Meta Quest 2: Update brings Horizon Home, Air-Link fix and better colors
Meta is releasing the biggest update of the year so far for Quest. It brings the long-awaited Horizon Home and much more.
Mark Zuckerberg announced it over the weekend: Meta Quest 2's launch environment is finally going social.
The feature comes with update 41.0, which will roll out to Quest owners in a staggered fashion starting June 14. As usual, it may take up to a week or more for the update to reach all users. Some features may take even longer.
To find out the current firmware version of your Meta Quest 2, check out our Quest Guide.
Let's talk about the new features and improvements of update 41.0.
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Horizon Home
Never be lonely again! With Update 41, Quest gets a feature that should have been there from the start: the ability to invite friends to the home environment. Meta announced Horizon Home last fall at Connect 2021. Now, after a long delay, it's finally becoming available to Quest users.
Horizon Home lets you invite friends and family to see and hear you in the form of Meta's new, more lifelike avatars. Like the Horizon Workrooms office app, the feature simulates the spatial location of voices: Your virtual counterpart sounds different depending on where they're standing and at what angle they're speaking to you. This is intended to enhance immersion and presence.
Horizon Home also now lets you vote together on which multiplayer experience to launch next, and you can watch Oculus TV 2D and VR movies together. In the latter case, you'll be right in the middle of the action. Follow the link to see a list of the best Quest documentaries.
Horizon Home has Early Access status and according to Meta, update 41 is just the beginning. Horizon Home will get more features and improvements in the future. For example, the ability to set up the virtual living room yourself was teased.
Horizon Home is a pillar of Meta's overarching metaverse platform Horizon, which also includes Horizon Worlds and Horizon Workrooms.
Protecting offspring: more control for parents
The second major feature of Update 41 is the parent supervision features announced in March. These were preceded by regulatory complaints and controversy.
With the new features, Meta aims to give parents and guardians tools to protect their children from harmful VR content and better control their VR consumption. Among other things, parents can block certain apps, view the app library, and check VR viewing time. More features are planned for the future.
More information is available in a separate info portal for parents. As a reminder, the recommended minimum age for using Meta Quest 1 and 2 is 13.
Air Link: Beta support for Windows 11
Many Windows 11 users report stutters when streaming PC VR content to the VR headset via Oculus Link or Air Link. Meta finally addresses the problem with Update 41: Performance and stability have been improved, and a cumbersome trick to fix the stuttering should now be unnecessary.
Nothing changes for Virtual Desktop users: The VR app has long since fixed the judder problem. For more information, see our Quest VR streaming guide.
App library gets permanent filters
According to the release notes, Meta also fixes one of the oldest and most annoying bugs of Meta Quest. You can now set the default filter function and app order that is displayed in the app library.
Previously, the system always switched to the chaotic total overview by itself, which sometimes made it difficult to find VR apps.
Better colors in system menus and windows
Meta also improved the color fidelity for the start environment, the system UI, and other apps that are displayed in 2D windows.
You can also find a way to adjust the color space for these elements to your needs under Settings > Experimental. You can read the full release notes for Update 41.0 in the Meta Quest Release Notes.
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