Quest's New Boundary System Is A Dangerous Safety Regression
Over the past 9 months, Meta rolled out an overhauled Quest boundary system with reduced friction. But the new approach has also turned out to be a dangerous safety regression.
You start in passthrough when you put the headset on, and that part hasn't changed. But when launching into a VR experience, if you hadn't already set up a boundary the headset would start scanning your floor for open space, then suggest a Roomscale boundary, which you'd accept or edit. If there wasn't enough space for Roomscale, it would suggest a Stationary boundary instead.
So what's changed? Over the past nine months or so, Meta has slowly rolled out a new system. Instead of initiating the floor scanning process when launching into VR without a boundary, it simply puts you in a Stationary boundary automatically, with no prompt at all. If you want a Roomscale boundary, you need to manually open Quick Settings and switch to it.
The safety issue here arrives in how the Stationary boundary, now the automatic default, has changed since first introduced on the original Oculus Quest.
