A new app uses your smartphone camera to track your body and it can send the data to the standalone VRChat Quest app.
Existing VR systems focus on head and hand tracking, though some VRChat enthusiasts use extra hardware to add body tracking. Most commonly, that means adding three or more HTC Vive trackers strapped to their body. The total cost of these trackers and the required base stations is north of $600, and a PC is required. HTC did tease a self-tracking Vive Tracker for later this year, but the pricing hasn’t yet been revealed.
Driver4VR offers a much more affordable alternative with no equipment to strap on. It just requires an iPhone/iPad with iOS 12.0 or above or an Android phone or tablet with Android 5.1 or above. Since it’s doing real-time computer vision, don’t expect it to work well on low-end chipsets. You’ll want to use a high-end device.
The app can use either your front camera or rear camera. Usually the front will have a wider field of view, and being able to see the tracking state makes it much easier to find the right position for your phone. Try placing it as far away from you as possible facing downward, ideally in a phone mount (you can find many on Amazon). The app doesn’t seem to let you choose secondary ultra-wide cameras, at least on Android.
You connect the app to VRChat on Quest via OSC by simply entering your headset’s IP address. This can be found in the headset’s Wi-Fi settings by selecting the network it’s connected to.
Driver4VR’s tracking quality isn’t close to what you’d expect with actual trackers, and there is a short noticeable latency. It also doesn’t work well if you’re not directly facing the phone. But for many VRChat users the experience will still be preferable to having no full body tracking at all.
The app itself is free to try out on the App Store and Google Play, but this only gives you access to hip tracking. To get feet tracking too you’ll need to pay $17 (iOS) / $16 (Android) via an in-app payment. The developer plans to add more tracking points in future.
