VRChat, the popular online VR world platform (or metaverse space, if anyone’s still using that phrase), is launching new features with potential to open up the space for non-VR users and increase avatar interaction.
A new ‘selfie cam’ face-tracking function is being trialled in beta. It allows you to control your VRChat avatar’s facial expressions and hands by having the avatar mimic your ‘real’ face and hand movements.
This function allows users to make their avatars more expressive when using the desktop version of VRChat without a VR headset. Instead a desktop webcam can perform basic face and hand tracking, which is then relayed to your avatar (example pictured below).
A new ‘drone’ first-person view mode is also being trialled in beta, allowing you to view the VRChat virtual world from the perspective of a drone, controlling your view with control functions similar to those of an aerial drone.
The new drone function (pictured below) allows you to view the virtual world from a totally different perspective to the standard ‘first-person’ avatar view. A new ‘camera dolly’ view function, that lets you set up viewpoints similar to those created by professional movie camera dolly angles, is also being trialed in beta.
The functions were announced on Bluesky by Charles Tupper, VRChat’s head of community. Tupper said the features will be available to members of VRChat+, the platform’s paid-for subscription level.
For many users VRChat can be one of the more wholesome VR worlds, in which users often interact while represented by cutesy avatars. Users can create virtual worlds as well as avatars in VRChat, but creating pornographic content within the platform is banned.
Users are allowed to make “sexually suggestive” content, such as avatars in skimpy clothes or an adult-themed nightclub within a world, but such content has to have a content warning. Some content within VRChat is age-gated to those who have verified that they are aged 18 or over, by joining VRChat+ and submitting ID to the platform.
Many users have described spending time in VRChat as an increasingly ‘sexual’ experience in recent years, as users play with the boundaries of avatar and world-building raciness.
The new ‘selfie-cam’ function in particular has the potential to make a more immersive experience for those looking to VRChat for intimacy, even if it doesn’t allow their avatar to do much more than smile and wave their hands about a bit.
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