11/24/2023 0 Comments British flag minecraft loomThe Quest 2 arrives in a very fancy box, and the thing itself – a white headset with elasticated bands to secure it to your head, plus two quite snazzy controllers for your hands, seems to have really good build quality. The idea is also that, à la Minecraft or Roblox, you can then also build your own “worlds” within Horizon’s universe, which other users can then visit.Īfter numerous efforts to beg, borrow, or steal a Quest 2 headset, I bite the bullet and spend £399 at Meta’s UK store, just to write this column (don’t say I never do anything for you, dear reader).Īt first, everything looks good. That ranges from places where you can play games, socialise, watch live comedy, or watch gigs from stars including John Legend and Billie Eilish. Horizon Worlds, Meta promises, offers a “virtual universe with thousands of experiences for you to explore”. It has some hardcore headsets for gamers, which have to be combined with high-end PCs, but its lead consumer model is the Quest 2, which can be used without a computer, and which allows you to enter Horizon Worlds, Meta’s flagship metaverse product. The reality at present falls considerably short of that, but Meta bought up a leading VR headset manufacturer, Oculus, as early as 2014 – suggesting this isn’t a new hyperfocus for Zuckerberg – and has maintained a team updating its VR headsets ever since. Where at present you might use one program to browse the net, check your bank on a different app, and then use a third altogether to play a game, in the metaverse you could at least notionally do all of these things in one continuous experience. The general concept is of a liveable online space – usually understood to rely on virtual reality (VR) – that joins up lots of different worlds and activities. As with many concepts in big tech, people completely disagree on what is or isn’t a metaverse, and on the extent to which it is puffed up by hype. Before we get ahead of ourselves, it is worth taking a moment to think about what “the metaverse” actually is. Little did I know that this supposedly straightforward endeavour would sap what little of my sanity was left – after the last few years of just, well, living in the world – lead to physical injury, a fight with a (real-world) cat, and a full-scale existential crisis in a virtual reality lavatory.īut all of that was still in my future. I didn’t even notice the danger therein, the simple and seemingly innocuous next sentence – “go for a wander round” and “see what it’s like”. So, when the New European’s commissioning editor, Jay Elwes, suggested I look at this as a topic, and look at how the bet is going, with around $20bn spent since Zuckerberg’s new focus, I was happy to take on the assignment. He has pledged to spend $100bn (£83bn) – yes, billions with a b, not millions – over the next decade to make his company (now renamed Meta to show its new focus) the winner of the next generation of the internet.
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