Facebook's Oculus Revealing Its More Expressive and Natural Looking Avatars

Oculus is updating its avatar from 2016 to more expressive and customizable avatars than they were previously. Initially they will be updated in only a few video games for the Quest VR platform including Epic Roller Coasters, PokerStarsVR, and Topgolf with Pro Putt and later will be updating in the Synth Riders and after a year it will appear in a new video game recreation called ForeVR Bowling as well.

The avatars that are being updated and launched in the below featured video game are more natural looking and fleshed out when compared to its previous versions. Next up in the update, the avatar will have a billion features for you to choose from ranging from doable combos of hair, eyes, physique kind, facial hair, piercings, clothes, and many other different options. The new updated avatars will not have a gender toggle that means you will not have to choose whether you want your avatar to be a female or male nor there will be pre-baked batch of face presets as the game will allow you to dive into every facial function, all the way down to wrinkles, nostril, and make-up and you will be able to create an avatar that appears just like you or only one that’s aspirational, reflecting the way you need to be seen in social VR areas.

Oculus plans on opening its new avatar SDK to all developers by the end of 2021 along with these VR personas being supported on Facebook Horizon which is the company’s own expansive social VR playground. According to the company games are just one application for these refreshed avatars and the avatars will appear in the same form on all applications like Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, and more but only if the users chooses to do so. However, Oculus wouldn’t divulge any specifics on how exactly your avatar will appear in those apps or when because the company says they are still in the initial phases and have a long way to go.



Avatars first launched on the Oculus Rift platform in 2016 as “monochrome busts with floating arms,”. The company shared that all the avatars from the early days had eyewear on as a result of they weren’t making an attempt to simulate lifelike facial options, significantly the eyes. Hand motion was the massive breakthrough on the time, since Oculus had launched its Touch controllers for the Rift.

The avatars in Top Golf will have a more a more welcoming, cartoon-y look than the more lifelike Expressive Avatars that Oculus confirmed off in 2018. Oculus studied behavioral traits, on how the avatars normally blink and how other facial features work and move to make the new avatars appear more grounded in actuality and while for the remainder of your physical aspects like movement of hand and legs the company is leaning towards machine learning to make your avatars arms and legs action appear less stiffened and more natural.

If you want to create a new avatar you can create it through Quest and Quest 2 headsets by clicking into your profile and for Rift customers linked to a PC, the new avatar editor can be positioned throughout the floating row of navigation buttons close to the underside of your discipline of view.

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