Meta has conceded that the virtual legs of Mark Zuckerberg displayed at its online event this week were not exactly the genuine deal.
Tuesday at the annual Connect conference, the Meta CEO announced new goods and services as a cartoonish digital representation of himself.
He stated that avatars in Horizon Worlds, the company’s virtual social program, would soon have legs and jumped up and down to illustrate.
Meta has recently admitted that the demo contained “motion capture-created animations.”
Using sensors to record a person’s movements in real life and translating them into computer-animated graphics is motion capture.
Therefore, the legs exhibited by Zuckerberg’s avatar in the video demonstration may be more lifelike than the legs in the metaverse.
“To provide this peek of what’s to come, the part incorporated motion capture-created animations,” Meta told Upload VR editor Ian Hamilton.
Early Meta and Microsoft avatar models were mocked for their appearance as legless, waist-up bodies floating about their virtual settings.
Meta has consequently concentrated on giving avatars legs in the metaverse, even though the company’s CEO has stated that achieving so is “difficult.”
During the talk, Zuckerberg stated, “There’s one more addition coming shortly that’s probably the most requested feature on our roadmap: legs.”
“I believe everyone has been anticipating this. But truly, legs are difficult. Consequently, other virtual reality systems lack these as well.’
He stated that Meta will introduce full-body avatars with legs to Horizon Worlds first, followed by Meta’s other offerings.
Meta introduced Horizon Environments in December of last year, allowing users to interact with others, play games, and create their virtual worlds.
It is an early stage towards Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to develop the platform into a metaverse — a virtual shared area populated by avatars of real people.
Tuesday’s biggest announcement at Connect was the release of the Meta Quest Pro VR headset, aimed at creative workers.
The £1,499 headgear, aimed at architects, engineers, and designers, among others, includes additional functions designed to enhance users’ experience of being physically present with others.
The device is the successor to the October 2020 release of Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 and the May 2019 release of the first Oculus Quest.
It is 40% thinner than the Quest 2 because of its redesigned pancake lenses, which also provide 75% greater contrast and have new self-tracking controllers that “function as an extension of your hand.”
The October 25 release date for Quest Pro, which Zuckerberg described as a “game-changer” for bringing the metaverse to life, has been announced.
A year has passed since Zuckerberg’s company announced its rebranding as part of its long-term plan to transform its social media platform into a metaverse.
Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook in his Harvard University dorm room in 2004, has referred to the metaverse as an “embodied internet.”
Within a few years, Facebook users will be able to access the platform with a headset instead of a smartphone or PC.
Instead of swiping a device’s screen, individuals could conceivably meet up with a Facebook buddy in a virtual shared area — such as an ultra-realistic simulation of another planet or a beautiful garden – and speak to each other’s avatars.
