Why You Can't Have Legs in Virtual Reality (Yet) (cnn.com) 99
Mark Zuckerberg showed off a cartoon version of himself in a virtual world at an event in October as he outlined the company's new focus for the next decade. Zuckerberg demonstrated a bunch of things his virtual avatar could do. But one thing that is still far beyond the capabilities of Meta's current virtual reality is rendering and handling legs or feet. CNN: Meta has been considering for years how to make avatars more realistic. In an Instagram AMA (Ask Me Anything) session earlier last week, Andrew Bosworth, Meta's VP of Reality Labs and incoming CTO, acknowledged the difficulty of the task while saying the company is considering how to solve it. "Tracking your own legs accurately is super hard and basically not workable just from a physics standpoint with existing headsets," Bosworth said.
Companies can track a person's upper body reasonably well with a headset and controllers, but actual leg tracking is practically non-existent in virtual reality right now -- at least when it comes to the kind of VR you're likely to use in your living room. Some apps, such as VRChat, do let people have full-body avatars, but they tend to use software to approximate lower-body motions; it can be silly-looking at best and disconcerting (or even sickening) at worst. Despite all the progress made in perfecting the technology behind VR headsets in recent years, it's still tricky to perfectly track your legs in real life and recreate the same movements in VR without setting up an array of sensors on or around your body. Still, several VR experts told CNN Business they think it's important to bring legs into virtual spaces.
Companies can track a person's upper body reasonably well with a headset and controllers, but actual leg tracking is practically non-existent in virtual reality right now -- at least when it comes to the kind of VR you're likely to use in your living room. Some apps, such as VRChat, do let people have full-body avatars, but they tend to use software to approximate lower-body motions; it can be silly-looking at best and disconcerting (or even sickening) at worst. Despite all the progress made in perfecting the technology behind VR headsets in recent years, it's still tricky to perfectly track your legs in real life and recreate the same movements in VR without setting up an array of sensors on or around your body. Still, several VR experts told CNN Business they think it's important to bring legs into virtual spaces.
No one cares about legs (Score:3)
When are genitalia coming into virtual spaces?
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Who needs genitalia when you have a face like Zuck
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The man is a massive vagina. He is nothing but genitalia!
Re:No one cares about legs (Score:5, Interesting)
I expect that may be an other reason why they didn't bother with legs, as their proximity with genitalia and many other secondary sexual characteristics.
The biggest reason given on why Male Gamers like to play with female characters is the statement "If I am going to be looking at someones ass for hours on end, it might as well be something nice to look at" There is a lot of non-verbal communication about sexuality in how someone walks especially on how they move their hips. I am sure Meta who is generally hated by all, doesn't want at the monument to deal with concerned parents and religious groups, because there are middle age men, thinking lustful thoughts of a rendered avatar of their teenage daughter, or worse flirting with them, because they have no idea of their age, and thinking they are adults.
Removing legs and their lower parts of their bodies, is probably a way to reduce a lot of the sexuality that may happen.
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I expect that may be an other reason why they didn't bother with legs,
Research showed that 99% of all people had more than the average number of legs.
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Removing legs and their lower parts of their bodies, is probably a way to reduce a lot of the sexuality that may happen.
Someone today was telling me about how Roblox (the huge VR for children) has sex areas where the Lego-like avatars attach block-like genitalia and do all manner of unspeakable acts.
Re: No one cares about legs (Score:2)
Either someone did this and did not get banned yet, or this is yet another urban legend which surrounds games like this.
Re: No one cares about legs (Score:2)
So the whole reason is because some uptight puritans who don't even hold reign in most of the western world anymore might cry foul.
Somehow I don't buy this for a second.
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When are genitalia coming into virtual spaces?
This is the actual reason why legs aren't in VR. Leg tracking has existed since arm tracking. But if you show legs in a G environment, you show where the legs meet. If you allow users to control the legs with precision, you allow them to control crotches with precision. Then you get lewd motions. Lewd motions are harder to do without crotches.
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Oh horse shit. We have had legs in both OpenSim and Second Life for almost 2 decades. You don't need tracking to show legs and walking, or other basic movements. When you press forward, the sim, or whatever, plays a walking animation on the legs. You can have legs in Meta without lewd motions.
Re: No one cares about legs (Score:2)
Right. The moment they do this, a mob wearing those hats with the buckles on them and who speak with "thee"s and "thou"s will pick up the torches and pitchforks, march straight to the developers campus, passing liquor stores and porno shops along the way, and demand their heads.
Or it could be because people won't know how to use this function properly, end up trashing their home and severely injuring themselves, and launch a massive lawsuit against the company and putting them out of business.
I thin
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When are genitalia coming into virtual spaces?
It already has in VRChat, and it works way better than you'd think. There's a shader that will cause things to shift and bend to visually line up with stuff, and it can even integrate with bluetooth vibrators such as the lovense line of products. Add in some full body trackers and maybe a beanbag chair to lay on so you can contort around to a comfortable position that roughly aligns with the visuals and you're all set.
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Ugandan Knuckles Brigade ahoy!
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When are genitalia coming into virtual spaces?
Second Life avatars are complete bodies. and you can change the parts around any way you like. Not only legs, of course. There was a huge business in genitalia.
And yes, the parts are programmable, and can be used for fucking (assuming vendor compatible parts on your partner).
What am I missing about this Metaverse news: Everything anyone has claimed they are going to do was already done back in 2005. And it's still online. And it's open source, Not just the technology, but the financial/economic parts, the
Re: No one cares about legs (Score:2)
VR games that are user editable will always end up with floating sky penises and giant swastikas.
Users will always abuse a platform like this.
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buh (Score:2)
Can't be done with current headsets. But trivially done with some bands placed around the legs, with gyros in them. So what do headsets have to do with it?
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Which is what I think the big reason why VR hasn't really caught on too much.
It is just too much prep work, to be placed in a virtual world that will give you 15 minutes of gee-wiz this is cool, only to hope to use it with you normal game controller and with a basic monitor, so you can be engaged in the outside world as well. (watching TV, messaging friends, keeping an eye on the kids or if the dog needs to go out...)
3D TV was a fad about 10 years ago. It didn't go too far, because it required people to h
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That's part of it, but they still need some tracking to keep in sync with the headset which is tricky because they're way down there and obstructed by other stuff
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Make 'em a wireless accessory. 433 or 800 MHz between them and then bluetooth to the device. No tracking needed. Figure out limb positions from IK.
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They would be wireless, likely bluetooth similar to the controllers, but even with good sensors on them, they tend to drift away if they don't have a shared reference point with the headset. That can either be external cameras/lighthouse like the older gen rift and vive or inside-out tracking where there are sensors on the headset. Having your extremities visible and moving but not where you expect them is a very bad experience for the user
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Yeah, but. . . (Score:4, Insightful)
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In Kinect, motion tracking generally amounted to triggering a button press if you moved enough. I think that's all you really want for legs. People aren't literally physically going to be doing the Mortal Kombat moves.
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Except a Kinect can actually track your leg positions
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You obviously have never seen any of the accurate 90's hacking movies or the B5 spinoff ship.
Jump kicking is essential for breaking through a firewall.
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No, Meta says physics does not allow it. Clearly it is not possible.
Or maybe they're not making back the discount they give people on headsets, and they don't want to go into the ankle sensor business too?
I actually did an estimate for a compact ankle/foot sensor for gait analysis research. You could probably build your own for about $20.
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Note "can't be done" is rather nonsense, since other VR games do have legs (and are better than Facebook's metaverse game in every way). I'm thinking of Echo VR, definitely worth playing to see what VR is like (a world a lot like Ender's game), but even VR golf avatars have legs.
The real problem is that the people working on Meta's Horizons don't actually care about the game and are only collecting a paycheck. Every other virtual world I can think of is better, and that includes the Mii-verse, which is not
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The real problem is that the people working on Meta's Horizons don't actually care about the game and are only collecting a paycheck. Every other virtual world I can think of is better, and that includes the Mii-verse, which is not much but btw also has legs.
Kind of makes you think they might know something everyone else but Zuck knows. This thing is going to go over as well as a turd in a punch bowl. Linden Lab found out the hardware, Sansar, a few years back that not everyone wants to strap on a VR rig to play a game.
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But why do it if you're not a game company? "Metaverse" as a virtual parallel world is a dumb idea. Stick with social media. Trying to create a virtual world where commerce and other things can happen has been tried and is has failed, as Second Life has shown. The core Facebook users are not people looking for something like this, they just want to quickly check if there are messages from friends and families. Who's going to go to the effort of putting on a VR headset and standing a safe place of a room
"Do not want" tag? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there a way I can automatically tag all the VR/"metaverse" crap on /. and have it not show up in the feed?
It's been the stupidest cringe-worthy buzzword fest for a while now. I am sure scammers would like to blow another bubble, now that most real world things are as inflated as they can be, but please - keep me out.
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Sort of, they used to have a filter under your account options, where you could decide which stories (or editors) you didn't want to see, but I am unsure if it works still. I mean the filter option is still there, I just don't know if it works.
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We need a feature to directly vote on stories (those already out of the pipeline), just like we vote on comments. So a stupid irrelevant story about crypto so that the Slashdot paretn compnay makes more money gets rated "idiotic", stories about the Superbowl get rated "irrelevant", and the rare event when Slashdot has a new for nerds story we can rate as "interesting". Because right now it often feels like slashdot stories are just trolling us.
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Wish I didn't post here first so I could mod this up ;)
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Is there a way I can automatically tag all the VR/"metaverse" crap on /. and have it not show up in the feed?
Don't worry. We'll dispel with this tech related content and return you to Trump building walls and getting Mexico to pay for it shortly.
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Is there a way I can automatically tag all the VR/"metaverse" crap on /. and have it not show up in the feed?
Seconded. And also add a tag for crypto scams also.
Looks exactly like a ghost town (Score:1)
Why do the legs need to be controllable? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand the no legs thing because why do the legs need to be controllable at all? Just add them in and make them move in a walking fashion when the avatar moves like we've been doing in video games for decades now.
Bam, no more weird floating ghost people.
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Just add them in and make them move in a walking fashion
Super easy, just add them! Why didn't all the people struggling with this for years think of that?! /s
Sarcasm aside, no, it isn't a matter of "just add them", they're a complex visual effect to make look reasonable.
Even in an ideal world where you know where the hips and feet are and where they're supposed to be going it's a rather involved inverse kinematics problem. Typically they're animated as sets of joints at toes, mid-foot, ankle, knee, and hip, each constrained within ranges, each inter-related. S
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Sarcasm aside, no, it isn't a matter of "just add them", they're a complex visual effect to make look reasonable.
Have you seen Facebook's VR world? There are no complex visual effects anywhere there.
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Or just don't bother. 3D games have been doing this for decades and gamers are just fine with looking looking down in first person and not seeing any feet or legs.
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They're fine with it until the game designer decides to make them do platforming. Then it's not so great.
I am a developer for 20 years -- it IS super easy (Score:2)
Just add them in and make them move in a walking fashion
The reason you dont see it is two fold: waste of time and resources, not needed.
Zero times in any "vr chat" have I said, oh damn, everything looks weird because of a lack of legs. Yeah, ok.
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Sarcasm aside, no, it isn't a matter of "just add them", they're a complex visual effect to make look reasonable.
Maybe you didnt read my whole post so I will rephrase what I already said in my last post.
So you mean exactly what the video game industry has been doing for decades now?
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Probably the issue is an uncanny valley effect. If you leave out legs, people's brains easily skip over that bit. It doesn't seem weird unless you think about it. But if you put in the legs and they're not perfect, the imperfection will continually draw your attention.
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If you leave out legs, people's brains easily skip over that bit.
It really doesn't. If you watch any videos of Facebook's VR world, one of the first things you notice is that no one has legs. Then you wonder if it's a graphics bug. If you didn't notice it, it's because in a lot of the videos they crop it near the waist-line.
Also, all the Facebook commercials have legs, so there's some false advertising going on there.
Re: Why do the legs need to be controllable? (Score:2)
Imagine disorentation and sickness taken up to a whole new level. :-\
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AI can probably render fairly realistic legs and leg movement, but the question is whether they need to track one's real legs. Are people dancing a lot in VR? Those who can't dance probably would prefer AI fake it for them.
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On the one hand, pretty much every event has a few people that mention not having visual legs and arms. Most either simply don't dance, or dance anyway without caring about the fact they only have a visible head, torso, and hands.
VRChat does approximate arms and legs, basically pinning the arms to the tracked hands and doing basic locomotion animations for the legs that follow the inputs of the user. It's
Re: Why do the legs need to be controllable? (Score:2)
Being someone who DJs in virtual environments
That might be the dorkiest sentence I have ever read.
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This is slashdot, dummy.
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Everyone just gets a Dalek avatar, problem solved. Soon, Meta will be giving everyone a home Dalek control system, where you get into this wheelchair like device, close the cover, pull the helmet down over your head, and soon you're in virtual reality while back in the real world there's a pod creature in the living room crying "Exterminate!"
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Bam, no more weird floating ghost people.
No, worse. Weird inverse kinetics creating all sorts of monstrosities as people move in VR. The sensibilities of the past are not relevant here. VR lives and dies on immersion. There's nothing quite as immersion breaking as your body not reacting the way you expect it to. Mind you with actual leg / body tracking products on the market you can see a massive difference in the quality of motion (again, realism).
What applies to your mouse, keyboard and screen does not at all apply to VR.
Re: Why do the legs need to be controllable? (Score:2)
A lot of people get sick by playing FPS's on a regular monitor.
Add in VR goggles and leg tracking, and this problem gets a whole lot worse.
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here's nothing quite as immersion breaking as your body not reacting the way you expect it to. Mind you with actual leg / body tracking products on the market you can see a massive difference in the quality of motion (again, realism).
And floating legless people is not immersion breaking?
What applies to your mouse, keyboard and screen does not at all apply to VR.
You say that but I don't see how they are any different at all hence me making my last post.
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And floating legless people is not immersion breaking?
No. There's a big difference between a physical and virtual disconnect, and showing something obviously virtual. There's debates around either side on this but the companies which have done actual research into this find that breaking away from reality is orders of magnitude more agreeable to a user than trying to imitate it.
Two classic examples from the VR world on this is Boneworks and Half-Life: Alyx. The former went to great length to enable full IK and collision detection. The latter specifically opted
Full body tracking using Azure Kinect (Score:1)
fuck you zuck and your paid media cronies (Score:2, Informative)
just stop already no one fucking cares about meta fuck off with this bullshit
Re: fuck you zuck and your paid media cronies (Score:2)
AC has the essentials right this time.
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I like the idea of laughing while FB falls down with their half-baked pivot. I would be seriously concerned if I thought Zuck was going to succeed where all others have failed. His success means that in effect he is in charge of the next [obvious] phase of the Internet and online society. Thinking it's OK for him to create and control a so-called Metaverse would be a minority opinion, possibly a fringe opinion. You'd have to be very explicit in your support of Meta to avoid being labeled as a satirist or tr
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You'd have to be very explicit in your support of Meta to avoid being labeled as a satirist or troll.
Fair enough.
I would be seriously concerned if I thought Zuck was going to succeed where all others have failed.
Unfortunately or fortunately (depending on your opinion) Zuck and FB/Meta likely would be one of the companies that could pull it off.
Interface (Score:1)
Re: Interface (Score:2)
You can buy a "3D calculator" at your neighborhood dollar store. 100% realism, and full haptic feedback.
Re: Interface (Score:2)
The "3D calculator" is the "3D teapot" of this generation.
Just use a Kinect and K2VR (Score:2)
Buy a used Xbox 360 Kinect ($20-$30 on eBay), and use the free K2VR (https://k2vr.tech/). Boom, done. Leg tracking. You don't need a fancy headset that keeps track of your legs, and you don't need to buy additional hardware trackers for your hips and your ankles.
Seriously, I don't know why more VR solutions aren't going with depth camera tracking instead of trying to guess where your limbs are.
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Right - if and that is a big if - this is problem even worth solving, the solution is simply to get over the NIH issue and have an external camera watch the legs.
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Really? (Score:2)
"Mark Zuckerberg showed off a cartoon version of himself."
He's been doing that for decades, no?
I wanted legs in Half-Life Alyx (Score:3)
When I was playing Half-Life Alyx, there were some instances where I was immersed enough that I tried doing things with my legs, such as pushing boxes or other objects out of the way.
So yeah, I think we'll see some kind of leg tracking become standard, eventually.
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Half-Life Alyx,
Sweet, thanks for the tip.
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What century is this? (Score:2)
Dying Light, The Forest have Legs (Score:2)
VR for real. (Score:3)
I really dislike that these articles associate "VR" and Facebook's "meta" as being that same thing. VR is general purpose, and has been around forever. Meta is a VR App, and a bad one at that.
On the consumer end, VR has been truly viable for a little over 7 years now. In 2016 I got a HTC Vive [wikipedia.org] and my mind was blown. Since then, I've given up pretty much any game that isn't VR.
For those looking to get into VR, all "cell-phone" based VR is a gimmick, as are more "stand-alone" headsets. Facebook (Oculus) VR headsets are decent hardware BUT with all the spyware and anti-features you can expect from Facebook. If you want a good gaming experience, there are basically two good models on the market right now. The HTC Vive Pro 2 [vive.com] $1399 for the full kit; or the Valve Index [steampowered.com] $999 for the full kit.
After you have the hardware, there are multiple game stores, StreamVR [steampowered.com] is generally the best.
Most of my time now in VR is spent in the game Pavlov VR [steampowered.com] (in which, you also have legs.) which is a Counter Strike GO replica. Other VR game are also listed on Steam [steampowered.com].
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Most of my time now in VR is spent in the game Pavlov VR [steampowered.com] (in which, you also have legs.) which is a Counter Strike GO replica.
How do you move around in that game? For example, if I want to walk across the street, how do the controls work?
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It feels like a classic FPS video game with the additional of being able to physically duck and peek corners.
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I really dislike that these articles associate "VR" and Facebook's "meta" as being that same thing.
Except it *is* the same thing. Facebook is remarketing all their VR work under the "meta" marketing bullshit and all in aid of the "metaverse" they are trying to build. But the sad reality is that in the industry they are leading the development of VR by a long LONG way.
Whether VR is viable for you or not has nothing to do with whether Facebook will continue to develop new technologies using it. E.g. full hand tracking without controllers.
Ok, fine, but why can't we have tentacles? (Score:2)
Bam! Solves the legs and genitalia problems at the same time.
Ah yes (Score:2)
Flipping things around: perhaps the people involved should be working harder to make the basics of VR simple, scalable, compelling, and non-gimmicky. Putting attention on the problem of legs in VR is just window dressing for the fact that no one has yet found a good reason to be doing any of this, let alone an implementation that people actually want to use. This is like spending brain power on t
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Contractors: "Great, happy to show you what we've got. Here's a rendering of the SLS ready for launch and we want to draw particular attention to the color scheme, we've really been working on that first. We've got some additional renderings here and here where you can see how outstanding that color looks during sunrise, and also sunset."
NASA: "Uh...."
Well it's the meta-verse (Score:2)
So, I suppose it's still a good thing we don't have to deal with legs walking around without the upper body part
I walk on my hands... (Score:2)
Roller balls, treadmills (Score:2)
The whole VR hype has been going on for what, 30 years now?
There was plenty of time to solve this problem, and if those solutions don't work, then "we won't have legs" until actual holodeck technology becomes a thing.
Already A solved issue? (Score:1)
You mean I actually have to WALK??? (Score:2)
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Why track my legs??? I don't think I want to move my legs in a walking manner in order to move in VR. Should be able to sit in real life while my avatar walks in VR. Requiring leg movement in real life in order to move is wrong on more than one level.
For VR sports that require legs, like soccer or climbing, etc...?
Or foot fetishes? (either side of that)
Locomotion (Score:2)
I've played video games since the early 80s and I've never experienced motion sickness before.
Tracking "your own legs" (Score:2)
Tracking your own legs accurately is super hard and basically not workable just from a physics standpoint with existing headsets, ...
Opposed to tracking other peoples' legs? So... Would that be harder or simpler?
Sounds like a Meta problem (Score:2)
I've seen legs in video games for years. Even Doom had 'em. Even Joust had 'em. Pac Man didn't, though, so I see their point.
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Let's start with braking the hip-to-head freeze? (Score:1)
Let's start with braking the hip-to-head freeze?
Deca move [deca.net] is a pretty good idea to unglue one's head from the hip and make the looking around more natural - and not always connected with the direction of movement.
It can be used even with the phone, afetr some simple-ish callibration.
Should not be a problem to strap more sensors for the knees, let's say.
Was wondering when will Steam and Meta steal their idea and ...ahem .. incorporate it (punt intended) in their own systems.