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Today, Facebook Reality Labs revealed details about Codec Avatars, its new project that can generate photorealistic virtual characters that look JUST like you—and animate them in real time. 1/ wired.trib.al/SQoW3kd
There are lots of avatars in VR already, but they tend to lack a certain…visual fidelity. While these simple avatars are enough to allow some naturalistic interactions, they're a far cry from looking truly like the person they're supposed to represent. 2/ wired.trib.al/SQoW3kd
Here’s how it works: Inside Facebook Reality Labs, two capture processes record humans, generating 180 *gigabytes* of data each second. Faces are painstakingly studied like in this one, "Mugsy." 3/ wired.trib.al/SQoW3kd 
And in the "Sociopticon," a larger dome that is the second capture area, the lab studies how our bodies move, and how muscles and clothes deform when we do. 4/ wired.trib.al/SQoW3kd
The resulting information is used to train a neural network's "deep appearance model," so that when a person is in VR, it can encode their behavior as data—and then decode it on the other end, in another person's headset, as an avatar. 5/ wired.trib.al/SQoW3kd
Reality Labs uses a series of prototypes that contain cameras and sensors pointed at the face. These devices collect the data that allows the system to animate the avatars in real time. And yes, they are talking about hot yoga. 6/ wired.trib.al/SQoW3kd
So will Facebook deploy this? In the age of deepfakes and privacy concerns, it's not hard to imagine how people could try to undermine or misuse Codec Avatars. 7/ wired.trib.al/XrU9RcR
Right now, it's a creative solution to a difficult problem—and it's one more sign that an AR/VR future is coming at you faster than you might have thought. 8/ wired.trib.al/SQoW3kd
