Forum Discussion
Meta Avatars SDK (Feedback/Issues)
Do you have any feedback and/or issues in regards to the Meta Avatars SDK? Use this place to discuss, as we'll have members of the engineering team reviewing this thread!
Read the blog on the M...
I have been paid by unity's documentation people multiple times to comment on their documentation. I have said the same thing to them each time. And each time they say "thank you, here is your money for helping us improve meta documentation". The layout of the docs has improved, the content is lacking big time.
I think they need to tell the developers and documentation people that they are not done until a non-insiders can use what they create. Then hold them accountable.
There were actually several people who were paid to review the documentation plus things like the the Meta Avatars 1.0, and what I hear consistently is that none of that feedback was incorporated year 2 years on, AND that the overall documentation has actually gone backwards in the years since, but not as much as the SDK themselves which as I am sure you are aware, are not as polished and relatively bug fee like they used to be.
I just tried v74 of the All in One SDK with v35 of the Meta Avatars 2.0 and it said we are to now use OpenXR versus Oculus XR as it will be deprecated, BUT the avatars that worked just fine in Oculus XR, do not track in Open XR at all and I cannot figure out why!!! Wasted 2 days trying to make it work, and I have concluded that the SDK is broken. We can just add that to the 6 weeks I wasted trying to get the 2.0 Avatars working in December/January as the SDK had/has a lot of issues and no one could get them working till v35 came out. Even then, v35 only seems to work with OVRCameraRig which is odd as Meta keeps telling us we can use the avatars on other headsets, but they REQUIRE XR Origin, not OVRCameraRig.
What the heck is going on a Meta? Seems like they are very checked out at the moment. I would love to be wrong and all is fixed in the coming weeks, but I am not holding my breath as we all know Meta is in a do or die situation with Horizon World and from what I hear, it is an all hands on deck sort of final effort to push that platform. Shame as the real Metaverse is being made by indies but we are wasting our time on broken documentation and SDKs.
I appreciate your response as it makes me feel a little better about my recent struggles. I've wasted so much time in the past week or two just trying to get my custom avatar working again. It's very frustrating because this is something I had easily done months ago.
The crazy thing is Meta has no problem rolling out updates. Every time I turn off my headset, another update is installing. It seems like every few weeks, the SDKs are being updated. The problem is, things change with every update so a workflow that you might've used (or followed on youtube) could be completely obsolete 2 months later.
I agree with you 100% on the Meta Horizon World thing. It's like they are throwing every resource they have at that, and not caring about anything else.
When is the last time you've seen a Meta moderator on here replying to ANYTHING? Not on any posts I've been reading, however I do see MetaStoreHelp does reply seemingly everyday (2 hours ago). Maybe they can give us some clarification on exactly what we would need to do in order to get custom Avatars 2.0 working (especially with Unity 6) as I'm not sure *anyone* has got it working yet. Even when following updated documentation step by step (and using all recommended versions), things just aren't working. It's really frustrating like you said because the best VR experiences on the Quest are not coming from Horizon Worlds. 😆😅😅
On my schedule today is to step into the SampleAvatarEntity and C++ api and see if I can figure out if it is failing from their side, or if there is some bug or set of settings they forgot to tell us to use.
I have great hope for the idea. Let us hope someone at Meta cares if they fail or not.
That did not take long, got the correct avatar to load.
As I stepped into SampleAvatarEntity, I noticed the init code was gray.
(1) In your player settting->other->Script Compilation add "USING_XR_SDK".
(2) Set input system to BOTH, as something still wants the old system and if you don't you get an error.
(3) Ignore when it tells you with android (you should not set it to BOTH input systems), as it will not compile or run with NEW only.
- Approved
This is a reasonable callout here, and I just wanted to chime in to make it clear that we ARE reading this stuff. I've just come on board as community manager for the developer side of these forums and we're still hammering out the processes we're using to make sure questions get answered in a reasonable timeframe, but we are here and we're glad to see you are too.
I'm pleased to see that some progress was made here, I'll make sure the team has the chance to take a look.
Thanks for the comment Casey and thank you Meta for hiring a new Community Manager.
One of the things I have been asking for is complete samples of the Meta Avatar 2.0 SDK fully working in a multiplayer environment with both OVRCameraRig and XROrigin setups. Right now the Meta Building Blocks only covers OVRCameraRig and is less than half baked as there are no interactions and no locomotion which is the very minimum needed so that every developer is not having to reinvent that wheel. Further, the same is needed for an XROrigin setup as not everyone is using OVRCameraRig, especially for those who plan to use the Avatars on other platforms that Meta has said they will support back at Connect 2023. I spent 6 weeks this past December trying to get XROrigin working and while I was very close, but the Hosts Avatar would not appear at all for the non host despite it working just fine the other way around. Everyone else at the time also could not get it working and this hundreds, of not thousands of hours were wasted in the community. Since then, I only know of one dev who got it all working with v35 while others are still struggling for some reason. I have not tried again myself as I am waiting for a solid working sample first as I am just not willing to blow more time on something that really should be a drop in and go with minimal effort. Something like this that I provided to others on the Start Discord, but this is the one that the non host could not see the host with https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ssCHYXS0Len1mi0SVkzwfigCCUOzCFOV/view?usp=sharingSurely someone at Meta has a fully working OVRCameraRig and XROrigin with all the locomotion and interactions being tracked over either Fusion or Unity Netcode that if shared would be a BIG WIN for the development community. Would be a big win for Meta too as more will adopt the avatars.
