Meta's Quest Pro can track now your tongue, but it's not the update the headset needs most

Date:
Tue, 19 Dec 2023 17:10:18 +0000

Description:
The Meta Quest Pro can now track your tongue movements, but the update that face tracking really needs is to be more affordable.

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The Meta Quest Pro has received an unexpected update its face tracking can now follow your tongue movements.

One of the main hardware upgrades featured in the Meta Quest Pro is face and eye tracking. Thanks to inbuilt cameras, the headset can track your facial features and translate your real-life movements onto a virtual avatar.
Because it's perfectly mimicking your mouth flaps, nose twitches, and eye movements, the digital model can feel almost as alive as a real human at
times at least in my experience with the tech.

Unfortunately, this immersion can break down at points, as the tracking isnt always perfect, with one fault many users noticed being that it cant track your tongue. So if you wanted to tease one of your friends by sticking it out at them, or lick a virtual ice cream cone you couldnt until now.

Meta has released a new version of the face-tracking extension in its v60
SDK, which finally includes support for tongue tracking. Interestingly this support hasnt yet been added to Meta avatars so you might not see tongue-tracking in apps like Horizon Worlds but it has already started to be added to third-party apps by developers. Rleased new #VRCFT modules for new #QuestPro v2 facial tracking with support for tongue.Supports (Air)Link and
VD via VDX (when VD adds support) using the ALXR Local module and ALXR
clients with the ALXR Remote moduleYou can download from here https://t.co/F37U2zA8is#VRChat pic.twitter.com/sUmfLaXVpN December 14, 2023 See more

This includes developer Korejan (via UploadVR ) who develops a VR Face Tracking module for ALXR an alternative to apps like Virtual Desktop and Quest Link, which help you connect your headset to a PC. Korejan posted a
clip of how it works on X (formerly Twitter). All the gear and nothing to do with it

Meta upgrading its techs capabilities is never a bad thing, and we should see tongue-tracking rolling out to more apps soonish especially once Metas own avatar SDK gets support for the feature. But this isnt the upgrade the
feature needs. Instead, face tracking needs to get into more peoples hands, and there needs to be more software that uses it.

Before the Meta Quest 3 was released I seldom used mixed reality the only times I did were as part of any reviews or tests I did for my job. Thats changed a lot in the past few months, and Id go as far as to say that mixed reality is sometimes my preferred way to play if theres a choice between VR and MR.

One reason is that the Quest 3 offers significantly higher quality
passthrough than the Quest Pro its still not perfect, but the colors are
more accurate, and the feed isnt ruined by graininess. The other, far more important reason is that the platform is now brimming with software that offers mixed reality support, rather than only a few niche apps featuring mixed reality as an aside to the main VR experience. Mixed reality is great, and more can use it thanks to the Quest 3 (Image credit: Meta)

Even though theyve been out for the same length of time on Meta hardware, there isnt the same support for face tracking or eye tracking. Thats despite all the talk before the Quest Pro released of how much realism these tools
can add, and how much more efficiently apps could run using foveated
rendering a technique where VR software would only properly render the part of the scene youre looking at with your eyes.

The big problem isnt that face tracking isnt good enough if it can track
your tongue it definitely is impressive its (probably) the Quest Pros poor sales. Meta hasnt said how well or badly the Pro has performed financially, but you dont permanently cut the price of a product by a third just four months after launch if its selling like hotcakes it fell from $1,500 / 1,500 / AU$2,450 to $999.99 / 999.99 / AU$1,729.99. And if not many people have
this headset and its tracking tools, why would developers waste resources on creating apps that use them when they could work on something more people could take advantage of?

For face tracking to take off like mixed reality has it needs to be brought
to Metas budget Quest line so that more people can access it, and developers are incentivized to create software that can use it. Until then, no matter
how impressive it gets, face tracking will remain a fringe tool. You might also like The Meta Quest 3 doesn't beat my 4K TV for Xbox gaming, but I don't care The 4 Meta Quest 3 apps I'd buy in the 2023 Holiday Sale if I didn't already own them Meta's new VR headset design looks like a next-gen Apple Vision Pro



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/virtual-reality-augmented-reality/metas-qu est-pro-can-track-now-your-tongue-but-its-not-the-update-the-headset-needs-mos t


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