CloudGate’s Virtual Self turns Vive Trackers into full-body motion capture devices

When game developer CloudGate Studio got its hands on HTC Vive Tracker peripherals earlier this year, it led to players kicking dinosaurs in virtual reality. It was a fun use case, but the company has much bigger plans for this tech. Its Virtual Self plugin enables developers to use one to three Trackers to provide full-body motion-capture in VR. It will be available to demo in CloudGate’s dinosaur survival game Island 359 on December 1, and at a later date, the plugin will launch for Unreal Engine 4, with a Unity version plugin to come.

Virtual Self coincides with HTC’s announcement that players can purchase Trackers for $100 each starting today. The Tracker can turn anything into a VR peripheral. Attaching one to a tennis racquet or baseball bat will turn that object into a controller for a round of immersive sports indoors. Starting in March, developers could buy Trackers to begin experimenting with them.