Starting next week, Meta will add a more socially oriented home space to Quest 2. Horizon Home, which the company announced on Oculus Connect last year, will appear when users don the virtual reality headset. They can invite friends over and hang out, watch videos and play games together. It’s part of Meta’s vision for the metaverse, a shared virtual space where people can do all kinds of things together, along with Horizon Worlds and Horizon Workrooms.
One, as demonstrated in a video shared by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is the ability to view 360-degree footage with friends. Zuckerberg showed off the feature with climber Alex Honnold of Free Solo fame. They watched The Soloist VR, a movie in which Honnold is climbing the Dolomites. If you thought Meta’s torso-only avatars looked strange on the virtual ground, wait until you see two of them floating 300 meters above northern Italy.
Quest 2 users can check out Horizon Home and its miserable looking virtual home office starting today if they feel comfortable using the public test channel. Meta will roll out the v41 Quest update, which includes Horizon Home more widely next week, a Meta spokesperson told Road to VR. We will probably learn more details about Horizon Home then. Meta will add more home space customization options later.
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