HTC has teased that some users may not even need to wear their latest Vive Ultimate Trackers soon thanks to an upcoming AI-powered body tracking update.
HTC’s Vive Ultimate Trackers are capable of inside-out body tracking thanks to the inclusion of two on-board cameras that track its own position in space, requiring you to strap them to your elbows, feet, or hips for full-body tracking.
Now the company has shown off a video about how its Vive XR Elite headset, Face Tracker module, and Vive Ultimate Tracker pucks can be useful in physical therapy. In it, we get a look at a single Vive Tracker pointed at a user doing a sit-up, with the device placed on a nearby tripod, ostensibly making sure the user is executing the right moves.
“In addition, the incoming AI body tracking doesn’t require the patients to wear the trackers,” the company says in the video. “This will lead the rehabilitation experience to a new level.”
While it’s clear the update is being positioned for enterprise use, when the company first showed off is AI body tracking at GDC 2024 back in March the company said the new feature would service “VTube, Arcade, healthcare and more” with the OpenXR-supported device capable of tracking 26 joints, suggesting it will be broadly released as an integral software update.
As shown in the GDC 2024 demo, it seems to be primarily targeting non-VR use cases, working essentially like a webcam attached to an AI pipeline. We’ve reached out to HTC for more clarity on when/how the update will work, so check back soon.
Released in late 2023, the $200 Vive Ultimate Trackers are the company’s first to make use of inside-out optical tracking, departing from the SteamVR base station ecosystem that drives its various PC VR headsets and Vive Tracker 3.0 released in 2021.
Thanks to Antony ‘SkarredGhost‘ Vitillo for pointing us to the news.
HTC has teased that some users may not even need to wear their latest Vive Ultimate Trackers soon thanks to an upcoming AI-powered body tracking update.
HTC’s Vive Ultimate Trackers are capable of inside-out body tracking thanks to the inclusion of two on-board cameras that track its own position in space, requiring you to strap them to your elbows, feet, or hips for full-body tracking.
Now the company has shown off a video about how its Vive XR Elite headset, Face Tracker module, and Vive Ultimate Tracker pucks can be useful in physical therapy. In it, we get a look at a single Vive Tracker pointed at a user doing a sit-up, with the device placed on a nearby tripod, ostensibly making sure the user is executing the right moves.
“In addition, the incoming AI body tracking doesn’t require the patients to wear the trackers,” the company says in the video. “This will lead the rehabilitation experience to a new level.”
While it’s clear the update is being positioned for enterprise use, when the company first showed off is AI body tracking at GDC 2024 back in March the company said the new feature would service “VTube, Arcade, healthcare and more” with the OpenXR-supported device capable of tracking 26 joints, suggesting it will be broadly released as an integral software update.
As shown in the GDC 2024 demo, it seems to be primarily targeting non-VR use cases, working essentially like a webcam attached to an AI pipeline. We’ve reached out to HTC for more clarity on when/how the update will work, so check back soon.
Released in late 2023, the $200 Vive Ultimate Trackers are the company’s first to make use of inside-out optical tracking, departing from the SteamVR base station ecosystem that drives its various PC VR headsets and Vive Tracker 3.0 released in 2021.
Thanks to Antony ‘SkarredGhost‘ Vitillo for pointing us to the news.
Wevr, the veteran XR studio behind one of VR’s earliest and most recognizable VR demo, announced it’s now secured $3.5 million in new funding from HTC Corp. and Epic Games.
It’s been almost a decade since VR enthusiasts first got a chance to don the pre-production version of HTC Vive at GDC 2015, where they likely went face-to-face with a giant blue whale in Wevr’s iconic VR demo theBlu: Whale Encounter.
Of course, Wevr has done much more beyond that iconic first episode in its theBlu series, having worked on a number of immersive experiences over the years including Gnomes & Goblins, Harry Potter VR, and Reggie Watts Waves VR. You’ll probably recognize more than a few in the studio’s sizzle reel below:
Now HTC and Epic are adding to their investment in Wevr as the company announced it’s expanding its cloud-based development platform Virtual Studio and real-time 3D production capabilities, which the company says will help them meet new demand for brands to create XR content.
According to Crunchbase data, this brings the studio’s lifetime investment to $42.3 million, with its $25 million Series B investment arriving in February 2016.
“Wevr is an incredibly creative company with a command of XR technology. They are the ones to beat in this space,” said Cher Wang, CEO of HTC Corp. “We share the founders’ mission and passion for creating high quality spatial content and bringing immersive experiences to the next level on premium XR systems.”
Additionally, Wevr announced that industry veteran Tim Dillon has joined the leadership team as EVP Business Development, who brings his extensive experience in interactive and immersive media, experiential and emerging technologies, including at Media Monks and Moving Picture Company (MPC).
Founded in 2010 and originally known as WemoLab, Wevr has worked with a number of brands on location-based XR entertainment, including Warner Brothers, Google, Samsung and Universal, having collaborated with Jon Favreau, Deepak Chopra and Run The Jewels.
Hey there, Hypergrid Business readers. It’s the new year, and I’m moving my office and cleaning up, and have a few VR headsets sitting around that I’d like to get rid of.
They work, are hardly used, and one is even in its original — UNOPENED — box.
If you’re in the western Massachusetts area, and want to meet up, I can give you a free VR headset. Or if you’re anywhere in the world, and can pay for shipping, you can buy the brand-new one.
Here’s the one I’m selling
HP Reverb G2 VR headset
I don’t have my own picture of the headset itself because I haven’t opened the box. Yup, I bought it a year ago and never even opened it. It’s been sitting on a shelf in my office, and I realized that if I haven’t opened it yet, I’m never going to.
It runs for $599 on the HP website, currently on sale for $469, but it’s out of stock as I write this. I’m selling it for $400.
The box is unopened, so I don’t know exactly what’s in there for certain, but I bought it directly from HP and I’m reasonably sure that they put in everything it’s supposed to have.
Here’s the official picture of the headset itself:
HP Reverb G2
It’s a fancy, high-end headset and comes with two controllers, has six degrees of movement, and is compatible with SteamVR and Windows Mixed Reality. The way it works is that you plug it into your computer, so there is a cable that you have to have on your head when you use it. So, unless you’ve got one of those computers that fits in a backpack, you’d probably be using this headset sitting down, or, at least, standing in one place close to your PC.
Here’s a picture of some guy using it, with the chair positioned just right so you can’t see the cable running from his head to the laptop:
HP Reverb G2 VR headset. (Image courtesy HP.)
Are you interested? Email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com. I’m charging $400 plus shipping, so if you’re not too far away, it might be a good deal.
If nobody here is interested, I’ll put it up on eBay.
And here are the three free VR headsets I’m giving away:
HTC Vive
HTC Vive
Comes with a couple of controllers plus a faceguard thing. It’s an all-in-one headset that you recharge with a USB cord. I think it’s the HTC Vive Focus Plus. It’s currently $449 on the official website, down from a regular price of $629. I’ve opened it and played with it, and no longer have the original packaging, so I’m just giving it away.
You don’t need a phone or a PC to use it, so it’s completely wireless. You do need a WiFi connection, though, to download apps and stuff.
If you’re around Western Massachusetts, we can meet up in some local coffee shop, and you can just have it. Or you can pay for shipping and I can box it up and send it to you. But, like I said, I don’t have the original packaging so I’ll have to bubble wrap it.
The controller has a little hidey-place inside the headset:
Daydream View headset from Google.
That’s also how you put your phone in it. For a list of compatible phones, see this official list from Google.
It can also run regular Google Cardboard apps, but then the controller won’t work.
Generic Google “Cardboard” headset
Some off-brand Google Cardboard-compatible headset.
This is one of those cheap generic $10 headsets you can buy at Walmart that you put your phone into. It can run any Cardboard-compatible app.
I use it with my Android phone, but there’s even support for iPhones. There’s no controller with Cardboard, and no six degrees of movement. You can turn your head, but you can’t move your head laterally forward or backward, so if you’re not careful with how you use it, you can become dizzy quite easily. But you can use it to watch YouTube’s 360-degree videos in VR, and there’s a bunch of roller-coaster-type rides, some simple games, and, of course, porn.
If nobody here wants any of these free ones, I’ll give them away on Nextdoor or Craigslist, but I figured I’d give you guys first crack at them.
China Mobile, that country’s largest wireless carier with over 940 million subscribers, has formed a metaverse industry alliance including some of the biggest names in China-based tech.
As reported by Shanghai Securities News(Chinese), China Mobile announced during Mobile World Congress Shanghai what it calls the ‘China Mobile Metaverse Industry Alliance’, something the company says will be “the world’s strongest metaverse circle of friends.”
At MWC Shanghai, state-owned China Mobile announced the first batch of 24 members of the alliance, including Huawei, Xiaomi, HTC Vive, Unity China, NOLO, XREAL (formerly Nreal), AI company iFlytek, video streaming platform MGTV, and cloud streaming platform Haima Cloud.
Image courtesy China Mobile
Main objectives include improving the state of metaverse development in China, sharing resources to deepen cooperation between the companies, and developing a “win-win concept” to share the new dividends of the digital economy. China Mobile additionally announced a member alliance fund that will support outstanding metaverse projects as well as R&D for both hardware and XR content creation.
At the MWC Shanghai press conference, Zhao Dachun, deputy general manager of China Mobile, said that the metaverse represents a new opportunity for trillions of yuan (hundreds of billions of USD) and “an important carrier to accelerate the construction of digital China and realize the digital economy.”
China Mobile isn’t new to the space. In 2018, China Mobile partnered with HTC to “accelerate the proliferation of 5G infrastructure and devices in China” and provide HTC with greater push to get its VR devices into more retail channels.
In 2021, the company launched its own XR interoperability standard called GSXR (General Standard for XR), which included support from many of the companies listed above in addition to Pico, Rokid, Oppo, Baidu, Tencent, China Telecom, and Skyworth.
Migu, China Mobile’s streaming content subsidiary, has also recently built a new ‘Metaverse Headquarters’ in Xiamen, China. There, the company says it will leverage 5G and XR technologies to help build Xiamen into “high-quality, high-value, modern and international” city with digital intelligence, China Daily reports.
HTC teased a self-tracking Vive Tracker that doesn’t need base stations.
Vive Trackers are used by businesses in bespoke VR software to track real-world objects, and by VRChat users to track body parts such as their torso, eblow, legs, and feet.
The current Vive Tracker 3.0 shipped in 2021. It’s priced at $130 but requires SteamVR Tracking base stations, available from $135 each.
The new ‘Self-Tracking Tracker’ is set to launch in Q3 of this year. It has two wide field of view cameras and an onboard processor to perform inside-out positional tracking, like a Quest Pro controller without any buttons, triggers, haptics, or sticks. This means it doesn’t need base stations nor to be within view of a headset’s cameras.
It will connect to a specific USB-C dongle, which HTC says will support up to 5 trackers at once. It will support the OpenXR standard, so won’t require a HTC headset.
HTC claims it weighs under 100 grams and is approximately 50% smaller than Vive Tracker 3.0. However, it won’t replace Vive Tracker 3.0 – it will be sold alongside it. Typically camera-based inside-out tracking doesn’t work well in plain rooms with no high-contrast features or in low light, while base stations work in almost any environment.
Like previous Vive Trackers, it will support standard 1/4” threaded screw mounting, the same used by cameras and speakers. There’s also a new magnetically-attaching clip mount, and HTC says it will release the CAD files so people can 3D print their own mounts.
HTC says the Self-Tracking Tracker is still in the development phase and didn’t announce a price.
HTC today announced a new Vive Tracker accessory which is the first in the industry to use inside-out tracking, meaning it doesn’t require any external beacons. The device can be attached to props to bring them into VR or to the user’s body for enhanced body tracking.
HTC’s existing Vive Trackers are a popular accessory for anyone interested in VR full-body tracking, but they use SteamVR Tracking technology which requires external beacons for use.
Now the company has announced a new Vive Tracker, and while it doesn’t yet have a name, HTC confirms it is their first standalone tracker based on inside-out tracking which uses on-board cameras to track its own position in space. That means no external beacons or cameras need to be set up for use.
HTC says that up to five of the new standalone Vive Trackers can be used at once, which could be used for body tracking in VR by attaching two trackers to the elbows, two to the feet, and one to the hips. Combined with the user’s head and hands (which are already tracked by the headset and controllers), the trackers can be used to represent the user’s movements more fully—which allows people to do some pretty incredible things in VR.
Details are slim right now; HTC hasn’t announced the price or battery life, and the release date is far off in Q3 2023. Though the company says the device will support standalone Vive headsets, PC VR, and a fully self-contained mode for those wanting to use the trackers for non-VR uses such as object tracking. The tracker is also based on OpenXR, and HTC says this will make it possible to use the tracker with other headsets from other vendors.
The base of the tracker has a quick-release system for removing it from its mount, as well as a standard camera tripod thread for connecting various standardized mounts and holders. The units are small too, with HTC saying they come in at just half the height of the latest Vive Tracker 3.0.
1 of 5
Image courtesy HTC
Image courtesy HTC
Image courtesy HTC
Image courtesy HTC
Image courtesy HTC
Developers interested in experimenting with the new tracker can contact HTC here to register their interest.
Although the device will support PC VR, HTC says it recommends that anyone already using SteamVR Tracking should stick with the existing Vive Tracker 3.0 for its precision and compatibility.
– – — – –
While this is the first dedicated inside-out tracker to be release by a major VR vendor, the device is fundamentally similar to the Quest Pro and Magic Leap 2 controllers which also use on-board cameras to track their position.
Assuming HTC’s new inside-out tracker works well, the company may not be far off from releasing its own inside-out tracked controller.
HTC today announced a new Vive Tracker accessory which is the first in the industry to use inside-out tracking, meaning it doesn’t require any external beacons. The device can be attached to props to bring them into VR or to the user’s body for enhanced body tracking.
HTC’s existing Vive Trackers are a popular accessory for anyone interested in VR full-body tracking, but they use SteamVR Tracking technology which requires external beacons for use.
Now the company has announced a new Vive Tracker, and while it doesn’t yet have a name, HTC confirms it is their first standalone tracker based on inside-out tracking which uses on-board cameras to track its own position in space. That means no external beacons or cameras need to be set up for use.
HTC says that up to five of the new standalone Vive Trackers can be used at once, which could be used for body tracking in VR by attaching two trackers to the elbows, two to the feet, and one to the hips. Combined with the user’s head and hands (which are already tracked by the headset and controllers), the trackers can be used to represent the user’s movements more fully—which allows people to do some pretty incredible things in VR.
Details are slim right now; HTC hasn’t announced the price or battery life, and the release date is far off in Q3 2023. Though the company says the device will support standalone Vive headsets, PC VR, and a fully self-contained mode for those wanting to use the trackers for non-VR uses such as object tracking. The tracker is also based on OpenXR, and HTC says this will make it possible to use the tracker with other headsets from other vendors.
The base of the tracker has a quick-release system for removing it from its mount, as well as a standard camera tripod thread for connecting various standardized mounts and holders. The units are small too, with HTC saying they come in at just half the height of the latest Vive Tracker 3.0.
1 of 5
Image courtesy HTC
Image courtesy HTC
Image courtesy HTC
Image courtesy HTC
Image courtesy HTC
Developers interested in experimenting with the new tracker can contact HTC here to register their interest.
Although the device will support PC VR, HTC says it recommends that anyone already using SteamVR Tracking should stick with the existing Vive Tracker 3.0 for its precision and compatibility.
– – — – –
While this is the first dedicated inside-out tracker to be release by a major VR vendor, the device is fundamentally similar to the Quest Pro and Magic Leap 2 controllers which also use on-board cameras to track their position.
Assuming HTC’s new inside-out tracker works well, the company may not be far off from releasing its own inside-out tracked controller.
HTC launched the Vive Flow Business Edition this week, an enterprise version of its lightweight immersive viewer headset.
As we covered in our review, Flow is the lightest VR headset on the Western market at just 189 grams. However, it’s a device with fairly niche use cases and some major caveats.
Flow is controlled by your phone as a rotational laser pointer, but that’s obviously not ideal for business use cases so HTC is now selling an optional $59 controller. The controller isn’t positionally tracked either though, it also just acts as a laser pointer. HTC says the controller can also be purchased by consumers.
Importantly, Flow is a tethered headset — to use the headset, it needs to connect to a USB power source. Flow only supports a very small and specific list of Android phones, with no iPhone or laptop support.
The Business Edition also comes with a two-year commercial warranty and an expedited return and replacement system, if needed. On the software side, there’s also ‘Kiosk Mode’ — this allows content to be queued or started remotely, on behalf of the user, and prevents accidentally closure of an experience.
During the week that’s definitely not E3 there have been a number of companies sticking to tradition, hosting events with lots of new videogames to announce. Amongst them was the PC Gaming Show yesterday which just so happened to have a tasty virtual reality (VR) update, a brand new gameplay trailer for Half-Life: Alyx mod Levitation.
The work of modders FMPONE and Corey Laddo – and a few others behind the scenes – Levitation has been gaining plenty of attention ever since it was unveiled earlier this year. While we’d all love an official update from Valve, thanks to the Steam Workshop Half-Life: Alyx is highly moddable with dozens of excellent community additions, and Levitation is gearing up to be one of the best.
Half-Life Alyx: Levitation is going to be a 4-5 hour adventure in City17, set in an area called Sector X which houses a mysterious floating building. G-Man is set to make a return alongside your mate and inventive engineer Russell. Even with the new trailer, little else has been revealed regarding the narrative. At least it’ll serve as a nice (unofficial) side-mission for fans eager for more Half-Life in VR.
From the looks of the gameplay trailer Half-Life Alyx: Levitation is going to be heavily action-oriented, once again pitting Alyx against Combine soldiers and the ever-reliable headcrabs.
Two years after its release Half-Life: Alyxis still regarded as the pinnacle of VR gaming, offering just the right mix of action, immersive interaction and puzzling that the franchise is known for. “A stunningly rich experience from start to finish, Half-Life: Alyx is one of the best VR titles available, a perfect showcase for what VR gaming is capable of,” gmw3 said in its review.
Currently, Half-Life Alyx: Levitation is expected to arrive later this year. While you’re waiting other Half-Life: Alyx mods include Return to Rapture, a two-episode addition set within the Bioshock universe. Or how about VR mods for non-VR titles? Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, Quake 3 Arena, Resident Evil 2 and 3, and more have all been given the unofficial VR mod treatment.
