Meta’s avatar legs roll out to beta testers, but only in Quest Home

Quest Home avatars will finally have a leg to stand on — two, even — as the company walks out the appendages for beta testers.

Meta is adding legs to Quest Avatars in Quest Home — but not Horizon Worlds —in a new beta announced last week in the Meta Community forums (via UploadVR). Community manager Ryanality posted in the forums that the “Public Test Channel (PTC) for Quest v57 is starting to roll out for Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 2 soon,” though without specifying any new features. Then, yesterday, a forum user named TomCgcmfc reported their avatar had legs.

A post on X (formerly Twitter) from Brad Lynch shows what the legs will look like. For now, beta users can’t see their legs without looking at an in-game mirror, and from the video, it looks like the avatar won’t crouch when the user does so. Although the legs reportedly don’t make an appearance in Horizon Worlds yet, theydo exist in betas for a new mobile and web version of Horizon Worlds, which was rumored last month.

Users in the Meta Community forum also reported updated menus that allow hand tracking to position and use them (rather than needing direct manipulation). On Reddit, one user claimed to see improvements to both hand tracking and auto-switching between controllers and hands. NyaVR on X posted that they found code references to new settings, including an extended battery mode (via Mixed Reality News).

It’s been more than 10 months since Meta announced legs would be coming, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying at Meta Connect that legs are “probably the most requested feature.” Zuckerberg said then that the company would need to use an AI model for leg movement because tracking them with the headset’s cameras is tricky. Tricky enough, apparently, that the legs shown in the Connect keynote last year may have actually been prerecorded motion capture.

It’s possible Meta will drop more leg news at this year’s Meta Connect on September 27th. A lot of the show will probably be devoted to more details about the new Quest 3 headset, although there might not be much left to the imagination at this point, considering somebody may have already filmed its unboxing.