Announced just before Facebook became Meta, Horizon Worlds is a VR application that sticks Oculus… Facebook… Meta users into a virtual environment.
We’ve already seen what it might look like with Horizon Workrooms, the boardroom equivalent, but now that Worlds is out in the er… world, we’ll probably have a better idea of what’s coming from the social media company.
No more Horizon Worlds to conquer
Faceb– … Meta has made the Horizon Worlds app free-to-download, following an invitation-only beta earlier this year. The only catch is that you need to be an American or Canadian resident in order to experience it. Oh, and over the age of eighteen, for some reason.
Well, actually, the reason is that Horizon Worlds has a strong user-creation focus. And any time that happens on the internet, there are bound to be penises. Creatively designed or hidden penises, to be sure. But they’re still penises. That’s still a sight people must be protected from in 2021. It’s not like approximately 50% of the planet has one or anything.
Anyway — Meta hopes that its users will make use of its, “best-in-class social world-building tools”, in order to help, “bring to life a creator-friendly VR space”. This is a fancy way of saying ‘free labour’, but it’s also something Meta wants to encourage. To that end, they’ve thrown $10 million in funding at Horizon Worlds creators so far.
And, just to prove that they don’t expect you to do all the work, Meta has released Arena Clash inside Horizon Worlds. This SEO-optimised name is attached to a 3v3 laser-tag game played in VR. Using the Meta Quest 2 headgear, of course. And, to give users a spot of inspiration, Meta says there are, “..more reference worlds and templates coming in the future”.