Tuesday’s event was also Zuckerberg’s first public meeting in Meta’s Horizon World virtual world. Zuckerberg took the opportunity to show off his latest avatar, which he said will be rolled out to users via phones and virtual reality headsets later this year. He said the avatars will be “more expressive and detailed than anything currently available.”
Zuckerberg emphasized that users’ avatars will also have legs, which he said was “probably the most popular feature we have planned.”
Zuckerberg said the avatars didn’t have legs before, mainly because it’s difficult to accurately locate body parts like legs in virtual reality. “But seriously, the legs are stiff, and that’s why the user avatar has no legs in other VR systems,” he said.
Zuckerberg’s announcement came just months after he came under fire for posting his virtual avatar on social media Instagram. Many social media users scoffed at the avatar of Zuckerberg standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, which some said was not comparable to video game footage from the 1990s.
At the time, Zuckerberg responded with an updated avatar, acknowledging that the previous avatar was “rudimentary.”
Zuckerberg explained on Instagram: “Even in a headset, Horizon’s graphics capabilities are much more powerful, and the app is improving very quickly.”
Grimes, the girlfriend of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, also took the opportunity to attack Zuckerberg and his avatar, saying he was “not qualified” to run a metaverse business, adding that Zuckerberg Kerberg’s virtual reality project “died” before it actually got off the ground.
It was reported earlier this week that Zuckerberg was quick to roll out a new avatar following criticism. A graphic designer at Meta once revealed on the recruitment platform LinkedIn that he and his team designed about 40 versions of Zuckerberg’s virtual avatar over a four-week period before it was finally approved.
“We started with simple graphics and then did a lot of work to drastically improve the look and feel of Horizon over the next year,” Zuckerberg said at the Meta Connect event on Tuesday. “The Metaverse needs inspiration.”
But Meta’s business has not been smooth in recent months, and the company’s stock price has been falling because of Zuckerberg’s new plan. Meta shares traded near a four-year low on Tuesday.
In an internal memo obtained last week, Meta’s vice president of Metaverse, Vishal Shah, told employees working on the Horizon World app that they would spend the rest of the year polishing the app in order to deliver it to more people. Fix various issues in the app before users release it.
Shah said in a memo that the app’s launch experience was “confusing and frustrating.” Shah believes that the employees who developed the app didn’t put much time and effort into it.
“Why don’t we like that we’ve made so many products and haven’t been using it all the time?” Shah wrote. “The simple fact is, if we don’t like it, how can we expect our users to like it?”
Zuckerberg announced at an event on Tuesday that the company will eventually launch new avatars in partnership with video conferencing service Zoom, which will also be available on Android and iPhone.
During the event, Meta released its new $1,499 Quest Pro virtual reality headset. The company also announced new partnerships with NBCUniversal and Microsoft, such as an Office app-based Metaverse experience that gives users the opportunity to use Microsoft Office tools such as Word and Excel in a virtual world.
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