More lifelike Meta Quest avatars appear to be on the way
Meta apparently has improved Meta avatars in development that could be unveiled at Meta Connect 2024.
VR enthusiast Luna noticed yesterday that some Meta employees are testing more detailed avatars in Meta Horizon Worlds, as can be seen on the app's "People you may know" page. A little later, she published another picture of the avatars. The new avatars were deactivated shortly after.
Here's a bit of an unorthodox "leak" curiosity of Horizon Worlds' "People you may know" page:
Some Meta employees are already dogfooding the new Horizon avatars, likely to be revealed at Connect 2024.
Your headset will just hang if you try to load the profiles though :p https://t.co/zpZe76kZRO pic.twitter.com/EGnXfQAqLP
AdAd- Luna (@Lunayian) July 24, 2024
Back in June, Luna found evidence that Meta was preparing new avatars. The following string appeared in the Quest firmware:
"This app uses new avatars. They look more customisable and detailed than ever before!"
The new avatars could be unveiled at Meta Connect 2024 in September.
The next big leap: Codec avatars
Apparently, Meta has been working on the new avatars for a long time. At Meta Connect 2022, Mark Zuckerberg showed off a more detailed avatar and said that the improved avatars would arrive in 2023.
What actually arrived were legs for the Meta avatars, but only in the home environment and in Horizon Worlds.
Meta's photorealistic Codec avatars may also come to Quest headsets in the following years. Strings have appeared in the Quest firmware indicating that Meta is working on an implementation of the technology. They could arrive in 2027 with Quest Pro 2 or as early as 2026 with Quest 4, assuming the next-generation headset supports eye and face tracking.
Apple beat Meta to the punch with Spatial Personas, so Meta is playing catch-up.
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