#1863 - Mark Zuckerberg

Joe Rogan (0:14)

It's very impressive.

Mark Zuckerberg (0:15)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:15)

It's very cool.

Mark Zuckerberg (0:17)

Coming out in October, we're going to be talking about it at our Connect conference that's coming up. Yeah, pretty excited about it.

Joe Rogan (0:27)

But it's so interesting that when you put it on, so I'll just describe it to people. When I put it on, there was an avatar in front of me, and it was an alien woman. And the alien woman, when I moved my mouth, she moved her mouth. When I moved my eyes left and right, it's tracking my eyes. When I make like an angry face, like, it makes an angry face when you go like, oh, it's incredible. You can see the evolution and the progress of this stuff where it's getting to the point where it's mimicking human patterns in a kind of a creepy way.

But it's very cool.

Mark Zuckerberg (1:03)

Yeah, so, you know, for me, the stuff is all about like helping people connect, right? I mean, the way that I got into this is, you know, I don't know. I just started thinking about like, what is the, like, what would be the ultimate expression of basically people using technology to feel present with each other? And it's not phones, it's not computers.

Like, how do you get this the sensation of actually being present? Like, you're right there with another person. And that's, to me, what virtual and eventually augmented reality are all about.

And there's just this whole technology roadmap that you that we basically just need to go run down over the next decade to unlock that. So for the next device that's coming out in October, you know, there are a few big features. I mean, the one that you're talking about, basically social presence. I mean, the ability to now have kind of eye contact in virtual reality, have your face be tracked so that way your avatar, it's not just like this still thing, but if you smile or if you frown or if you pout or whatever your expression is, have that actually just in real time translate to your avatar. I mean, that's obviously like our facial expressions are just a huge, that's like a, you know, there's more nonverbal communication when people are with each other than verbal communication.

Joe Rogan (2:27)

You had a really good point too about face tracking. And like, if you're doing like a FaceTime call, that you don't look at each other in the eye, because you're looking at the camera to look in the eye, and then you don't see the person. So if you look at the camera, you're looking up, and if you look down at the actual screen, you're not making eye contact with the person. But this is able to recreate actual eye contact with the avatar.

Mark Zuckerberg (2:53)

Yeah, no, this will be the first time really to do that. You know, I mean, when we're using technology today, I mean, it's great to be able to make phone calls and video calls and all that. I mean, if you can't be with someone today, it's nice to be able to see their face. But when you're on a video call, you don't actually feel like you're there with the person, right? I mean, you get some signals, some information, you can see their face, but the whole time, you're kind of trying to convince your brain that you're actually there with them, but your brain knows, right? It's kind of like a deep level that that's, you're not actually there with them. You're just getting some information about what they look like.

And to me, what virtual reality unlocks is it basically really convinces your brain that you're there. And when you're in there, you have to basically try to convince your brain that this isn't real, right? And that you're not present. And there are all these just subtle signals and things that either deepen the illusion or break it, that each time we do a new version, we just try to break down a few more of the barriers. So one of the big ones early on, well, the first one obviously was just having a headset and be able to look around. And for that, one of the key things that, your eye basically refreshes, I don't know, call it every five milliseconds or something. So if you turn your head and the image isn't refreshed to where you're looking within five milliseconds, then there's this huge mismatch between your visual system and your vestibular system and your balance in your ear. And people used to feel uncomfortable from that, because it's a physical discomfort, because what you were looking at didn't match as you were rotating your head. So that was the first thing. Then we got hands.