Meta Says Zuckerberg’s Avatar Legs Were Animated ‘Preview’

The legs may have been a lie.

In perhaps one of the larger internet meme reveals in recent memory, Meta said in a statement to UploadVR Thursday that the highly-anticipated legs on CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s avatar were not actually a result of its VR technology or headsets.

For those who’ve been wondering about the legs shown in the Connect keynote (@hrafntho). Meta: “To enable this preview of what’s to come, the segment featured animations created from motion capture.”

— Ian Hamilton (@hmltn) October 13, 2022

“To enable this preview of what’s to come, the segment featured animations created from motion capture,” the company said.

This implies that the headsets were not rendering the legs but that they were animations of some kind.

Zuckerberg did say at the event that it was a “preview of our next generation of avatars.”

The legs and the avatar in general became the focus of internet attention after Zuckerberg posted a picture on Facebook of his billion-dollar Horizon Worlds avatar, which some compared to graphics from 90s video games.

Just look at how far we’ve come in 24 years. Mind blowing to behold. This is truly the future. pic.twitter.com/8BjSRZb4eD

— Josh Johnson (@secondfret) August 17, 2022

At Meta Connect 2022 on Tuesday, he joked in the presentation about the criticism, saying that “everybody has,” been waiting for his digital legs. He also said that legs are hard for VR to render in avatar form because it is hard for the device to know where they are.

It looks like that ability is potentially still out of reach for Meta’s technology — even for a demonstration.

Catch up on what else happened at Meta Connect here.