Experiments are ongoing using PINCH™ gloves as an interactive input device to the CAVE, ImmersaDesk, PARIS and other virtual reality systems. Each fingertip is covered with an electrically conductive material. Anytime two or more fingers touch (aka pinch) they complete the circuit. The gloves then register which circuits are completed, by adding the bit values of the touching fingers.

The data from the gloves can be stored in one of two modes. In wand emulation mode certain pinches result in emulating wand button presses or joystick values. This allows existing applications to use the PINCH gloves. In standard mode the resultant values from all pinches are stored in the CAVE’s valuator array. At EVL, a daemon has been added to the CAVE library to support PINCH gloves.

The CAVELib™ is commercially available from VRCo and support for the PINCH glove is part of their Trackd daemon software.