AltspaceVR is in the middle of a big week for the company with a number of big announcements including today’s which brings support for the HTC Vive to the platform.
The news comes on the heels of AltspaceVR’s announcement of support for the GearVR yesterday, meaning that the social VR platform now officially has support for most of the major headsets with Sony’s Morpheus Playstation VR still remaining as an outlier.
Vive support comes as an important step for the young social VR platform as it allows for access to hand tracked input devices, which can be seen in the video. These inputs allow for a whole layer of non-verbal communication to be added within the social space.
Previously, AltspaceVR has demonstrated tracking of hand input via devices like the Kinect or Leap Motion, but each of those devices has known issues with losing tracking and can result in poorly timed mishaps within a social communication space. Imagine you are giving an important presentation on a virtual stage, revealing support for a new hardware device, and all of a sudden your arms start flailing about wildly and voguing. That would be pretty embarrassing, wouldn’t it? Eh, Eric? (This actually happened during the GearVR press conference yesterday, thankfully however everyone had a great sense of humor about it.) With the Vive the tracking is pretty darn locked in (unless you have a bunch of reflective surfaces) so the chances of your social gestures being misconveyed are far smaller.
Altspace will be hosting an event at 10am PST to talk more about Vive support and if you are in San Francisco this evening they will be demonstrating the platform on the Vive at the Kaledoscope VR Film festival.
We will be at both events and will report back with more info
