Sketchy Realms has SHIPPED the face tracking it PROMISED for VR Realms, its FREE social hub on Steam, and WIDENED it beyond the ONE headset it had actually VERIFIED. Patch 0.3.2, POSTED at 17:29 UTC on October 12, says the game “now also reads HTC’s face tracker, and a Quest Pro through more PC links.” The SAME line carries an unusual ADMISSION: “This is new and we have not been able to test it on those headsets ourselves, so tell us in Discord how it goes.”
What changed between the preview and the build
The studio PREVIEWED version 0.3.0 on October 10. That post described face tracking that sends smiles, jaw, brows, cheeks, tongue, eyelids and gaze to EVERYONE in a session, switched ON by default, and “working today on a Quest Pro,” with more headsets “being tested.” TWO builds followed in roughly 41 HOURS: 0.3.1 at 00:12 UTC on October 11, billed as “A small update,” and 0.3.2 the next afternoon.
The headline change is HARDWARE reach, NOT new CAPABILITY. Typing /face link in chat now LISTS what a given headset offers. Beyond the developer’s own wording, there is NO INDEPENDENT confirmation yet of how well HTC’s tracker or the extra Quest Pro PC links behave in practice. Readers SHOULD treat that support as EARLY and COMMUNITY-tested.
The webcam now starts OFF, every time
The PRIVACY-relevant change sits in the webcam section. “The webcam is off every time the game starts,” the notes say. “One click in Settings, Comfort turns it on again, as you had it.” The October 10 preview ALREADY said desktop webcam tracking was off until a player picked a mode, and that “your camera picture never leaves your PC,” with ONLY a computed POSE sent to other players. That claim is the developer’s description of its own code; it CANNOT be AUDITED from outside the app.
The reset-at-launch default is STRICTER than the approach the studio took with eye tracking earlier this month, when avatar gaze went out to other players by DEFAULT unless a user opted out. We covered that rollout on October 4. Notably, headset face tracking itself was described as ON by default in the 0.3.0 preview, and 0.3.2 does NOT say that changed.
A SECOND fix settles which CAMERA wins. With a headset plugged in, the game now picks the WEBCAM rather than the headset’s own sensor; /face cam list followed by /face cam and a number overrides it. Webcam tracking also gained WRIST rotation that other players can see, flat open hands, a RECOGNIZABLE thumbs-up, full blinks and shoulder movement.
MetaHuman avatars become MODULAR
The larger engineering piece is AVATAR plumbing. An avatar made from a MetaHuman “now has a face that talks, blinks, looks around and follows face tracking,” and its outfit, hair and cape become SWAPPABLE pieces. In Creator Kit 0.4.30, a “Make modular avatar” button turns an assembled MetaHuman into a face piece with 51 SHAPES, plus separate outfit, hair and cape pieces, including a CLOTH cape that swings in the game.
ONE fix reaches EXISTING content. On humanoid and VRM avatars, the studio writes, “a turned wrist used to wring the arm like a towel.” The forearm now takes HALF of the turn, and “it works on every avatar already on the Workshop; nobody has to upload again.” Avatars on the older mannequin skeleton, which previously had about a DOZEN emotes and ALWAYS sat cross-legged, now get all FOUR bench sits, the lying poses and EVERY emote.
Smaller fixes and two open polls
- VR Drop Portal WORKS again, and the hand that pressed it keeps its laser.
- Mirror Range now counts from the mirror, so players no longer drop out of view when the user steps back.
- New Workshop uploads appear in the creator’s own menus IMMEDIATELY instead of waiting HOURS for Steam to list them.
- The Halloween hub gained THREE more arrival points, and the robot host’s pop-up is now PRIVATE to the player it answers.
- Two polls run until October 25 at vr-realms.com: what would keep players in the hub when nobody else is online, and which game the studio should build next.
Why it matters
VR Realms launched FREE on Steam on September 25 and is listed as “VR Supported,” NOT VR-only. That makes the webcam path the ENTRY point for players with NO headset to read their face at all, which is the pitch the studio’s X account is now making DIRECTLY. For headset owners, the useful question is SIMPLE: does the HTC and expanded Quest Pro support WORK OUTSIDE the developer’s office? By the studio’s own account, the FIRST answers will come from PLAYERS, not from Sketchy Realms.
Sources: VR Realms 0.3.2 patch notes (Steam, Oct 12); 0.3.1 patch notes (Steam, Oct 11); 0.3.0 preview and earlier updates (Steam news hub); VR Realms Steam store page; MIXED (Oct 13).