Meta Quest Pro recently received an unexpected update, with its face tracking feature now able to track users' tongue movements. One of the major hardware upgrades to the Quest Pro is face and eye tracking. Thanks to the built-in camera, the headset is able to track the user's facial features and translate the user's real movements into a virtual character. Thanks to its ability to perfectly simulate mouth openings and closings, nose twitches, and eye movements, the digital model can sometimes even be as lifelike as a real human. At least in my experience with this technology.
However, this immersive experience can also be problematic in some cases, as tracking isn't always perfect. One problem that many users find is that it can't track tongues. So, if you want to show your tongue to a friend, or lick a virtual ice cream, you probably can't do it – until now.
Meta has released a new version of the face tracking extension in its V60 SDK, which finally includes support for tongue tracking. Interestingly, this support hasn't been added to Meta**ATAR yet - so you may not see tongue tracking in apps like Horizon Worlds, but developers have started adding it to third-party apps (developed by Korejan). He developed a VR face-tracking module for ALXR, a platform that competes with applications like Virtual Desktop and Quest Link that help you connect your headset to your PC. Korejan has posted a ** on X (formerly Twitter) about how it works.
It's always good that Meta is constantly improving its technology's capabilities, and we expect tongue tracking features to appear in more apps soon. Especially when Meta's own **atar SDK provides support for this feature. However, this feature does not need to be upgraded. Instead, facial tracking needs to get into the hands of more people, and more software is needed to use it.
Before the release of my Meta Quest 3, I rarely used mixed reality. The only thing I've done is as part of any review or test. But that's changed a lot in the last few months, and I'd say mixed reality is sometimes even my preferred way of playing, if there's a choice between VR and MR. One reason for this is that the Quest 3 transmits significantly more than the Quest Pro — it's not perfect, but the colors are more accurate and the image isn't blurry with graininess. Another more important reason is that the platform is now full of mixed reality-enabled software, not just some of the most popular VR-focused apps, which only occasionally offer additional features for mixed reality.
Although Meta hardware has been on the market for the same time, there is very little support for face tracking or eye tracking. Although there was a lot of talk before the Quest Pro launch about how these tools could add realism and how applications could run more efficiently using Foveated Rendering technology — a technology that actually renders VR software on only part of the scene you see with your eyes.
The problem may not be that face tracking itself isn't good enough — if it can track the tongue, it's definitely an impressive skill — but that the Quest Pro isn't selling well. Meta doesn't disclose whether the Quest Pro's sales are good or bad, but if you cut it by a third four months after the product launch (from $1,500 to $2,450 to $999.)99/£999.99/au$1,729.$99), which means it's not selling well — especially since other headsets are still selling in price. And if a lot of people aren't buying the headset and its tracking tools, why would developers waste resources developing software that uses them instead of developing apps that appeal to more users?
For face tracking to become as popular as mixed reality, it needs to make its way into Meta's budget Quest series so that more people can use it and developers can be incentivized to create software to use it. Until then, no matter how impressive it may be, facial tracking will remain a marginal tool. Therefore, for ordinary consumers, we expect Meta to popularize this technology into more applications in the future, so that more people can experience this magical charm of technology.
post by tech