Breakdown
- Niantic, the developers behind Pokemon Go, have released a new mixed reality app that lets you interact with a virtual pet
- The Peridot can jump on your hand, interact with your strokes and pulls, and can also follow your directions
- Hello, Dot is now free on the Quest Store, and shows promising signs of a Pokémon Go experience in mixed reality
While Pokémon Go features augmented reality, allowing you to witness your party of pocket monsters in your living room, it's not exactly immersive. You need to hold your smartphone camera at the floor and, if you look past your device, you can tell it's obviously not real.
However, as technology progresses with hardware like the best VR headsets, especially with the likes of the Meta Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro, the idea of bringing Pokémon into the real world is almost here. And, nothing proves that more than the Pokémon Go developers' latest VR app.
Hello, Dot is a new app for Quest 3 that allows you to interact with a virtual pet. Available on the Quest Store's App Lab program for free, this mixed reality experience will give you a Peridot, a virtual animal that first debuted in Niantic's other mobile game, Peridot. However, the developers also told UploadVR that an Apple Vision Pro port is in the works too.
In Hello, Dot, you get a virtual pet that you can interact with, thanks to the Quest 3's impressive hand-tracking. The Dot will jump on your hand, react to you pulling or stroking it, and it will also follow your lead as you point to where you want it to go. Not only are the Dots stupidly adorable, but they're also a good indication of how we could react to various Pokémon in mixed reality.
While the Google April Fools' joke back in 2014 was a precursor to Pokémon Go, the prank was obviously much more advanced than the game we received. However, Niantic did develop a Pokémon Go demo for the HoloLens, and the company acquired 6D.ai a few years back for "planet-scale AR", so it seems like the idea of Pokémon Go in our VR headsets isn't an if, but rather a when.
I'm not entirely sure if we can get the entire Pokémon Go experience in mixed reality, or else we'll be looking like The Simpsons' take on Apple Vision Pro. However, the idea of interacting with the likes of Pikachu, or being towered over by Pokémon like Gyarados or Rayquza makes me desperate for Pokémon Go in Quest 3.