In January 2016 — months before the HTC Vive even shipped to consumers — we covered an experimental co-op project that combined the Vive with Microsoft's Kinect sensor to project real players into a shared virtual space.
As well as letting multiple players exist in the same virtual environment, the setup used Kinect's depth cameras to capture gamers' real-world images and composite them into VR — an early ancestor of what we now call mixed reality capture and passthrough experiences. Gaming outlets including Co-Optimus cited the project as an example of how VR could change cooperative play entirely.
The concepts explored in that prototype era — shared presence, seeing real bodies in virtual space — are now mainstream features on headsets like the Quest 3, and passthrough content has become its own category, including in the adult VR space we review.
Condensed from our original coverage.