AltspaceVR today announced that the social VR platform will be receiving official support for HTC Vive, the first consumer VR headset to integrate large-scale positional tracking.
After yesterday’s announcement that the VR social space would soon be getting mobile support via the Samsung Gear VR platform (Road to VR was in attendance at the closed Gear VR demonstration), the company has today officially added yet another headset to the roster of their cross-platform service.
AltspaceVR now supports the HTC Vive Innovator Edition, a developer kit given away by Valve for free to selected developers/studios. The final model, which is slated to come out later this year, is said by HTC’s Brian Lowe to contain an integrated microphone, modular headphones, and a much thinner cable connecting the headset to the PC.
The company hopes users will drop in for a chat no matter what consumer VR device they may buy in the coming months, although there’s still no word yet if Playstation VR (ex-Sony Morpheus) will join the ranks.
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The social VR software, which has provided users on Oculus Rift DK2 up until now with shareable, streaming content from services such as Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, also offers interactive tabletop games where you can play chess, or even D&D. Players can sit down (in character, mind you) and roll dice, build maps, or move pieces across the board with a mouse click—a feature we hope will be full interactive with the Steam VR hand controllers.
“Our team has been working hard to support the new platform, and we’re thrilled that consumers around the world will be able to communicate with each other via AltspaceVR upon the launch of Vive,” said CEO Eric Romo. “We appreciate that developers are also excited about Vive’s advanced capabilities and its integration with Steam, the largest digital distribution platform for PC gaming.”
Since our interview with “Cymatic” Bruce Wooden, developer and community relations manager at AltspaceVR, we already had a pretty good idea that both HTC Vive and Gear VR were in their collective sights. But with official support coming to Oculus Rift, Gear VR, and now HTC Vive, the team has cemented their commitment to being available to as many people as possible, which in the social networking business is key to survival.
AltspaceVR will be announcing more features this week in their first ‘Social Week’, taking place Sept. 14-21. You can check out their events page for direct links into the scheduled event area.
