Sunday, December 22, 2024

Meta Expands Access to Horizon Worlds VR Social Experience

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Meta’s VR social media experiment is coming to more users, with Horizon Worlds being expanded to more regions from today.

Meta’s Horizon Worlds enables users to create their own interactive VR experiences, which is the foundation of Meta’s broader metaverse push. Horizon Worlds is still relatively early in its life cycle in this respect, and as such, it’s still largely reliant on the existing, pre-built Worlds available within the platform. But eventually, the hope is that more and more people will be building and interacting via their avatars within this customizable, creative digital space.

And now, even more people will be able to try it out.

As per Meta:

Starting this week, we’re beginning to roll out Meta Horizon Worlds to people in all Meta Quest markets in supported languages so more people can connect with each other around the globe. We’re expanding access to everyone 13+ in Meta Quest-supported markets (14+ in South Korea and Spain), while we’re also opening up access to Worlds on headsets as well as mobile devices and the web.”

That last point is particularly important, as it will enable non-VR users to also engage in the Horizon Worlds experience. That could be a key gateway into Meta’s next gen push, and as its VR experience improves, Horizon Worlds could become a more central engagement experience for many users.

As you can see in the above video, Meta’s also launching a new VR experience with Sabrina Carpenter, which will spark broader interest from pop culture fans. Imagine what a virtual Taylor Swift concert might do for Quest sales?

It’s still a long way from becoming a thing, but Meta’s metaverse vision is slowly taking shape, with custom experiences like Horizon Worlds showing the way as to what’s coming, and where more and more people will be engaging in future.

And while not everyone can see it just yet, the capacity to build VR worlds, via AI prompts, and foundational sandbox tools like Horizon Worlds, is significant.

There’s a long way to go, but Meta continues to build towards the next stage.

Meta says that it’s rolling out expanded access “over the next few months”, so you may not have access right away, but it is coming soon.

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