Meta, formerly known as Facebook, introduces a new feature for its Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues virtual reality platforms that it thinks will reduce harassment, abuse, and other weird behavior among its users. Personal Boundary is a new feature that stops avatars in virtual worlds from being too close to one another, “providing more personal space for people and making it easier to avoid unwanted interactions.”
The system’s operation appears to be pretty straightforward: when someone approaches too close, their forward movement gets blocked. At launch, the distance between avatars will be slightly under four feet. There will be no visible barrier or haptic indication when someone gets stopped, so users will be unaware that someone is attempting to sneak upon them.
According to The Verge, avatars can go past one another when Personal Boundary is enabled. Thus the technology can’t get used to blocking or trapping users.
“We’re purposely turning Personal Boundary on by default because we believe it will help define behavioral norms—which is critical for a new medium like VR,” Meta explained. “In the future, we’ll look into introducing further controls and UI tweaks, such as allowing users to modify the size of their Personal Boundary.”
The simple fact is that this thing is essential for the same reason that board administrators are required. Certain people are incapable of acting appropriately on the internet. Strange behavior, including outright violence, is unfortunately in augmented environments.
During an 11-hour VRChat session in December 2021, one user documented over 100 “severe events,” some of which involved users pretending to be under the age of 13, according to the New York Times.
Bloomberg tech reporter Parmy Olson recently told the BBC that she’d had her own “weird” encounters in Horizon Worlds, including males taking virtual photos of her and leaning in close to speak to her, which “sounds like someone is physically talking into your ear.”
A beta tester stated in the official Horizon group on Facebook on December 9, the day Horizon Worlds went online, that she’d to get virtually grabbed by another user during a session.
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