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by mortenjorck 2463 days ago
There's something slightly unnerving about Horizon's avatars. While it's more or less understood that floating avatars are the best match for current modes of VR locomotion, thus the lack of legs, there's an important difference between something like Rec Room VR's floating avatars and Horizon's: The former's are far more abstract, and thus look more natural in their omissions.

Rec Room's avatars consist of floating hands, a floating head, and a floating torso, all disconnected. It doesn't seem odd that they don't have legs, because their other features are more removed from the human form. Facebook's, on the other hand, are fully-formed cartoon characters from the waist up, more on the order of XBox Live avatars. This greater detail makes the lack of detail elsewhere look out of place, and even slightly disturbing given its imposition on a human figure.

4 comments

People can get used to anything. In college I got a glance at the totally normal cartoons my little sister was watching and I was horrified -- it looked like borderline body horror to me. But she thought that the cartoon characters of my childhood were equally creepy. (In retrospect she was right; Courage the Cowardly Dog was some really messed up shit.) In comparison, a floating cartoon torso is going to be nothing for an adolescent to assimilate.
Reminds me of Metaverse from Snow Crash
can i interest you in a motorcycle race?
Yours Truly.
I use oculus rooms regularly, it has similar type of avatars and suits me better then those of rec room or altspace
It would be cool if everyone was on a skateboard, little car, wheelchair, hoverboard, etc.
That's one path to monetisation.