GDC 2025: Emerging Opportunities in MR/VR on Meta Horizon OS

That’s it, folks: GDC day one is officially in the books! Today we were delighted to host an all-day developer summit that provided attendees of all experience levels and skillsets with hands-on learning on mixed reality development, tools, development strategies, and more.

As we work to provide more opportunities for developers to grow an audience and translate exciting ideas into unforgettable experiences, one of our primary goals is to deliver more capable devices, bolstered developer programs and an expanding suite of tools to help you build and iterate faster than ever before—regardless of your studio size.

Whether you’re new to mixed reality development or want to apply your existing skills to a new platform, there are an increasing number of opportunities to accelerate your development process, level up your skillset and expand your reach. So buckle up and dive in below to see what’s waiting for you on Horizon OS.

Multiplayer experiences are on the rise, with the majority of the most popular games in the Meta Horizon Store today having multiplayer support. Users are also spending more time than ever in free-to-play apps that commonly offer social experiences. Given these trends, there’s never been a better time to build a new experience with multiplayer at its core or implement multiplayer support in an existing game.

Free-to-play apps are leaning into in-app purchases (IAPs) as an increasingly viable means to generate revenue, contributing to an overall payment volume increase of 12% in 2024. To help you capitalize on opportunities to monetize via IAPs, we’ve launched our Growth Insights Series that includes tips and strategies to execute effectively.

Tools like Building Blocks, MR Motifs and Meta XR Simulator make integrating and testing features like colocation even easier (more on this below), allowing you more time to focus on creating a unique and fun experience and less time on setup and troubleshooting.

Learn more about multiplayer features on Horizon OS by visiting the documentation, and keep reading below for tools that can help with integration and testing.

We’ve invested heavily in creating tools that streamline and decrease development time—and if you’re working solo or are new to mixed reality development, these tools lower barriers to entry and provide an opportunity to accomplish more with less development experience or fewer resources.

Many of the most successful mixed reality apps share similar mechanics that have become commonplace since the launch of Meta Quest 3.

Given the repetition of certain mechanics throughout the content ecosystem, we started creating ‘MR Motifs,’ or blueprints for recurring features that we expect developers to use as they build new mixed reality experiences. Motifs aren’t apps themselves, but rather the culmination of technical features and APIs used to achieve certain functionality. You can leverage these motifs—which include source code, best practices and video tutorials—to expedite your build process and build on top of prevalent features.

As of mid-March, there are three motifs you can start building with:

Be on the lookout for more motifs coming soon and get started by visiting the documentation.

Building Blocks are tools for Unity in the Meta XR All-in-One SDK that enable you to quickly discover and integrate common features. Each block encapsulates a specific functionality, making it easier to quickly prototype or enhance an existing app with new capabilities.

In just a few clicks, you can simply drag and drop features like Passthrough, Virtual Keyboard, Hand Grabbing and much more into your project with all dependencies configured correctly. Blocks can also be modified to meet the needs of your unique app experience, like adding a custom Hand Grab pose when grabbing a particular object.

Recently, we launched Multiplayer Building Blocks to expedite social feature integration and help you build shared experiences quickly. Using these blocks, you can quickly add support for Matchmaking, Colocation, Player Voice Chat, Meta Avatars and more. To find a complete list of Multiplayer Building Blocks, visit documentation.

Building Blocks have also evolved into powerful tools we use to explain to new developers how XR features work and how they can easily be “opened” and modified. When you click on the new Blocks detail page, you’ll see explanations of what is added/modified when installing a block, links to relevant documentation on the installation and more.

Testing is a core part of the app development process that has traditionally involved frequent donning and doffing of a headset, but that is no longer the case when you build for Horizon OS. In fact, with Meta XR Simulator, you don’t even need a headset to authentically test your experience.

Now you can seamlessly simulate physical environments and device controls to test against different room layouts and input options for both mixed reality and multiplayer experiences. Loaded with 11 pre-made synthetic environments, this powerful tool eliminates many development hurdles associated with testing for varying room sizes and physical objects. And when that’s not enough, you can even scan a room using your headset and export it to the XR Simulator.

Achieving efficient multiplayer testing is also easier than ever through the simulator’s ability to run multiple synchronized instances simultaneously on the same desktop. This functionality, combined with the record and replay system, eliminates the need to deploy several headsets and recreate sequences for both VR multiplayer and colocated mixed reality experiences.

To learn more about the XR Simulator’s advanced features and get started on PC or Mac, visit the documentation.

Of course, after you test your project, you’ll likely want to dive in and start debugging and issues you found along the way. The Immersive Debugger for Unity enables developers and technical artists to intuitively iterate in-headset to account for spatial and visual elements using a UI panel featuring application-specific debug options.

We’ve designed Immersive Debugger with a full suite of features to expedite debugging for both novice and experienced developers. Without removing your headset, you can monitor state changes, invoke any action for a specified function, tweak specified float/in/boolean variables, and more.

To get started with Immersive Debugger and learn how to customize your in-headset debugging experience, visit the documentation.

Our GitHub repository provides developers building for Horizon OS an opportunity to get inspired from a trove of fully-equipped showcases illustrating best practices for mixed reality, multiplayer, Interaction SDK, Scene API, and more. Each showcase addresses different challenges you may encounter when developing your next app and offers both the full project and source code to help you learn. Here are some showcases you can get started with today:

Our GDC developer summit featured a panel of developers working daily with AI characters, dynamic storylines and generative creation tools. Their insights helped attendees discover opportunities to optimally leverage AI for content creation.

Around the Horizon ecosystem, we’re seeing advancements in AI as it’s being used to efficiently generate audio, environments, code, meshes and more. LLMs are also being leveraged to assist with dialogue, and we’ve even seen AI deployed in recent hackathons to create experiences where users can unleash their own creativity. We’re also investing in AI tools, including new features in the Meta Horizon Worlds desktop editor that enable US-based creators to generate TypeScript as well as sound effects and ambient audio (more on that later this week).

Learn more about Meta’s AI model, Llama, today to start leveraging AI for NPCs, text-to-speech, content generation, and much more. Plus, stay tuned for our full GDC session on creating compelling content with AI to hear from a panel of developers working daily with AI to create characters, worlds, dynamic storylines and more.

Developer programs like Meta Horizon Start are designed to holistically support the app development journey so you can efficiently move from inception to distribution.

Whether you need technical support or could benefit from using the latest developer kits, Start provides opportunities to receive exclusive benefits and join an experienced developer community that can help you enhance your projects for a wide audience ahead of launch.

At GDC, we had the opportunity to host JollyCo’s Head of Marketing, Andrey Grechko, as he shared his team’s journey with the Horizon Start program to create the upcoming immersive first-person shooter game Sugar Madness.

When confronted with development hurdles like maintaining consistent player positioning and maneuvering relative to incoming projectiles, Grechko’s team was able to leverage the Start team as well as the significant Start developer community to test out ideas and seek solutions. In this specific scenario, they were able to combine two community-sourced solutions that helped signal when players should dodge projectiles and ensure accurate player head positioning when dodging.

It’s benefits like these and so much more that make the Start program special—developing a high-quality experience requires skill, tenacity and ingenuity, and being able to rely on a passionate and experienced developer community, especially when encountering roadblocks, can significantly elevate your chances for a successful launch.

JollyCo’s story also provides insights on how Meta Horizon social and multiplayer features, the in-app purchase system and the First Hand showcase helped deliver a fast-paced and adaptable experience that can captivate a young audience and encourage competition. Be sure to stay tuned for the full session available on-demand coming soon.

Explore all the benefits of Start and apply today to start receiving exclusive benefits and support that can help you build out your vision.

From enhanced development tools and developer programs to trending genres and game modes, there are countless opportunities to innovate and grow on Horizon OS. We hope you found these insights valuable and can’t wait to see what you’ll build.

Stay tuned for more recaps from GDC coming this week on the developer blog, X and Facebook. For monthly recaps of the latest updates and tips curated for developers building for Horizon OS, subscribe to our monthly newsletter in your Developer Dashboard settings.