Chandler Murch had a plan to propose to his fiancee Kelly Tortorice. He wanted to make it memorable and different so he contrived to pop the question using a HTC Vive Virtual Reality (VR) pre-release kit.
Murch, who is a Valve employee, scheduled Tortorice a tour at his office at Bellevue, Wash. The ruse involved a claim that he wanted to test a VR device. As she was deeply immersed with the experience, walking through a virtual world that included the Alps, a virtual engagement ring suddenly came toward her. When she removed the VR headset, Murch was on his knees holding out a real engagement ring (Murch used a wand controller to align the virtual ring and the engagement ring, The Verge reported).
"So there I was, typical day...on a sunken ship deck; fixing robots; painting three-dimensional fire; walking through the Alps; and then suddenly, a virtual engagement ring started floating my way. Chandler told me to grab it. Then told me to take off my headset, and there he really was, on one knee, with a real ring. It wasn't imaginary anymore," Tortorice posted on her Facebook page.
Tortorice, of course, said yes to the proposal. Murch has the HTC Vive VR headset to thank for the glitch-free event. It is not yet available in the market and only few developers have access to the device, according to Ars Technica. What made the VR proposal special and effective is Vive's capability for "room-scale VR," a technology that is absent in potential rival technology, Oculus Rift. It has more than 70 sensors, 90 Hz refresh rate and a 2,160-by-1,200 pixels resolution, reported Mashable.
If you are also planning to pull a similar stunt, the HTC Vive will hit store shelves on December this year.
