Build with the magic of mixed reality

Mixed reality with Meta Quest enables spatially aware experiences that deliver seamless interactions between users, virtual content, and physical spaces. Explore limitless possibilities to drive innovation with groundbreaking capabilities and personalized experiences that adapt to the real world.

What is mixed reality?

Mixed reality (MR) merges people’s real, physical space with your digital content to create new experiences where physical and virtual objects co-exist and interact in real time. MR enables users to see and interact with virtual elements seamlessly as if they were as real as their physical objects and surroundings.

Why is it important?

Mixed reality unlocks a blank canvas for developers to drive innovation and spark dynamic interactions between users, virtual content, and the world around us. With MR, you can create experiences that were previously impossible in VR, like incorporating virtual objects that augment and adapt to the physical world in real time. Whether you want to build apps for gaming, education, healthcare, entertainment, or countless other genres, MR delivers unparalleled potential to improve productivity, unleash creativity, fuel collaboration, and bring people together.

What is social presence?

Social presence describes the feeling of interacting and being present with others in the same environment, even when you’re miles apart. Meta Horizon OS facilitates social presence by enabling more authentic interactions, communication, immersion, and feedback than a 2D or flat-screen experience.

How can MR benefit my 2D app?

Meta Horizon OS provides new opportunities to enhance new and existing 2D apps with spatial features that go beyond what’s possible on a 2D screen. With the ability to navigate physical spaces and intuitively interact with virtual elements in boundless environments, users can feel more immersed, connected, and engaged with your app experience.

Browse mixed reality capabilities

Passthrough

Blend virtual content with the physical world and enable people to see their surroundings in rich color.

DOCUMENTATION & RESOURCES

First Hand showcase app

Scene

Scene empowers you to quickly build complex and scene-aware experiences with rich interactions in the user’s physical environment.

DOCUMENTATION & RESOURCES

First Hand showcase app

Spatial Anchors

Place and persist virtual content in physical space with realistic depth and occlusion.

Depth API / Occlusion

Render virtual objects so they become occluded by physical objects and surfaces in the real world and appear realistically embedded within their environment.

Unity

Unreal

OpenXR

Interaction SDK / Hand Tracking

Enable the ability to use hands as a controller and switch between controller and hand inputs.

Voice SDK

Create voice-powered experiences and interactions, like talking to a virtual character, or dictating a note.

Unity

Unreal Engine

Audio SDK

Enable spatial audio to add a new dimension of presence and stimulate people’s senses.

Unity - Native, FMOD, Wwise

Unreal - Native, FMOD, Wwise

Body Tracking

Enable dynamic 3D representations of the upper body by using hands/controller and headset movements to infer accurate body poses that are composed into a body-tracking skeleton.

Unity

Unreal Engine

OpenXR

How mixed reality capabilities come together

Mixed reality capabilities integrate virtual content into a user's experience by understanding the physical environment to enhance what the user sees.

The Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest Pro use "Space Setup," a method where the headset's cameras and depth sensors create a 3D scan of the environment. This scan allows developers to craft virtual content that interacts realistically with physical objects and responds with accurate physics.

The Passthrough, Scene, and Anchor APIs are essential for enabling Space Setup and dynamic mixed reality experiences. With Passthrough, apps can utilize the device’s external cameras to capture physical environments in realtime, allowing people to see their surroundings in-headset. After obtaining a feed of a physical space, using the Scene API enables apps to identify and understand physical objects like doors, floors, and ceilings. By understanding physical objects, virtual content can interact and collide with physical objects as if they are in the same space to enhance user feelings of presence in-headset. Using Spatial Anchors, your app can ensure virtual objects maintain their position during and between sessions to deliver a more consistent and delightful user experience.

Start developing for mixed reality

Step 1: Consider

Before you start developing, read up on key design guidelines and best practices that can help you create an accessible and enjoyable experience for everyone. Adhering to recommended guidelines will also speed up review time when your submit your app to the Meta Horizon Store.

Read Human Interface Design Guidelines

Mixed reality design best practices

Step 2: Get familiar with developer tools

Discover tools that can help streamline your development process from setup to testing and eliminate tedious, repetitive tasks. For example, the Mixed Reality Utility Kit can help you program against the physical world, while Meta XR Simulator enables you to iterate and test your project without needing to wear a physical device.

Browse developer tools

Step 3: Discover samples and showcases

Learn how to integrate mixed reality mechanics using Meta Motifs and discover methods to implement various capabilities for creating engaging and enjoyable experiences.

See showcases

Step 4: Start developing

Use curated documentation, best practices, tutorials, and code samples to develop a prototype or a completed project on Unity, Unreal Engine, Native, or Web.

Start developing for Meta Quest

Find mixed reality blueprints with showcase apps

Cryptic Cabinet

Cryptic Cabinet transforms your surroundings into a mystic realm filled with enigmatic challenges and surprises. Your living room becomes the stage for an unforgettable adventure. This project illustrates how to use a variety of capabilities to turn any room into a unique MR gameplay experience.

Key capabilities: Shared Spatial Anchors, Scene, Passthrough, Interaction SDK

View in Meta Horizon Store

View source code

Discover

Discover key features of the Meta Quest mixed reality APIs and how to achieve colocation, which is the ability to occupy the same physical and virtual space in an MR experience with multiple users.

Key capabilities: Shared Spatial Anchors, Scene, Passthrough

View in Meta Horizon Store

View source code

Phanto

Phanto is a mixed reality game built in Unreal Engine that demonstrates how Scene Mesh, Passthrough, and Depth API can be combined to create action-packed gameplay. Phanto heavily leverages Unreal blueprints, providing the perfect starting point to integrate mixed reality into your project.

Key capabilities: Scene Mesh, Passthrough, Depth API

View source code (Unity)

View source code (Unreal)

Slimeball

Slimeball! is a competitive, tabletop, mixed reality game with an emphasis on expressive characters. It utilizes mixed reality, hand tracking, and social presence capabilities to build a fun tabletop social experience.

Key capabilities: Passthrough, hand tracking, Interaction SDK, Spatial Anchors

View in Meta Horizon Store

View more use cases