Oculus Rift Team Working on New Face Tracking Technology

Virtual reality technology hasn’t even hit the market yet, but that won’t stop the Oculus Rift team from developing new technology it seems. Word is that the Facebook-owned company is now looking into a way to capture and display your facial expressions in real-time.

Oculus already provides a way for users to interact with a completely different reality, but this new technology may skyrocket the realism even further by adding a key feature to making the virtual environment more lifelike.

In other words, picture two avatars inside a virtual world, each with the ability to interact and express their emotions through facial expressions. It’s as cool as it is scary, isn’t it? This may even fully immerse you in the virtual world and make you forget you are actually there.

The Oculus team is working with a team of researchers from the University of California in order to develop this new technology. They apparently came up with two designs, one involving a foam padding that covers the forehead. The latter was able to capture brow and some eye muscle movement.

The second design is a bit weird, involving a short adjustable boom attached to the headset. Both designs are able to capture data and send it to be analyzed by the software, which in turn transforms it into facial expressions. Though the technology is currently used only for research purposes, it could in theory be modified to a consumer ready device. The question is, will users be interested in taking their facial expressions to the virtual world?

Thank you Phys.org for providing us with this information