Quest’s new App to App Travel API lets developers create portals to worlds in other apps.
The new API builds on the existing Destinations feature of the Meta Quest platform. Destinations lets developers register levels, worlds, and lobbies in their apps so you can join them directly, instead of going through the app’s menu. If you’ve used Quest’s Party system to group launch into a multiplayer game session together or accepted an invite to join a friend in a game, Destinations is what makes that possible.
App to App Travel enables developers to programmatically launch to a Destination in another app. This can be for another app of theirs or even an app created by a different developer, as long as the target app supports Destinations.
Destinations and App to App Travel are a step towards Meta’s vision of a seamless web-like “metaverse”. But there’s an obvious roadblock: unlike the web, you’ll still need to download, install, and update the app you’re traveling to. Destinations also have to be pre-registered with Meta by the developer, so the system can’t be used for user-generated worlds.