Facebook's Legs Video Was a Lie

This is par for the course for Meta.

They almost never show actual content. It’s always aspirational.

When they do show real content, it’s mixed in with the aspirational videos to muddy the water so people discuss what might be coming , unsure of what’s legitimately happening.

People might say that this is the norm for all tech demos but the other big tech companies do show a lot more real examples of their products in their marketing.

Apple has hyped up marketing but they show what’s happening on device when a device is shown. And they show devices often.

Google almost always show real world stuff and clearly delineate when it goes into vision territory.

Microsoft are similar where they obsessively show on device interactions rather than a lot of faked content.

Meta are alone in the big MAGMA group that really fake their content everywhere. Even the infamous Magic Leap videos tend to have more real world content mixed in with their outlandish vision content.

I’m curious if their headset can even properly track legs/feet? Maybe with the new cameras on the controllers? Seems like a very difficult challenge with how the controller cameras would always be moving. But I would think any camera angle from the headset itself is going to have a tough time seeing where your feet are positioned.

For non-quest PCVR, people who want feet or leg tracking usually buy additional vive trackers and find some way to attach them to their feet. The tracking system is outside-in, and less likely to have issues with line of sight being blocked by your own body.

As to “why”, in PCVR land it’s mainly for social apps like VRChat at the moment. additional trackers anywhere on the body drastically increase how realistic any body language is. Even a single additional tracker on the torso or waist can give more accurate body movements. Trying to guesstimate the entire body position from just head and hands leaves a lot of room for mistakes.

What I find amusing is that some third party devs and I believe some official devs at Linden Lab already figured out how to do real time animation with the XBox Kinnect way back in the 2010s. I knew a guy, named Dasaved, who use to play with this functionality all the time in one of the old hangouts (he passed away many years ago unfortunately). So this isn't exactly new tech. I find it odd that the devs at Meta couldn't take a survey of prior art to figure out how to handle this. VR Chat has gotten this down pretty well from what I've seen.

Having worked in this space I think the criticism is overstated. It's very challenging and I'm going to wait and see if they can pull it together.

Dang. I didn’t watch the event, just followed headlines and was under the impression that the legs were already developed.

The amount of ads on that site was too much.