We tried Meta Quest's Hyperscape photorealistic environments demo, now available in more regions

"Experiences may seem realistic. Don't sit or lean on virtual objects in this experience."

This is the message that greets you when you launch Meta Horizon's new virtual reality experience for the Quest 3, called Hyperscape, and it's not the exaggeration I thought it would be initially.

The environments, however few (six, right now), that you get to explore are indeed as photorealistic as current consumer technology allows. They're real places that were scanned and translated into virtual environments you can explore on your Meta Quest 3, and Meta Quest 3S.

Indeed, that Meta Horizon Hyperscape Demo we reported on recently has now launched in more regions than just the US, so you're now more likely to be able to find it and try it out for yourself, on your virtual reality headset.

While this is a demo, as the name suggests, it's looking quite impressive, and does demo the idea pretty well. Which is – an app that lets people from all over the world, including you, scan real places with your phone, translate them into virtual ones, and add them to this app, for others to explore in virtual reality.

That's what we expect eventually, but for now, in this demo, you have six places to explore and learn things about, and that's the extent of it.

You can teleport around a home studio full of interesting trinkets, a car garage that lets you appreciate some cool racing cars up close, three more studios by artists, and a lovely conference room that has a view of some greenery outside. It's all indeed quite lifelike, clearly professionally scanned, and while I doubt most casual users would be able to do such a perfect job scanning their environments, it's quite exciting as an idea.

Think Google Street View, but in VR, and for people's special places, offices, art galleries, and other fun interiors, alongside the familiar exteriors. A really cool concept, definitely worth checking out on your Meta Quest VR headset.



In fact, we'll let Meta sell you on the idea:



We'll let you know when the final thing releases, as soon as Meta reveals a date, but for now – a demo it is.

Worth pointing out again:

• Hyperscape is only available on the Quest 3 and Quest 3S, and not in all regions yet
• This is only a demo, so you can't upload your own spaces, or explore more than the 6 demo ones yet
• It's a free app by Meta
• It requires a high-speed internet connection, evidently, although I personally have one and still got a warning it's not enough (yet everything worked just fine)