Optional full-body Rec Room avatars are now available to all players in the beta, but do not yet support body tracking.
Full-body avatars are an optional alternative to Rec Room’s current avatars, which feature only a head, torso, and hands. The feature began rolling out in beta in March, but was initially limited to level 50 players.
Its competitor VRChat has supported full-body avatars powered by body-tracking hardware for many years, while Meta’s Horizon Worlds added full bodies last year, though like Rec Room it also doesn’t currently support body tracking.
Rec Room says it’s still working on body tracking support in SteamVR, such as by attaching 3 or more Vive Trackers or using the Quest 3’s inside-out upper body tracking (IOBT) on PC via Virtual Desktop. However, the company isn’t providing a specific timeline for this, and hasn’t said whether Quest 3’s IOBT will be supported standalone.
For now, Rec Room’s full bodies operate using inverse kinematics (IK), meaning the system will try to estimate the likely positions of your limbs based on the position of your head and hands.
Rec Room emphasizes that full-body avatars will remain completely optional and says it is “committed” to keeping “floating bean” avatars as well.
