Horzion Worlds is portrayed as a ‘social experience’, in which the audience is not only encouraged to participate, but also to create.
What does that look like in practice? Within the platform, much attention has been paid to training: in various video series the makers explain how to set up your own world and how to take care of participants. You make use of the Horizon Worlds community for this. In Build Mode you can create your own world, consisting of objects, characters and storylines. This way you can create your own puzzles and invite others to participate in your games.
At the time of writing, about 10,000 virtual worlds have been created in Horizon Worlds. In early June, Meta (Facebook’s parent company and platform owner) added Horizon Venues to Horizon Worlds. This makes it possible to organize live events within the virtual world and to interact with other visitors during these events.
For a large part of the experience you need a Quest or Quest 2: a VR headset in which you experience the world. In this area too, developments are not standing still: the future VR headsets (and successors to the Quest 2) will probably use even more sensors to merge the real world with the virtual world. This is possible, for example, by fusing previously recorded video with images that the built-in camera records of the environment.
Horizon Worlds (www.oculus.com/horizon-worlds)
Price: Free (includes in-app purchases)
System Requirements: Web
Language: English