Don’t worry, he proposed in real life, too. Chandler Murch, an employee at Valve Software, the official SteamVR partner for the HTC Vive, popped the question to Katie Tortorice while she wore the VR headset, and with creativity like that, she obviously said yes. Tortorice shared the news via her Facebook profile, where she wrote:
Posted by Kelly Tortorice on Thursday, 1 October 2015
Completing the post are photos of the virtual ring she saw in her headset, Murch actually dropping to one knee to ask the question, inspiring the subsequent happy ending.
“[Chandler] told me to take off my headset, and there he really was, on one knee, with a real ring,” Tortorice continued. “It wasn’t imaginary anymore. But I didn’t say yes. I said, ‘OF COURSE I WILL MARRY YOU!'”
With such a historic use of virtual reality technology, how could she have said anything else?
While the couple’s engagement isn’t the first to be carried out by way of VR headset (there was a Google Cardboard instance version back in March), Murch’s position as a member of the Valve team means that it’s definitely the first HTC Vive virtual reality proposal. In fact, the rest of us don’t even have the option of using the hardware to pop the question, as the product isn’t set to launch until the end of 2015.
“Thank you for such a hilarious and fun surprise,” concludes Tortorice’s post. “I love you and I can’t wait for the life ahead of us.” We have every hope it will be even better than virtual reality.
