Though Meta didn't announce it, you can generate a new Meta Avatar by taking a selfie.
David Heaney
The new Meta Avatars with overhauled graphics and animations launched last week, after being officially confirmed at Meta Connect. But what Meta didn't announce, neither at Connect nor when launching the new avatars, was that you can generate a new one using your smartphone's front camera.
To do so, just open the Meta Horizon phone app, navigate to your avatar, and create a new one. You can have multiple avatars now, so generating a new one doesn't mean overwriting your existing new-style avatar. You can tweak every aspect of it after generation, just like if you made a manual avatar.
The feature doesn't appear to be available in regions with laws that complicate the use of facial recognition technologies, such as Illinois and the EU.
Avatar generation from a selfie has been available in the competing Ready Player Me avatar system (which supports VRChat) for over three years now, and it was actually a key element of Facebook Spaces from all the way back in 2017.
Jamie Feltham
It's an interesting feature that should help those who aren't interested in or good with video game character creator interfaces get set up for social VR. Eventually it's possible the same scan could be used to generate a Codec Avatar too, offering you two virtual versions of your self, cartoonish and realistic.
