The recent demonstration video used motion capture for the leg tracking.

Earlier this week, Meta released a demonstration video revealing that their in-development Metaverse virtual platform, Horizon Worlds, would soon add fully-articulated legs to its avatars. The floating torsos that the system employs now have proven to be a bit of a sticking point for some onlookers, finding them creepy, so this would be a boon to the platform’s image.

Legs are coming soon! Are you excited? 🎉 pic.twitter.com/SB6qSepKm4

— Meta Horizon (@MetaHorizon) October 11, 2022

However, in spite of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his associate doing karate kicks on a Horizon Worlds stage, it turns out that this demonstration was more of a concept. According to Ian Hamilton, an editor for UploadVR, the demonstration was actually accomplished through pre-recorded motion capture rather than live leg-tracking.

“For those who’ve been wondering about the legs shown in the Connect keynote (@hrafntho). Meta: “To enable this preview of what’s to come, the segment featured animations created from motion capture,” Hamilton wrote on his Twitter.

Meta's VR legs video wasn't what it seemed https://t.co/UF5rVyFkYl pic.twitter.com/ZGe1YUu4wg

— Engadget (@engadget) October 14, 2022

Earlier this year, Meta CTO and Reality Labs team leader Andrew Bosworth admitted in an interview with CNN that it will likely be a long time before avatars could have accurately-tracked legs. “Tracking your own legs accurately is super hard and basically not workable just from a physics standpoint with existing headsets.”