Unity XR Interaction Toolkit - Adding Haptic Feedback

In this Unity VR XR Toolkit tutorial, I'll show adding haptic feedback for the controllers. ► Art Assets - Polygon City - Low Poly https://bit.ly/3ScOYa1 My discord link ► https://discord.gg/DgUdNDT7KU ► Download Unity at https://unity.com Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 00:26 Setting up Haptics for

VR interactions get dramatically better when you can feel them. This tutorial adds haptic feedback to the XR Interaction Toolkit controllers so the player senses a light buzz when their ray hovers over a grabbable object and a stronger pulse when they actually grab it - all through built-in events, no code required.

Where haptic events live

Under the XR Origin, select the left hand and right hand controllers. In the Inspector, scroll down the XR Ray Interactor to find the Haptic Events section. The toolkit ships several predefined events you can hook into directly - hover entered, select entered, and friends - each with two simple settings: intensity, which is how strong the vibration feels in your hand, and duration, how long it lasts.

Step 1 - Add hover feedback

Enable the On Hover Entered event. This fires whenever the interaction ray passes over a grabbable object, so it should be a whisper, not a thump: set intensity to 0.1 and duration to 0.1. The goal is a barely-there tick that tells the player this object is interactive without becoming noise as they sweep the ray around the scene.

Step 2 - Add select feedback

Now for the grab itself. Enable On Select Entered and set both intensity and duration to 0.2 - deliberately stronger than the hover, but still restrained. The graduation matters: hover says you could grab this, select says you did grab it, and the difference in strength is what lets the hand distinguish the two without the eyes getting involved. Configure the same values on both controllers so the feedback is consistent whichever hand grabs.

Step 3 - Test it in play mode

Hit Play. Roll the ray over one of the paper balls and a slight feedback pulses in the controller. Hold the grip trigger to grab, and as the ball pops into your hand the stronger pulse lands. Throw it - straight into the trash can - and the whole loop feels physical. Sight, plus touch: with haptics wired to hover and select, the game now talks to the player's hands, and even simple grab-and-throw interactions become far more satisfying.

A final note on tuning: these intensity numbers are starting points, not rules. The principle to keep is restraint - haptics that fire constantly at high intensity stop meaning anything. Keep hover barely perceptible, keep select clearly stronger, and adjust both to taste against the objects and interaction pace of your own game.