Participant

Question

Missing the "Old" home environments?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
August 29, 2025
111 replies
7189 views

After a long 10-hour workday, one of my favorite ways to reset and recharge was slipping into my Quest home environment. Cascadia was always my favorite — peaceful, open, a place where I could truly unwind and reset my compass. Ryokan Retreat with its koi pond, Desert Terrace with the hot air balloons at sunrise, and Winter Lodge with that cozy vacation warmth… each one gave me space to breathe. Now, with the older home environments gone, I really feel the loss. The new ones feel confined, with boundaries that keep you from exploring. They lean toward pushing social interaction, which is great sometimes, but not what I’m looking for every time I put on the headset. I love exploring other worlds, concerts in Horizons worlds, and 360 YouTube videos of places I’ll be visiting — but I also just want a spacious, relaxing home to return to. Something that feels like my place in VR. The old environments gave that sense of openness and serenity. The new ones feel smaller, more limited. Meta, I hope you’ll bring back some of the old favorites — they weren’t just backgrounds, they were sanctuaries. Would love to hear everyone's thoughts on this and maybe we will all find our home.

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cinjo98

New Participant

I agree completely. I loved the different environments and changed them back and forth every couple of weeks. It was fun and very enjoyable looking at the different areas of each. I hate the Horizon feed and have no desire to be involved in the social aspect of it. Now every time I turn on my headset I am disgusted and just want to exit it as fast as possible. Why must the powers that be always ruin what you love?

InvictusMasterAuthor

Participant

Amen

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NosePunch

Inspiring

I hate that Meta did this! I want my old home environments back! Too many pastel colors in this new scheme, makes me want to throw up. It's too much like Horizon World, which I want nothing to do with. Zuck keeps screwing around with things that worked.

Choleni

Honored Contributor

NosePunch It's truly sad that the old environments were removed.............. again🙄

But you don't have to use any of the pastel backgrounds.

Midnight, Valley and Blumhouse aren't pastel-ish at all.

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NosePunch

Inspiring

If any of them have pink or baby blue colors, I won't like them. I also had a couple special limited editions home environments that are now lost. How did they thing this would be a good move?!

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Brady1952

New Participant

Bring back the old environments , they were the best

InvictusMasterAuthor

Participant

Or at least give us more choices Brady1952

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MountainGirl

New Participant

The more I try to enjoy Meta Horizon and Horizon Central, the more disappointed I become. Im giving it a good try, but I just dont like the social interaction that inevitable. There doesnt seem to be a place to just relax and unwind. I tried the Moon Portal as Meta AI suggested. It's full of limited environments with substandard graphics , plus glitches, and the portal moves with the heaed set, which is hard to follow, ( plus it doesnt go away in my headset) . Im sad.

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DoctorBagPhD

Participant

They're gone forever, this clown company hates you and doesn't care about your experience. They genuinely only care about shunting in new features because that's how they get paid. HorizonOS is a bloated unworkable joke and I can't wait to see Meta go the way of BlackBerry for the exact same reason- Their software experience is a joke.

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Maccyb123

Honored Contributor

Blackberry? Who's that? 😁 I don't find it over bloaty as I could uninstall most of what I don't need like FB, Instagram, etc. I don't worry about the home environments. They're definitely worse but as soon as you start playing you can forget the other stuff. You can hide apps too. I only have around 10 to 15 apps to look at when I start up. I do understand you though, it would be better to have the old environments and just an apps screen without the other stuff plus an option to uninstall Worlds totally. I don't have Worlds where I am, and I don't mind if it stays that way. But once the games are available I don't worry about the other stuff.

steve40

Honored Contributor

Those who want lots of environments can always use Side Quest, it lets you side load user-made environments. If you don’t mind PCVR, you can also use SteamVR Home, which can be heavily customised and you can swap the default Steam home for hundreds of different custom-made ones.

Choleni

Honored Contributor

So, this won't give you back the old homes, but maybe can help to keep them alive.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/1ow7vtl/i_was_one_of_the_first_people_to_create_custom/

These are custom homes, but she said that she might be able to do that with the old Quest homes too. (Thanks for telling me, O.🙂)

You can contact her on her reddit link if you are interested in that.

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NosePunch

Inspiring

I didn't want to update to v81 and I have updates turned off yet my Quest 3 updated anyway. I want my old home environments back! Meta needs to stop changing things for the sake of change, when it doesn't make things better.

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Maccyb123

Honored Contributor

Yes, unfortunately you cannot avoid updates forever. After a particular period it is force updated. I loved the old mining town but after looking at it a few times, I didn't bother. I usually keep it in pass through so I don't fall over the coffee table on the way to my swivel chair to play games 😂. However I know a lot of people like to relax in their familiar home environment so I can understand your annoyance. I don't mind the new ones, particularly the night mountain scene the Blumhouse one but they're very low res. I can't look at them too long. I am mystified as to why it looks like 128p.

InvictusMasterAuthor

Participant

The res isn't bad on my quest 3, but the space feels confined unlike the old environments. On a side note.... I hate it when the coffee table gets aggressive. LOL

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DijitalBlue

New Participant

I really hate the new environments. They look like they were made by a marketing team on a mission to design the blandest most basic crap. There's only a handful of choices, where the old menus had so many more to choose from. I even side loaded some from outside of Meta that looked really cool.

Now they're just blah, ugly, corporate, and make me want to use the headset even less. Every time I put the headset on, they've made drastic and ugly/confusing changes to the entire UI. You'd think with this many iterations it would eventually get good.

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MonkeyKing8080

New Participant

i guess my quest 3 is going back into the box, Until meta brings back old environments.

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Maccyb123

Honored Contributor

Unfortunately you'll probably be waiting forever. I can't see them bringing it back. I miss them too, but life goes on. However!! Maybe if enough people complain about it,, we will see them come back 🤞🤞🤞🤞

ellieglasgow

New Participant

Couldn't agree more. I used to find the old environments so meditative and anxiety-soothing. Gaming is an indoor activity and is mainly preferred by introverts. I understand the concept you are trying to create; however, I believe you should give the user more autonomy.

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