Meta Horizon Worlds v141 Release Notes

Meta Horizon Worlds v141, our last update of 2023, is here! As 2023 draws near to a close, we’d like to take a moment to thank the entire Worlds community. Whether you’re a creator who’s spent countless hours building new worlds of your own, a casual world hopper who loves to dip in every now and then to see what’s new, or somewhere in between, you’re part of what makes Worlds great, and we can’t wait to see what the new year brings.

This week, we’re launching some features to help you set reminders while in Worlds, testing a new onboarding experience, and addressing a number of bugs.

Improvements to Speaker Awareness and Microphone Notifications

Sometimes worlds get loud, and it can be hard to identify where the sound is coming from. You may hear a conversation you want to join or meet a new friend you want to follow. Or maybe someone nearby is playing a game and you’d like to mute them. That’s why we’re testing a new feature that lets you double press the menu button on your left controller to see a list of everyone nearby and easily identify who’s speaking. Their profile icon will light up, and you can take quick actions like mute or go to their profile where you can follow them or give them thanks.

Additionally, we’re beginning to test new notifications that better inform you whether your mic is turned on or off when entering a world. During testing, these features may be limited to certain worlds and may not be available to everyone.

Introducing Optional Time Reminders

We recently created a new way for people to see how much time they’re spending in Worlds. Now we’re introducing the option of setting daily time limits and bedtime reminders as well. You can choose to be reminded to take a break after a certain amount of time or get an alert when it’s time to call it a night.

Both of these features can be found under Settings > Safety & wellbeing.

Limited-Time Quests: Earn Exclusive Rewards

It’s officially Horizon Season! Now through January, we’re bringing you a packed calendar of events, games, community hangouts, and new features to make your Worlds experience better than ever. We’ve added a new Limited-time Quests tab to the Quests menu. Limited-time quests give you a chance to unlock limited edition rewards. Keep checking the menu as new quests and rewards will be added during the winter months—the more you play, the more you unlock!

Quality of Life Improvements

General

• Yesterday we introduced Horizon Central—an immersive new way to discover content in VR. It’s a social hub where you can meet up with friends, make new ones, and find your next immersive experience. Whether you want to challenge yourself in an escape room, team up with others in a free-for-all battle, or kick back at a concert, Horizon Central is your ticket to a good time.
• We’re testing an updated onboarding experience with updated gameplay-based tutorials that introduce new players to key features and settings. We hope to roll this out to additional players in the coming weeks.
• Previously, when players were AFK, they blocked others from walking through their space. We’ve improved this experience by disabling personal boundary for those AFK players.

Highlighted Bug Fixes

Here are some highlighted bug fixes for this week’s release.

General

• We fixed a bug where some user settings were reset when updating the app.
• Players standing on a moving platform should now have the comfort aid enabled.
• We fixed a bug where the camera orientation wasn’t updated correctly when returning from safe zone.
• We fixed an issue where the avatar headshot was larger than intended.
• We fixed a bug that was causing a decrease in rendering performance when first loading into Worlds.

Creators

• MoveRelativeTo entity/object no longer spams an error, because it can correctly recognize the same MoveRelativeTo script in an Update loop. This will also result in a performance improvement, since it no longer repeatedly loads the same script per frame.
• MoveRelativeTo previously had a local/world space parameter which was not being correctly read, which caused it to get stuck in the “local space” mode and led to positions being inaccurate for the world space scripts. This has now been fixed, and using “WorldSpace” as the parameter will move the object to the right position.
• We fixed a bug where the spawn point ignored the “spawn on start” option while in Edit mode.

Select Known Issues

Here are some of the known issues the Worlds team is currently investigating.

General

• We’re aware that some worlds are loading as empty worlds. A workaround for this is to leave the world and then travel back into it again.
• Images are appearing in the home world mirror unexpectedly.
• Some avatars are unable to step through doorways.
• The followers panel isn’t loading for some people.