Personal Boundary prevents other avatars from encroaching on your personal space.
Anyone familiar with online gaming will tell you that the virtual world can be a cruel and unforgiving place. Online anonymity has emboldened a whole new generation of trolls eager to ruin the party for the rest of us and immersive technology, for all its benefits, has only added further fuel to the fire.
As Meta continues to expand upon its own growing metaverse, the company is looking to nip this problem in the bud before it can evolve into a legitimate issue. This is where Personal Boundary comes in.
Rolling out now for Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues, Personal Boundary is a new feature that prevents users from encroaching on each other’s personal space. Activated by default, Personal Boundary will prevent other Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues users from coming within 4-feet of your avatar. You can still hive-five and fist-bump other players with the setting activated, you’ll just need to fully extend your arms past the boundary. This feature can de deactivated manually in your settings.
“Virtual reality can and should be for everyone. 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,” said Vivek Sharma, Vive President of Horizon via the company’s official blog.
“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.”
Moving forward, Meta promises to continue to expand upon its existing safety features for Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues. For example, the company has already implemented hand harassment measures that prevent users from touching each other inappropriately.
Feature Image Credit: Meta
