Horizon Worlds is similar to Rec Room. Users enter Horizon Worlds with Meta’s head-mounted Quest series and shape their avatars themselves. Users use avatars to participate in most activities in the real world, such as socializing with users around the world, visiting friends, attending concerts, and traveling around the world.
Zuckerberg had previously said that Horizon would be available on phones last year, but that didn’t happen. Metaverse VP Vishal Shah responded that the company considered the redesign of the original mobile app as “a bit like playing a VR game on a phone, rather than a phone-friendly experience.”
Users can apply for a waiting list online and try using Horizon on their mobile phones, and some users have already been qualified for testing.
Meta will open early access to versions of the web. Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth proposed a web version of Horizon last year and posted a screenshot. The web version is designed to be the only way for iPhone users to access Horizon. The reason is that Apple prohibits apps from serving as gaming platforms, which is why Xbox cloud gaming cannot be launched as an iPhone app.
In user-provided test footage, the Meta avatar on mobile shows running legs as it moves, and the VR player in the session still doesn’t appear with legs, despite Meta’s announcement some time ago that they would be introducing legs.
According to news, Meta believes that Horizon “has not found product-market fit.” Its competitors, Rec Room and VRChat, have long dominated the top five Quest apps, while Horizon Worlds only ranks in the top 25. Meta plans to launch mobile and web versions and improve graphics quality to change this and attract a new group of users. This will be a challenge due to the completely different input methods between VR and smartphones, and Rec Room and VRChat already offer mobile versions.
