtualBricks within the community.