Look, I’m not going to pad things out here. A game studio called Triangular Pixels strapped a Vive VR tracker to a cat with a little cat jacket, coded a matching digital cat into virtual reality, and now the cat can follow players around inside VR. The software “detects cats standing up, walking around, sitting down, and lying down,” and plays animations to match.
Someone strapped a VR tracker to a cat to play video games with it
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
The name of the cat pictured above is classified. But there are several more pictures of the tracker in action here, and if you like cats, this one is pretty adorable. You can also watch five minutes of the cat’s avatar (catvatar?) obliviously wandering through deathtraps in Triangular Pixels’ game Unseen Diplomacy below. Triangular Pixels suggests that once the tracker gets a wider release later this year, people could use it on cats, other pets, or small children. For now, I will tentatively say that this beats being a cat, summoning a cat, or saving a cat for the title of “coolest cat-related thing to do in VR,” because none of those involved real cats.
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