Designing Hand and Forearm Gestures to Control Virtual Forearm for User-Initiated Forearm Deformation

Thanks to the development of virtual reality (VR) technology, there is growing research on VR avatar body deformation effects. However, previous research mainly focused on passive body deformation expression, leaving users with limited methods to actively control their virtual bodies. To address this gap, we explored user-controlled forearm deformation by investigating how hand and forearm gestures can be mapped to various degrees of avatar forearm deformation. We conducted a gesture design workshop with six designers to generate gesture sets for different forearm deformations and deformation degrees, resulting in 15 gesture sets. Then, we selected the three highest-rated gesture sets and conducted a comparative study to evaluate the sense of embodiment and user performance across the three gesture sets. Our findings provide design suggestions for gesture-controlled forearm deformation in VR.