Meta Avatars SDK (Feedback/Issues)

Thank you: USING_XR_SDK!

As to the blocks - lack of documentation is often the problem. Just dropping them into a scene often adds a lot of stuff, you don't know what it did, or what it expects you to do to make it work. I seem to recall that blocks were added to make it easier for beginners. The problem is, they teach nothing, they just tweak your scene Hierarchy.

Same with Unity Event based interactors, Oculus interactors, and now XR interactors. You dropped in an ovrcamera, do we use the OculusXR with ovrcamer? or OpenXR? Or is OpenXR only workable with XROrigin? And now how do you make the ray interactors you dropped in work with unity game objects and a UI canvas? You have to do a lot of trial and error and some guessing. And will you need a ray interactable, graphic raycaster, ovr raycaster, or xr interactable or some isurface object?  I have two identical objects, it works with one and not the other. It is taking a lot of trial and error to figure out. We need docs.

I had locomotion problems, until I figured out that some block added its own locomotion script (It might have been ovrcamera). So it conflicted with my locomotion script.

When you test these, do you start from scratch using the documentation? Or tweak or use an example you already have?

Also, the UNITY (not meta) documentation interaction documents are outdated. They are from the previous major revision. So following the instructions leads you  a circle.

I tried to send you this personally CaseyAtMeta via the message feature here, but it said I reached some personal message limit which is odd as I have hardly ever sent a message here. I could not locate other contact details, so I am replying here instead.  Happy to remove and send to you personally for processing if easier. Here is a PDF for ease of sharing.

Hi CaseyAtMeta,

Thank you for taking the time to reply. It’s genuinely encouraging to hear internal acknowledgement that Meta Avatars in a networked context are not functioning as originally believed. I’ve been raising this issue since December 2024, and while the silence until now has been difficult, it’s at least a step forward to see this finally recognized.

For now, I can revert to using the OVRCameraRig, as I’m currently focused solely on Quest development. That said, I must ask…what happened to OpenXR?

Version 74 of the SDK clearly states:

“Beginning with v74, it is recommended to use the OpenXR plugin (com.unity.xr.openxr) instead of the OculusXR plugin.” 

Additionally, the March 7, 2025 blog post titled Meta and OpenXR reinforced this direction:

“Starting with our v74 SDK... the built-in OpenXR path for all major game engines will be a recommended path for development. Developers building on Unity, Unreal, and Godot can leverage OpenXR to build across platforms and access Meta platform plugins...”

With these statements in mind, I spent the past four weeks, since the SDK’s March 14 release, working to integrate OpenXR, trying to get even basic functionality to work. This is even bigger than OpenXR as there are other SDK issues like getting the Display Name and Profile Photo to no avail and it too is looking very much like it is an issue in the SDK and not on my end despite being told by Dev support it was. 

To be blunt, that’s another full month over 200 hours at 10-14hrs a day, including most weekends lost chasing a solution that was not ready, despite Meta publicly saying it was. This is all on top of the six weeks I spent between December and January trying to get Meta Avatar 2.0 working in multiplayer which as we know now, also does not work. Like many developers, I eventually gave up when it became obvious that it simply didn’t function.

Altogether, I’ve now spent over 500 hours on what have proven to be false starts — time that should have gone into advancing my project. For a solo indie developer, that kind of loss isn’t just inconvenient — it’s existential and likely will mean I will miss the Halloween release of my Haunted Castle Dark Ride addition to my Theme Park.

This isn’t just a technical issue. It’s a communication issue. Meta repeatedly assured developers publicly, on stage, and in official documentation, that these systems were ready. They weren’t. No amount of “we’re sorry” is going to make up for the scale of time lost by developers like myself, who trusted what Meta told us. Multiply this by countless other developers, many silent and this amounts to a lot of image damage in the developer community for Meta. 

Let’s not forget:

• Meta Connect 2022 | Meta Avatars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2tqbKvWtLc
  Ouch...this did not age well. It states at 7:29 “Today, developers using the Meta Avatars SDK on Unity could bring our avatars and their benefits into their VR applications, but we know that interoperability requires that we service even more developers across more platforms. I'm excited to share that we will soon ship support for iOS and Android in the Unity SDK. With this launch, the Meta Avatars SDK will enable more cross-platform capabilities so that developers can reach and service more people on whichever device that they use. 

• Meta Connect 2023 | Meta Avatars: Also did not age well but it looks like the Connect 2023 Meta Avatar talk never got published or has since been removed. I was physically at that talk and Meta made even bigger promises about supporting 3rd party headsets which of course would require OpenXR/XROrigin that here in 2025...still not implemented.

• Meta Connect 2024 | Meta Avatars: Aged within weeks of the presentation as Jill at Connect 2024 said there were "dedicated support teams" to help with the migration to the new Meta Avatars by March 30th 2025 and that the SDK would be solid. I asked for that support via many channels and like others, concluded that it does not exist. She even made other promises not kept in the same presentation from just this past October. https://developers.facebook.com/m/meta-connect-developer-sessions/meta-avatars-sdk/

None of these promises were kept. And yet, Meta’s profits continue to grow, off the backs of developers who trusted your roadmap. Many of us spent months working in good faith to implement features you said were production-ready. They were not. That’s not a small oversight, that’s a systemic failure.

I know none of this is personally on you, CaseyAtMeta, but someone at Meta needs to take accountability, because right now, this is the lowest point in my long immersive journey, and I’ve been with Oculus/Meta since the Oculus Kickstarter as a backer.

So I’ll ask plainly: Where can I send my invoice?  I'm already set up in your vendor payment system and just need a PO or wherever it is to invoice against.

I also am wondering - are you testing with ONLY the pre-built avatars? They work. And they work because they are the fallback for when the user avatar will not load from meta.

Users want their avatars, not the ones that come in the zip file.

This is now in 74.0.3 😁

#if USING_XR_MANAGEMENT && USING_XR_SDK_OCULUS && !OVRPLUGIN_UNSUPPORTED_PLATFORM
#define USING_XR_SDK
#endif