# Effects of Hand Representations for Typing in Virtual Reality

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.00613 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.00613/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 2 Feb 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [FoundHand: Large-Scale Domain-Specific Learning for Controllable Hand Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02690/) (2024)
- [Weakly-Supervised 3D Hand Reconstruction with Knowledge Prior and Uncertainty Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12307/) (2024)
- [Diffusion-based 3D Hand Motion Recovery with Intuitive Physics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01835/) (2025)
- [EvHand-FPV: Efficient Event-Based 3D Hand Tracking from First-Person View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13883/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Alphanumeric text entry is a challenge for Virtual Reality (VR) applications. VR enables new capabilities, impossible in the real world, such as an unobstructed view of the keyboard, without occlusion by the user's physical hands. Several hand representations have been proposed for typing in VR on standard physical keyboards. However, to date, these hand representations have not been compared regarding their performance and effects on presence for VR text entry. Our work addresses this gap by comparing existing hand representations with minimalistic fingertip visualization. We study the effects of four hand representations (no hand representation, inverse kinematic model, fingertip visualization using spheres and video inlay) on typing in VR using a standard physical keyboard with 24 participants. We found that the fingertip visualization and video inlay both resulted in statistically significant lower text entry error rates compared to no hand or inverse kinematic model representations. We found no statistical differences in text entry speed.