Meta Says New ‘Horizon Worlds’ Engine Update Brings Faster Loading and “well over 100” Concurrent Users

By
Ben Lang
-
11

Today at Connect, Meta said it’s rolling out an updated version of the engine that powers Horizon Worlds. The new tech will purportedly speed up loading of Horizon Worlds spaces and allow “well over 100” users in a single space.

The new tech, which Meta is calling the ‘Horizon Engine’ is said to be replacing the original foundation of Horizon Worlds which was based on Unity. The engine has been rebuilt with the goals of Horizon Worlds in mind—namely, enabling players to hop between interconnected social spaces.

Meta says the new system can decrease loading times for Worlds spaces by four times, making jumping between different spaces more seamless. The improved performance also means that Worlds experiences can now host more than 100 players simultaneously, which is more than five times as many as the previous limit.

Meta says it has also rebuilt ‘Horizon Home’ using the new engine, which is the default space you see when you put on Quest. This purportedly brings improved visual quality and some functionality upgrades, like being able to pin apps to the walls for quick access.

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The changes to Horizon Home appear to move Meta one step closer to merging Horizon Home and Horizon Worlds together. Now, running on the same engine, the space will also allow users to pin portals to various Worlds spaces for quick access.

At Connect, Meta also announced that it is working on an ‘agentic editor’ for Horizon Worlds called Meta Horizon Studio. While the company has already released AI features that allow creators to generate various assets for building Worlds experiences, the new agentic editor melds multiple tools together under a chat-based interface.

Image courtesy Meta

The new tool allows creators to build new Worlds experiences by asking for additions and changes in natural language, like ‘change the style to sci-fi’, or ‘add a new character that’s a talking bear who is lost and wants the player to help them get home’.

Meta Horizon Studio will be rolling out in beta in the near future, the company says.

Update (September 18th, 2025): A previous version of this article said the new Horizon Engine could support “up to 100” concurrent users. Meta has since more clearly said the engine can support “well over 100” concurrent users. This article has been updated to reflect that new understanding.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Hussain X

    "Meta says the new system can increase loading times for Worlds spaces by four times, making jumping between different spaces more seamless."

    I think you meant decrease/speed up lol.

  • Rupert Jung

    It's not about loading times. It's about the horrible artstyle. Just can't stand this forced happiness.

    • scottosaur

      Even aside from that, it's just bland and joyless. The avatars look like low-budget CGI cartoons, but I think that would be forgivable if the environments were worth visiting. But everything is so ugly and janky. Interactions feel off. Text and signs look awful, even in "official" worlds.

      I fire it up every few months out of curiosity and visit a handful of popular "worlds" and never see a reason to want to go back.

      • Funkyspectrum

        Try "CLOUD 9 ULTRACLUB" or "PENTAGRAM" escape room for worlds without the things you're talking about. I made those worlds, and I hate the default "look" of most other worlds, too.

      • Funkyspectrum

        It's absolutely possible to make decent looking worlds in horizons, but people don't because they are following the (pun not intended) meta. They want children in the worlds because they're only interested in as many people going in as possible so they can make money. It's a disgrace.

  • ZarathustraDK

    Stop trying to make that Pixar-knockoff/"Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints propaganda animation"-artstyle a thing.

  • Clamtastic

    Is anyone actually using Horizon Worlds as the primary thing they do in their Quest headset? I always felt that Meta put the cart before the horse on this app. They should have tried a lot of things to see which is popular and then poured resources into that one. Instead they focused on a lot of very low resolution, not fun content. Google would have canceled the whole project years ago.

    • Shuozhe Nan

      VRChat user also exists and are heavily invested. Guess Horizon is just Meta's development platform for Facebook 2.0. Get underlying tech working to support lot of users, and find an art style that can run on AR glass in the worst case..

      Just hope it will be something new then, and not replace Horizon. I use it very rarely, prefer to play alone in VR tbh..

    • Max-Dmg

      I used third party software to block it.

      • Clamtastic

        Ha! Nice.

  • Matt

    Now up to 100 players can experience some of the worst games and gameplay on the system.