Meta Horizon OS has gone through several changes since the release of the Oculus Rift DK1 on March 29, 2013.
The operating system has been updated on a roughly monthly basis since the v1.0 release in 2016, and was gradually ported from a proprietary embedded operating system to Android starting in 2015, first for the Samsung Gear VR and later for its own headsets. The updates often include experimental or undocumented features.
Overview
From 2013 to 2015, the then-proprietary firmware and SDK for Windows PCs were developed exclusively for the Rift by Oculus VR, which was acquired in 2014 by Facebook (now Meta Platforms) and renamed as Reality Labs. Starting in 2014, the company ported the Oculus Home, Oculus Store and Oculus Cinema (later Video) apps to Android for use on the Samsung Gear VR headset, allowing Samsung Galaxy phone users to access VR games and apps made available through the Store app. In 2018, Facebook launched the Oculus Go, which was both the first standalone headset and the first Android-based headset from the company. Subsequent headsets from Facebook used this combination of Android with the company's proprietary user interface and apps, even as the company was renamed in 2022 as Meta Platforms and the headsets were rebranded accordingly. In 2024, Meta announced that the combined operating system stack would be named as Meta Horizon OS and licensed to select third party hardware manufacturers.
Version history
Pre-1.0 (2012–2015)
1.0 era (2016–2019)
Quest and Rift era (2019–2020)
Oculus Quest era (2020–2022)
Meta Quest era (2022–2024)
Horizon OS era (2024-present)
References
