Since launching in December of 2016, Oculus Avatars has brought a much-needed sense of humanity to the Oculus platform, allowing users to interact with one another on a personal level while in VR. With every new update, the platform has expanded its offerings with regular technical updates, and a sizable catalog of faces, lipstick, hairstyles, and accessories, presenting users with plenty of options for customizing their virtual self.

Today, Oculus introduces its latest update to their Oculus Avatars platform, ‘Expressive Avatars,’ adding a new level of realism to the expressive behavior of avatar models. Thanks to new improvements to eye and mouth movement, avatars now offer more engaging, meaningful interactions that culminate in a more immersive social experience. To achieve this effect, Oculus studied the dynamics of the human eye and mouth in order to identify and replicate minute details.

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For example, studies have shown the human eye blinks more as it looks around due to the exposure to air; this information has allowed Oculus to better simulate the blink rate of an avatar based on what they’re looking at. They’ve also identified the differences in a users natural behavior while in a headset, primarily how they tend to turn their heads more to look at something than they would in reality. This is most likely due to the limited field-of-view currently offered by a majority of existing headsets. This crucial data has allowed them to better predict the head movements of a user, resulting in more realistic eye movements fromt the avatar.

These eye movements, including the eyebrows, are also affected by the user’s changes in a users voice while speaking. For instance, a sudden change in pitch or a jerk of the head could result in a raised eyebrow or widened eyes. Oculus hopes to eventually add more updates in the near future, such as pupil dilation and constriction based on lighting changes, as well as mutual eye contact between users.

Using the data mentioned above, Oculus has also made great strides in the movement of the mouth while speaking. Seeing as the lips move before, during, and after a sound is emitted from the mouth, the biggest difficulty for Oculus was accurately simulating the lip movements for a noise before it’s even emitted. After testing several solutions — including delaying the audio between users to buy computing time — they decided on a technique referred to as differential interpolation, which involves modeling intermediate mouth shapes between each sound while controlling individual mouth muscles.

In terms of avatar realism, Oculus looked back on past updates to develop a pleasant balance of realism for their latest design. The result is a lineup of slightly more accurate avatars married with minimalistic textures designed to keep the model from looking too realistic.

The Expressive Avatars update is available now on the Oculus Rift and Oculus Go headsets. No doubt we’ll most likely see support heading to the upcoming Oculus Quest standalone headset when it releases sometime this month.

Source: Kyle Melnick, VRScout

Image Credit: Oculus