Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse finally has its feet

Mark Zuckerberg has announced that his company is taking a big step towards making virtual reality metaverse avatars more lifelike. to put your feet on.

Since Zuckerberg unveiled his grand metaverse ambitions nearly a year ago, he’s bet his company’s future on the idea that the next era of the internet will rely on virtual and augmented reality. 3D digital avatars intended to mimic our bodies currently lack lower limbs.

Zuckerberg himself was mocked online when he enthusiastically shared a screenshot of his avatar on his Facebook page in August.

Shortly thereafter, Zuckerberg promised a “major graphical update” to Meta’s avatars and delivered that update at Tuesday’s annual Meta Connect developer event, announcing that legs were coming to the Metaverse.

“I know you’ve been waiting for this. Everyone’s been waiting for this,” said a visually enhanced avatar version of Zuckerberg during Tuesday’s presentation. Legs are difficult, and that’s why other virtual reality systems don’t have legs either.”

The fact that Zuckerberg is currently prioritizing his feet in the metaverse shows how important public perception of the metaverse is, and the most difficult challenge to its success is the seemingly simple (technical It might be to solve the visual problem, though technically complex). With the tech giant’s stock price plummeting over the past year and many of its employees reportedly skeptical of the company’s major AR/VR bet, this is a move for the company to bring people into the metaverse. It’s an exciting and important moment.

meta

The reason Meta had so much difficulty recreating the feet in the Metaverse is that currently its AR/VR headset only tracks upper body movements such as hand and facial gestures. So the company currently has no way of knowing what his feet are doing when he puts on one of his headsets.

To be clear, Meta’s current AR/VR product avatars, including the new high-end Quest Pro headset Meta just released, don’t have legs yet. The company says it will first step into the social environment, Horizon Worlds, before expanding to other products. However, it is unclear when exactly these legs will come. And it remains a major technical challenge to solve.

Zuckerberg says Meta uses predictive AI models to infer what your feet are doing based on your upper body movements. No other popular AR/VR hardware maker has been able to do this yet. But for Meta, the company with the world’s largest engineer-his staff, spending $10 billion a year on the Metaverse project alone, it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

“With stand-alone virtual reality headsets, occlusion makes it incredibly difficult to understand leg position,” Zuckerberg explained the technical challenge in his presentation. “So if your legs are under your desk or your arms are blocking your view, the headset can’t see them directly, so you have to build an AI model to predict the position of your whole body. “

Meta said that adding legs would not only improve the avatar, but would also improve the visual graphics more broadly. The company said on Tuesday that its new high-end headset, the Quest Pro, will have inward-facing head sensors that can track eye movements and facial expressions, allowing for a more realistic representation of avatars. The company also said it would “gradually update the meta avatar’s style and appearance over time,” including expressions as well as “depth,” “shading,” and more clothing and accessory options. I got

To be fair, part of what may have overwhelmed some critics so far about Meta’s AR/VR product is what’s been lost in the virtual-to-physical transformation. is. Meta’s AR/VR experience feels more like when you’re actually immersed in his 3D AR/VR world in a headset than when you’re looking at his 2D screenshots of the environment on your computer screen. is more realistic and impressive.

courtesy/meta

It remains important for Zuckerberg and his team to quickly find a way to fix the avatar’s leg problem and improve the avatar’s graphics overall. According to recent reports in The Verge and New York Times, Meta is having trouble letting employees spend time as avatars in its social VR/AR environment, Horizon Worlds. Also on his October 11th, Meta announced a major partnership with Microsoft to bring popular software like Office 365 to Meta’s Quest Pro devices. You have to work with your own headset.

The future of the company could be in jeopardy if meta can’t understand something as seemingly simple as a leg and convince the public that it’s worth diving into the metaverse. is wise to give in to trolls today and promise to give people what they want. No matter how complicated it is technically.