Meta and Italian luxury brand Valentino have partnered to launch a new line of digital clothing on the company’s Avatar Store.
When the Meta Avatars Store launched in late 2022, the company offered digital outfits from a number of luxury clothing brands, including Balenciaga, Prada and Thom Browne.
Now the prestigious Roman fashion house is among them, bringing a range of patently Valentino outfits inspired by its recent IRL collection, including two mini dresses, a skintight jumpsuit, a suit jacket, a bomber jacket, a t-shirt, a pair of jeans and a pair of shorts.
All of its digital outfits are priced at $5, making it basically the cheapest thing you can buy with the name Valentino attached to it. Second place goes to two physical items, the Rosso Valentino Mini Lipstick and Stick With Me Glitter Primer, both of which will set you back $25.
Like all of the digital clothing available on the Meta Avatar Store, users can dress their avatars across Quest, Instagram, Facebook, as well as in Messenger via its new avatar calling function, which lets you use your avatar in place of your camera for video chats. In VR, users can show off their digital purchases in the company’s Horizon Worlds social app.
If you’ve never perused the digital racks, follow these steps to sort through the store’s paid and free digital clothing:
Put on your Meta Quest headset.
Select your profile picture from the navigation menu, then select Edit avatar.
Select Store. From here, you can filter by brand and price.
Select the item that you want to get, then tap Save or Buy.
If you’re buying an item, enter your device PIN and confirm the purchase.
Select Save.
Your avatar will be updated automatically with your new items. You can go to your closet any time to view and change them.
Bigscreen is a social VR app designed around cowatching video content remotely. It supports YouTube, Disney+, Amazon Prime, movie rentals, and its own TV channels for shows like Rick & Morty.
The new avatars now have necks and estimated arms (no current VR headset has built-in arm tracking). They also have a wider range of skin colors, body types, hairstyles, gender-agnostic outfits, facial features, and more accessory options.
before (above) and after (below)
Despite the new features, Bigscreen claims the new avatars are significantly better optimized than the old ones. This should mean more avatars can be rendered in the same space without impacting performance, which is especially useful for standalone headsets like Quest.
The company plans to add support for hand tracking and eye tracking later this year for the new avatar system. Meta’s Horizon Home already supports eye and face tracking on Quest Pro and is getting YouTube cowatching at some point. Some VRChat worlds also support cowatching videos, and the platform will natively support eye tracking soon too, including on Quest Pro.
Bigscreen is also launching its own SteamVR headset later this year with 2.6K OLED microdisplays, called Beyond, set to be the smallest and lightest VR headset ever sold.
Meta researchers built a custom chip to make photoreal avatars possible on standalone headsets.
Facebook first showed off work on ‘Codec Avatars’ back in March 2019. Powered by multiple neural networks, the avatars are generated using a specialized capture rig with 171 cameras. Once generated, they can be driven in real time by a prototype VR headset with five cameras; two internal viewing each eye and three external viewing the lower face. Since then the researchers have showed off several evolutions of the system, such as more realistic eyes, a version only requiring eye tracking and microphone input, and most recently a 2.0 version that approaches complete realism.
But driving photorealistic avatars on the mobile chipsets used in standalone headsets like Quest is no easy feat. While Meta’s newest & most efficient model can only render (decode) five avatars at 50 frames per second on a Quest 2, this doesn’t include the other side of the equation – converting (encoding) the eye tracking and face tracking inputs to a codec avatar face state.
In a paper published for the 2022 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, Meta researchers present a prototype of a neural network accelerator chip “that achieves energy efficient performance for running eye gaze extraction of the Codec Avatar model”.
Transferring data between components on mobile devices requires significant energy. The custom chip is located near the eye tracking camera inputs on the main board to minimize this, and handles converting these camera inputs into a Codec Avatar state. The researchers point out this could also have benefits for privacy and security, as the general purpose processors wouldn’t even have access to the raw camera data.
To be clear, this chip is just an experiment. It only handles one small part of the Codec Avatars workload, it’s not a general solution for making the system viable on near-term standalone headsets. The regular chipset (eg. Snapdragon XR2) is still handling all other tasks.
What this demonstrates is the viability of using custom silicon to solve problems like avatars. The idea could theoretically in future be dramatically expanded to handle more VR-specific tasks.
Meta’s researchers are approaching complete realism with Codec Avatars 2.0, their prototype VR avatars using advanced machine learning techniques.
Facebook first showed off work on ‘Codec Avatars’ back in March 2019. Powered by multiple neural networks, the avatars are generated using a specialized capture rig with 171 cameras. Once generated, they can be driven in real time by a prototype VR headset with four cameras; two internal viewing each eye and three external viewing the lower face. Since then the researchers have showed off several evolutions of the system, such as more realistic eyes and a version only requiring eye tracking and microphone input.
At MIT’s Virtual Beings & Being Virtual workshop in April Yaser Sheikh, who leads the Codec Avatars team, showed a video of the latest version of the project, described as “Codec Avatars 2.0”:
“I would say a grand challenge of the next decade is to see if we can enable remote interactions that are indistinguishable from in person interactions“, Sheikh remarked.
In a paper published last year, Sheikh and his colleagues claim their newest models are smaller and more efficient than their past research, with the neural network now computing only the pixels visible to the headset. With this advancement, a Quest 2 headset is apparently able to render five avatars in realtime in the same (likely empty) scene.
Still, the company seems to have a long way to go to reach this kind of fidelity in shipping products. Meta Avatars today have a basic cartoony art style. Their realism has actually decreased over time, likely to better suit larger groups with complex environments in apps like Horizon Worlds on Quest 2’s mobile processor.
Codec Avatars may however end up as a separate option, rather than a direct update to the cartoon avatars of today. In his interview with Lex Fridman, CEO Mark Zuckerberg described a future where you might use an “expressionist” avatar in casual games and a “realistic” avatar in work meetings.
During the workshop Sheikh noted that it’s impossible to predict how far away Codec Avatars is from actually shipping. He did however say that when the project started it was “ten miracles away”, and he now believes it’s “five miracles away”.
Genies, a 3D avatar company, announced it’s raised a $150 million Series C investment, something it says will be used to hire more engineering talent and continue development on its non-fungible token (NFT) based “avatar universe.”
The round was led by private equity firm Silver Lake, and includes participation from existing investors BOND, NEA, and Tamarack Global. This brings the company’s total outside investment to $202 million, with the company now valued at $1 billion.
The company’s main focus for now is on avatar creator tools and digital fashion collections which it hopes will be used across the metaverse—and not just sit in a crypto wallet. The company envisions creating avatar homes and social experiences in the future—presumably also minted as tradable NFTs.
In late 2021, Genies notably inked a partnership with Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group to launch its own NFT marketplace, called ‘The Warehouse’. Users and creators on the platform can buy, sell, and trade avatars and accessories, which are minted on Dapper Labs’ blockchain network, Flow. The deal also saw NFT partnerships with a number of musicians, including Justin Bieber, Migos, Cardi B, and J Balvin.
“We believe avatar ecosystems are going to shape Web3 the same way that mobile apps defined Web2,” said Akash Nigam, CEO of Genies. “With every advancement of the internet, an expansive new region of entrepreneurial skill sets is born. In Web3, Gen Z avatar ecosystem builders are going to be the leaders of innovation and, through our creator tools, we strive to empower their wildest imaginations, ideas, and experiences as avatar creations.”
It’s not clear whether this particular blockchain tech will become the standard for digital ownership in the Web3 future, where digital property ownership is set to go well beyond pictures of cartoon apes. Just the same, many household names in the XR industry are also jumping into the NFT craze. HTC opened its own NFT marketplace in December, albeit solely dedicated to ‘flat’ NFT art for now. Meta is planning to do the same on its social network Facebook, although there’s still no clear launch date.
Within the last week, news has been abuzz with spectators’ accounts about Decentraland’s inaugural Metaverse Fashion Week. In fact, it’s safe to say that no other digital fashion event has ever received so much industry attention, making it one for the books.
As the metaverse and NFTs are continuously becoming a regular part of our everyday vocabulary, we’re likely to see more events become digitised and show a capacity to bring both industry leaders and global communities together. Both industry leaders and the general public have now seen greater evidence of a bridging gap between digital and physical commerce.
We’ve put together a quick recap on the top 5 things we enjoyed about the very first Metaverse Fashion Week. We’ll also touch on how these highlights are setting a precursor for future events in fashion, gaming and the metaverse as a whole.
The lineup
At least 70 brands were present at this year’s Metaverse Fashion Week, with names both big and small on the list. Larger brands were able to reach larger and more diverse audiences, while smaller brands were able to see increased exposure through the digital event.
Names including Dolce and Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger, Philipp Plein, Forever 21, Hugo, Selfridges and Estée Lauder all used Decentraland’s reserved land plot to sell both physical and digital products and wearables. Other, lesser-known brands such as Auroboros and Etro also made significant headlines.
Has this changed the game of fashion? Absolutely. As brands continue to pay attention to technological shifts, it appears that many more are and will continue to invest in the metaverse. Not only did MVFW offer selling opportunities for brands — attendees were also able to access further brand exposure through virtual afterparties, interviews, runway shows and performances inside Decentraland.
In all, the expansiveness of the event allowed for multiple experiences and an excellent opportunity for revenue generation. In fact, according to one survey conducted by Virtue Worldwide, 94% of global respondents reported foreseeing digital fashion becoming mainstream and one in three respondents say they already own a digital fashion item.
New ways to release clothing
Brands were able to explore new ways to sell their inventory and engage with consumers at Metaverse Fashion Week, allowing the concepts of both physical and digital wearables to converge. Through Boson Protocol’s technology, brands weren’t just able to advertise their physical pieces to consumers — they were also able to sell them as tokenised NFTs. This meant that singular assets purchased at the event combined both NFT wearables for Decentraland avatars and physical products that could be redeemed at actual storefronts.
According to Gigi Graziosi Casimiro, head of Metaverse Fashion Week: “MVFW is important because it connects many parts of a bigger engine in the fashion industry. This event allows brands to explore new possibilities for their creation and communication with customers. We are essentially building a stronger fashion community in Decentraland that allows people to express art beyond physical limitations.”
In all, Metaverse Fashion Week has set an important precedent for the future of fashion consumption. As avatars and digital personas become more integrated into our everyday online activity, so will the items that fill their inventory. The concept that NFTs can come packed with underlying utilities is also likely to change our understanding of purchasing, giving both physical and digital items an experience component as well.
Justin Banon, co-founder of Boson Protocol, has noted the importance of allowing digital and physical elements to be represented by NFTs. “What we are seeing is physical and digital items becoming ‘digiphysical’ — digital tied to physical,” he says. He refers to this new approach as “physical and digital experimental commerce.”
Easy access portal
Attendees of Metaverse Fashion Week had two option to enter the event — either using their Ethereum wallets, or as a guest. Luckily, both options were quite simple and streamlined. Unlike other metaverse-based events, the majority of attendees reported being able to enter Metaverse Fashion Week with ease.
As scepticism and cynicism still surround the concepts of blockchain technology and the metaverse — especially within the gaming community — an easy access portal was likely very crucial to MVFW’s success. And as far as we can tell, Decentraland nailed it. Given that these are early days, we’re of the opinion that not requiring every attendee to use a wallet or be crypto-savvy just yet was probably the right approach.
Overall ease of access
As the saying goes, the best things in life come for free. Unlike our vision of typical fashion weeks (which are usually only attended by the industry’s most elite figures), Metaverse Fashion Week was free for anyone across the world to access. That meant that no tickets, guest lists or money were required to attend. Also, given that it wasn’t held in a fixed, physical location, the event was also able to run around the clock — meaning that attendees from every time zone were able to jump in on the action and that the event was able to host a global community.
Not only did this approach increase the overall headcount — it was also notable in that it made fashion (namely higher-end fashion brands) more accessible to a wider user base.
Sam Hamilton, creative director at the Decentraland Foundation, spoke about the accessibility and global scale of the event: “The Chinese community is building stuff and the Japanese community, too. What you said about not being the same as traditional fashion weeks, we are building a brand new world here and we have the chance to make things better if we can. So it’s important to follow some things that happen in the traditional world, but also push the boundaries.”
Is it possible that taking elitism out of fashion events will change how brands are able and willing to monetise? It’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.
Gaming references
Okay, sure — we had a bit of a penchant for the Mario-themed house we spotted while browsing the event. While it might have been a small easter egg, we’re hoping it’s a precursor that future events of a similar nature will come packed with more incentive structures and a more gamified approach.
Metaverse Fashion Week has been a formidable trailblazer for the fashion industry — but as things still stand, it’s still the gaming industry that is leading the way into the metaverse. Even Big Tech platforms are touting gaming as the leader in our shift towards Web3. Following their acquisition of game publisher Activision Blizzard, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been quoted in a recent statement: “Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms.”
With measurable real estate, an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency and spaces for multiplayer gaming, Decentraland has already solidified its efforts to make the metaverse platform a space for gamers in Web3. To further develop its approach to gameplay, the platform has also invested in a company called Decentral Games — where players can play to earn and even gain access to custom wearables. Will we see a similar concept be replicated in the next big digital event? Let’s wait and see.
Check out our walkthrough
If you didn’t get the chance, be sure to check out our video walkthrough of Metaverse Fashion week! Here, we covered more highlights and our favourite parts.
This weekend, our team jumped into this year’s first Metaverse Fashion Week — a four-day event held inside popular blockchain-powered platform Decentraland. Over the course of the event, 60 brands showcased new clothing collections through a series of digital runway shows, after-parties, pop-up shops and more. Players were even given the opportunity to try on digital wearables using their avatars.
Let’s highlight what we experienced in this year’s Metaverse Fashion Week — including some pros, cons and highlights about the overall experience. We’ll also cover what the success of the event might spell for the fashion industry and future virtual events.
In a nutshell
In all, Metaverse Fashion Week was a great way for various brands to showcase new designs, experience greater exposure and explore new ways to combine both physical and digital wearables into singular purchases.
A large host of brands, artists and designers participated in the event — with names ranging from Estée Lauder to Dolce and Gabbana to Selfridges and Forever 21. Some brands even purchased real estate within Decentraland’s ecosystem, using their space to debut their new flagship stores.
Other brands, such as Tommy Hilfiger, showcased physical products as tokenised NFTs — meaning that users who purchased any wearables in the metaverse could also redeem corresponding physical items inside actual, real-world storefronts. This new convergence of physical and digital purchasing was enabled by the technology of Boson Protocol — a company that’s currently looking to create a new trading ecosystem for Web3 through its decentralised infrastructure.
Just like real-world fashion events, Metaverse Fashion Week was also brought to life by celebrity attendees and online performances. For example, future-savvy, electronic artist Grimes closed the virtual display of digital fashion brand Auroboros with her own DJ set — all with her avatar dressed in a custom bodysuit wearable.
To make purchases inside the event, users simply had to load their Ethereum wallets. However, the event was free for all to attend — with those not coming equipped with a wallet still able to attend as a guest.
Some of the good and bad
Those who reported attending Metaverse Fashion Week have claimed that connecting their wallets was generally easy and seamless. Each area was also visually appealing and engaging — with digital wearables, promotional visuals and other displays programmatically inserted into each space.
One of the biggest caveats reported by several attendees was the lack of proper graphics support. We’re not the only ones who experienced regular glitching and lagging throughout our time inside the event — with the display sometimes bugging out each time we switched rooms or locations. With that being said, however, better motion tracking, network advances and improvements in latency should allow us to see refinements made in other metaverse events down the road.
Also, due to the surplus of levels and obstacles inside the event spaces (such as stairs, lifts and ramps), we also noted the potential for gamification that the creators of MVFW missed the mark on a little. Seeing fashion brands explore new ways to offer products has been exciting — but it would also be nice to see Decentraland provide players with better incentive structures in future events of a similar nature.
Is this the start of a metaverse event boom?
Whether Metaverse Fashion Week was easy to traverse or not, one thing is clear: that it will likely be the first of many community events inside the metaverse, let alone inside the fashion world. Unlike the case with real-life fashion weeks, planning an event inside of a digital ecosystem has enabled a new way for anyone to attend — regardless of their status, association or location.
When commenting on making Decentraland a more inclusive and accessible platform, Sam Hamilton, Decentraland Foundation’s creative director, has aptly described it as a “virtual social world for anyone, anywhere.” Moreover, he’s commented on MVFW’s potential as a game-changer for the fashion universe, claiming that it has “levelled up the playing field for the world of fashion and decreased the limitations.”
As was the case in the early days of Web1 and Web2, it will take some time for user experiences to improve in Web3. However, the potential for more accessible, profitable and innovative opportunities has surely been illuminated by the model of Metaverse Fashion Week — and if they haven’t already, now is a great time for brands to start paying better attention to what they can do in the metaverse.
Check out our walkthrough video
If you didn’t make it to this year’s Metaverse Fashion Week, we put together this video covering our walkthrough inside the event. Check it out here:
For more updates on future Web3 and gaming events, be sure to keep reading gmw3.
Unity developers will be able to integrate the new Oculus Avatars 2.0 from December, with Unreal Engine support coming next year.
Announced at last year’s Connect in September 2020, Avatars 2.0 replaces the legacy Oculus Avatar SDK first launched with the Oculus Touch controllers in late 2016. Back then avatars had an basic monochromic style with the eyes always hidden by a virtual headset or sunglasses. A major update released alongside Oculus Go in 2018 added skin tones, and another just before Oculus Quest in 2019 added lipsync, microexpressions, and simulated eye movement.
While the editor lets you create a full body avatar, but in apps you’ll only see from the torso up. While a VR system with head and hand tracking can make a reasonable guess as to your elbow position, it’s not really possible to do the same for legs.
Facebook is using the new avatars across its entire Horizon suite of social VR apps. That will include Horizon Home, the coming update to Quest’s Home software adding social features. As part of its “metaverse” push, Facebook hopes as many third party apps as possible leverage the SDK so users have a consistent virtual identity across a wide range of apps. However, there’s no word yet on whether the SDK supports other VR platforms such as SteamVR. Multi-platform developers will be unlikely to be enticed if they have to integrate a different avatar SDK for each system.
Wolf3D’s Ready Player Me avatars are already used in plenty of social virtual reality (VR) apps including VRChat, Mozilla Hubs, and MeetinVR. Today, another social world has been added to that list with Somnium Space now supporting the avatar creation software.
While Somnium Space already had a basic avatar creation solution, the addition of Ready Player Me greatly expands the customisation options for users. It also enables Somnium Space users to utilise the avatar apps’ most interesting feature, the ability to create a character simply by uploading a selfie.
All of this can be achieved directly inside Somnium Space without any need for a separate app. You can create an avatar directly inside the Somnium WEB client before stepping into the virtual world. After uploading a photo – or you can skip that part and build an avatar from scratch – you’re presented with a massive list of customisation options to alter facial features, hair and hair colour as well as clothing.
“We are very excited to partner with Wolf3D and bring native support for Ready Player Me avatars into our Somnium WEB client. This is another important step towards our ultimate goal of interoperability. Allowing users to express themselves across the Metaverse is one of the most important aspects of their digital existence,” said Artur Sychov, Founder & CEO of Somnium Space in a statement. “We are committed to this goal and happy to add another layer of self-customization alongside user-generated Somnium Blockchain (NFT) Avatars and Somnium Classical Avatars.”
Somnium Spacehas been running since 2018, providing a virtual world where users buy land parcels that they can build upon or sell if they so wish. Built on the Ethereum blockchain network, you can join Somnium Space for free and explore its metaverse using PC VR headsets or online through a PC or mobile device. Because of its blockchain backbone, assets, avatars, and land parcels – basically any in-game assets – can be tokenized and stored in a blockchain wallet as NFTs to be sold through marketplaces like Opensea.
As Somnium Space continues to expand its feature set during 2021, VRFocus will keep you updated.
Facebook launched its latest avatars today, now with full upper bodies powered by machine learning.
Oculus Quest owners can try them on in PokerStars, Topgolf with Pro Putt, and Epic Roller Coasters. A software development kit and broader launch is planned for later this year. Interestingly, Facebook says it will show users a full body avatar when players are choosing their appearance from a “quintillion combinations”.
This is despite the fact that full body avatars aren’t supported in games. Facebook’s Mike Howard, product manager for avatars, says representing a full body helps players internalize their avatar and see an identity through its customization. More apps plan to add the new avatars, according to Facebook, and the company is aiming to be consistent with its avatar style across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and other properties.
“Adding Avatars 2.0 to our game was straightforward and seamless,” said Topgolf developer Ryan Engle, co-founder and CEO of Golf Scope, in a prepared statement. “Our experience uses just one controller and the SDK makes it simple to adjust the avatar’s hands in a natural way, which was our primary concern. Another critical component of development is performance and the new system made it very easy to hit our performance goals for Quest 1 and Quest 2 without any heavy lifting. As a multiplayer experience our players love connecting with friends and family all over the world and the new avatars significantly deepen that connection by visually representing each player in a familiar and friendly way. This is the version of avatars we’ve been waiting for and it couldn’t be simpler to integrate.”
According to Facebook, hand tracking will be supported in the new avatars when the SDK launches.
