The impressive, photorealistic digital replicas of real locations, created using Meta’s “Hyperscape” capture technology, which uses the camera on a Quest 3 or Quest 3S VR headset to scan a room, have been solitary locations until now. If you want to tour a virtual version of any room in your house (or the kitchen in Gordon Ramsay’s house), you can only do it yourself. But starting this week, Meta is introducing the ability to share links that will let other people go into the Hyperscape room with you in a Quest 3 or 3S VR headset or through the Meta Horizon mobile app.
According to the Meta blog post, an instance of the Hyperscape world will be able to house up to eight people, and that number is expected to increase in the future. The meta is “pushing rendering on device” and adding audio to the Hyperscape world.
However, you may be waiting a bit to actually be able to invite your friends to a location. Meta’s blog post urges readers to “please sit back” if they don’t have the feature yet, and Meta spokesperson Rachel Holm says it will be available “gradually to all users over the next few months.”
The feature is part of Metaverse’s vision of a metaverse that includes digital real-world locations as well as games. According to meta:
As the metaverse takes shape, we think a vibrant mix of experiences is important. In a few days you’ll want to immerse yourself in an otherworldly adventure, which is where our vast library of VR apps and the world come in handy. And other days, you may want to see a digital replica of a physical location that you might not otherwise have the opportunity to visit. Or maybe you want to spend quality time with friends somewhere a little closer to home. That’s what Hyperscape makes possible. Hyperscape can make your experiences in the metaverse more meaningful by bringing you together with the people who matter most in realistic digital replicas of physical spaces And fun. In the future, we’re excited to see what creators create by mixing styles and approaches.
I toured some rooms scanned with the Hyperscape Capture app earlier this year and I was impressed by how good they looked. If you want to know how they are, watch this YouTube video; The level of detail is similar to what I saw in my demo.