The Meta has announced that meta is adding a new “voice mode” to Horizon Worlds that garbles any voice chat from non-friends on the VR social platform
. By default, you’ll still listen to all nearby users at the identical volume, but turning on the “garble voices” toggle will substitute them with “unintelligible, pleasant sounds.” The feature will roll out in the forthcoming weeks, according to Meta.
According to a screenshot of the toggle conveyed by Meta, the feature can be used to push users “feel more comfortable or safe.” It tracks a series of reports about harassment users have participated in on the social VR platform, which reached out of beta late the previous year. In February, Meta raised a “personal boundary” system that’s on by default and stops other users from getting into your personal space.
Meta’s VR social platform brings a new safety feature alongside the UK launch. When you utilize Voice Mode to distort the speech of those around you, an icon will seem above your display name to indicate that you can’t listen to what outsiders are saying. But if you’d like to unmute them temporarily, you can boost your in-game hand to your ear utilizing a motion controller.
Interestingly, Meta’s screenshot of the Voice Mode feature offers it alongside a separate toggle that lets you mute non-friends completely. Presumably, allowing you to hear their voices in garbled form is represented as a settlement so you can still hear the widespread social unrest of a room without being subjected to potentially abusive comments from strangers.
Meta reported the new safety feature alongside the service’s launch in the UK. The country is the third to witness the release of Horizon Worlds, alongside the USA and Canada. The VR social platform is a nucleus part of the company’s pitch for its metaverse future. It includes the ability for creators to create their levels for other players to encounter.
Meta has announced a new setting known as Voice Mode in Horizon Worlds that will give people more control over their experience. The feature, to begin rolling out in the next few weeks, will allow the Quest 2 VR headset users to choose how they hear people who aren’t on the friend’s list, including the option not to hear unwanted conversations.
“By default, you’ll hear all nearby users at the same volume, but with Voice Mode, you can easily switch to Garbled Voices, in which non-friends voices come across as unintelligible, friendly sounds,” said the company in an update. “But if you want to hear what they’re saying, you can simply raise one hand with the controller to your ear to temporarily un-garble them without adding them as a friend,” explained the company.
“We plan to keep rolling out Horizon Worlds to more countries in Europe later this summer,” Meta said.
If you enable Garbled Voices, strangers will see an indicator that you can’t hear them, so they don’t feel you’re ignoring them. Horizon Worlds will also begin rolling in the UK this week on Quest 2 for people 18 or older. Again, if you enable Garbled Voices, strangers will see an indicator that you can’t hear them, so they don’t feel you’re ignoring them. But if you want to listen to what they’re saying, you can raise one hand with the controller to your ear to temporarily un-garble them without adding them as a friend.
Horizon Worlds is available for people 18 and above to download for free on Quest 2 in the US, Canada, and the UK. In addition, Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced last week that Quest 2 VR headset would get Horizon Home as part of a new update. The functionality will help users create their environments without using third-party apps.
Horizon Worlds is a social VR affair where you can locate new places with friends, build your unique worlds, and form teams to contend in action-packed games. The Horizon Worlds social metaverse platform is open only on the company’s Quest VR headsets.