Gamingdeputy reported on March 28 that Meta Quest’s mixed reality (MR) application can disable the annoying security boundary (Boundary), but only a few developers approved by the whitelist can publish such applications to the Quest Store and App Lab .
The safety boundary, formerly known as the Guardian system, is very important in VR to prevent players from leaving the game space and hitting furniture and walls.However, in most MR applications, safety boundaries are redundant or even obstructive because players can directly see the surrounding environment.and will also restrict players from fully utilizing the entire room as a gaming space.
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Gamingdeputy noticed that in the v57 system software update log, Meta stated that “some MR applications” will no longer use security boundaries. However, the company did not reveal the specific application name, nor did it explain the mechanism to achieve this function.
After UploadVR's investigation, we found that any Quest application that uses perspective functionality can disable the security boundary by adding the CONTEXTUAL_BOUNDARYLESS_APP flag to the manifest file. However,Unless the developer is included in Meta's special whitelist, the App Store and App Lab's upload systems will automatically reject any app that uses this identifier.
Apps currently approved by the whitelist include:
Cubism: The app appears to have been using this logo since Quest 3 was released.
Arkio: A collaborative design tool.
Espire 2: Stealth Operatives: This logo was just added this week.
Meta's own First Encounters demo: the introductory experience to Quest 3, added the logo last month.
Laser Dance: An upcoming room-scale MR game from developers Cubism.
Digital Lode says the safety boundaries that existed in mixed reality mode before the Espire 2 update were one of the reasons the game received a large number of 1-star reviews and refund requests.
Why not make the logo available to all developers and remove those annoying boundaries from mixed reality? About a year ago, Meta's VP of VR Mark Rabkin answered a similar question. Rabkin noted that some apps quickly switch between VR and MR, blurring the lines between the two content types. There is some truth to his point. If an app uses perspective as a background but covers most of the field of view with virtual objects so that the player can't see walls and furniture, should the borders be enabled in that case?
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Rabkin admitted, however, that security boundaries should be “looser” “if you could see everything around you.”
Meta's current solution is to review apps on a case-by-case basis to determine whether the security perimeter can be safely disabled. However, this approach seems difficult to scale and Meta must find a better solution.
In contrast, Apple Vision Pro's solution is to fade all virtual elements to transparency if the player's head moves more than 1.5 meters from the initial position or close to a real-world object. This approach avoids visible borders, but limits the player's range of motion to a circle 3 meters in diameter.