Build Bridges Across VR with the App to App Travel API

We envision a metaverse where people can seamlessly travel between different apps together and stay connected while exploring our platform’s library of VR experiences. Over the past few years, we’ve made huge strides to provide you with capabilities and features that help people find, join, and play with friends in VR. Features like Destinations and Group Launch are the pillars of what we call “VR Travel,” a process that allows people to join up together in the same immersive app experience. Together, these features drive social and sharing experiences that bring more users to your app.

Now, we’re excited to announce a huge step forward for VR Travel with the launch of the App to App Travel API, available with Platform SDK v47. For the first time, you can enable users to travel together between Destinations from different Meta Quest apps by partnering with other developers to send and receive users. App to App Travel capabilities let developers create “portals” or entry points that allow users to seamlessly transport themselves and others from one experience directly into the next. These portals act as bridges by connecting different VR experiences and encouraging people to explore and engage with our app ecosystem on a deeper level.

Below we dive into how App to App Travel works, potential use cases, and how you can get started.

Integrating the App to App Travel API is a simple and easy process. Once Group Launch is enabled in both the receiving and sending apps, all of the necessary hooks will be in place to implement app to app travel—but you’ll need to partner with another developer or gather certain information from another app in your organization. Using just a handful of fields, you can share and receive all the necessary information you need to start letting users travel to and from Destinations between your apps and developer partners’ apps.

It’s important to remember that many Destinations require a deeplink_message sent as part of the launch, and this may require you to communicate with the developer of the receiving app to understand what they expect in the deeplink_message.

More information about integrating the App to App Travel API and sending and receiving app to app travel requests can be found in the documentation.

With App to App Travel enabled, people can use “portals” connecting two VR experiences to jump directly into your app’s Destinations from any apps you’ve partnered with—or from another app belonging to your organization. Our goal is to boost the interconnectivity of apps on our platform by giving people an intuitive and easy way to “open the door” to other Destinations and experiences.

Together, these capabilities create unique opportunities for cross-promotion between apps. For example, a fitness app could partner with a social app to enable people to travel together to a social gathering place after completing their workout. Traveling from a fitness class to a social hangout can help drive overall satisfaction and create a deeper sense of presence by allowing people to stay engaged, socialize, and cool down with each other after working up a sweat.

App to App Travel opens up possibilities for you to partner with other developers while enabling users to try new experiences together and jump straight into your app from a different VR experience. We’re excited about the potential for App to App Travel to boost engagement, retention, and Destination visibility across our ecosystem, and we can’t wait to see how you use it to bring people together across more places in VR.

The App to App Travel API is available for Unity, Unreal, and native. To get started, check out the App to App Travel API documentation.