After years of forcing owners of its Meta Quest VR headsets to exist as floating torsos in their virtual homes, Meta is finally giving VR users legs for their avatars as part of a new update. The new update, available to Quest owners on the Public Test Channel, comes as the company prepares to launch its sleeker, slimmer Meta Quest 3 headset at a premium price point later this year.
Meta gives its VR users legs in Quest Home as part of the v57 update
Nearly a year after originally promising Meta Quest owners that it would be adding legs to their VR avatars in the near future, UploadVR reports that Meta has finally released the long-anticipated feature. Available to users who are signed up for Public Test Channel releases, the v57 update for Quest headsets now gives VR users legs inside the Quest Home. While other apps like VRChat and the Quest Roblox Beta already give VR users a pair of virtual legs to strut around on, the useful appendages have been conspicuously absent from Meta’s official apps until now.
For now, Quest users can only show off their new legs when inside the Quest Home app and can only view them using the in-app mirror. According to UploadVR, Meta claims that legs will also be coming to its frequently-memed Meta Horizon Worlds social VR app in the coming weeks. Numerous third-party games on Quest headsets make use of the Meta Avatar system to let players maintain a consistent appearance across titles, so it’s likely the new legs will also come to these VR apps eventually.
Meta’s years-long dominance of the VR gaming market faced a new challenge this year with the release of Sony’s PSVR 2. Though Sony’s tethered headset lacks some of the flexibility of Meta’s standalone option, being connected to a PS5 means the PSVR 2 can deliver far more graphically impressive experiences than are possible on the mobile-processor-powered Quest 2. Earlier this summer Microsoft reiterated its wait-and-see approach to virtual reality, stating that Xbox VR games won’t happen until the install base for the tech is larger.
