You can now enter the world of Meta, prepared by Facebook. As long as you live on the right side of the globe, have the right equipment, and dream of playing a game that resembles a poor relative of Minecraft.

The vision of the metaverse, unveiled by Mark Zuckerberg barely two months ago, has divided experts into two teams. One sees the Metaverse as the future; the next step after the Internet, from which we cannot escape. And even if that future takes longer to build than Zuck predicts, the vision of an intersecting mixed and virtual reality is, according to many experts, the inevitable future. The other, on the other hand, believes that the Metaverse is another misfire along the lines of Second Life, and a dream money launderer, judging by the fact that yachts and servants are already being sold in a virtual world that doesn’t yet exist.

Regardless of which side we stand on — Meta is already running. The machine has started, no one can stop it, and anyone over the age of 18 who lives in the United States or Canada can already see what kind of future Facebook has in store for us.

Horizon Worlds in the metaverse available to all. Under a few conditions.

Yesterday Meta announced that the first of the metaverse’s big interactive apps, Horizon Worlds, has been made available to everyone. For free. There are just a few catches.

The first is the mentioned place of residence. For the time being the application will be available only for residents of the United States and Canada.

The second is the necessary equipment. To operate Horizon Worlds you need Oculus Quest 2 goggles. For some time you will be able to use Oculus Quest 1, but on January 13, 2022, the application will no longer be available for the older generation of VR goggles.

The third catch is… the shape of the app itself. Because so far it looks like a very, very, very poor relative of Minecraft, only in a slightly more comical setting. Instead of blocks, we have cartoon shapes and avatars cut at waist height. You can create your own worlds and your own games in Horizon Worlds, and Meta has made sure there’s plenty to do already — in addition to recommending some of the best community-created games on the official blog, Meta today launched its own laser tag game called Arena Clash, where players can face off against each other in 3-on-3 matches.

Those who can’t play Horizon Worlds can watch gameplays on YouTube or Twitch. To put it mildly, so far the application… does not look encouraging.

The Meta is pumping in gigantic amounts of money to attract people to Horizon Worlds.

With the release of Horizon Worlds, Meta intends to hold the first of many contests for developers to earn money by getting involved in expanding the virtual world. Meta intends to allocate $10 million to attract developers and users.

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, we have no idea if and when we can expect the debut of Horizon Worlds in other regions than USA/Canada. It should also be added that the VR goggles aren’t very popular just yet. I’m afraid that until this changes, we will learn about the development of the Facebook metaverse from press releases, instead of experiencing it for ourselves.

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