Meta Quest: "Oceanarium" is the largest home environment yet
Meta Quest has a new Horizon Home environment that takes you to a colorful underwater world. We took a look.
Oceanarium is the latest addition to Horizon Home, your virtual Quest living room where you can invite your friends to chat or watch Meta Quest TV together.
The environment is part of the v69 update, which should have been rolled out to most Quest users by now. However, I could not find the Oceanarium in the settings. Only by searching for it in the Horizon Store was I able to find and download it.
A colorful habitat on the seabed
Oceanarium takes you to the bottom of the sea. You find yourself in an apartment with extravagant architecture that blends harmoniously into a colorful environment of corals, algae and other sea creatures. There is no separation between the living space and the water as in an aquarium; the fish swim right past you. This gives the scenery a surreal, fairy-tale feel. The only thing I missed was a mermaid swimming by.
Oceanarium is the most expansive environment Meta has released for Quest to date. In addition to the main hall, there is a lounge, a balcony, and even a small cave with jellyfish. The surrounding area is impressive with rocks, schools of fish, turtles, manta rays and a whale. I have never seen so many animated elements in a Horizon Home environment.
The video above shows a walkthrough of the new environment and was recorded with a Quest 3. The environment is rendered at a higher resolution using the Quest Games Optimizer, so it normally doesn't look quite as sharp as in the video.
Quest environments are becoming more elaborate
Oceanarium is the second environment after Lakeside Peak to push the limits of Quest's hardware. Lakeside Peak aimed for a more realistic natural look, but you could only move a few feet in each direction. With the new, more powerful generation of headsets (Quest 3 and Quest 3S), we will hopefully see more elaborate environments like this. Both Lakeside Peak and Oceanarium are also available on Quest 2.
If you like exploring virtual environments in VR, I recommend the travel app Brink Traveler, which was recently updated with a beautiful new destination.
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