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Meta went the cartoon method, (so did apple with memoji) the problem is that it looks cheap. So I suspect the front display was a compromise, between buildabil

Meta went the cartoon method, (so did apple with memoji) the problem is that it looks cheap. So I suspect the front display was a compromise, between buildability, and not staring people out by accident.

dartos 3y ago
It only looks cheap because meta made cheap, low effort avatars. Apple could make stylized eyes look good if they wanted, I’m sure they have some Pixar connections too if they really wanted to bring on experts.
- KaiserPro 3y ago
  > It only looks cheap because meta made cheap, low effort avatars. There is a wider societal statement packed in there, but that's for later. I would point out that memoji looks equally as cheap. However, there are slightly more rich people who choose/chose to use memojis
  - dartos 3y ago
    Memoji do not look as cheap. They don’t look great, but not nearly as cheap. You can see the polygons on meta’s models. They look like characters in PlayStation 2 era games. Besides that, it’s an apples and oranges comparison. Avatars in VR are full-body (ish) and are meant as your primary method of viewing and probably interacting with others in a Vr space. Memojis are just little faces you can put in your text message conversations. The fact that people are making this comparison shows how little effort went into the visual design of metas avatars.
    - KaiserPro 3y ago
      Heres a thought experiment: You are looking at potential videos to watch on $subject. There are two videos you can see, one with a thumbnail of avatar/memoji/emoji, the other with a real person. Which one are _most_ people going to clock on (hint we can test this by analysing youtube) The point I am making is that avatar/memojis look cheap, not because of how they are created, but because of ease of creation/lack of differentiation.
      - dartos 3y ago
        I don’t see the connection between those two statements, but I wholly disagree with your point. 3d humanoid models (avatars) can look like anything. Some look cheap, some don’t. Look at the sheer variety of avatars on vrchat. VRchat has technical limitations that prevent avatars from looking straight out of a AAA game, but the sheer variety of the avatars and how they’re made and how they’re designed (maya, blender, with shaders, with props, etc) makes VRChat feel more alive and engaging than metas offering. Any project that has billions of dollars of funding should be able to make good looking avatars that lend a distinct style. Hell, video games do it yearly on several million dollar budgets. Sorry, but you’ve convinced me that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
- white_dragon88 3y ago
  [dead]
- fouc 3y ago
  I don't want to see Toy Story representations of people. Memoji looks cartoonish. Cartoonish is unpalatable in professional contexts. There's a reason people don't like comic sans.
  - cpuguy83 3y ago
    What a sad state of affairs for professionals.
    - s3p 3y ago
      Not one professional is sad about this.
  - dartos 3y ago
    Then you don’t really want avatars. You want a 3d scan of someone which can be animated. That’s fine, but to hit the massive appeal that meta wants for its metaverse, they cant do that and scale. Also like who wants to go to the metaverse to get on a zoom call? Zoom is enough for professionals and their meetings.
- airstrike 3y ago
  FWIW, "never say never" but I don't think I'll ever opt into being represented by a Pixar-like avatar. If you believe I'm not alone, then by default you're alienating all of us if that is our only choice. The question then is whether my repulsion to being a memoji is greater than someone's repulsion to being an uncanny valley avatar. I think the latter can be iteratively improved until people no longer find it uncanny—indeed I'd argue the latest research pieces from Meta AI that have been posted here on HN do seem to point that way I don't think cartoon avatars can be improved to become palatable enough to those who dislike them

dartos 3y ago

It only looks cheap because meta made cheap, low effort avatars. Apple could make stylized eyes look good if they wanted, I’m sure they have some Pixar connections too if they really wanted to bring on experts.

KaiserPro 3y ago
> It only looks cheap because meta made cheap, low effort avatars. There is a wider societal statement packed in there, but that's for later. I would point out that memoji looks equally as cheap. However, there are slightly more rich people who choose/chose to use memojis
- dartos 3y ago
  Memoji do not look as cheap. They don’t look great, but not nearly as cheap. You can see the polygons on meta’s models. They look like characters in PlayStation 2 era games. Besides that, it’s an apples and oranges comparison. Avatars in VR are full-body (ish) and are meant as your primary method of viewing and probably interacting with others in a Vr space. Memojis are just little faces you can put in your text message conversations. The fact that people are making this comparison shows how little effort went into the visual design of metas avatars.
  - KaiserPro 3y ago
    Heres a thought experiment: You are looking at potential videos to watch on $subject. There are two videos you can see, one with a thumbnail of avatar/memoji/emoji, the other with a real person. Which one are _most_ people going to clock on (hint we can test this by analysing youtube) The point I am making is that avatar/memojis look cheap, not because of how they are created, but because of ease of creation/lack of differentiation.
    - dartos 3y ago
      I don’t see the connection between those two statements, but I wholly disagree with your point. 3d humanoid models (avatars) can look like anything. Some look cheap, some don’t. Look at the sheer variety of avatars on vrchat. VRchat has technical limitations that prevent avatars from looking straight out of a AAA game, but the sheer variety of the avatars and how they’re made and how they’re designed (maya, blender, with shaders, with props, etc) makes VRChat feel more alive and engaging than metas offering. Any project that has billions of dollars of funding should be able to make good looking avatars that lend a distinct style. Hell, video games do it yearly on several million dollar budgets. Sorry, but you’ve convinced me that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
white_dragon88 3y ago
[dead]
fouc 3y ago
I don't want to see Toy Story representations of people. Memoji looks cartoonish. Cartoonish is unpalatable in professional contexts. There's a reason people don't like comic sans.
- cpuguy83 3y ago
  What a sad state of affairs for professionals.
  - s3p 3y ago
    Not one professional is sad about this.
- dartos 3y ago
  Then you don’t really want avatars. You want a 3d scan of someone which can be animated. That’s fine, but to hit the massive appeal that meta wants for its metaverse, they cant do that and scale. Also like who wants to go to the metaverse to get on a zoom call? Zoom is enough for professionals and their meetings.
airstrike 3y ago
FWIW, "never say never" but I don't think I'll ever opt into being represented by a Pixar-like avatar. If you believe I'm not alone, then by default you're alienating all of us if that is our only choice. The question then is whether my repulsion to being a memoji is greater than someone's repulsion to being an uncanny valley avatar. I think the latter can be iteratively improved until people no longer find it uncanny—indeed I'd argue the latest research pieces from Meta AI that have been posted here on HN do seem to point that way I don't think cartoon avatars can be improved to become palatable enough to those who dislike them