XR industry pioneer HTC VIVE today announced its new innovative accessory for VIVE XR Elite, VIVE Full Face Tracker designed for the VIVE XR Elite headset. The new tracker brings exceptional immersion to VR, allowing developers to capture natural, subtle facial expressions for virtual environments and games.

The VIVE Full Face Tracker is a plug-and-play module that brings face and mouth tracking to VIVE XR Elite through a simple USB-C connection. It allows users to emote naturally in VR, capturing up to 38 blend shapes across the lips, teeth, tongue, cheeks, nose, and chin at a 60 Hz tracking rate. This means that even subtle facial expressions are accurately portrayed, and spoken words match facial expressions in real-time.

“This is great for everything from having more natural and realistic avatars, through to helping animators, researchers, training scenarios, healthcare and so much more. In the past we’ve also seen amazing ways to use eye and face tracking as inputs for games and other experiences,” said Shen Ye, Global Head of Product at HTC VIVE. “We’ve built this using our VIVE Wave platform, with support for OpenXR too, so developing for it is really easy. Because of this, anything built for the VIVE Focus 3’s eye and face tracking will work with the new VIVE Full Face Tracker.”

With built-in infrared LEDs, VIVE Full Face Tracker can accurately track eye movements at 120 frames per second. It also sports an innovative auto-calibration feature: the tracker detects your interpupillary distance (IPD) and automatically calibrates the headset for viewing comfort and clarity. This feature allows multiple users to share the same headset without having to manually reset the IPD slider every time.

For more information on product features, specifications, and availability, visit the VIVE Full Face Tracker business website and follow the VIVE social channels and blog.