Watch Realistic Avatars Powered by Oculus & Vive Interact in High Fidelity

I meant to blog this video last month, but it's still worth a watch -- two impressively realistic avatars, one powered by a Vive user, the other by an Oculus user, playing tic-tac-toe (kinda sorta) in High Fidelity:

High Fidelity's lead artist is a veteran of Pixar, so most avatars we've seen in demos are decidedly Incredibles-like, so it's good to watch eerily human-looking ones in action. (Dangling in mid-air Wiley Coyote-like over the Uncanny Valley though they may be.) In a new blog post, HF Director of Content Caitlyn Meeks includes this demo while summarizing the startups' mission to make the VR experience more human:

The human spirit is a profoundly slippery, playful, shining entity which, although it may be entertained by occasional games as a diversion, dwells in an ocean of thought. We humans dance, appreciate beauty, argue, love, share, create, pretend, solve problems and tell stories. We are surprised, delighted, frightened, disappointed, shocked. We experience self deceit and introspection. These things are innately living and human. We do these things, we act this out, in reality. If we want to be human in VR, we need the space and scope to do the same... We at High Fidelity are designing a VR platform to facilitate humanness from its very core. Instead of adding VR to a game engine or make a 3D chat room, we’ve written an extensible, distributed, completely open-source avatar-mediated multi-user virtual reality platform. Designed to accommodate any number of people in a distributed, decentralized, user operated universe of domains. Where the subtleties of body language, voice and human presence can be streamed together in real time. Together, with an HMD and hand controllers, we can dance, we can share objects and space together, we can talk, whisper, joke, explore and just be human together.

Then again, humans being awful to other humans is also, sad to say, a deeply human thing -- and seems to get worse, not better, in VR. So hopefully all this idealism is being tempered with an equally thoughtful approach to preventing abuse. Anyway, much more here.

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Comments

[Carlos Loff]

Now, yes... It looks like Philip is going somewhere

[Imagin Illyar]

The avatars look amazing, very realistic. Their body movements aren't quite right but I'm sure that will be improved. I have to wonder though. Are these people - in real life - standing, like their avatars, or sitting?

[DrFran]

@Imagin Illyar. The answer to your question is: Both. When I use my Vive in High Fidelity, I can either sit or stand. If I am playing a game, or doing something physical, I tend to walk around my "Vive Csve" (aka bedroom), but when I am at a meeting or talking with friends in HiFi, I tend to sit. A little nudge on the hand controller, and I appear to be standing.

What you do determines whether you sit or stand in VR. Tilt Brush and Fantastic Contraption both work best standing.