A few days ago we echoed the personal interest of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook Inc., that animated avatars in virtual reality are increasingly realistic, and now HTC Vive has introduced two tracking modules for its Virtual Reality headsets , especially highlighting Vive Facial Tracker which, as its name suggests, tracks the movements of your own face.
In this regard, it makes use of two cameras and an infrared illumination system with which it perfectly tracks 38 facial movements on the lips, jaw, teeth, tongue, chin and cheeks, allowing it to be his more expressive self, either virtually socializing or in capturing performance, as he points out in his presentation, and that will come soon at a price of 139 euros.
Moving towards more realistic Virtual Reality experiences
That’s sadly, compatibility is limited to professional-grade Vive Pro headphones, leaving out consumer-oriented models. But among the compatible headphones is the Vive Pro Eye, a variant of the Vive Pro that has built-in eye tracking.
It so happens that, at the beginning of the week, HTC already anticipated something of this launch at the beginning of the week through its Twitter account. And in addition to the Vive Facial Tracker also comes the new generation of VIVE Tracker, a general purpose tracking tracker, which in its third generation enjoys 75% more battery life, more elegant form factor, in addition to bringing compatibility for all steamVR headphones.
This tracker will also arrive soon at a price of 139 euros, allowing it to be integrated into custom controllers or attached to different parts of the human body using straps. Obviously, as we have already indicated, we are heading towards increasingly realistic virtual reality social experiences, where there are those who predict that in the future, video conferencing sessions could be replaced by virtual meetings, as in the case of Microsoft Mesh, focused on encounters in Mixed Reality.
Knowing if a person is angry or happy, or is in full motion, is something that little by little will become normal as the technologies that support Virtual Reality experiences continue to advance.
It will already be a matter of waiting for their respective commercial launches to take place and knowing the experiences of those first users who have their respective units, where in any of the cases it promises great precision of follow-up.
