Facebook's virtual reality technology is getting closer to creating the lifelike avatars depicted in the movie Ready Player One.

On Wednesday, the company demonstrated how it can create a photorealistic version of your whole body inside a VR environment by pitting two players against each other in a game of virtual soccer.

As you can see, the technology can replicate a lifelike version of the player and translate their movements into the game with no lag. "Doing this without any suit or markers in real time, with minimal hardware for [motion] capturing is groundbreaking," said Ronald Mallet, researcher supervisor at Facebook's Oculus VR company.

The demo is an expansion of Facebook's "Codec Avatar" technology, which can already create photorealistic avatars of people's faces. The prototype technology achieves this by using the sensors onboard the VR headset to measure a wearer's facial expressions, and then translating the data to the avatar in real time.

However, Facebook wants to go beyond simply capturing your face. "Genuine human communication requires the full body language," Mallet said. To pull this off, Facebook is working on using a single external sensor to record the wearer's body gestures. The captured data can then be mapped on an avatar built out of virtual bones and muscle.

Although the demo was impressive, Mallet said the company is still "years away" from bringing the technology to consumer VR headsets. One challenge Facebook will need to overcome is network latency. "We also need an easy way for people to generate and animate their avatars using off-the-shelf sensors," he added.

Another issue is security. Facebook doesn't want hackers masquerading as lifelike versions of yourself in the virtual world. So the company is working on adding fingerprint and facial-recognition authentication to future Oculus VR headsets as a way to prevent account takeovers.