Meta introduces the safe distance between virtual reality avatars. Zuckerberg’s company seems to have run for cover after the first incident of sexual harassment reported in early December that frowned on more than a few security fronts in Zuckerberg’s virtual and parallel universe.
On that occasion, the victim would have been a young girl the avatar of a young woman during a Horizon Worlds testing session. And it is precisely on Horizon Works, the creative platform, and Horizon Venue s, the live events service, that the novelty announced by Meta insists.
Safe Distance – or Personal Boundary as the company calls it, literally Personal Boundary, prevents avatars from being closer than about 4 feet, and is on by default out of the box.
We will bring better over time – Meta writes – as we understand how the novelty affects people’s experiences.
There is not much to explain, because it is trivially as if each avatar were wrapped in a “bubble” that prevents anyone else from invading that space: each attempt is automatically blocked by the security system developed by the designers.
Meta talks about possible changes because for the moment it is not possible to deactivate the safety distance, so it is likely that the company first wants to see the effects caused by this “extreme” choice to then understand which direction to take, whether to continue on this path, return to the previous freedom (it seems unlikely), or give the user the right to choose and perhaps even customize the same safety distance, which someone might want to increase or reduce.
We have chosen to propose the safety distance as the default setting because we think it helps to establish rules of behavior, which is important for a relatively young environment like that of virtual reality – Meta explained in the press release.