It’s something that many didn’t see coming, and yet we’ve been doing it for a while now, without even realizing it. It is about social distancing, the very one we know with COVID, but transposed into the virtual world, but for the purposes of individual freedom.
The new massively multiplayer virtual worlds are conducive to unwanted social interactions. Virtual reality obliges, the feeling of presence is much more accentuated than in video games on a flat screen, because our body is physically immersed in the virtual world with many other people, more or less well intentioned. Even if the problem is not new, it interferes just as much in the digital world in reality. Meta therefore announces that it is taking measures to avoid any drift within its metaverse.
The firm announces the Personal Boundary, or limit/personal space in the language of Molière. This feature is already deployed in the suite Horizon of Metato know Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues, and follows numerous abuses. Virtual wandering hands are unfortunately legion, as in our physical world, and oppression is felt there in the same way. However, the private sphere remains something very important for human beings. You know the saying: the freedom of some ends where that of others begins. Well, in real life as in digital, it’s the same thing.
However, virtual spaces too often “authorize” certain behaviors, because no moderation or control is done there. Thus, many malicious people take the opportunity to literally satisfy their impulses by sticking to other avatars and practicing obscene or inappropriate gestures in addition to encroaching on the private sphere of other players.
This new feature therefore creates a space between us and the other avatars at a distance of about 1m20. This limit prevents anyone from invading your avatar’s personal space simply by making anything that comes too close to us disappear from the screen. This is also the case in Echo VR, where a virtual limit has long been in place to avoid “glue pots”. Finished the kiss then, but the check still doable by stretching out your arms.
Meta therefore seems to take physical harassment as well as moral harassment very seriously. and bases this advance on research carried out over the years. The aim here is to set the tone and to establish rules as of now regarding the freedoms in its metaverse and his vision can serve as a guide for developers to help them develop new interactions that are more respectful towards each other.
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