Drum roll… now i Horizon Worlds avatars now have legs. Already. “It’s one of the most requested features from our users,” reads a press release from Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram and now bets everything on the smoky concept of metaverse.
Until now, avatars had no legs and floated through the virtual reality world like ghosts.
What is Horizon Worlds, the first introduction to Zuckerberg’s metaverse?
Horizon Worlds is a sandbox/social network focused on virtual reality. It can also be accessed from a computer, but it’s actually programmed for viewers MetaQuest 2. It is Meta’s first step in creating a metaverse, which in Zuckeberg’s vision (and not only) will one day replace the Internet as we know it. The idea is that we will spend a lot of time indoors in the future interconnected virtual worlds, seamlessly, with ours. This is thanks to virtual reality and augmented reality.
If we don’t care about the legs of Meta’s avatars, that is, almost nothing, the second part of the announcement will arouse a minimum of interest in us. “The new update will initially be available on Horizon Worlds, but will be available to all other developers at a later date.”
Translated? Meta offers everyone the opportunity to integrate their avatars into products, platforms and services outside of Horizon Worlds. It is one of the core concepts of the philosophy of the metaverse: not so much ‘private’ and closed worlds, but one interconnected world, oriented according to principles of interoperability. Users can use the same avatar to – in theory – visit the worlds of Horizon Worlds and then enjoy a game of Fortnite. It doesn’t matter if the two products are from different companies.
Following the same principle, virtual gadgets purchased from the Fortnite store can also be imported into Horizon Worlds (and vice versa). The idea is that the metaverse should function a bit like the real world. If we go to a bar dressed a certain way, it’s not like we have to change when we go to the cinema – because the rules of the cinema say so. Users have a collection of virtual objects that they can always carry with them.
Meta avatars will invade the world
Meta made one SDK (software development kit) dedicated to avatars. It can be used freely by any company or third-party developer. The SDK will also support soon Unreal engineit will also soon be compatible with Unit (and thus with Android and iOS). Soon the SDK will also include the reception of the user’s facial expressions, one of the key features of the new (and very expensive) Meta Quest Pro viewer.
Meta also wants to simplify avatar creation. Soon it will be possible to record and import a selfie video on its platform. Thanks to machine learning, the video is then used to create an avatar that resembles us in every way. Obviously, users who want to create avatars that differ from their real physical appearance are free to do so.
Meta avatars will also soon be able to be imported into WhatsApp and Messenger: they can be used for video calls, as well as creating personalized emojis and stickers.
Source: Lega Nerd
