Last week Mark Zuckerberg wowed users by announcing that new avatars are coming to the virtual reality platform next year Horizon Worlds they will have legs. An incredible novelty, given that so far the avatars were nothing but floating torsos ghost-like, unable to kick, jump, or do anything else involving the lower limbs. But not all that glitters is gold, not even in virtual reality. Apparently, in fact, Meta’s demonstration of the legs in VR was made using the motion capture technology(voluntarily) deceiving users.
Half: The VR avatar legs are just an illusion
Calling his legs “probably the most requested feature on our roadmap,” Zuckerberg’s avatar announced the novelty for avatars by jumping and stretching to showcase the beauty of his lower limbs. A show of great impact, which does not correspond at all to the reality of the facts. As reported by the publisher of UploadVR Ian Hamilton, Meta stated that “to enable this preview, the segment featured animations created by motion capture”. A somewhat disappointing statement for Meta users, who have been waiting for the addition of VR legs for their avatars for a long time.
Instead of showing the real technology that Meta will make available to users, in fact, Mark Zuckerberg’s demonstration used other technologies to create a representation of what the company hopes to launch in the near future. Essentially, something very similar to what happened during Tesla’s big announcement of his humanoid robot Optimus, who was actually just a boy in a robot suit. In fact, this is by no means a novelty in the industry. Anyone who has ever seen an ad will know that promotional material often uses technology that doesn’t actually reflect the final product, or isn’t even present in the product. But this time Meta seems to have exaggerated. The legs in VR of the avatars, in fact, may never arrive. And this appears to be a pretty good scam.