Meta's latest bid to get you into the metaverse is the Horizon Engine, promising 'infinite connected spaces, more realistic physics, and higher player counts'
Are you sick of hearing about the metaverse? Well, it seems like we aren't done yet, as Meta has been drip-feeding details about its upcoming Horizon Engine, a Meta-specific game engine built to create experiences in Meta Horizon. This was partially unveiled just a few weeks ago, but we've now got a few bold claims on the pipeline of creation in the engine, plus a link to sign up for the beta.
In a blog post titled "Meta Horizon Engine at a glance", Meta says the new engine focuses on a few major points: The first is 'Scalability from cloud to mobile', which is effectively the ability to run worlds on the cloud, and then on mobile devices. It mentions the idea of "running on mobile phones", which suggests you will be able to play worlds natively, which you couldn't do prior.
The second is "speed and performance". Meta claims worlds "load and run quickly" with its new engine.
The third is "familiar tools", and it says Horizon Engine will work with templates and formats that are designed to be familiar to developers. Given that Horizon Worlds are user-made, this could speed up production and lower the skill ceiling.
The last element is "platform evolution". Effectively, Meta argues that the building of this engine is an attempt to make a 'technical foundation', which will continue to grow alongside users. Projects that run for a long time rack up technical debt, so a fresh start allows a change of focus. Part of that change is Meta's attempt to design the platform "from the ground up with user safety in mind."
The Horizon Engine boasts support for tools like FMOD for sound, Noesis for UI, and PhysX for physics (that's a throwback). It supports Meta's own Avatars software and has bespoke rendering models. Two weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg claimed, in the Meta Connect 2025, that the new engine can support five times as many people and that it's four times faster than before. This same announcement promised "infinite connected spaces, more realistic physics, and higher player counts."
I've spent some time in the current version of Meta Horizon Worlds and was not very impressed. In my time with it, it felt slow, hard to navigate, loaded with poorly made content, and otherwise bored me very quickly.
I have concerns around platforms like Fortnite, Meta, and Roblox using so much content that can be created by children, but the idea of them having access to creative tools that can be easily learned is potentially neat. The metaverse still has to deal with, well, the fact that it's the metaverse, though.
If you want to sign up for the Horizon Studio Beta, you can do so right now, but there's no word on when acceptance is likely to happen, other than at some point later this year. Meta Horizon Worlds are part of the broader Meta Horizon ecosystem, much like maps in Fortnite.
It is still the metaverse, though, and that will be just as big a hurdle for many as the engine it runs on.