meta updated Horizon Worlds, the premier virtual reality/”metaverse” app, to make it easier to report bugs. If you see something going wrong while using the app, you can now hold down the A, B, X, and Y buttons on your controllers to bring up the “report a problem” window wherever you go. can attach a screenshot showing what went wrong.
If the experience seems familiar, it may have been in the test for a while; according to Meta spokesperson Kelsi Horn, early tests were available for “a subset of creators” as early as April 2021. Since then, according to Horn, Meta has improved the user interface and is now rolling it out for everyone. Horn added that “bugs reported through this tool are reviewed individually by members of the Horizon Worlds team,” so it seems that Meta is definitely trying to pay attention to the reports.
That should not necessarily come as a surprise. In the blog post announcing the update, Meta admits that a competition held in the app could not be judged fairly because “the platform was unstable and had too many bugs by the end of the competition.” A recent report from my colleague Alex Heath reveals that Horizon’s bugginess has been a sore spot within the company; the team behind it will be in a “quality lockout” for the rest of 2022 to fix the bugs before more people start using the app (early this year, Alex reported it had about 300,000 monthly users). In a memo, Meta’s VP of metaverse, Vishal Shah, told employees, “Feedback from our creators, users, playtesters and many of us on the team is that the total weight of papercuts, stability issues and bugs is making it too difficult for our community to experience the magic of Horizon.”
Meta also makes it a priority for its employees to actually start using Horizon — “everyone in this organization should make it their mission to fall in love with Horizon Worlds,” Shah wrote, wondering why the team running the app built does not spend money. yourself more time.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose vision has largely powered the company’s metaverse efforts, has promised to share details about “major updates to Horizon and avatar graphics” at the company’s Connect conference on October 11. The company also plans to announce its next-gen headset, the Quest Pro, which leaked spectacularly last month. Of course, new graphics and new hardware can also mean a host of new bugs, so this upgrade to the reporting system is well-timed.
