It’s been a busy week for Meta. On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg introduced by way of Facebook that Meta can be launching Horizon Worlds, the corporate’s social metaverse platform, in France and Spain. The Facebook publish was accompanied by a picture of Zuckerberg’s avatar, with the pale, vacuous look of a Victorian ghost, taking a selfie in entrance of primary renderings of the Eiffel Tower and the Basílica de la Sagrada Família. Commenters and web denizens subsequently dunked on the picture all through the week, calling out the cartoonish graphics. Probably not the specified response to a undertaking that’s meant to usher within the digital future.

On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg shared an replace about Horizon Worlds, full with a brand new model of his avatar and a rendering of an historic Rome-style atmosphere. In the publish, he admitted “the photo I posted earlier this week was pretty basic — it was taken very quickly to celebrate at launch.” Zuckerberg added that Horizon Worlds is “capable of much more.”

In these pictures, it does look higher. There’s lighting this time, and his avatar’s face has an precise expression. It nonetheless doesn’t precisely appear like a spot that’s interesting to spend time in, however I suppose that’s all within the eye of the beholder.

Horizon Worlds is out there on Quest VR headsets. It grew to 300,000 customers within the first two months after its December 2021 launch, and in February, the Horizon Worlds Twitter account posted that greater than 10,000 worlds had been created — although Meta hasn’t been clear about the way it plans to average the rising platform.

Meta is at present increasing Horizon Worlds choices, together with bringing it to cellphones. Horizon Worlds additionally rolled out “in-world purchases” for a “handful” of creators, which might make it extra much like Roblox. Incidentally, Zuckerberg’s preliminary Horizon Worlds picture did look an entire lot like that exact gaming platform aimed toward children.