Announced at Connect last week, Meta is launching its next-generation avatars in Horizon Worlds today, giving users a lot more customization options to choose from before jumping into the company’s social VR platform.
Starting today, users can dig even deeper into adjusting their avatars’ appearance, including features like customizable body proportions, nose shape, eye size, and lip size. Like its previous avatars system, these also work across Meta’s other platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.
The sort of flash marketing images you’ll see with smiling and laughing avatars only really paints a part of the picture though, since the sort of smooth, Pixar-esque scripted avatar animations seen on flatscreen simply aren’t a thing in VR. Still, the new avatar system brings a lot more flexibility to the table, which Instagram user ‘mistermavix’ shows off in a recent video:
Meta says in the most recent Horizon Worlds v182 release notes that world creators should make sure their virtual environments are ready for updated avatars, which includes things like making sure features of their worlds interact with the new avatars’ expanded range of body shapes and sizes.
Specifically, attachable items, lighting, and interactable objects like furniture may need adjustments to accommodate the new avatars, Meta says, noting that doorways and walkways should also be reviewed to ensure they comfortably fit the varied avatar proportions.
This follows an update in August last year that finally brought legs to Meta avatars, which came amid a greater push to attract more users to Horizon Worlds with the launch of support for Android and iOS mobile devices as well as standard PC browsers.