A Browser-Based Gesture-Driven Avatar Interaction Framework for Metaverse Onboarding Environments

Abstract

Avatar interaction shapes how engaging and immersive a metaverse experience feels, and for that interaction to feel natural, avatars need to respond to users without forcing them through a controller-based interface first. This paper describes a gesture-driven interaction layer built for a browser-based metaverse onboarding environment, where users explore a set of virtual rooms as an avatar and interact with embedded video, document, and quiz content using hand, arm, and head gestures instead of a keyboard or controller. The system combines real-time gesture recognition (Google MediaPipe) with two alternative locomotion techniques - hand-raise navigation and in-place walking - so users can trade off precision against physical immersion depending on the task. The contribution is the integration, deployment, and evaluation of these techniques as a single lightweight, web-deployable, controller-free interaction model, assessed through a structured internal onboarding session with five participants. We report what worked, what didn't, and the design trade-offs that came out of combining these techniques in one deployed system.