Hello mouse_bear Someone over on Oculus Start linked me here and I am glad as I do have some feedback but first, let me share that Meta is onto something big with the new Meta Avatars. My user testing with them was very positive. Users were absolutely delighted to see their own Meta Avatar and it made their immersion deeper. Way to go team Meta!!! Sadly it was not smooth sailing to implement and turns out that I cannot use them right now unfortunately. More on both below.
End to End Tutorials and Videos:
There is a big win for Meta and Developers in terms of Meta Avatars and the more apps that can adopt, the more it will make the entire platform feel more cohesive (like the Miis did on the Wii). I know you know this, but what you may not know is how much time developers are wasting right now due to a lack of a more direct explanation on how to implement Meta Avatars. Yes there is documentation but I and others I have spoken with, have spent many hours trying to figure it all out as not all was obvious. Thank goodness for the developer forums and the Oculus Start Discord. Thankfully I got it all sorted now, but that comes at a cost of wasted time and that impacts both of us. I spent many hours trying to figure out little things that are just not obvious in the documentation or even just absent. When I look back on what I have learned, I recognize one good tutorial would have cut it down from days to maybe 30 mins. Meta Avatars is that simple. This said, the trend these days is to not only provide the technical documentation like you have, but also videos with the developer(s) just casually walking you through setup, store deployment, avatar setup and testing (not just local avatar as that is far from custom Avatar in an app), common issues, limitations (like the lighting one below), troubleshooting tips, and best practices etc. These sorts of videos often get you up and running very quickly and allows you to get back to creating not trying to figure out why your avatar is blue. I am sorry to be negative here, but it really needs to be said that Meta should really consider stepping it up here as it is a win win for both Meta and devs who are working hard to bring content to the platform. Delays due to documentation gaps affect both of us. I highly recommend asking someone around the office who knows little to nothing about the Meta Avatars and have them try and implement it in Unity and elsewhere as it will provide many insights as to the gaps in the documentation and as well as input for your videos. If the Meta team would like to reach out to me for more feedback, I welcome it.
Realtime Spot and Point of Light Support:
I managed to get the Meta Avatars working end to end with a users custom avatar, but due to the additive/async scene load nature of my title, I cannot use light probes and thus I cannot light the Meta Avatar with anything other than a real time Directional light which just looks so flat and out of sync with the rest of the realtime lights. With this said, I am requesting real time shaders, preferably URP Lit or Simple Lit, be added to the Meta Avatar shaders for those of us who prefer real time lights and/or cannot use light probes. I know Meta does not recommend many realtime lights due to the hardware of the Quest, but with clever optimization, you really can have them...and a lot of them. There are over 100 realtime lights in my ride so far and as you can see if you try it yourself, they make things look very real as compared to light probes. Just look at the seat you are in and how the light and shadows interact especially in that loading area going under all the spotlights. It really adds to the immersion of my title and I am sure others.
Thanks for reading my feedback and I look forward to improvements over the coming months. Ideally, realtime spot and point lights will be working with the Meta Avatars before I have completed my ride over the next year. LOVE to hear back from you on the priority of this request.
My title https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/4212005182188732/
Edited to remove some of my frustration that was coming through. 🙂