Recently, Meta opened the VR social platform Horizon Worlds to adult users in the United States and Canada, and the game was originally announced as "Facebook Horizon" in 2019, but since Facebook changed its name to Meta, the game has also officially changed its name to Horizon Worlds.
Horizon Worlds is a social virtual reality platform based on Meta's VR device Quest 2 and Oculus PC, and when the metaverse concept is still not as hot as it is today, the game is already popularizing the concept of multiplayer virtual interactive world, and I have to admire Zuckerberg's foresight in this direction.
This meta is also officially opened to more players to play the qualifications, officially more users into the construction of the metaverse, Horizon Worlds is still the main social attribute of immersive social, as the metaverse concept of the world still has a lot of deficiencies, but if it can be successful, Horizon Worlds may become the world's most immersive metaverse game, then now "Horizon Worlds" How far is it from the metaverse?
Zuckerberg's metaverse?
Perhaps many players are very curious, Zuckerberg, who has a unique understanding of the metaverse, will make a metaverse game?
Horizon Worlds' original vision was to create a virtual social platform for a huge number of users to adapt to the needs of Facebook (now Meta). As a virtual platform for user communication, Horizon Worlds has already combined many of the characteristics of the metaverse, such as shared identity.
Originally a standalone app, Horizon Worlds isn't yet part of the metaverse, but it's the company's first big project built on many of the same ideas — like having a shared identity in a connected, immersive experience where players can spend time with friends.
This independent and versatile user image fits the "identity" characteristics of the metaverse and gives the player a sense of existence in a common world.
Horizon Worlds, on the other hand, has also upgraded the capacity of the space, from the previous 8 players to the current maximum of 20 players in a space, a significant increase in the number of players, but it depends on the complexity of the scene (the creator can reduce the total number of players to add more geometry, animation, logic, etc.).
Horizon Worlds has also now upgraded the latest Oculus Avatar system, which replaces the previous proprietary avatar system, and when loaded into Horizon Worlds, the avatar you've configured in the headset will automatically appear, further highlighting your identity as a user.
The game's building tools have also been expanded and improved, and creators now have accurate control over elements such as the texture and material properties of objects, and can even selectively illuminate the scene. Lights are still lacking in dynamics because they don't react in real time based on real-time casting shadows or changes in moving objects, but they react fast enough that creators can easily handle dynamic lights with the game's built-in tools.
Such a detailed and meticulous construction system gives Horizon Worlds a more unique world-building ability, through which players can build a more realistic and immersive virtual space, providing the most basic creation toolkit for the creation of metaverse worlds. This also corresponds to Zuckerberg's previous theory that all manufacturers are creating conditions for the construction of the entire metaverse, rather than independently forming the so-called metaverse.
The VR technology used in the game is still quite advanced, and Meta's VR equipment guarantees the quality of the audiovisual presentation of the second world, and perhaps the immersive experience will become one of the competitive elements of the metaverse space.
But today's Horizon Worlds is only a social platform with game content, the diversification and civilization attributes of the metaverse have not yet been revealed, the construction of the entire game belongs to the embryonic stage, the function is still not complete, and still belongs to the independent world space of Meta, and has not really completed the global connection.
The content of the game is only part of the construction system in Horizon Worlds, and Meta, who is familiar with the design of social platforms, first chooses the area where they are best at it, preferring to put functional construction first than building a universal metaverse world. It can be said that Horizon Worlds is the true prototype of the social metacosm.
Horizon Worlds still doesn't beat Robles
Some players may wonder, which is more competitive than Robles?
If it comes to the future, Ray may not be able to give a conclusive conclusion, but in terms of today's conditions, Horizon Worlds still does not have the ability to compete with Robles.
Why? In fact, the reason is easy to think of, that is, because of the popularity of VR devices. Horizon Worlds has an unavoidable hardware cost, which makes the popularity of the game a rather difficult problem, and now VR technology is still not mature, the lack of immersive technology will make the credibility of the second world drop significantly, and the current world and the high-tech society of "Ready Player One" with a VR device are still a long way off.
In addition, "Robles" and "Horizon Worlds" have a fundamental difference in positioning, "Robles" mainly focuses on the game aspect, it encourages players to use editing game editing for attack to create game modes, but also in creating a diverse game community; Horizon Worlds is different, the game is only a social mode add-on, the biggest value of this platform is to let players experience the charm of virtual social.
As mentioned earlier, Horizon Worlds' original Meta is from a social platform, the first thing the game should focus on is still the interaction function between players, and the earliest demonstration of the game is indeed related to the user, which is quite in line with the "friend" characteristics of the metaverse, like horizon Worlds' Workplace is the embodiment of this attribute.
At the heart of the build tools in Horizon Worlds is collaboration, the game allows you to build collaboratively with up to four friends at a time, and everything players see and do is synchronized between users, creating a very powerful sense of co-creation. This even applies to the Scripts panel (which allows users to add logic to their creations), where even small changes are made to the script, and friends next to them will see the changes on their terminals.
However, Horizon Worlds has not yet established a reasonable and rigorous economic system, so that the creation and transaction in the game have not been able to form an independent and effective system, and the creators cannot get the in-game incentives in addition to creation, nor can they rely on the creation to gain recognition, which weakens the players' creative enthusiasm to some extent.
However, in order to make up for this deficiency, Meta has recently begun to implement the kickstart creator project on the platform, spending $10 million to implement the creator incentive mechanism, although the specific incentive project has not yet been announced, but Meta is also aware of the shortcomings of the economic system.
In general, compared to Robles, Horizon Worlds obviously has its own development direction, but after all, Meta is not from a game company, and it will have its own bias in the entire metaverse world structure. Rather than allowing players to experience the fun of the game in the second world, players want to find a sense of social society in the virtual world, and socialization has become the first principle of the construction of this metaverse.
Instead of asking how far Horizon Worlds is from Robles, it's better to ask how much work Horizon Worlds still needs to be done to perfect, and horizon Worlds is still an unfinished product, waiting for Meta to build step by step.
The question of jointly building the metacosm
Although every company is trying to build a complete metaverse world, but no company has ever imagined, such a huge virtual world operation problem, Xiao Lei also mentioned in the article before, the metacosm is to be truly realized or to complete the decentralization, so who is responsible for the operation of this virtual world?
If zuckerberg envisions a metaverse to build a community, so that each company is responsible for the operation of its own construction part, then the division of the metaverse world is the center of the dispute, although the virtual world can expand indefinitely, but the user is not infinite, and competing for user resources will become an important matter in the future metaverse.
On the other hand, the maintenance of the whole world also needs major companies to share its costs, after all, if the composition of the second world is completed by major Internet companies, the maintenance of the server also needs to be jointly undertaken and mutually supervised to ensure its security, so the distribution problem here is another big problem.
Just recently, Minecraft has encountered a hack, the game is facing the threat of Log4j code execution errors; this week in the Java world, another eye-to-record vulnerability was revealed. Apache Log4j remote code execution vulnerability, there is a recursive parsing function, users who have not obtained authentication can also send data requests remotely, attackers only need a string of code, they can easily trigger the vulnerability, remotely control the target server, and execute arbitrary code on the target.
This vulnerability is aimed at a game based on Java, and It just so happens that Minecraft is on the list, so what should the major vendors do if there is a hack against the metaverse world in the future?
As a second world relying on the trust of many users, the metaverse world must ensure its permanent existence, because only if the user trusts and recognizes the status of the virtual world, the metaverse world will have the meaning of existence, if there is no way to guarantee this, the existence of the metaverse world will be denied by the user, and the virtual will eventually return to the unreal.
Therefore, most companies are trying to complete and build the concept of the metacosm, but this is only a prototype of a second world, and many follow-up matters are not really conceived. Rather than constructing a virtual world that can accommodate users around the world, many manufacturers are more willing to follow the heat to hype this concept, but they have not noticed that it is easy to build, it is not easy to operate, and the metacosm is now only a prototype, and it still requires manufacturers to work hard to improve its concept.
Although the current Horizon Worlds is still not a metaverse, but its attempts at social interaction gameplay and virtual immersion are still indispensable, after all, in the second world, immersion and socialization are very necessary elements, Horizon Worlds synchronization and light simulation and other functions are further to provide technical support for the construction of the metaverse, its existence as Zuckerberg said, An exclusive social system designed to jointly build all aspects of the metaverse, under the simple idea, hides Zuckerberg's ambition to seize the metaverse social track first.
Horizon Worlds is really not a metaverse, but does Zuckerberg really not want to dominate the construction of the metaverse? That's not necessarily true, at least in the social field, he will not give up such a huge market as the meta-universe.