Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous ‘legs’ in Meta keynote were not actually virtual reality, report says

Mark Zuckerberg’s “legs” were not all they seemed during a now-infamous part of his company’s keynote, a report has claimed.

Earlier this week, Mr Zuckerberg took the starring role in a new keynote by Meta, the Facebook parent company. In it, he introduced a number of new technologies coming to its metaverse platform.

One of the main ones was the introduction of legs. Until now, people’s avatars in Meta’s virtual reality were just floating torsos, without a lower body.

Meta seemed especially proud of that new feature, putting out a tweet exclaiming that “legs are coming soon”. The bizarre phrase was instantly mocked.

But that introduction was not all it seemed, according to the new report. The legs were not actually being rendered in the metaverse, but instead were pre-recorded using motion capture, according to UploadVR journalist Ian Hamilton.

He said that Meta had told him the introduction was merely meant as a preview, and was not an actual demonstration of the planned legs. “To enable this preview of what’s to come, the segment featured animations created from motion capture,” the company said, according to Mr Hamilton.

Meta did not comment further when reached by The Independent.

Legs are particularly challenging for virtual reality. Though many platforms do already include legs on their characters, they difficult to actually track, so those legs tend not to move around in keeping with people’s actual limbs.

That had prompted questions in the wake of Mr Zuckerberg’s announcement, which had shown him and a colleague jumping up in the air and using their legs in a variety of different ways. There is no way for Meta’s existing VR hardware to track such movements.

Meta’s keynote introduction had already brought further questions about the company’s plans for the metaverse. Mr Zuckerberg has been clear that he is reorienting his entire company towards virtual reality – but the reaction to its early technology has been largely negative.

Technology critics have mocked the low quality of the virtual reality technology, for instance. In August, Mr Zuckerberg unveiled a new avatar for the metaverse after his previous character was criticised for being “dead-eyed”.