“One of the things that I’m really excited about for future versions is getting eye tracking and face tracking in.”
During a recent podcast interview with The Information, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shed some additional light on the future of Oculus, teasing everything from future hardware improvements to updates regarding the companies long talked-about AR headset.
A good portion of the 45-minute conversation also revolved heavily around the companies commitment to improving its current social VR offerings. According to Zuck, future hardware updates will revolve heavily on providing more realistic VR interactions, such as “authentic eye contact” and “real expressions” powered by eye and face tracking technology.
“When I think about where you’re at with VR today, you go into the experience — there are some pretty good games and different experiences,” said Zuckerberg while speaking to The Information. “But I’d love to get to the point where you have realistic avatars of yourself, where you can make real authentic eye contact with someone and have real expressions that get reflected on your avatar.”
“One of the things that I’m really excited about for future versions is getting eye tracking and face tracking in, because if you’re really excited about social presence, you want to make sure that the device has all the sensors to really kind of animate realistic avatars so you can communicate well like that.”
With all this talk about social VR, I can’t help but think about Facebook Horizon. A proprietary social experience designed specifically for Oculus Quest headsets, Facebook Horizon was originally scheduled to launch in early 2020. Could the above-mentioned improvements to social VR be the reason for the continued delays? Here’s hoping we won’t have to wait for the Oculus Quest 3 to get our hands on this multifaceted social experience.
The entire 45-minute interview provides some interesting insight into Facebook’s inner workings. You can listen to the full conversation here.
Feature Image Credit: Mark Zuckerberg
