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I wonder if the majority of people designing/pushing these huge systems of weird cartoon avatar interaction systems... are a tad bit on the spectrum (Which give

I wonder if the majority of people designing/pushing these huge systems of weird cartoon avatar interaction systems... are a tad bit on the spectrum (Which gives them superpowers in understanding tech/algorithms....) but a side effect is the uncanny valley of these weird avatars being pushed by these teams at Meta/FB. It feels more 'creepy' to me talking to a cartoon 'uncanny-valley' representation of a person rather than just seeing their actual photo/video feed. reading this post on "Avatars, Anthropomorphism, and Autism Spectrum Disorder"... > A 2016 study looked measured the neural responses of children with ASD and neurotypical children when shown unfamiliar human and robot faces. The test showed that the targeted responses were present for both for neurotypical children, but only for the robot faces for the kids with ASD. “Together, these studies provide some evidence that individuals with ASD may typically process anthropomorphic rather than human faces https://codebaby.com/avatars-anthropomorphism-and-autism-spe https://codebaby.com/avatars-anthropomorphism-and-autism-spe...

beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
It looks like they're trying make corporate Memphis art meets DreamWorks movie character design into just the standard avatar. Insanely goofy.
- loud_groan 4y ago
  The biggest games are Orcs, Humans and a Lot of Brown (the Riot and most of the Blizzard portfolios). Or Toon With a Lot Of Purple (Overwatch, Fortnite, many Playstation titles). Or Brown (Modern Warfare, PUBG, CS:GO, R6). Or anime. Or photoreal (Unreal engine titles excluding Valorant & Fortnite, RDR, Cyberpunk...) When you reach 100m users, the ideas get limited. C'est la vie.
benreesman 4y ago
I’m more than a touch aspy myself which makes this faux-biting rebuke that sounds cool in only my head a bit meta: but nerds figured out how to sell tech stuff to normies quite some time ago.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  Zuck hasn't.
  - entropicdrifter 4y ago
    Sure he has! He keeps them in rage-loops so he can show them ads and manipulate politics
  - benreesman 4y ago
    Of all the things to criticize Mark for, being bad at making money seems a weird one.
    - nmfisher 4y ago
      Not being bad at making money, but selling something other than eyeballs is a vastly different proposition.
    - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
      What has he successfully sold to consumers?
      - djitz 4y ago
        Their own lives
      - dustymcp 4y ago
        Advertising and alot of it.
    - numpad0 4y ago
      He’s certainly good at making money but consistently horrible at keeping nerds around.
      - CamperBob2 4y ago
        (Shrug) He owns John Carmack...
Karrot_Kream 4y ago
I think it's much more a facet of limited performance (as mentioned in the talk itself) on these platforms rather than anything else. Performance on headsets is a challenge on pretty much all of these apps, from VRChat to Rec Room. I also think a lot of people that look just at the pictures don't realize that presence in VR adds a lot and can compensate for some loss of graphical fidelity. It's like how the first 3D games were quite blocky and a lot less refined than the best 2D games of the era but just the ability to move your character and the camera in 3D compensated for the bad graphics, to an extent.
- loud_groan 4y ago
  > I think it's much more a facet of limited performance (as mentioned in the talk itself) on these platforms rather than anything else. VRChat avatars have personality. On hardware now 6 years old. People are reacting to the lack of personality, not the lack of immersion.
  - onepointsixC 4y ago
    On PC hardware. This looks like it was built from the ground up for Quest and have a ready to customize one for each user instead of a painstakingly hand crafted one created in blender.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    Most VRChat avatars need PC to run and still cause instability on lower end PCVR setups. Quest can't even render them half the time.
    - numpad0 4y ago
      IIUC, users have to specifically upload a mobile version for VRC on Quest to display an avatar, rather than it trying and failing by chances. It's files missing or present difference.
      - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
xnx 4y ago
As best I can tell the push for this comes from the top and no one who knows better is stopping him.
- nomel 4y ago
  The push for low fidelity, as usual, and as mentioned in this very talk, is the limited power of these mobile systems pushing dual 2k displays at 90Hz.
  - numpad0 4y ago
    The issue is not in polygon counts, but artistic qualities. There would be PS2 games that would look more comfortable and/or convincing than this.
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      But running at 120fps at basically 4k resolution while scanning 5 camera inputs on the same low power mobile CPU? I think not. And remember these scenes can be modified by users and are loaded as needed. This is not like a precooked scene in a computer game where designers spend weeks fine-tuning the lighting model. I notice pretty much all quest apps use ambient lighting only which gives them this fake look. Some nice spotlights would do a world of good. But I guess anything better than this is just too expensive for the system.
      - dandellion 4y ago
        Mii avatars probably have even less polygons and use simpler shading and they look a lot better to me.
      - numpad0 4y ago
        You actually don’t get the “uncanny” feeling from this? Compared to non-Meta avatar systems and game graphics? Are non-gamers less susceptible to it? Is that how these avatar systems goes through the front door???
DonHopkins 4y ago
Maybe if Zuckerberg himself didn't look so much like a plastic lizard, his avatar wouldn't be so creepy.
numpad0 4y ago
These deep down in the uncanny valley stuff is usually done by assigned neurotypicals, not autistic. Autists are usually good at staying out of it.
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Please stop perpetuating this harmful stereotype about people with ASD.
dqpb 4y ago
> weird cartoon avatar interaction systems Imagine the opposite - photorealistic avatars. There would be no interaction! You'd spend all your time rendering.
- munificent 4y ago
  > Imagine the opposite - photorealistic avatars. You mean like... video?
- Animats 4y ago
  > photorealistic avatars. It's coming, to, of all things, Second Life. Second Life is adding "puppeteering", and this works with head tracking, face tracking, and full body tracking. Users have been working on VR viewers. (The client is open source.) It's all very experimental, but there is a meeting in Second Life every two weeks[1] where all of this is demoed. Some of the attendees are rigged for full body tracking, and, with good quality Second Life avatars, which have far more detail than Meta or VRChat, and can do facial expressions, they look reasonably good. It's striking how someone with a full rig dominates a meeting without even trying. They're so much more present than the people sitting at keyboards. Hardware is a big problem. You need a good gamer PC to run all this and get the full effect. And a VR headset. And tracking gear. This is a real problem in the era of the $99 Chromebook. It's not getting cheaper, either. The first NVidia graphics card that was good enough for this was the NVidia 1060 with 6GB VRAM, in 2016, introduced at $250. It still costs about $250 to get that level of GPU power from NVidia. People who really want to be looked at - performers, influencers, etc - will need a full tracking rig. The audience doesn't. [1] https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/6509-introducing-the-second-life-public-calendar/ https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/6509-introducin...
cowtools 4y ago
>Which gives them superpowers in understanding tech/algorithms... does it?
drbojingle 4y ago
I suspect its just easier and faster (in terms of cpu and network throughput) to translate human facial expessions to a digital represebtation and apply it to lofi animated character than using something more hi def.
Vanit 4y ago
I initially thought the same, but using even the current gen avatars for multiplayer on the Quest 2 feels great and is surprisingly convincing. The speech to mouth movement detection looks natural and combined with the body language being accurately represented with reverse kinematics I felt like I was colocating very realistically.
DerSaidin 4y ago
I don't think those avatars have enough human likeness to really trigger the uncanny valley effect. I think it is weird for a different reason: it looks like 1990s tech - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds

beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago

It looks like they're trying make corporate Memphis art meets DreamWorks movie character design into just the standard avatar. Insanely goofy.

loud_groan 4y ago
The biggest games are Orcs, Humans and a Lot of Brown (the Riot and most of the Blizzard portfolios). Or Toon With a Lot Of Purple (Overwatch, Fortnite, many Playstation titles). Or Brown (Modern Warfare, PUBG, CS:GO, R6). Or anime. Or photoreal (Unreal engine titles excluding Valorant & Fortnite, RDR, Cyberpunk...) When you reach 100m users, the ideas get limited. C'est la vie.

benreesman 4y ago

I’m more than a touch aspy myself which makes this faux-biting rebuke that sounds cool in only my head a bit meta: but nerds figured out how to sell tech stuff to normies quite some time ago.

KerrAvon 4y ago
Zuck hasn't.
- entropicdrifter 4y ago
  Sure he has! He keeps them in rage-loops so he can show them ads and manipulate politics
- benreesman 4y ago
  Of all the things to criticize Mark for, being bad at making money seems a weird one.
  - nmfisher 4y ago
    Not being bad at making money, but selling something other than eyeballs is a vastly different proposition.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    What has he successfully sold to consumers?
    - djitz 4y ago
      Their own lives
    - dustymcp 4y ago
      Advertising and alot of it.
  - numpad0 4y ago
    He’s certainly good at making money but consistently horrible at keeping nerds around.
    - CamperBob2 4y ago
      (Shrug) He owns John Carmack...

Karrot_Kream 4y ago

I think it's much more a facet of limited performance (as mentioned in the talk itself) on these platforms rather than anything else. Performance on headsets is a challenge on pretty much all of these apps, from VRChat to Rec Room. I also think a lot of people that look just at the pictures don't realize that presence in VR adds a lot and can compensate for some loss of graphical fidelity. It's like how the first 3D games were quite blocky and a lot less refined than the best 2D games of the era but just the ability to move your character and the camera in 3D compensated for the bad graphics, to an extent.

loud_groan 4y ago
> I think it's much more a facet of limited performance (as mentioned in the talk itself) on these platforms rather than anything else. VRChat avatars have personality. On hardware now 6 years old. People are reacting to the lack of personality, not the lack of immersion.
- onepointsixC 4y ago
  On PC hardware. This looks like it was built from the ground up for Quest and have a ready to customize one for each user instead of a painstakingly hand crafted one created in blender.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Most VRChat avatars need PC to run and still cause instability on lower end PCVR setups. Quest can't even render them half the time.
  - numpad0 4y ago
    IIUC, users have to specifically upload a mobile version for VRC on Quest to display an avatar, rather than it trying and failing by chances. It's files missing or present difference.
    - Karrot_Kream 4y ago

xnx 4y ago

As best I can tell the push for this comes from the top and no one who knows better is stopping him.

nomel 4y ago
The push for low fidelity, as usual, and as mentioned in this very talk, is the limited power of these mobile systems pushing dual 2k displays at 90Hz.
- numpad0 4y ago
  The issue is not in polygon counts, but artistic qualities. There would be PS2 games that would look more comfortable and/or convincing than this.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    But running at 120fps at basically 4k resolution while scanning 5 camera inputs on the same low power mobile CPU? I think not. And remember these scenes can be modified by users and are loaded as needed. This is not like a precooked scene in a computer game where designers spend weeks fine-tuning the lighting model. I notice pretty much all quest apps use ambient lighting only which gives them this fake look. Some nice spotlights would do a world of good. But I guess anything better than this is just too expensive for the system.
    - dandellion 4y ago
      Mii avatars probably have even less polygons and use simpler shading and they look a lot better to me.
    - numpad0 4y ago
      You actually don’t get the “uncanny” feeling from this? Compared to non-Meta avatar systems and game graphics? Are non-gamers less susceptible to it? Is that how these avatar systems goes through the front door???

DonHopkins 4y ago

Maybe if Zuckerberg himself didn't look so much like a plastic lizard, his avatar wouldn't be so creepy.

numpad0 4y ago

These deep down in the uncanny valley stuff is usually done by assigned neurotypicals, not autistic. Autists are usually good at staying out of it.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago

Please stop perpetuating this harmful stereotype about people with ASD.

dqpb 4y ago

> weird cartoon avatar interaction systems Imagine the opposite - photorealistic avatars. There would be no interaction! You'd spend all your time rendering.

munificent 4y ago
> Imagine the opposite - photorealistic avatars. You mean like... video?
Animats 4y ago
> photorealistic avatars. It's coming, to, of all things, Second Life. Second Life is adding "puppeteering", and this works with head tracking, face tracking, and full body tracking. Users have been working on VR viewers. (The client is open source.) It's all very experimental, but there is a meeting in Second Life every two weeks[1] where all of this is demoed. Some of the attendees are rigged for full body tracking, and, with good quality Second Life avatars, which have far more detail than Meta or VRChat, and can do facial expressions, they look reasonably good. It's striking how someone with a full rig dominates a meeting without even trying. They're so much more present than the people sitting at keyboards. Hardware is a big problem. You need a good gamer PC to run all this and get the full effect. And a VR headset. And tracking gear. This is a real problem in the era of the $99 Chromebook. It's not getting cheaper, either. The first NVidia graphics card that was good enough for this was the NVidia 1060 with 6GB VRAM, in 2016, introduced at $250. It still costs about $250 to get that level of GPU power from NVidia. People who really want to be looked at - performers, influencers, etc - will need a full tracking rig. The audience doesn't. [1] https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/6509-introducing-the-second-life-public-calendar/ https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/6509-introducin...

cowtools 4y ago

>Which gives them superpowers in understanding tech/algorithms... does it?

drbojingle 4y ago

I suspect its just easier and faster (in terms of cpu and network throughput) to translate human facial expessions to a digital represebtation and apply it to lofi animated character than using something more hi def.

Vanit 4y ago

I initially thought the same, but using even the current gen avatars for multiplayer on the Quest 2 feels great and is surprisingly convincing. The speech to mouth movement detection looks natural and combined with the body language being accurately represented with reverse kinematics I felt like I was colocating very realistically.

DerSaidin 4y ago

I don't think those avatars have enough human likeness to really trigger the uncanny valley effect. I think it is weird for a different reason: it looks like 1990s tech - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds