Meta’s upcoming Horizon OS launch is bringing a number 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 flexibility to share home windows with different customers when in its Horizon Dwelling social house.
Found by serial dataminer ‘Luna’, a beta model of Horizon OS v76 is packing in a number 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 the moment obtainable on the Public Check 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 working 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 the moment aren’t obtainable, Luna notes, nonetheless they’re mentioned to incorporate a number of default choices, reminiscent of Summary, Seashore, Greenhouse, Dwelling Workplace, Mild, Loft, and Workplace.
Luna additionally uncovered a hidden tutorial for an upcoming ‘Navigator’ system person 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 consistent with the kind of icon-based app choice you see in Imaginative and prescient Professional and cell units at this time.
NEW: I’ve datamined a tutorial for the upcoming “Navigator” system UI overhaul on Meta Horizon OS.
This was found in v76 PTC. You’ll find my earlier reporting on this within the quoted put up under, however TL;DR that is at the moment 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 “recommend that Meta is engaged on the flexibility to share home windows with different customers in Horizon Dwelling (and presumably Worlds),” which they preserve “will probably 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 effectively earlier than Imaginative and prescient Professional was launched, though it was Apple’s $3,500 blended actuality standalone that has finally been the important thing driver within the firm’s quest to additional mildew the console-style Quest right into a normal computing system.
Besides, since Imaginative and prescient Professional’s launch in early 2024, Meta has launched numerous 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 might use smartphones to scan and recreate a person’s face—very like Imaginative and prescient Professional does at this time.
The important thing limiter although is Quest 3’s lack of eye or facial monitoring, which might 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.
