Quest might finally get a social feature worth shouting about.
You’d expect social experiences to be at the forefront of Meta’s virtual reality (VR) drive but one thing that’s always been missing is the ability to directly hang out in the home environment. During Connect in 2021 Meta announced Horizon Home – rather than Oculus Home – which would eventually add that social aspect. That’s going to arrive in the Quest’s v41 update which CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated today.
With Horizon Home, the whole premise is that rather than having to use a separate app to convene with friends in VR or just use voice through the party feature Quest users will be able to gather in one environment and see each other’s avatar. From there they’ll be able to jump into a game or app, making the whole experience far more seamless.
To showcase the update today Zuckerberg invited climber Alex Honnold where they watched his 360-degree film The Soloist. This is a heart-pounding, death-defying ascent up the Dolomite mountains, free climbing up sheer rock faces.
“Met up with legendary climber Alex Honnold in the new Horizon Home — launching with Quest v41 update to bring social presence into your virtual home as soon as you put on your headset,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. “Invite friends to hang out, watch videos together, or jump into apps right from your virtual home. More options to customize your home space currently in development. Also, check out Alex’s 360 film The Soloist VR where he takes you 1000 ft up free climbing the Dolomites!”
The announcement hasn’t specified when v41 will arrive but considering Meta rolls these out monthly and v40 landed almost a month ago, Quest users will likely see the feature arrive in the next week or so. As always it’ll be gradual, so you might need to wait until the end of June to test the new social feature out.
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