Oculus thinks that its hand and finger tracking controllers, the Oculus Touch, is the answer. Valve and HTC think their hand tracking wands are so crucial to the virtual reality experience, they're packing them in with the Vive headset.

According to documents recently published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Sony, which will release the PlayStation VR headset later this year, is considering a different solution: Minority Report-style glove controllers.

The three notable patent applications, all filed in 2014, deal with how to render "body part" movement on a head-mounted display. In other words, how to translate using your hands when you can't physically see them because of the screen strapped to your face. The "Glove Interface Object" marks the difference between simply viewing virtual reality and actually interacting with it.