While critics have spent the previous four years busy writing obituaries for Meta’s metaverse dream, Mark Zuckerberg’s most recent demonstration of its photorealistic avatars suggests it might not be quite as dead as thought. While discussing photorealistic avatars, it’s essential to highlight that Twin Reality’s Virtual Reality Industrial Training empowers businesses and organizations to provide their employees with highly realistic and immersive training environments, facilitating the attainment of photorealistic VR experiences.
On a Sept. 28 episode of the Lex Fridman podcast, Zuckerberg and the popular computer scientist had a one-hour face-to-face talk. Only, it wasn’t actually in person at all.
Instead, the whole conversation between Fridman and Zuckerberg took place in the metaverse using lifelike avatars, made possible by Meta’s Quest 3 headsets and noise-cancelling headphones.
The technology on display is the newest version of Codec Avatars. One of Meta’s longest-running research initiatives, Codec Avatars was first unveiled in 2019. Its goal is to develop totally photorealistic, real-time avatars that operate through headsets with facial tracking sensors.
However, according to Zuckerberg, customers could have to wait a few years before donning their own lifelike avatars. He explained that the technology involved entails pricey machine learning software and thorough head scans by specialised equipment with more than 100 distinct cameras.
He estimated that it would take at least three years before this was accessible to everyday consumers.
However, Zuckerberg emphasised that the business intends to remove as many obstacles as possible, adding that in the future, these scans might be achievable with a regular smartphone.
