Why is it so hard to build a metaverse avatar — a visual representation of ourselves in the digital world — that walks on two legs?
"I think everyone has been waiting for this," said a cartoonish digital version of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, unveiling his new avatar legs and jumping up and down at a virtual-reality event Tuesday. "But seriously, legs are hard. Which is why other virtual reality systems don't have them either."
Early avatar models introduced by Meta, as well as Microsoft, have been ridiculed for appearing as legless, waist-up bodies floating around their virtual worlds.
That's in part because tech companies have been eager to show off their progress in building out virtual-reality environments while still working on the technical challenges of making avatars more human-like and realistic. Meta renamed itself from Facebook last year in hopes of jumpstarting its corporate transformation into a provider of metaverse experiences for work and play.
Zuckerberg described legs as "probably the most requested feature on our roadmap" and said they will be available soon on Meta's Horizon virtual-reality platform. He said the challenge is perceptual, involving how the brain — taking in images seen though a virtual-reality headset — accepts a rendering based on how accurately it is positioned.
Legs are harder to render accurately because they're often hidden from view.
"If your legs are under a desk or if your arms block your view of them, then your headset can't see them directly," he said.
Zuckerberg said the company has been working to improve how its artificial intelligence systems track and predict where legs and other body parts should be moving.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More