Using the Vive Focus Plus to alter real-world environments.
Imagine your standing in your bedroom, office, or any other comfortable interior of your choosing. You look down at the floor and watch as the ground begins to move underneath your feet; a thin layer of water slowly starts to rise above your ankles.
Before you know it, the water has reached your waste, then your head. Now you’re totally submerged, your vision skewed to the point you can only make out vague silhouettes of large furniture; even your own to hands have become a blur.
That’s just a taste of what one developer is working on using HTC’s new Vive Focus Plus 6DoF standalone VR headset. Harnessing power of the dual front-facing passthrough cameras featured on the device, Tony Vitillo—VR/AR developer and owner of Skarredghost.com—developed a simple, but intriguing, mixed reality experience that can best be described as my personal hell on Earth.
In a video released as part of a series of tweets documenting the experiments, Tony shows himself using the upgraded Focus headset to virtually flood his personal office.
The digital water can be seen rising out of the floor and steadily increasing in height as it encapsulates everything within the room. As the water level reaches his waste, you can begin to see the movement of the water’s surface add realistic distortion to various “submerged” objects, including Tony’s own hands and feet.
In terms of potential use-cases, the possibilities are exciting. Tony goes on to provide his own prospectives, such as an underwater escape room that uses real-world locations to educate users on how to handle dangerous flood scenarios. For a less stressful approach, he frames the experience as a potential relaxation tool that could bring calming, beachside visuals to soul-crushing office spaces.
Seeing as the HTC is labeling the Vive Focus Plus as a professional-grade headset for enterprise use, Tony’s deceitfully simple experiment could serve as an excellent tool for a variety of educational training purposes.
The Vive Focus Plus was originally scheduled to launch earlier this week. However, due to shipping delays, several regions—including the US—will be receiving staggered rollouts throughout May.
The standalone headset features many of the same properties as its original counterpart, save for several improvements to tracking, including dual 6DoF controllers.
