Booth Homes Have Finally Arrived In Horizon Worlds
Cliffside Metahome is a surprising arrival--and it brings hidden messages in the furniture.
Virtual architecture often goes by slang terms among social VR users. For the modern, boxy houses that sit somewhere in style between Japanese and American Midcentury architecture, there's one name they're known by: Booth Homes.
Booth Homes is a term for custom home maps that VR users typically purchase on the popular marketplace site, Booth. Home maps can vary on the website in terms of architecture style, but the phrase still covers all of them. The Japanese/American Midcentury style is a popular representation of the name. It looks simple to create, but a skilled worldbuilder can really make it shine.
While Horizon Worlds doesn't freely allow Unity map uploads to their platform by everyone yet, one user has managed to deliver this style of house in an impressively optimized way.
Check out these images of Cliffside Metahome by RexRod, and then scroll down for insight on what this particular map could be saying. If you can't view the galleries through our newsletter, click through to our main article page to see everything.
The chandelier represents the Meta logo depending on where you stand, and there are books mentioning the word "metaverse" all over the house. Aside from a few color differences Meta usually employs in its art, this worldbuilder knows their company style well.
At the same time, I swear I've seen this house on Booth for as long as I've been in VR. Such a perfect blend of these two specific styles is pretty shocking.
The scale of the mountains in Cliffside Metahome might also be the beginning of change for Horizon worldbuilders. Scale is the one thing in virtual worldbuilding that can help to place a VR user in more of an immersed state. VRChat worldbuilders have realized this long ago, cementing its platform as a social VR standard.
What if the next Organism comes from Horizon? Virtual architecture is already beginning to transcend platforms as users interact with various worlds. There will probably be splinters from the main Booth Home style as time goes on too, but it will likely be based on color and material rather than what platform the creator is based in.