When you first glide into Horizon Worlds, the virtual reality app from Meta Platforms Inc., you’re greeted with a vivid cityscape and portals into worlds with labels like “adventure” and “comedy.” On a recent visit to the “adventure” world, I zoomed around a town in the Wild West toting a Colt single-action army revolver and occasionally trading shots with three other avatars dashing between a saloon and a bank. The avatars sported sun glasses and multicolored hair, but were sans legs, a limitation Meta doesn’t appear to have solved yet.
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There were at least a dozen of these cartoon torsos floating around the Soapstone Comedy Club, whose welcome sign said it was created by unemployed_alcoholic. This zone felt more active, with avatars standing in groups and making small talk about their kids or life in the real world.
“I woke up at one, and then ate something, and then took another nap at two,” one woman told a man just outside the club.
In the midst of another group, a man named Momsmasher69 shouted at one of the assembled, “You ain’t got no legs!” and cackled. There was no comedy show on that day — they’re typically held on weekend evenings, eastern standard time — and most of these people didn’t know each other, but they seemed to be having fun all the same. A handful of kids and teens were zooming around wildly and then disappearing.
“I’m four months away from being old enough to be here,” one of them mumbled to me after explaining that he was just checking the place out. “Shhh.”
The metaverse, an immersive, 3D environment where people interact via avatars, looks a little crisper and more vibrant than it did more than a year ago. Visitors to Horizon Worlds are generally well behaved, and such apps have even been a source of emotional support for many.
But this also, still, feels like a niche hobby. Few are talking about their metaverse experiences on social media platforms like Twitter or TikTok. Anecdotally, several people who have bought Meta’s Quest 2 headsets, which are necessary for visiting the company’s metaverse apps, tell me they rarely put them on anymore. The headsets take time to adjust and load up, and isolate you from others you may be living with. Motion sickness also affects many users, myself included.
Following a great deal of hype last year, companies now seem to be reining back their investments in the metaverse. Walt Disney Co. has terminated its efforts in the space and Microsoft Corp. shut down its metaverse app for socializing, called AltSpaceVR, earlier this year.
Read the full article here by Parmy Olson, Advisor Perspectives.
