Horizon Home Gets Some Free Lionsgate Movies For Cowatching

Meta is streaming some free Lionsgate movies each month to Quest 2 owners, who can watch together in Horizon Home with friends in the United States.

Lionsgate movies like Gods of Egypt (3D) and Leprechaun can be watched together with friends in Meta Horizon Home. The free movies from Lionsgate will change monthly, Meta announced in a blog post, and this content is only available to people living in the United States. A Meta representative told UploadVR that in the future “we’ll explore the possibility of adding movies that are available to users outside of the US.

The latest feature lets people watch “2D and 3D rectilinear content together on a giant screen” much like startup Bigscreen has enabled with its VR service for years. Notably, Bigscreen went head-to-head with the company formerly known as Facebook a couple years back by contesting its platform fees for movie rentals. The startup continues to build its own synced video watching functionality, first launching free movies and recently making it easy to watch YouTube together.

Meta Horizon Home, meanwhile, was added to Quest this month with a key feature being the ability to invite friends to share your home space “as soon as you put on your headset” to see content like Alex Honnold’s recent 360-degree video release together. Cowatching traditional 2D content was promised late last year with the official announcement of Horizon Home, but Meta was non-specific about what videos would be watchable with the system.

Meta benefits from being the default experience you get with a Quest 2 headset and uses platform-level features starting with a “ Party—a VOIP call that lets you hang out and chat with friends in VR” which you can then use to “invite some friends to your Meta Horizon Home.”

The Lionsgate movies are available alongside a range of 360-degree content in the Oculus TV app.

Meta Quest’s Home Will Finally be Social in v41 Update

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.

Horizon Home

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!”

Horizon Home - Group

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.

Another step towards Meta’s metaverse vision, as further updates are announced gmw3 will let you know.

Quest v41 Adds Horizon Home To Meet Friends In Social VR

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg formally announced Quest v41 includes the ability to invite friends to your virtual home “as soon as you put on your headset.”

Horizon Home has been the announced name for the social feature since last year when Meta revealed it would be coming to Quest. Over the years Facebook tested and retired multiple VR apps aimed at meeting with a small group of friends, including Oculus Rooms and Facebook Spaces. More recently the company released Horizon Workrooms for work meetings and Horizon Worlds for creating public social experiences inside VR. Meta is still in the midst of a restructuring process that includes cancelled projects and changing policies, like the promise that Quest will drop the requirement it be connected to a Facebook account.

Meta says Horizon Home is rolling out “soon”. Typically, system updates for Quest headsets take place over a couple weeks as the company ensures new features work as intended. Zuckerberg demonstrated the Horizon Home feature in a video prepared with climber Alex Honnold showing how the two of them could use Quest 2 in different physical spaces to watch Honnold’s recent 360-degree video release together.

“More options to customize your home space” are in development, Zuckerberg wrote.

The feature should allow people to more easily jump into a game together or watch videos with physically distant friends or family. Horizon Home was announced last year but Meta is yet to detail any external content partnerships or specific apps beyond its own which support this key functionality. For now that means 360 degree videos can be watched together, but in the future might it incorporate traditional content like Bigscreen and Apple’s SharePlay?

We’ll dive into how Horizon Home functions and what we can do with it as soon as we can access it.

Quest Update to Finally Make Home Space Social, v41 Rollout Starting Next Week

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been taking a personal approach lately to revealing new features coming to Quest 2. Now Zuckerberg has revealed that in the v41 software update coming sometime next week, Quest’s Horizon Home space will finally give you the ability to invite friends and tour content as a party, including 360 videos and games.

The company first announced Horizon Home at Connect late last year, which promised to someday bring to Quest 2 a simple, first-party place to meet up with friends. Over the past few months, the company added an array of social features, including teleport nodes in v38 to Horizon Home so users could more freely move around the virtual room. It was still missing the ability to share that space with a friend though.

In a video posted to Zuckerberg’s Facebook Timeline today, the Meta CEO hashed out a few of the features of v41 as he chatted with legendary free climber Alex Honnold, and watched a 360 video of Honnold breaking down a death-defying session the climber had in the Dolomites. Check out the video below:

Zuckerberg says the new features in Horizon Home will be available “as soon as you put on the headset.”

“Invite friends to hang out, watch videos together, or jump into apps right from your virtual home,” Zuckerberg writes. “More options to customize your home space currently in development. Also, check out Alex’s 360 film The Soloist VR where he takes you 1,000 ft up free climbing the Dolomites!”

It’s not exactly clear when we’ll see v41, however a Meta spokesperson told Road to VR we should be expecting it sometime next week.

There’s still plenty of other features that will need clarifying, including the number of users supported for a single Quest home space—voice parties currently support up to eight people—and how joining games and launching 360 videos together will work.

Zuckerberg tends to go light on the details before the Oculus blog tosses out specifics though, so we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled there in the meantime.

The post Quest Update to Finally Make Home Space Social, v41 Rollout Starting Next Week appeared first on Road to VR.

Quest Home Spaces Get Node-base Movement, a First Step Toward Upcoming Social Features

Last year Meta announced that it would finally be bring social features to the Quest home environments, allowing users to easily get together in the same virtual space. We aren’t there yet, but the company has taken a first step in that direction by adding node-based locomotion to all of Quest’s home spaces.

Back in October Meta announced that it “soon” planned to upgrade Quest’s home space into a social area where users can congregate together (without a third-party app) and do basic activities like watch videos and launch into other VR apps together. The company calls it ‘Horizon Home’.

Well, the actual social part of Horizon Home isn’t here yet, but the company has taken a first step toward it.

At launch, all Quest home spaces placed the user in one specific spot from which they couldn’t move.

Now, as of at least Quest v38, all home spaces have an array of nodes which users can move between by pointing their controller and using the thumbstick. Moving between nodes with controllerless hand-tracking alone doesn’t seem to work yet.

Ostensibly this will allow multiple users to navigate the same spaces. It isn’t clear how many users will be supported in a single Quest home space (though voice parties currently support up to 8 people).

Quest’s home environments appear to be using typical real-time rendering, so it isn’t clear why Meta has decided to limit users to moving between specific nodes rather than letting them move anywhere within a pre-determined safe area. Especially odd because users can navigate away from any individual node by physically moving within their playspace. Furthermore, the distance between nodes is decidedly ‘impersonal’, and further away than friends hanging out in the same area would likely want to stand.

So while movement within the Quest home spaces is a first step toward social features, it will hopefully see some refinement by the time users are actually able to join each other in the same space.

The post Quest Home Spaces Get Node-base Movement, a First Step Toward Upcoming Social Features appeared first on Road to VR.

Quest v38 Update Lays Groundwork For Meta’s Horizon Home

The latest Quest software update, v38, is rolling out to users now, with changes the lay the groundwork for Horizon Home.

The biggest changes in the update are centered around social functionality and improving the home experience on Quest, likely in anticipation of Horizon Home, which gets a mention in the release notes.

As of v38, the App Library will highlight apps with multiplayer features if you’re in a party with other users. Likewise, there’s now a ‘Recently Met’ feature, which will let you connect with users you’ve recently played games with online.

The settings menu has also been updated to a new layout and now has a search bar, and a few settings are moving from Experimental Features to full release. Most notably, the mixed reality couch and desk are now available to everyone and can be set up in the Guardian settings. These features allow you to define couches and desks within your playspace, which will then be accurately represented in the home environment on Quest.

The mixed reality tracked keyboards are also moving from experimental to full release, now found in device settings.

Improvements to the Quest tracking system are also listed, but without any specific further details.

As previously reported, v38 also includes updates to the headset’s UI, replacing the Oculus logo with the new Meta logo.

All in all, this update seems centered around social features and improving the experience within Quest home, laying the groundwork for increased capabilities and social features that are set to come with its upgrade to Horizon Home. While we don’t have a launch date just yet, Horizon Home will allow you to invite other users to your home and, eventually, support building your own space with full customization.

You can read the full v38 release notes here. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Latest Quest 2 PTC Update Includes First Look At Horizon Home, Guardian Walls

The latest version of Quest 2’s software available on the Public Test Channel includes a brief glimpse of the promised social Horizon Home feature.

A short introduction demo for Horizon Home is included in Quest v37, which is only available to those that have opted into the Public Test Channel via the app. It doesn’t actually let you invite other friends into your Home space yet, but it does show you everything you can do with others inside Horizon Home and how you’ll add friends into spaces too. We’ve got a quick glimpse of the demo below.

Horizon Home Demo Hidden In Quest v37

The demo is actually hidden away, but Quest leakster Bastian found the feature along with the hidden command needed to run it. head to SideQuest, click the ‘Run ADB icon in the top right’ and post “adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d systemux://co-presence-nux com.oculus.vrshell/.MainActivity” to try it out for yourself.

This inclusion might suggest Horizon Home will be included with the full launch of v37, though the standard Quest software hasn’t hit v36 yet. Once live, you’ll be able to explore Home environments together, watch videos via the Oculus TV app, immerse yourself in 360 degree content together and, perhaps most importantly, launch straight into parties for games like Arizona Sunshine.

Bastian also uncovered the ability to define walls and the ceiling when in your Guardian play space as a means of further expanding Guardians’ capabilities and references to support for the Apple Magic Keyboard and Logitech MX Keys, too.

Are you going to be checking out Horizon Home when it’s finally ready? Let us know in the comments below!

Quest’s Home Environment May Soon Get The Social Capabilities We’ve Been Waiting For

Back in October, Meta announced that it would eventually transition its home environment to ‘Horizon Home’, giving it a fuller set of social features like being able to invite party members to visit, hang out, or launch into VR apps together. It seems we’re getting a step closer to the release of those features, as Quest 2’s recent v37 firmware is hiding a few things.

Developer Luboš V released a video showing off some of the hidden features that lurk within v37 of the Quest firmware.

Apparently itinerant firmware sleuth ‘Basti564’ also had a part in uncovering the hidden features, who is known for leaking images and models of Project Cambria, the company’s in-development mixed reality headset, and for having uncovered videos of the Quest 2’s Space Sense room guardian in action before its official launch.

Check out the video below:

The v37 update is now available on the Public Test Channel for Quest 2, however the features seen above aren’t accessible. In the video we get a glimpse at:

  • Tutorial on how to use Horizon Home
  • Room capture: letting you virtually integrate your playspace by mapping walls and ceiling
  • Apple keyboard support
  • Voice assistant history menu
  • What appears to be a work-in-progress social network integration, which is likely either be a portal to its Horizon social VR apps or more Facebook integration

The revelation of these hidden features comes on the heels of an interview with Digiday where Meta’s VP of Horizon, Vivek Sharma, hinted that the company hopes to eventually bring all of its social VR apps social VR apps—Horizon Worlds, Horizon Venues, and Horizon Workroom—together in a more seamless way.

There’s no telling how soon we’ll see any of that stuff though. Closer integration with its Horizon social apps, representing a substantial overhaul, certainly sounds like one of those flashy monolithic updates Meta typically reserves for events.

Meta previously said it was hosting a Gaming Showcase in early 2022, although it’s not certain when that’s taking place. Last year’s was in April, although GDC 2022 in March may be a better bet. In any case, we’ll have our eyes peeled on the Oculus blog in the meantime.

The post Quest’s Home Environment May Soon Get The Social Capabilities We’ve Been Waiting For appeared first on Road to VR.

Horizon Worlds Beta Goes Public In US & Canada With 18+ Age Requirement

After years of waiting, the Horizon Worlds beta is opening to anyone in the US and Canada, with no invite required.

Meta announced the change today, which moves the beta from an invite-only system to a public beta with no invite requirement. Anyone who is in the US and Canada and over 18 can download Horizon Worlds and try it out from today.

UploadVR asked Meta for clarification on how the 18+ age requirement will be verified, to which a spokesperson responded: “When you log into Horizon Worlds with Facebook, you’ll be able to use the app in VR if your age on Facebook is over 18.”

Horizon Worlds is the social hub and creation tool created by Meta as part of the wider Horizon brand, which also includes Horizon Venues and Horizon Workrooms. It was announced all the way back in 2019, then known as Facebook Horizon, and displayed similar social, world-building functionality as VR apps like VRChat and Rec Room.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has emphasized Horizon Worlds’ priority within the company’s VR/AR efforts, hoping it might start the ‘social fabric’ of VR. Likewise, Meta Consulting CTO John Carmack has stated that he wants the next iteration of the company’s annual Connect conference to be held inside Horizon apps.

We first tried Horizon Worlds at Oculus Connect 6 in September 2019. A Closed Alpha began in March 2020, followed by a transition to an invite-only closed beta in August. It was then that we were able to go hands-on with Horizon Worlds for a second time, which left us feeling that the app had good foundation but didn’t necessarily feel like the full picture of Meta’s social VR puzzle.

In October, Meta rebranded Facebook Horizon to Horizon Worlds and announced a $10 million fund to encourage Horizon creators, despite still being in closed beta at the time.

Now, more than two years after it was announced, the beta will be open to those in the US and Canada. There is no word on other regions at the moment, but expect to hear more as the open beta progresses towards (hopefully) a full launch in the future.

Horizon Worlds beta is open to anyone aged 18+ in the United States and Canada from today on the Quest and Rift platforms. Support for the original Quest 1 will end January 13, 2022.

Horizon Workrooms 1.2 Adds Customization, New Themes, Lectern

Horizon Workrooms 1.2 is available now, bringing more customization to rooms and a lectern for easier presenting.

Originally announced back at Connect 2021, the new update lets users upload custom posters and logo graphics to display in the room, as well as pick a room theme.

When Workrooms launched, there was only one room available (the ‘Lakes’ room). Now there are two room locations available, each with two different themes: Lakes – Cabin, Lakes – Vibrant, City – Bright and City – Sleek.

The latter Vibrant and Bright themes feel a bit more casual, while the Sleek and Cabin themes take on a slightly more professional tone, especially the former.

The City room is a nice change of pace from the standard offering, but the view does look a little close to the ‘The World If’ meme skyline for my liking. Nonetheless, you can make it feel a little more homely by uploading custom graphics and decorating the walls.

To upload custom graphic files to Workrooms, you’ll need to ensure that both your Workrooms Quest app and the Oculus Remote Desktop app are updated to version 1.2. Oculus Remote Desktop doesn’t update automatically, so you’ll need to head over to workrooms.com and download the latest version.

Once everything is updated, head to the Room tab in Workrooms in VR, then scroll down until you find the option that lets you customize the room’s graphics. Clicking on the plus icon for each graphic will open a link in the browser of your connected computer, where you can upload the poster and logo graphics.

Once uploaded, apply them to your room and feel a little bit more at home. We managed to get our UploadVR logo into the City – Sleek theme, as pictured above, and it definitely makes the space feel a little more personal.

The last new feature is a lectern, to be used when presenting so that you still have access to your desk area while speaking to the audience.

Will you be customizing your Workrooms environment? Let us know in the comments.