Wednesday, 24 July, 2024 UTC
Summary
The upcoming Meta Avatars graphics overhaul is being tested by Meta employees.
VR enthusiast Luna has spotted that some Meta employees' Horizon profiles show a completely different avatar style to the current Meta Avatars, and provided UploadVR with links to independently confirm this.
The upcoming overhaul was first announced with a CGI mockup by Mark Zuckerberg at Meta Connect 2022 almost two years ago. At the time he said it was coming in 2023, but that obviously didn't pan out.
Current Meta Avatars, for comparison.What Meta Avatars did get last year was legs, in Horizon Home and Horizon Worlds at least, a significant update given they had previously been widely ridiculed for only including the upper body.
The SDK for third-party apps got legs too in December, but they currently aren't animated so developers would have to implement this manually, an arduous task none have yet undertaken.
Meta’s Horizon Metaverse Avatars Finally Have Legs
Meta Avatars in its Horizon Worlds “metaverse” platform now have virtual legs.
UploadVRDavid Heaney
Meta will likely launch or at least announce the new overhauled avatars at Connect 2024, which will take place on September 25 and 26.