Meta, formerly Facebook, recently, announced the launch of Horizon Worlds, its virtual reality world of avatars, to anyone in the US and Canada, who are 18+ years of age and have the Quest 2 headset. The platform was in the testing phase since last year and was limited to select users.
This is an important step further of Meta into the metaverse because Horizon Worlds is a metaverse of the nascent sense, where users can participate in online experiences like chatting with friends, using VR headsets that allow the entire experience to feel a lot more immersive.
Horizon Worlds provides a digital environment, where users will appear with avatars that are highly customizable. Horizon World’s app can be downloaded via
Oculus’s Experiences section. You simply need to log into your Oculus or Facebook account to launch the app on your device and experience.
Horizon Worlds allows users to do a lot of things like playing games, hanging out with friends, listening to music, hosting digital parties, professional meetings and more.
The app might be available to other parts of the world in the recent future however no timeline is given by the company. More Horizon World features and Horizon World games are also being added.
It's worth noting that Meta is also introducing several initiatives towards the online safety of women across its platforms. Horizon Worlds comes with tools to report bad behavior to pause experiences if they turn toxic; users can mute, block or report if someone behaves badly.
This announcement marks Facebook's next big shift in the metaverse space after its rebranding. Mark Zuckerberg had said in October, “Our hope is that within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers.”