Meta’s upcoming Horizon OS launch is bringing a couple of extra of Imaginative and prescient Professional’s most helpful options to Quest, together with a video chatting selfie cam for avatars and presumably the power to share home windows with different customers when in its Horizon House social house.
Found by serial dataminer ‘Luna’, a beta model of Horizon OS v76 is packing in a couple of new options, together with the very Facetime-inspired avatar selfie cam which can be utilized in video chatting apps.
Quest’s v76 replace is at present obtainable on the Public Take a look at Channel (PTC), though Luna went a bit additional to implement the avatar selfie cam in a sideloaded model of Discord.
Meta Quest/Horizon OS v76 PTC – Avatar Selfie Cam operating in sideloaded Discord. The decision backgrounds aren’t enabled but although.
Thanks @Phene420 for reminding me to check in different apps lol. https://t.co/6WkehJra8B pic.twitter.com/EzTeYPAop1
— Luna (@Lunayian) March 23, 2025
Backgrounds at present aren’t obtainable, Luna notes, nonetheless they’re mentioned to incorporate a number of default choices, comparable to Summary, Seaside, Greenhouse, House Workplace, Mild, Loft, and Workplace.
Luna additionally uncovered a hidden tutorial for an upcoming ‘Navigator’ system consumer interface overhaul on Horizon OS. Teased at Meta Join 2024 in September, the brand new UI system restyles the present dock-based UI to a extra conventional launcher overlay—placing it extra in keeping with the type of icon-based app choice you see in Imaginative and prescient Professional and cell units in the present day.
NEW: I’ve datamined a tutorial for the upcoming “Navigator” system UI overhaul on Meta Horizon OS.
This was found in v76 PTC. Yow will discover my earlier reporting on this within the quoted publish beneath, however TL;DR that is at present deliberate for v77+ https://t.co/mTtVv2KtSu pic.twitter.com/xIWTd2GQsP
— Luna (@Lunayian) March 22, 2025
Whereas the tutorial was found in v76 PTC, Luna suspects the Navigator function will arrive in v77 or past, presumably as an Experimental function.
Moreover, Luna’s datamining revealed that strings within the v76 PTC of Horizon OS “counsel that Meta is engaged on the power to share home windows with different customers in Horizon House (and presumably Worlds),” which they keep “will possible work equally to SharePlay on visionOS.”
The string in query states it “[s]hares a panel in order that different customers in your world can see it”.
Granted, Quest customers have been asking for these options since nicely earlier than Imaginative and prescient Professional was launched, though it was Apple’s $3,500 combined actuality standalone that has finally been the important thing driver within the firm’s quest to additional mould the console-style Quest right into a basic computing gadget.
In addition, since Imaginative and prescient Professional’s launch in early 2024, Meta has launched a variety of options in effort to deliver Quest’s software program nearer to parity with visionOS, together with spatial video playback, pinch-style gesture controls, and higher passthrough on Quest 3.
Nonetheless lacking in motion although is Meta’s long-promised photorealistic Codec Avatars although, which the corporate first teased in 2019.
Like Imaginative and prescient Professional’s photorealistic avatars, Meta researchers demonstrated that Codec Avatars may use smartphones to scan and recreate a consumer’s face—very similar to Imaginative and prescient Professional does in the present day.
The important thing limiter although is Quest 3’s lack of eye or facial monitoring, which may imply Meta is ready to launch Codec Avatars with its subsequent high-end headset—the completely hypothetically and nonetheless unconfirmed Quest Professional 2. And if we had been betting, in all probability some extra Imaginative and prescient Professional-inspired options too.
