Zombies, laser tag and confusion: what happens inside Meta’s virtual world

On a frosty December afternoon, I played an exhilarating game of laser tag, flew around town on a magic broom, killed zombies in an abandoned mall, and hung out with an old friend who lives over 3,500 kilometers away – all without leaving mine. home or, indeed, not even my living room.

These are possible things to do in Horizon Worlds, the new social virtual reality app from Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook. Launched in the US and Canada earlier this month, the app includes a series of VR “worlds” you can visit and encourages users to build their own worlds for anyone to explore.

Horizon Worlds is Meta’s most ambitious effort to date to get people to live in VR after spending billions on this technology and recently making it an even bigger focus by touting its “metaverse” ambitions. The launch comes at a promising time: VR is more accessible and savvy than ever. But challenges remain.

Although the app is free, the headphones needed to use it cost $299 or $399 (about R$1,720 or R$2,295, respectively). Even after years of hype, VR remains a niche technology, with uncertain use cases beyond gaming and entertainment. And Meta is betting heavily that it can convince people to believe its virtual worldview after a period of heavy press headlines about the company’s impact in the real world.

After spending days in Horizon Worlds, one notices that, of course, the universe Meta imagines already has some polished pieces, but it’s still very rudimentary around the edges – and it’s certainly not the kind of fully-developed and expansive virtual world created when the Meta executives talk about the so-called “metaverse”.

In Horizon Worlds, users inhabit legless, customizable floating avatars (my avatar looks like a cartoon version of me with nice hair) that some might find frightening or unpleasant. Facial expressions also don’t necessarily match what the person behind the avatar is feeling. For example, I found it easy to make him look excited, but nearly impossible to make him look sad.

Manual controls can become shaky and glitchy – especially if your “virtual self” is near any virtual reality object that might get caught. It can also be difficult to find fun things to do in Horizon Worlds, and frankly, worlds that already exist often look cooler than they actually are.

As more people populate VR, there will no doubt be concerns about some of the problems we already have on the internet in virtual environments. A Horizon Worlds beta tester reportedly posted on the app’s official Facebook group in early December that a stranger had groped her inside the app. When asked about this incident, a Meta executive told tech site The Verge that the person hadn’t used the app’s many security features, such as the ability to block another user.

In my experiences, harassment hasn’t been an issue, but it has long been an issue in VR in general, and it’s not as easy to block or report other users (especially if you don’t have the skills to use the Quest controls). A different issue became more immediately obvious: There seemed to be several underage users (the app is available to anyone 18 and over), including one I heard saying to another user on a Saturday night that “my mom is. telling me I have to go to bed.”

There’s a lot at stake for Meta and, no doubt, for anyone who chooses to use VR. The virtual reality market is still small. Technology market research institute IDC estimates 8 million VR headsets shipped this year and 14 million next year. But the market continues to grow and Meta is at the forefront. The success (or failure) of Horizon Worlds will likely affect user experiences across different VR applications for years to come.

in the square

The first thing you see when you open Horizon Worlds is a menu that includes three activity options, under the questions: Do you want to play, hang out or join an event? Unfortunately, when I was testing the app in mid-December, there weren’t many events happening there. Instead, I spent part of my time at the Plaza – a general meeting place or space within Horizon Worlds – and exploring different worlds, both alone and with a real-life friend who joined me at VR.

The Plaza is smartly designed, especially if you’re new to VR. Your avatar materializes on a platform from which you can view the avatars of other people who might be there at that moment. There are a few simple activity options like launching paper planes and boomerangs at targets, and this helps users get a sense of how the controls work. It’s also a good place to meet a live person (Meta calls them “community guides” and their avatars have a clear label above their heads) who can help you if you have questions or need help.

Fun with laser tag

The Plaza is a pleasant place to find your way around. At the end of the year, it was decorated with festive pieces that ranged from a cheerful snowman to incessant music in Jingle-Bells style. But after about 15 minutes or so I was more than ready to move on.

Where to go? A tap on one of my handheld controls opened a menu that includes everything from a virtual camera to tools for reporting users who are behaving inappropriately and the ability to navigate different worlds. The menu also features suggestions for worlds within Horizon Worlds, some built by Meta, others by users.

One world Meta has built and has been promoting is Arena Clash, a multiplayer laser tag game. I walked in there alone and was relieved when a fellow user with a star-shaped pin and black metal rim glasses immediately welcomed me and invited me to join the team. Even though I’ve used VR headphones for years, I’m still embarrassed to approach strangers in virtual places. We played several rounds of three-on-three laser tag that got so shrill that my husband walked into the room, in real life, to ask me to stop screaming. I apologized, but, oh well, I was working.

For now, at least, Arena Clash brings Horizon Worlds at its best: it’s visually well thought out, easy to navigate and, most importantly, fun. It’s the kind of virtual environment you can imagine visiting indefinitely and actually visited several times over the course of a week.

And now?

While the Arena Clash was easy to find (and enjoy), I had a harder time discovering other attractive worlds. Horizon Worlds has some suggestions – a combination of worlds it promotes and those targeted at users based on factors such as worlds you “like” – but it hasn’t done a good job of highlighting the good ones. It’s also difficult to search when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for.

A world called Retro Zombies looked promising. You can shoot zombies in what appears to be an empty mall. But the graphics (including the zombies) were rudimentary and, after a few minutes of shooting, everything stopped being exciting.

In the end, I noticed that all the worlds that users posted are visible on their profiles (and you can see the details of who made a world before visiting it). I found Horizon Worlds own username (Horizon_Worlds) and checked your list. It introduced me to several interesting new worlds, including Horizon’s Haunted House of Horrors, complete with ghosts sticking out of the walls, spooky animated paintings hanging in the hallways, and a Frankenstein lab for you to set up your own.

I can not see you

In addition to struggling to find something fun to do, I also had a hard time finding my real-life friend on Horizon Worlds.

One afternoon I went to the Plaza looking for my friend Signe Brewster, senior writer for the product review site The Wirecutter. In real life, she lives on the other side of the country, so we talked on VR several times. I arrived, through my avatar, and looked around. I couldn’t find her anywhere. Signe had an equally baffling experience elsewhere in the digital space.

We soon realized that even though we were both in the Plaza, we weren’t using the same version of the environment. Horizon Worlds limits capacity to 20 people per world before automatically placing users on another replica of that world; perhaps there were too many people in the square one of us had entered.

Finally, I spotted a portal in the Plaza to a snowy world called Santa’s Cave and went there to find Signe. She arrived shortly after I spoke to a user that her mother said it was okay to use the app. We travel the icy slopes of the world, talking about real-life things like how fast our kids are growing and what Christmas presents are best for young children. We use virtual pickaxes to hit pieces of something that could be ice cubes or rocks. We had a lot of fun, but we didn’t find Santa Claus.

Until we gave up and went to the Arena Clash to play laser tag. It was a fun time. But to get me back, Horizon Worlds needs more worlds like this – and Meta will have to convince a lot more of my friends to wear headphones.