As we all know, Meta has recently "bloodstained".
The reason for the collapse is simple: the number of social users generating revenue for the company in the real world is decreasing, and the metacosm that burns money to the point of hand cramps has not yet improved.
It's been two months since Meta launched Horizon Worlds, a large metaversium social platform that has been secretly polished for years. For this metaversal world that has devoted a lot of Mana's efforts, many people are full of curiosity and want to see what this world that carries Meta's future looks like.
But right now, the barrier to entry for experiencing Horizon Worlds is not low: first, you have to have a Quest 2 VR headset worth at least $299, and second, you have to be an 18- or older user in the U.S. and Canada.
In order to see for yourself the meta-universe world that shoulders the honor and hope of Meta, this time, silicon star people also "spent a huge amount" to buy a Quest to do a review for everyone.
| the first experience of Horizon Worlds
While geared up, the process of actually getting into Horizon Worlds has been a lot of vignettes. Originally, when I heard that Meta officially announced the opening of Horizon Worlds last December, Silicon Star people wanted to give everyone a review at the first time, but since december last year, Silicon Star People's Oculus Store has been in a "Coming soon" state.
After looking for Oculus customer service, the other party replied that he would wait, and then this wait was two months. In this regard, silicon star people casually searched on the Internet and found that such a situation is not just an isolated case, some people say that this is because Meta is putting users in batches, and the reason behind it is that Horizon Worlds is not stable enough and the capacity is relatively limited.
But anyway, the other day, Horizon Worlds finally arrived. Put on the headset to open the application, and the silicon star people quickly turn on the machine to play.
To access Horizon, you must have a Facebook account before you can log in. Well, the metaverse concept of the union settlement with the real world is there.
Next, enter the "pinch people" link. Although the various pinching options are still slightly rough compared to the same type of virtual world games as The Sims, from skin tone, hairstyle, clothing and even eyelashes, users can customize the choice, basically still able to create the image you want. In addition, the silicon star people were surprised to find that the virtual human image that was previously ridiculed by the whole network group as a legless ghost was actually pinched in the pinching link.
Once you've set up your avatar, you can enter your personal space. Looking to the left is a reminder of the rules of the game, looking to the middle is Horizon's main menu, looking to the right is a mirror that reflects your personal image, and the virtual character in the mirror will do the same when you wave and smile.
Afterwards, a female voice guide will guide you every step of the way, as well as explain the rules of Horizon's operation. She'll tell you that looking down at your left wrist triggers menu options at any time, and the wrist menu consists of three things: Horizon-themed menu, sound switch, safe space, and taking photos.
First, let's talk about the theme menu. In Horizon Worlds, you can currently do four things: one is to enter the Play to play some mini-games; the other is to enter the multiplayer room or public square under the Hangout menu to socialize with people; the third is to participate in some regular theme events through Attend; and the fourth is to independently or invite friends to build your own world through the Create function.
The "sound switch" and "personal space" on the wrist can be said to be two functions tailored for patients with social phobia.
To make people's social activities in this world more realistic, in Horizon, all users' voices are unprocessed projections of reality, and the size of the voice changes depending on how far you are from other characters in Horizon.
To be honest, when the Silicon Star people first hear their voice coming out of the virtual character, they will have some vague discomfort, and they always feel that they are "exposed" in an instant, at which time you can choose to turn off the microphone.
But turning off the microphone only makes it impossible for others to hear you, and others will still see you come to you and actively chat with you. At this time, patients with severe social phobia can also choose to enter safe mode to completely hide themselves. In this mode, you're like wearing an invisible cloak, you can hear and see what others are saying, but there's no you in the perspective of other players. It is said that this feature is a special setting made by Meta to avoid unnecessary harassment of players.
After almost 2 minutes of rule introduction, you can officially start your Horizon tour.
However, just as the Silicon Star Man rubbed his small hand in anticipation, the interlude appeared again. Originally, according to the process introduced by the audio guide, the Silicon Star people should enter a place called Welcome Wolrds, but after entering the jump page, the Progress Bar of painting Scene was stuck in the middle, and after 2 minutes of stuck, there was still no response to declare a complete crash.
Uh, well, force shutdown, start all over again.
| welcome to the large virtual children's world
After logging in again, the real Horizon Worlds are finally in front of you. Let's take a closer look at the worlds of gaming, socializing, and building in Horizon.
Game experience: the number is too small, the gameplay is young and single
The last Welcome World is gone, and the first thing Silicon Starman entered was the Play section, but at the moment there are really very few games under this section: a low-end version of the chicken-eating game, a low-end version of the zombie game, a shooting flag game, and a small game collection, gone.
After experiencing these games one by one, Silicon Starman had a question: Why is Horizon Worlds only open to adults over the age of 18, and these games are obviously developed for children?
Come and feel it with the Silicon Star people.
Once Mini Games is selected, you'll be transferred to World Hop Plaza, where you'll have a minimum of two people and a maximum of four people before you and the rest of the game can start.
The first mini-game, pitching. It's about grabbing the ball and throwing it into the hole, and whoever shoots more will score more. The flexibility of using the handle to simulate fingers to grasp is not bad, but the accuracy of throwing into the distance is not too high, and finally "forced" the silicon starman to choose only the nearest two holes in front of him.
The second mini-game, Feed the Fish. Catch the small fish and still on the surface of the sea, bounce into the mouth of the fish and score. At the beginning of the game, the Silicon Star Man was completely confused, did not know what to do with these small fish in front of him, and it was useless to throw it directly at the shark in the distance. Only later did you find out that you had to let the bait bounce off the surface of the sea and enter the shark's mouth.
The third mini-game, posing. Follow a cartoon monkey to do the action, who does a good job of card points score high. Hold your two handles and follow the musicology monkey's movements, and when it stops your hand stops in the same direction to score. If you want to say how you feel in these 1 minutes, the only feeling is that Quest's grip on the position of the opponent is quite accurate.
After a few mini-games, you and your matching opponents walk the red carpet together to see the final score and hold an award ceremony. But no one gives you an award, you just play the trophy yourself.
How, adults over the age of 18, are you interested in these games? Some people may say that because it is a small game, the gameplay is relatively simple. Let's take a look at a few more separate games.
First, Arena clash, the most popular game on the platform right now. After entering the game, you can first practice shooting targets in the waiting area, and the operation of the controller simulating shooting is still more sensitive. Then, you can choose the orange team or the blue team to start "eating chicken", and in a few minutes, whoever of the two teams can knock down more of the opposing team members wins.
The whole site is not large, but the design is not bad, there are rooms, platforms, pipes, etc. for hidden places, there are some equipment in various places to obtain, and the smoothness of sliding and moving is also good. But it is that the game method is too "pediatric", chasing, shooting, freezing, resurrection, too cartoon style also makes vr vrasity greatly reduced.
Action Island, also a shooter game, players are grouped in teams, picking up guns and shooting each other in an attempt to capture the flag. The whole experience is similar to Arena Clash, and the way the game is played is basically the same, but the venue and the goal of the final victory are different.
The next, Retro Zombies, is a zombie-fighting game in a mall-like place where you can shoot zombies from all directions, load and shoot again and again, and win coins. Silicon star people personally feel that the VR realism brought by this game is a little stronger, and sometimes they see themselves inexplicably shedding blood, and they turn around only to find a "zombie" coming towards you.
In short, after all experience, the current games in Horizon Worlds are basically shooting and throwing. In addition to VR creating a more three-dimensional environment, other aspects should not be much attractive to adults, belonging to the kind of person who will not want to play a second time after playing, and is still in the stage of prototype polishing.
Social experience: the "hell" of social terror, the "paradise" of social cattle
Quit the game, let's take a look at the highlights and highlights of Horizon - social.
Overall, Horizon's social features are relatively well designed. You can invite your real-life Facebook friends to join Horizon and meet them in the virtual world, play, build, or meet new people in the game
The interaction design between virtual characters is also very socially friendly. In Horizon, all the characters you meet are real-world players, and while you speak, the mouth of the avatar will also move synchronously, and some communication involving body language is also designed, including high-fives, likes, etc., so that the social immersion during the use process is further enhanced.
In Horizon, the social function mainly involves two major sections, one is in the Hangout social plaza, and the other is to participate in multi-person activities through Attend.
Among them, Social Square currently has two small worlds: The Plaza and Questy's. The former is set in a small plaza by the sea, while the latter is a sci-fi space. In these two small worlds, you can join a group of users to chat with, or you can play small games with other people, such as throwing darts, throwing paper airplanes, shooting and so on.
Throwing paper airplanes at The Plaza, in the distance were crowds chatting
Questy’s
Players in the square are generally very enthusiastic, will greet you when they pass by you, want to talk to you after playing a small game together, and because the voice of other users is in your ear, people who do not like to socialize may feel nervous when entering the social square. During the experience, silicon star people also had "social death" scenes in which they forgot to turn off their microphones while talking to their families, and were asked what they were saying.
But this feeling of social fear also varies from person to person, and the cousin of silicon star people with social talent syndrome is completely successful after logging on to Horizon, and soon chatted with people and developed into Facebook friends.
In order to avoid the situation that you can't find after talking to anyone who forgot to add friends, Horizon also intimately helped you classify and summarize in the friends column, around those people, where you have met whom, when you have encountered at a glance, click on the user avatar, you can send her / him a message or initiate a voice chat.
In addition to Hangout, you can also find friends with similar interests through activities in Attend. The activities in Attend have fixed themes and fixed times, if you are interested, you can click subscribe, horizon will send you a reminder before the event starts. Current event topics include meditation, group interviews, car shows and more.
So, if you're a sociable person, visit Horizon, and you're sure to get around.
Create an experience: Take the first step in nurturing every user as a creator
This time, in addition to the gaming and social attributes, Horizon Worlds also has a feature of its openness.
Meta understands that if you want to create an incredibly rich virtual world as it expects, you can't do it on your own. As a result, it developed a series of easy creative tools to encourage every user to participate in the construction of Horizon World.
When you click on the Create option, you'll be taken to a build page where a virtual mentor will teach you how to use Quest's handles to build in Horizon, including how to move, grab, stack, preview, and publish. After the tutorial, you can start building your own space with the various modules provided by Horizon and publishing them to all users.
The significance of this function is on the one hand to help expand horizon with the help of users, on the other hand, it is also to meet the personalized needs of many groups. For example, many people will build their own party space, some companies will build their own virtual group conference rooms, etc. After the release of personalized worlds, all users can explore these worlds in the Worlds option, and the number of worlds created by users in the Worlds section is currently growing rapidly.
In order to encourage users to be more interested and better use of the creation function, Meta has also set up a creator fund to reward the world of excellence, and users can also join Meta's creation group to find partners, support resources and teaching resources.
After the experience, silicon people believe that Meta's approach of guiding users to become creators is still meaningful, opening up imagination space for the future of Horizon Worlds. But on the other hand, Create still has a certain threshold for ordinary users, which is reflected in the long learning time, slightly complex operation, too single optional modules, and the time and energy required to build.
Horizon Worlds is the first step in enabling users to create the world, but only the first.
Construction modules within Horizon
| there are still many problems that need to be solved if you want to reach the metaverse
After some experience, the consistent feeling of Silicon Star people and friends for Horizon Worlds is that the ideal is indeed very full, but the reality is still very bone.
Let's start with the pros. First of all, it can be felt that Meta really put a lot of thought into designing Horizon Worlds. Although horizon world is very large, the entire interface and interactive flow are simple and easy to understand, and users only need to know the composition of Horizon Worlds and how to use the gamepads through just a few minutes of introduction.
Second, both VR interaction and social attributes do a good job. Through the headset and the controller, the user's expressions and actions can be captured and projected on the virtual character in real time, and the "real" communication with dialogue, expressions, and body movements really elevates people's Internet-based social activities to a new dimension.
In addition, the basic framework of this world is very well built, and there is a lot of room for imagination. Meta divides Horizon Worlds into games, social networking, events, and creations, making the original huge world content orderly, and there is a lot of potential under each part to be tapped. In particular, the setting of making users also become creators of the world makes Horizon's Worlds full of possibilities.
Of course, as the prototype of the metaverse, Horizon Worlds has many unsatisfactory places.
First, the instability of the operation of the system can be clearly felt. In addition to the twists and turns of the landing experience mentioned at the beginning of the article, it takes a long time to load every time the world is switched between worlds, and there are many times in the middle of the jam.
Second, the painting style is too cartoonish and the game setting is too low. You know, the style of painting that silicon star people expect from Horizon worlds is like the oasis world in Ready Player One, cool punk, bizarre, futuristic, and various games make you adrenaline soar. In contrast, the current Horizon Worlds, not to mention the floating legless man setting, the whole painting style is very cartoonish, will not give you a sense of surprise. And the game is almost looping in pitching and shooting, which is slightly boring.
Oasis World on the left and Horizon Worlds on the right
Third, the operating rules have not yet been established very perfectly. In fact, since the trial run of Horizon, the most foreign media reports have not been how fun the world is, but many have focused on the repeated harassment, discrimination and other issues.
The silicon star cousin really encountered discrimination in the process of experience. Since his appearance is set up in a distinctly Asian form, and Horizon is currently only open in North America, a stranger he meets in the game asks him, "How did you get in?" Because you look like a Chink (an insulting term for the Chinese). "This experience obviously makes the user experience very much reduced."
Finally, let's talk about a few feelings about the game itself.
Among them, one of the most prominent feelings is that the VR headset is really too heavy. While quest 2 has tried its best to reduce its weight to 500 grams, you'll feel like 5 kilograms when all of this weight is pressed on your face. If you find that your face has sagged recently, don't doubt it, there must be a credit to Quest. After only more than 1 hour of testing, the silicon star man's face left two deep marks, which disappeared after a few hours.
Therefore, if there is no VR game in the future that is fun enough to explode, the silicon star people are estimated to not easily choose to wear quest to play for more than 1 hour.
Many people feel this way, the image is from Reddit
In addition, after playing for a while, the whole person fainted. During the experience, the Silicon Star Man developed a dizzy feeling of wanting to throw up several times, and had to interrupt several times before continuing again. It is understood that this symptom is called 3D vertigo, which is a very common phenomenon, and the reason for its occurrence is not only related to the user's personal physique, but also related to some factors of the VR game itself, such as low frame count, stuttering, acceleration, game style, texture light and darkness and so on.
This time, in addition to the silicon star people themselves have this feeling of vertigo, other experienced friends around them also have different degrees of discomfort, and it is not clear whether it is related to the game itself.
So, if Meta wants to pull everyone into the metaverse, the hardware problem is a mountain that crosses its path. After all, as Musk says, "No one wants to tie a screen to their face all day." "Besides, it's still such a thick and heavy screen.
Overall, combined with horizon Worlds' current playfulness and the feeling of using a headset, silicon people are not particularly "cold" to Meta's metaverse. Horizon Worlds is still far from the oasis world we've been looking forward to.
But at the same time, it must be admitted that we cannot ask for horizon Worlds now with too harsh eyes, it is only an opening chapter, and there is still more room for imagination in the future.
According to Meta's latest data, including Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues, horizon monthly activity has reached 300,000, an increase of 10 times in three months. Perhaps all we need to do is give Meta enough time to see if it can finally surprise us.
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