Meta announced last week the launch of Personal Boundary for Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues.
Personal Boundary prevents avatars from coming within a set distance of each other, creating more personal space for people and making it easier to avoid unwanted interactions. Personal Boundary will begin rolling out today everywhere inside of Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues, and will by default make it feel like there is an almost 4-foot distance between your avatar and others. Over time, we’ll continue to make improvements as we learn how this affects people’s experiences.
Personal Boundary prevents anyone from invading your avatar’s personal space
If someone tries to enter your Personal Boundary, the system will halt their forward movement as they reach the boundary.
You won’t feel it as there is no haptic feedback.
This builds upon Meta’s existing hand harassment measures that were already in place, where an avatar’s hands would disappear if they encroached upon someone’s personal space.
An always on by default feature
Personal Boundary has been developed as an always on choice, by default, because “we think this will help to set behavioral norms and that’s important for a relatively new medium like VR,” Vivek Sharma, Vice President, Horizon explains.
In the future, Meta will explore the possibility of adding in new controls and UI changes, like letting people customize the size of their Personal Boundary.
Precisely because Personal Boundary is the default experience, users will need to extend their arms to be able to high-five or fist bump other people’s avatars in Horizon Worlds or in Horizon Venues.
Improving the experience for everybody
“Virtual reality can and should be for everyone,” Sharma points, “And we’re constantly working to improve people’s experience in VR, gathering feedback from the community to inform our work as we continue to iterate and make improvements.
“We believe Personal Boundary is a powerful example of how VR has the potential to help people interact comfortably. It’s an important step, and there’s still much more work to be done. We’ll continue to test and explore new ways to help people feel comfortable in VR.”
