Mixed reality apps on Quest no longer need Boundary
Mixed reality experiences will feel freer in the future: Developers can now turn off the Boundary system when using passthrough.
Boundary (formerly known as Guardian) was designed for virtual reality to prevent users from unknowingly leaving their play area and becoming a danger to themselves, others, and their furniture.
In Mixed Reality apps, however, Boundary is redundant because you can see the physical environment. Nevertheless, Meta kept the security feature, and only select apps like Home Invasion, Cubism, and Meta's own MR tutorial First Encounters were allowed to do without it.
This is now a thing of the past. With version 66 of the Meta XR Core SDK, all developers can disable Boundary. With one caveat: applications must use passthrough.
"The Boundary API enables developers to suppress the boundary visibility, allowing users to go beyond the Guardian Boundary. The feature is closely related to Passthrough: The boundary visibility can only be suppressed when a Passthrough layer is rendered," Meta writes in the release notes.
This means that when the app switches to VR, Boundary is reactivated for security reasons, which makes sense.
Please note that this change will need to be implemented by developers in their apps. So it will likely be a while before most MR apps can get by without Boundary and offer a freer, less annoying mixed reality experience.
You can find out how it feels in the mixed reality shooter Home Invasion, where you have to defend your house from invading zombies. I tried Home Invasion and can only recommend it if you have enough space.
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