Using Traditional Keyboards in VR: SteamVR Developer Kit and Pilot Game User Study

Following the commercial release of VR systems like HTC Vive and Oculus Rift to mainstream consumers, academic publications have explored the challenges of text entry in virtual reality. This paper describes a commercial developer kit that enables text entry using a traditional physical keyboard for HTC Vive. The paper gives a high-level system overview and presents the results of a pilot study exploring initial use of the devkit for typing in VR, focused on how users learn to adapt to this new VR text entry experience. The pilot study explored the use of a VR mini-game with the goal of helping users get familiar with VR typing.