  Alphanumeric text entry is a challenge for Virtual Reality (VR) applications.
VR enables new capabilities, impossible in the real world, such as an
unobstructed view of the keyboard, without occlusion by the user's physical
hands. Several hand representations have been proposed for typing in VR on
standard physical keyboards. However, to date, these hand representations have
not been compared regarding their performance and effects on presence for VR
text entry. Our work addresses this gap by comparing existing hand
representations with minimalistic fingertip visualization. We study the effects
of four hand representations (no hand representation, inverse kinematic model,
fingertip visualization using spheres and video inlay) on typing in VR using a
standard physical keyboard with 24 participants. We found that the fingertip
visualization and video inlay both resulted in statistically significant lower
text entry error rates compared to no hand or inverse kinematic model
representations. We found no statistical differences in text entry speed.
