Metaverse Not Actually Ready to Add Virtual Legs

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

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.

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.

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.”