Facebook’s experimental app for meeting in VR, Spaces, is giving people new ways to change their appearance.
Facebook Spaces was introduced last year, around one year after the launch of the Oculus Rift. It’s currently available on Rift and Vive, but a recent job listing confirms plans for support on PSVR as well. The software creates rooms in which people can meet and participate in activities together. You can even make a phone call to the real world via Facebook Messenger, and invite others to look into your virtual world through their phones or computers.
The potential benefits of connecting people face-to-face in VR is the reason Mark Zuckerberg acquired Oculus in 2014, and the experimentation seen inside Spaces has occurred alongside the work of teams at Oculus. It has been a little hard to see the broader strategy at play given the ongoing evolution of headsets and their controllers, like the more portable but limited Gear VR and Oculus Go, but Spaces very much looks like a major step toward Facebook evolving its social network for the age of spatial computing.
With the latest updates rolling out this week, Spaces allows people connecting with Facebook to adjust their appearance to a much greater degree.
According to a blog post from Facebook, the company is aiming to let everyone “represent themselves in VR in a way that feels natural.” Here’s what’s new:
“Added hundreds of new options to customize your appearance, including new head shapes, hairstyles and facial features to choose from. You can also customize your body type for the first time.”
“Easier than ever to fine-tune your look with new controls to adjust the size, position and angle of your features in the avatar creator.”
“Avatars feel more present in the VR space with richer materials, better lighting and shadows.”
“Fine-tuned the tech under the hood to make avatar body movements look more fluid and natural.”
“Updated our system that provides people with avatar suggestions using machine learning, so it can take advantage of the new and expanded feature options when matching you to suggested looks.”
Let us know what you think of this update down in the comments below!
