But what happens at Meta ? After the events mentioned during our last live (see video), here is that Mark Zuckerberg’s firm would be listening to the players. VDo you remember? Those who allowed virtual reality (more than anyone) to become what it is today. On the issue of avatars, you found it as absurd as it was aberrant to see only a bust, a head and hands that fly ? Well, let’s save that for Game Of Thrones, Meta heard you. Your avatars will soon be equipped with legs: a small step for the avatar, two large legs for the metaverse !
Remember, during our last live, we noted the fact thatafter having amazed us with the 90 Hz, the 120 Hz, the hand trackingmixed reality and the project Avalanchenothing extraordinary had been announced since. Whether it’s in terms of the games or the experiences themselves, we can’t say that the year 2022 has been as successful as the previous ones.
Adding legs to avatars is a starting point that contrasts less with the vision of the metaverse that Zuckerberg had during the Connect 2021. Far from giving us a nice leg, this addition marks a turning point in the history of Metathat of listening to the playersand not only to the sacrosanct NFT and other personal data. This mea culpa (far from being assumed), Meta already realized it once, stating that he was working on whatHorizon Worlds and the avatars are at least “semi-realistic”, and the second time here, by making the avatars more realistic, i.e. by first displaying their legs. Yes, you can have the most photorealistic character possible, if he has no legs and his body floats, what’s the point? So let’s start at the beginning.
Talking about that, this is Andrew Bosworth, technical director of Metawho is at the initiative of these famous gambettes. During his last session instagram, he had fun questioning the players in the following way: “Ask me anything”and of course, guess what, his community asked him about leg tracking. Andrew replied to them:
Yeah, we’ve been laughed at a lot for the legless avatars, I think that’s a very fair point and yet quite funny.
Andrew Bosworth went on to say:
Having legs on your own avatar that don’t match your real legs is very confusing to people. But of course we can put legs on other people, which you can see, and you don’t mind at all.
So we’re working on legs that look natural to viewers – because they don’t know how your real legs are positioned – but you, when you look at your own legs, you’ll probably still see nothing. This is our current strategy.
You would have understood it, Meta works on the legs of his avatars, but you will only see those of others and not your own. The current avatar system, released to developers late last year, currently shows legs in the editor, but they are not included in the SDKs and therefore do not appear in the apps.
Many apps and games display virtual legs, but like no system VR current doesn’t include leg tracking, it doesn’t match the movement of your actual legs. Some people don’t see a problem with it, even prefer it, but as A. Bosworth points out, it disconcerts more than one. This in no way precludes installing an avatar system showing other people’s legs, and that’s what Meta according to him.
However, this approach still presents major challenges, such as managing the transition between sitting and standing positions, and the natural appearance of the legs when moving with the joystick. In many applications today, avatars feel more like shuffling and sliding than actually walkingthe fault is also due to movements that are too fast to be realistic.
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