The Meta Quest v41 software update is rolling out next week, and Quest’s virtual reality (VR) Horizon Home space is adding social hang-outs, giving users the ability to invite friends to watch movies, play games and more, according to a Quest blog post Tuesday (June 14).
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg first announced Horizon Home at Connect late last year, which promised a simple hang-out space for friends on Quest. Meta said at the time that the metaverse is much bigger than gaming and entertainment and includes aspects of work, education, fitness, socializing and more.
Meta Home Horizon was launched as Quest users’ onramp to the metaverse.
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The new features of v41 and Horizon Home are available to users “as soon as you put on the headset,” Zuckerberg said in a video on his Facebook Timeline. He said there will be more features for users to further customize their home space.
The video also showed an example of the 360-degree viewing capabilities with friends, where Zuckerberg and climber Alex Honnold of Free Solo watched The Soloist VR, a film that features Honnold free climbing the Dolomite Mountains.
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“As part of this update, we’ll begin gradually rolling out the ability to invite friends to your Meta Horizon Home environment and hang out, coordinate your next gaming session, and even launch your group straight into supported multiplayer experiences (including Beat Saber, Demeo and Echo VR),” the blog post stated.
Meta said in the post the update is “just the first step towards our long-term vision. We’ll be adding more features and improving the experience over time.”
In other news, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, maker of massively multiplayer online (MMO) game Fortnite, launched an early metaverse proof-of-concept last year with a series of “live” concerts featuring the avatars of Travis Scott and Arianna Grande.
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