Shortly after the Apple Vision Pro’s January release, many buyers were horrified to discover that their wildly expensive new headsets didn’t let them download and watch porn. (This isn’t all too surprising, given Apple’s generally porn-avoidant history. Still, as 404 Media reported, buyers were pissed.)
Enter: Meta, which knows what the people buying its VR headgear really want.
Meta announced last week that its latest software update, v63, would let users of its Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets more comfortably wear their devices while lying down. In a press release, the company noted that “there are myriad reasons you might want to use your Meta Quest headset lying down,” explaining that users might want to lay back while watching a made-for-VR David Attenborough series on the Galapagos Islands, attending bizarre metaverse concerts in Horizon Worlds, meditating, “and more.”
Don’t play, Meta… we know what “and more” means. VR porn enthusiasts have been hankering for a better lying down mode for a while, and it seems that CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse team has answered the call. Get cozy and freak on, y’all.
Unfinished Quest
There is one catch to the update, though: lying down mode isn’t yet available on the Quest 3, Meta’s most advanced consumer-oriented headset to date.
But Meta does have a reason for this seeming discrepancy. In an Ask Me Anything on Instagram this week, the company’s chief technology officer and Reality Labs head Andrew “Boz” Bosworth addressed the user concern, explaining that Meta is indeed “planning to bring” the horizontal upgrade to the newer headset but has run into some slow-downs due to the Quest 3’s differing “Smart Guardian” interface. (Put very simply, Meta’s Guardian systems allow users to draw VR boundaries in their real-world space.)
“I don’t have a date for you exactly,” Bosworth continued. “But it is coming, and we’re making good progress on it.”
Boz confirmed that Lying Down Mode will also come to Meta Quest 3 in a future OS update, says it needed more work due to concerns with safety in relation to Smart Guardian and Mixed Reality. pic.twitter.com/vnqkbBqQp0
— Luna (@Lunayian) March 12, 2024
Of course, masturbation isn’t the only reason why a Quest user might want to be able to more functionally lay back while wearing their headset. It’s also certainly worth noting that the Instagram user who asked Bosworth about the update during his AMA explained that it would make their Quest 3 experience as a disabled person far more comfortable — an important accessibility consideration for Meta, which urges its “commitment to inclusive design” in its Quest documentation.
That said, some netizens’ minds seem pretty fixated on the “and more” of it all.
“It’s for porn,” one Redditor wrote in response to the above AMA snippet, shared yesterday to a thread in the r/OculusQuest subreddit, “right?”
