Virtual Desktop Can Now Use Quest 3's Inside-Out Body Tracking To Emulate Worn Vive Trackers

Virtual Desktop's latest update lets you use Quest 3's Inside-Out Body Tracking and Generative Legs to emulate worn Vive Trackers for SteamVR body tracking.

Vive Trackers are mainly used by VRChat users to track body parts such as their torso, elbows, legs, and feet to drive their avatar in real-time. But this incurs a significant added cost. The traditional Vive Trackers cost $130 each and require SteamVR Tracking base stations ($150 each) while the inside-out Vive Ultimate Trackers cost $200 each - and both require $40-$50 straps too. Further, using traditional Vive Trackers with headsets that don't use SteamVR Tracking requires a manual calibration process, as does using Vive Ultimate Trackers with headsets other than HTC Vive standalone headsets.

Quest 3 Now Has Inside-Out Body Tracking & MR Occlusion
Quest 3 inside-out upper body tracking is now available, and mixed reality occlusion can now be shipped in apps.

Virtual Desktop's latest update on Meta Quest headsets, out now, can instead give you emulated Vive Trackers for your entire body.

To drive the positions of the upper body emulated trackers, on Quest 3 the update leverages the Inside-Out Body Tracking (IOBT) feature the headset got in December, which uses the headset's downwards-facing side cameras. On older Quest headsets it will simply use inverse kinematics (IK), a mathematical estimation based on your head and hand positions.

For the lower body emulated trackers Virtual Desktop uses Meta's Generative Legs feature, which Meta says uses a "cutting edge" AI model to estimate your legs positions. Generative Legs supports Quest 2, Quest Pro, and Quest 3.

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VR enthusiast Luna testing Virtual Desktop's Vive Tracker emulation on Quest 3.

You can configure which trackers are enabled and which aren't using a community-made tool. This lets you, for example, use Quest 3's IOBT for the upper body and real Vive Trackers for the lower body, giving you true 6DoF body tracking at the lowest possible cost.

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VR enthusiast Luna using Virtual Desktop emulated Vive Trackers for their upper body combined with real Vive Ultimate Trackers on their lower body.

And emulated Vive Trackers isn't the only new feature in this Virtual Desktop update. It also adds the ability to emulate Valve Index controllers using Quest's controller-free hand tracking, enabling finger tracking in SteamVR games which support it.

Finally, the update brings the following bug fixes and general improvements:

• Improved motion extrapolation quality of Synchronous Spacewarp (SSW) for all headsets
• Now sending headset battery level and charging state to SteamVR
• Reduced video compression artifacts with 10-bit codecs
• Improved desktop streaming latency on macOS
• Added Wide motion support with hand tracking on Quest
• Switched to recognizing index and finger curl for trigger / grip presses when using regular hand tracking
• Fixed issue with Unreal/Unity/WebXR where the VR session wasn't ending properly
• Fixed desktop being cutoff on some resolutions with AMD
• Fixed game compatibility with: Hard Bullet, Resonite, JKXR, Roblox

While Valve's Steam Link these days offers a free and frictionless gateway to SteamVR and Meta recently significantly improved Air Link's session battery life, Virtual Desktop's developer Guy Godin continues to push the bounds and add new features and improvements you won't find on either of the free alternatives, making his $20 app still the wireless PC VR tool of choice for many Quest owners.

Why VR? Flying Through The Eiffel Tower With Your Sister

The twins traded off driving the toy camper through the tall grass. 

Plastic camper in hand, they would play in the front yard for time out of mind. They’d go on adventures around the bushes, to the stream and into the woods. On trips to volcanoes or deserts, or chased by wild animals, their make believe family was always safe inside that plastic camper.

The twins made up words together and escaped in these hours together. They also played multi-hour games of Monopoly together, ending with the formal recording of defeat to the superior twin in a new slip of paper for their keepsake box.

Roughly half a century has passed from those days in the 1970s and into the early '80s. The sisters live a time zone apart in Colorado and Indiana, in lives driven by their work schedules at a school and hospital. Across the waning years of the 20th century, through some of the toughest times of their lives, the sisters kept “close” via telephone call. It was just a hollow voice recreated over the lines and sent up the bundle of cord to their receivers, but it was a familiar one.

These days, those voices call out to one another over the expanse of virtual reality from a pair of Meta Quest 2 headsets.

“You’re really flogging now,” Tonda or Ronda tells me.

I can’t tell which of the cackling twins made the comment during our recent play session. The pair, now in their late ‘50s, met me in an airship at the top of the Eiffel Tower. The comment on my putting was fair as I had missed my shot for the second time. We floated over a recreation of the famed Paris world’s exhibition in the year 1889 and chatted for about half an hour there in the docked blimp on the 18th hole of a picture-perfect mini golf course.

The twins don’t play mini golf very well. They play so poorly, in fact, that it sometimes feels they’re playing a reverse of the game. When viewed that way — “flog” to get the highest score rather than “golf” to get the lowest — these sisters are fantastic VR gamers.

“Yep, that’s flogging,” one of them says after I miss another shot.

From Easter Egg Hunts & Treasure Maps To Wearing The Likeness Of A Dead Husband

Tonda and Ronda in Walkabout Mini Golf

The twins are among some of Walkabout Mini Golf’s biggest fans. They play the game quietly in their homes during whatever moments they can manage to squeeze it in. The narrative persists that many VR headsets go into disuse following initial excitement after purchase. In places like Walkabout Mini Golf, though, those headsets stay on the network to take VR travelers to some of the most meaningful people in their lives.

In the case of the twin sisters Ronda and Tonda, they’ve each purchased extra-long USB-C cords so they never run out of power to their headsets across five or more hours in a day together. When a new course debuts for them to explore, they seem to “pass over the money without even thinking about it” like the people in Field of Dreams.

“It could be $3, it could be $30, it could be $300,” Tonda said. “There is not a price you can put on a safe place you can spend with family. We’re in the same space, it doesn’t matter how much it costs.”

The first thing they do in any new Walkabout course is just look around.

Then they have a playthrough.

Then they find the 18 hidden balls. A Walkabout developer hides them just like the Easter Bunny. The twins go and find every single one. Sometimes they are helped by a YouTuber called Innerprincess VR, whose passionate videos document the location of each hidden ball in the game. 

“We don’t cheat very often,” Tonda says defensively.

Later, the twins return to see the new course again at night so they can piece together clues on a fox hunt in search of their next special treasure for the clubhouse.

“Ronda can figure out all the clues,” Tonda says. “I can find the balls.”

One day, Ronda and Tonda discovered the game's developers, Mighty Coconut, added a beach ball. It can be smacked around much like the golf balls. They smacked it back and forth until it rolled over a rail and out toward the ocean. Then they decided to spend an “embarrassing amount of time” trying to get the ball back to the top of the Laser Lair. The twins felt so tickled by the idea that they spent so much time putting the thing back into place that they’ve made a recurring joke out of the whole affair. They've even sent each other beach balls in the mail.

When I first spoke on the phone with Tonda, I got right to the point in asking why she moved away from her sister in the first place all those years ago.

“When I was 17, I met the love of my life,” she says.

Dan is his name.

“Protect your mom,” the kids always heard their dad say. “Take care of your mom.”

Tonda said goodbye to Dan in the morning before heading to work. When she finished her shift to head home that day in 2022, he didn’t pick up the phone.

Tonda didn’t want to get out of bed anymore.

Their first date was on January 1, 1983. They saw 48 Hours together. Dan apologized after the movie. He didn’t realize just how much bad language was gonna be in the film. The couple eloped on December 27, 1983.

She only left the house for work and didn’t answer anybody’s calls. After more attempts to invite Tonda out than a family can count, she finally accepted an invite to dinner. 

That night, Tonda’s son put her in contact with his Quest 2 and she tried out tennis and ping pong. By the end of the weekend, Tonda had her own Quest 2 and the following Wednesday, Ronda had hers. Not long after, they were putting together, ball-hunting together, flying together, and then flogging together.

To say that Tonda has used her VR headset to process her husband’s death is an understatement. She found Walkabout’s simple avatar editor and customized it to make her avatar look like Dan, so much so that her adult son cried when he came face to face with his likeness on the golf course.

“Oh my god, this is a way for her to bring him in,” Ronda realized when she joined in. “She’s not alone in this.”

Dan in real life trying an early VR headset.

“It’s like he’s there too,” Tonda says. “When I did not want to communicate with anybody, along came this opportunity that was different to give me a way to come out of it.” 

“For people that maybe don’t perceive themselves as gamers, you don’t have to be good at it to have a good time,” Tonda says. “It’s not about being good at it, it’s about ‘let's go do this thing together and spend time together.’ It’s just about going someplace that’s nice and safe.”

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Meta Finally Lets Users Appeal Bans in Social VR App ‘Horizon Worlds’

Meta announced it’s finally giving Horizon Worlds users the ability to file an appeal when suspected of breaking the social VR app’s Code of Conduct.

It’s been nearly three years since Meta first released Horizon Worlds in open beta, however now the company has pushed its v149 update which includes the ability to file an appeal when restrictions are placed on their profile for suspected ‘Code of Conduct for Virtual Experiences’ violations.

The company’s virtual Code of Conduct specifies that users can’t do things like promote anything designed to deceive other users, things that are illegal, abusive or could lead to physical harm, spam others for stuff like commercial services, goods or requests, or engage in or share sexually explicit or excessively violent behavior or content in public areas.

Meta says in a blog post that users can now submit a request by going to ‘Account Status’ to view any restrictions added to your profile for Code of Conduct for Virtual Experiences violations. Now you’ll be able to submit your request via the link provided in the warning or notice of suspension email.

Additionally, Meta says it’s changing how it handles Code of Conduct breakers. Suspects will have their microphones temporarily muted, and they could also temporarily lose access to some Quest features including Chats, Groups, and Calls, in addition to general access to Worlds. Severe or continuous violations may result in your Horizon profile being disabled along with your Meta account, Meta says.

Over the last year, Meta has focused on Horizon Worlds in effort to increase user retention. Starting in summer last year, Meta introduced its initial slate of first-party content with hero shooter Super Rumble and co-op adventure Citadel. The company has since released Horizon Worlds support for flatscreen devices, including Android and web browsers.

https://youtu.be/02kCEurWkqU

The post Meta Finally Lets Users Appeal Bans in Social VR App ‘Horizon Worlds’ appeared first on Road to VR.

Horizon Worlds Is Now One Of The Top 10 Most Used Apps On Quest In The US

Meta’s Horizon Worlds “metaverse” platform is now in the top 10 most used apps on the Quest Store in the US.

Mark Zuckerberg announced the achievement to investors during Meta’s Q4 2023 earnings call on Thursday.

The Meta Quest Store publicly lists the ‘Most Popular’ apps at a given time in your region at a URL described as showing "the most played experiences right now", which I often check to see what Quest owners are actually doing with their headsets. At the time of writing, Horizon Worlds is #8 in the US, so it seems likely this is the metric Zuckerberg was referring to.

When I last noted Horizon Worlds' rank a few months ago it was around #20, so Meta’s social platform is seeing impressive growth. And in a way, it’s not surprising. Horizon Worlds has seen significant fundamental upgrades over the past year.

In July, Meta announced that it had spun up a new studio called Ouro Interactive to build high-quality games in Horizon using imported 3D assets created in professional desktop modeling software. Ouro has launched three games so far, Super Rumble, Citadel, and Shootball. Meta has also recently been rolling out this 3D asset importing capability to select third-party creators.

This new capability enables worlds with much higher fidelity graphics, avoiding the flat lifeless style of worlds built using the in-VR shape manipulation tools.

Meta’s Horizon Metaverse Avatars Finally Have Legs
Meta Avatars in its Horizon Worlds “metaverse” platform now have virtual legs.

In September, Horizon Worlds finally added the feature it had been ridiculed on social media for not having: legs. While there are valid arguments for why avatars without full body tracking shouldn’t have legs, they fell flat in the face of the fact that it just looked janky and unfinished in screenshots shared to outside VR, limiting the appeal of the entire platform. As frivolous as it may sound, we'd wager adding legs had a non-negligible impact on Horizon Worlds’ growth.

In December, Horizon fully rolled out support for members-only worlds, enabling the platform to be used by clubs, groups, and communities.

What may have had the biggest impact of all, though, was Meta integrating Horizon Worlds into the Quest system software Library interface. Since v60, as well as Applications Quest owners now have a tab called Worlds, with one-click access to the top Horizon destinations.

Meta Is Gradually Merging Horizon Into Quest’s Interface
Here’s how Meta is slowly but surely merging Horizon Worlds into the Quest system interface - and vice versa.

Even though it made it to the top 10 most used apps on Quest, however, Horizon Worlds is still ranked behind its major competitors. At the time of writing, Rec Room is #3, VRChat is #4, and Roblox is #6.

That all the major social platforms are in the top 10 most used apps on Quest reflects just how popular and retentive social VR is. People often think of Quest as a platform only for gaming and fitness, but social VR platforms are more used than all but a handful games - and any fitness app. While mainstream sentiment towards the idea of spending time socializing in “the metaverse” remains in the realm of ridicule or speculation about future potential, for millions of headset owners it’s already their primary use case.

Microsoft Teams Now Supports 3D Immersive Meetings & Quest Owners Can Join From VR

Microsoft Teams now supports immersive 3D meetings.

To start an immersive 3D meeting in Teams, you just click a new 'immersive space (3D)' dropdown menu option.

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Quest headset owners can join from VR via the Microsoft Mesh app now available on the Quest Store.

Those who don't own a Quest headset can join on their monitor on PC and use their keyboard and mouse to move through the environment.

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Microsoft provides a default 3D environment, but organizations can also build their own environments using Unity and the Mesh toolkit.

Custom environments from Accenture, Mercy Ships, BP, and Takeda.

The ability to join immersive 3D Teams meetings from Meta Quest headsets was originally teased alongside Quest Pro at Connect 2022, when Microsoft and Meta announced a long-term strategic partnership in AR/VR.

This partnership with Meta seems to be Microsoft's AR/VR play for the foreseeable future. In 2022 its HoloLens lead left the company, and it recently announced it was killing its own PC VR platform.

The Meta partnership recently brought Xbox Cloud Gaming and Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to Quest. The next arrival should be Windows 365, which will stream a virtual full-fledged Windows 11 PC from the cloud for a subscription fee.

Quest Users Can Now Join Zoom Meetings From VR Workrooms
Meta Quest users can now join Zoom Pro meetings from VR via Horizon Workrooms.

Microsoft Mesh may seem like a direct competitor for Meta's own Horizon Workrooms. But the companies are planning to let you join regular Microsoft Teams meetings from Workrooms at some point in the future, just as you can already join Zoom meetings.

Still, Microsoft Mesh's immersive meetings seem to offer significantly greater levels of customization for organizations willing to put the effort in, and the seamless integration with Teams should make it the VR meeting tool of choice for those already using Microsoft's collaboration platform.

‘VRChat’ Competitor ‘Resonite’ Coming to PC VR This Week

Resonite, a new social VR platform from the principal creator behind metaverse app Neos VR, is set to launch into early access on SteamVR headsets this week.

Update (October 3rd, 2023): Resonite is slated to launch on October 6th at 11:00 AM PT (local time here) on Steam. The developers say the app is now ready to make its first steps into Early Access:

“We reached a point where we are confident that major issues will be sorted out and we’d generally prefer not to make all of you wait longer and delay the launch. There will still probably be some bumps, but we’ll smooth them out as time goes,” the studio announced on its Patreon.

“We’re very excited to open the new platform and experience our work. We have a lot more for store in you as well coming in the future. The launch is just beginning of this new digital universe and with your help and support, we’ll continue shaping and expanding for many years (and hopefully decades) into the future.”

Resonite seems to have already resonated with backers, as the metaverse platform is now garnering over $25,000 per month through Patreon. Check it out on Steam here. The original article follows below:

Original Article (September 25th, 2023): There’s a fair bit of drama surrounding Neos VR, something you can read up on over at Ryan Schulz’s blog, which delves into the cryptocurrency-fueled rift between principal developer Tomáš “Frooxius” Mariančík and Karel Hulec, CEO of the app’s publisher Sorilax. The two have completely parted ways, with Hulec still managing Neos while Mariančík is now heading a new team developing Resonite.

From what by all accounts was a bitter split, Resonite is emerging from the controversy, bringing with it what Mariančík describes as a “novel digital universe with infinite possibilities.”

“Whether you resonate with people around the world in a casual conversation, playing games and socializing or you riff off each other when creating anything from art to programming complex games, you’ll find your place here,” the app’s Steam description reads.

Like Neos VR, Resonite heavily focuses on in-app content creation, allowing users to create their own interactive avatars, art, gadgets, and “complex interactive worlds and games.”

There’s no release date yet for Resonite (see update), however the app’s Steam page says it’s launching into early access sometime in October. Whatever the case, Resonite doesn’t appear to have ambitions to launch on Quest, PSVR 2, or mobile hardware currently, essentially setting it up to be a PC-exclusive experience likely appealing mostly to enthusiasts.

We’re curious to learn more about Resonite, and what sets it apart from Neos. Whatever the case, there seems to be a fairly substantial expected migration of Neos users to Resonite, as Resonite’s Patreon page already boasts over $14,000 monthly donations.

According to cached pages, support for Neos VR’s Patreon has decreased significantly in the past two years since the project included its own cryptocurrency and friction arose between its creators; near its all-time high of over $18,000 per-month donations, today Neos garners a little under $5,000 per month from backers.

Avatars In Meta's Horizon Worlds 'Metaverse' Finally Have Legs

Meta Avatars in Horizon Worlds now have virtual legs.

If you launch Horizon Worlds and look in the mirror in the menu space, you'll see your avatar's full body, and you'll see it for other people too when you enter a world. The company's virtual avatars had previously faced widespread ridicule for their upper-body-only appearance.

If you look down however you still won't see your own legs. This legs update only applies to third person avatars - other people and yourself in the mirror - not in first person.

Group selfie from Jose Ramos Moreno

Many third-party VR apps & games already give you virtual legs in both first and third person. But no shipping VR system has built-in leg tracking, so virtual legs don’t match the actual movement of your real legs. Further, there's not really a graceful way to handle the transition between sitting and standing, nor to make the legs look natural when moving around with the thumbstick. Some people don’t mind these issues with fake virtual legs, but it feels disconcerting to others.

Legs had already arrived in the Quest home space (branded Horizon Home) two weeks ago for Quest firmware Public Test Channel users, but this is the first time they've arrived in a VR app.

Third party apps using Meta Avatars (such as GOLF+) can't yet add legs though, as the SDK hasn't been updated. Horizon's developers seem to have early access to a new version.

Meta may be waiting to release the SDK update at its yearly Connect conference though, where it announces and releases many of its Quest VR features. This year it's scheduled for September 27, just under two weeks from now.

Meta Avatars Are Getting Legs, Then A Graphics Overhaul
Meta Avatars are getting third-person legs soon, and a major graphics overhaul next year. They will also get support for Quest Pro’s eye tracking and face tracking later this month so your gaze, blinking, and facial expressions are mapped to your avatar in real-time. Legs will arrive in Horiz…

Last year Meta also announced its avatars would be getting a full graphics overhaul this year with a more realistic style. But there's been no word on that since, and the company said the demo it showed was made with motion capture technology, not VR.

This Steam Add-on Aims to Make It Easier to Sleep in VR

Sleeping in VR is definitely a thing. Just head for any of the so-called ‘sleep worlds’ in VRChat for yourself to see avatars snoozing away whilst curled up on a virtual couch. Now a Steam overlay looks to make it easier for the VR sleepers among us to catch their forty winks.

Called OyasumiVR – VR Sleeping Utilities, the software is designed to detect when you’re asleep and automate various tasks, something its creator ‘Raphii’ says can help make VR sleeping “as comfortable as possible.”

OyasumiVR can is also said to dim headset brightness, trigger avatar animations based on your sleeping pose, automatically handle invite requests so you’re not disturbed, and automate various SteamVR settings.

There’s actually a pretty extensive array of features beyond those mentioned above, including the ability to create shutdown sequences so you can automatically turn off controllers. base stations, quit SteamVR, or even shut down Windows entirely—just what you need if you’re looking to drift off to asleep in VR, but want to wake up in your own bed.

Originally projected to land on Steam on August 25th, OyasumiVR – VR Sleeping Utilities is available for free starting today on Steam. You check out the full list of features on the linked Steam page to see if it’s right for you.

Roblox Developer Conference Attendees Receive Free Quest Pros Ahead of Quest 3 Launch

Roblox has done very well on Quest. When it launched on the standalone VR platform back in July, it managed to break one million downloads in its first five days, essentially making the online game the hottest social VR platform currently available on Quest. Now Roblox has also showered attendees at its annual developer conference this past weekend with free Quest Pros.

Despite being in direct competition with Meta’s Horizon Worlds social VR platform, there doesn’t seem to be any bad blood over the explosive growth of Roblox on Quest.

A message was sent to attendees at RDC23 this past weekend, stating that Meta is footing the bill to provide a heap of free Quest Pros, its $1,000 mixed reality standalone.

“The news is out! We want to give a special thanks to our partner meta. They have offered to provide all RDC23 attendees with Meta Quest Pro headsets to help you create the best Roblox experiences for VR,” the message reads.

Developers didn’t have to wait long, as they collected their free Quest Pros on site at RDC23.

During the RDC 2023 keynote, Baszucki also revealed that Roblox now features “over 50,000 experiences that are ready right now on Meta Quest.”

Roblox is currently available on the Quest platform via App Lab, however the company says it’s set for its “full” release on Quest sometime in September. Baszucki didn’t specify when, although it’s a good bet that the popular social platform will be a launch day title on Quest 3, which could come as early as September 27th during Connect, Meta’s annual developer conference.

The company also announced Roblox is headed to PlayStation in October, however it’s not clear if that will include PSVR or PSVR 2 support as well.

Citadel Is The Second Horizon Worlds Game Built By Meta With Imported 3D Assets

Citadel is an FPS adventure built in Horizon Worlds using the platform's upcoming new creator tools.

Meta actually describes Citadel as a "rogue-lite action-adventure puzzle platformer FPS", which can be played solo or co-op with a friend.

Currently, third party Horizon creators have to build worlds entirely inside VR, placing and manipulating primitive colored shapes using the tracked controllers and then using a spatial visual scripting system to add dynamic functionality. But this results in a crude simplistic graphics style that has faced widespread ridicule when seen in screenshots outside VR.

Citadel is the second game to be built using two new tools: textured 3D asset importing from desktop PC software and TypeScript, a popular language based on JavaScript.

The first game was a six player free-for-all shooter called Super Rumble, which launched in July. Super Rumble was also the first Horizon world available in the mobile & web closed beta.

When releasing Super Rumble, Meta said it was created by a new internal games studio called Ouro Interactive, and it would be just one of many "marquee titles" that will launch on Horizon over the next six months from both Ouro and select third party studios.

We've reached out to Meta to ask whether Citadel was built by Ouro too, and whether it also supports mobile & web.

Meta isn't yet making the new tools available to general creators, and hasn't yet given a date for that happening. It could be announced at the company's yearly conference, Connect, which this year is scheduled for September 27.