“Akanbe” is in the virtual reality space as well! Meta Quest Pro now supports tongue tracking VR Inside

It turns out that face tracking in Meta Quest Pro added the ability to track human tongue movements.

This means that the facial expressions created by avatars in the virtual space are closer to reality.

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The lack of tongue tracking limits virtual experiences

The Quest Pro's native face tracking didn't have the ability to track the tongue.

When the Quest Pro was released in October 2022, a lot of people praised the face tracking, but there were also reviews complaining about the lack of tongue tracking.

In other words, when looking at your facial expressions in a virtual mirror, sticking out your tongue highlights the difference between reality and virtual space, breaking the sense of immersion.

The expressive power of social VR, where avatars communicate with each other, is also limited by the lack of tongues.

Tongue tracking has been added to Quest Pro

Quote source:Twitter

Therefore, with version 60 of the Unity SDK and native code, Meta released a new version of OpenXR for face tracking, which now also includes tongue movement tracking functionality.

VR glasses have infrared cameras on either side of the nasal cavity that track tongue movements.

The Meta Avatars SDK does not support this yet, but third-party avatar apps will be able to do so by updating to version 60 of the SDK.

korejan, developer of the VRCFT-ALXR module for OpenXR, posted a video on X testing tongue tracking in the Quest Pro using the VRFCT module.

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It has been pointed out that there are a few apps that can use tongue tracking.

Steam Link and Virtual Desktop support the Quest Pro's previous face tracking, which you can now use with VRChat as well.

However, both applications must be updated to support the v60 SDK to include the tongue in their tracking.

However, US tech media UploadVR predicts that many standalone apps will not be able to use tongue tracking.

That's because the Quest Pro, the Meta's first high-end model, sold very poorly, and few third-party apps supported the Quest Pro's face tracking.

In fact, the Metaverse “Horizon” fully supports tongue tracking, while the standalone VRChat app only supports eye tracking.

summary

Meta Quest Pro introduces a new face tracking function that can track tongue movements, increasing the expressiveness of the user's avatars in virtual space.

Originally, the Quest Pro's face tracking didn't include tongue movement tracking, which some reviews said reduced immersion.

While the ability to recreate tongue movements improves the Metaverse experience for users, it also gives developers more expressive possibilities.

However, for these benefits to be truly valuable, it is necessary to increase the number of applications that support the tongue tracking function.

The situation surrounding the Quest Pro is tough, but I'm looking forward to its progress in the future.

reference:Quest Pro now has tongue tracking［UploadVR］