For popular online magazine TechCrunch, “The future of virtual reality, according to Meta, is a worse version than what the past has accustomed us to.” In particular, he does not convince the idea of buying a new VR viewer – the Meta Quest Pro which will be sold for 1800 euros – to participate in virtual meetings with work colleagues. This is because, despite the new viewer being able to capture the direction of the gaze and the expressions of the wearer, and to reproduce everything on the face of the avatar, the limits of the graphics make the result not very appreciable. And one always has the impression of being in a cartoon.
But in the future, everything could change. Because the Reality Labs of Meta, the division of the Menlo Park company that deals with developing “new and better” ways to connect people, have long been working on “Avatar Codecs”, digital copies so realistic that they make interactions remotely “indistinguishable from those in person”.
An example of the potential of these avatars is the one described in the video – visible on this page – that Meta showed on the occasion of its “Connect” event dedicated to the metaverse. It is called “Instant Codec Avatar” because Meta aims to create a three-dimensional replica of the user’s face, including the multiple expressions of him, through a simple scan carried out with the smartphone. Scanning is fast, taking just two minutes, but further processing of the data still takes a few hours of work. Also for this reason the Instant Codecs Avatar are not yet accessible to consumers. But it’s safe to bet that they will soon be. At that point the telepresence will be closer. And as a result the experience in the Metaverse will become much more credible. And palatable.
by Pier Luigi Pisa