Mark Zuckerberg’s meta-metaverse legs have been staged – decode

It’s fair to say that nobody is more excited about Meta’s future metaverse than billionaire CEO, co-founder and chairman Mark Zuckerberg. Note his utter delight when he announced earlier this week that “another feature is coming soon, which is probably the most requested feature on our roadmap.”

“Legs!” he said. “I think everyone’s been waiting for this!”

In fact, the addition of legs to Meta’s Metaverse was what grabbed the most headlines this week – rather than the improved haptics and tracking capabilities or built-in web browser of the new Quest Pro mixed reality headset.

Zuckerberg explained that Meta will use an artificial intelligence model to predict and display the positions of a user’s entire body. “But as delightful as the livestream reveal may have been, it appears that the ‘demo’ of Horizon World’s legs was more of a ‘simulated screen shot’ moment.

According to Ian Hamilton, editor of upload VR, A meta spokesperson told him that “to enable this preview of what’s to come, the segment featured animations created from motion capture.”

Anything in a product demo deserves skepticism (“All demos lie!” comes one reply), but the apparent invention of a feature that’s drawn a significant amount of industry comment, snark, and competitive trolling certainly doesn’t help the rocky launch of what is intended to be Meta’s signature product.

At least Zuckerberg’s comment about adding legs makes it clear that this poses a significant challenge – one that he might have said in hindsight meta hasn’t solved yet.

“Seriously, legs are hard, which is why other virtual reality systems don’t have them,” he said as his avatar shuffled and danced around the screen.

“The perceptual science behind it is actually quite interesting,” he said. “We discovered early on that your brain is far more willing to accept a rendering of a part of you as long as it’s positioned correctly, but when it’s rendered in the wrong place it just feels awful – it breaks that.” overall sense of presence and immersion.”

Because of this, Zuckerberg explained, early VR iterations showed the locations of VR controllers, rather than guessing the locations of the hands and arms holding them. But for Horizon Worlds, and most VR tech, there are no controllers or sensors for users’ feet and legs.

“Understanding your leg position is surprisingly difficult because of occlusion — if your legs are under a desk or your arms are blocking your view of it, your headset can’t see them directly,” he said. “You need to build an AI model to predict your entire body position.”

As a result, the first full-body avatars will come to Horizon Worlds first, then to Meta’s other products.

Some people have suggested that the lack of legs is a feature, not a flaw, as the amount of potential chaos and abuse that can be simulated increases significantly once the human form drops below the waistline. Unfortunately, Meta’s Horizon Worlds has already received its first sexual assault report.

But this latest reveal of a “preview” that relies on trusted motion capture rather than VR doesn’t help Metaverse’s PR woes.

In October 2021, Facebook – arguably one of the biggest names in tech – bet the entire $10 billion farm on the Metaverse. The company changed its name to Meta and has since focused its sprawling enterprise on supporting Zuckerberg’s vision of a virtual social universe.

However, shareholders are not impressed. And when Zuckerberg unveiled his cartoonish Horizon Worlds avatar in August, the immediate reaction from the trade press and the public was nothing short of derision. While virtual worlds aren’t known for exceptional graphics, Meta’s visual style debuted so poorly that Zuckerberg quickly released updated images with more sophisticated rendering.

Just last week, Meta put Horizon Worlds development on “Quality Lock” in hopes of fixing bugs and other performance issues. Internal emails suggested that even Meta employees weren’t using their own product. And it remains an open question whether Meta’s metaverse will play well with other metaverses or Web3 technology.

Certainly, given Zuckerberg’s unique vision and zeal, Horizon Worlds will only be the first iteration of Meta’s future. It remains to be seen whether anyone wants to take part.