Virtual Reality

NFL PRO ERA, the NFL football VR game series, is relaunching as a live service game later this year, giving previous owners of both NFL PRO ERA (2022) and NFL PRO ERA II (2023) the new version of the game.

Slated to release sometime this Fall, the new base game is set to include free play, full season mode, exhibition mode, updated rosters, and uniforms.

Players who owned previous versions get the new base game for free, developer StatusPro says in a Meta blog post, which will include the option to purchase the planned 2025 Edition Upgrade at a discounted price, which includes additional content.

The paid 2025 Edition is also tacking on some new abilities, like the ability to play on defense as a linebacker, taking the game beyond its previous quarterback-only gameplay, as well as online multiplayer.

The FCC tests electronic devices that use wireless technology for compliance with standards. Products must be approved by the FCC before they can enter the U.S. market. When FCC records show that a product has received approval, it is often an indication that a launch is imminent. This has been the case with the Quest 3 and many other devices.

The website 91mobiles (see sources below) has discovered FCC documents that point to a new VR headset from Meta. The product is identified as the 2AGOZ-P97. MIXED did a search and found numerous FCC documents for the product that were uploaded on September 1 (and earlier).

The product name is not mentioned anywhere, but it will most likely be Meta Quest 3S or whatever Meta will call the new device. According to the documents, the device will support Wi-Fi 6 like the Quest 3.

The Surreal Touch controllers were first announced back in July. Their Kickstarter campaign launched last week with a goal of $50,000, and has to date received almost $90,000 from 330 backers.

Alongside launching the campaign, Surreal Interactive also revealed new PC VR streaming gameplay footage. Most notably, while the startup previously only showed Beat Saber on Normal difficulty, it's now showing its founder using Surreal Touch to beat Rum n' Bass on Expert.

After months of neck-and-neck competition, Quest 3 overtakes Valve Index to become the second most popular PC VR headset. […]

These numbers could be natural fluctuations. However, it is likely that some users have switched to Quest 3 from the much older devices, especially since Quest 2 has been sold out for some time and the full Valve Index kit still costs twice as much as Quest 3.

Fans of Down the Rabbit Hole have had to wait four years for a sequel. On September 26th, Escaping Wonderland, a new VR tale in the Alice universe for Meta Quest and Pico, will finally be released. I was able to play the sweet diorama adventure at Gamescom and talk to the developers about their work.

Escaping Wonderland is not really a sequel to Down the Rabbit Hole. Instead, the developers want to tell a new story in the same universe. So if you haven't played the 2020 adventure, you can easily dive into the new part. However, fans of the first part can look forward to small easter eggs.

By the way, there were no licensing issues. The Wonderland series of novels is in the public domain, which allows you to create your own interpretations of the story in the world created by Lewis Carroll. Only the characters created by Disney or other interpreters are protected.

The finished game will keep you entertained for about three to four hours. If you want to explore every nook and cranny and collect all the collectibles, you can play Escaping Wonderland for up to five hours. But there will be no alternate endings. "We have written a moving story that is very important to us and that we believe players will enjoy. That's why we didn't want to dilute it with alternate endings," says Max Huusko Svederoth, concept artist and designer.

A PC built into a keyboard without a display, like the Raspberry Pi 400, starts making a lot of sense with Meta Quest HDMI Link running on the most popular standalone VR headsets.

The Raspberry Pi 400 is a roughly $70-$100 keyboard with a Raspberry Pi 4 PC inside. The keyboard PC features a pair of Micro HDMI ports for display, a USB-C port for power in and three USB-A ports for attached devices.

Paired with a VR headset like Quest 3, I've used retractable USB-C cables to make the connections more manageable between keyboard, power, and headset. The setup is completed with a mess of USB hubs, micro HDMI to HDMI adapter and a Shadowcast 2 capture card.

It's not often I'll preview the same VR game twice before launch, but I'll happily make an exception for Skydance's Behemoth. Recently confirmed for release this November, you play as Wren, a hunter traveling across the cursed Forsaken Lands who's attempting to slay the titular monstrosities. Behemoth utilizes brutal physics-driven melee-based combat that lets you cut, maim, bludgeon, and kill enemies who stand in your way while exploring different regions.

According to the new report, at the same product roadmap review meeting where Zuckerberg and Bosworth canceled La Jolla they greenlit a very different headset codenamed Puffin, with the same target year of 2027.

Puffin reportedly resembles "a bulky pair of glasses" and weighs less than 110 grams, yet is an opaque VR-style headset with pancake lenses and passthrough cameras. Its remarkably light weight is apparently being achieved by offloading both the battery and computing hardware to an external tethered puck, which Meta "hopes" will be small enough to fit in the user's pocket.

If the report is accurate, Puffin will be significantly lighter than any other shipping fully functional VR headset to date. For comparison, Meta Quest 3 weighs around 400 grams without its straps and facial interface and around 515 grams with them. Of this weight, the battery is around 70 grams.

The report describes Puffin as not including controllers, instead using the gaze-and-pinch input scheme introduced by Apple Vision Pro. Given The Information has also reported Meta plans two Quest 4 models for 2026, this strongly suggests Puffin will be a completely new product line, perhaps focused on media and productivity use cases, directly competing with Apple Vision headsets at a much lower price.

If there is one barrier to VR game development, it’s that it is expensive to make games and the market for VR, whilst growing, is still relatively small. Unfortunately this has led to some publishers being apprehensive about taking risks and instead pour the majority of their resources into less risky projects.

Flat2VR saw this problem and came up with a clever solution. If it is too risky to develop entire new games for VR why not take old classics and tweak them into working VR games. And surprisingly, they have done an amazing job of it so far, with some of their work putting official devs to shame. What is Flat2VR?

Flat2VR is a new development team that will specialize in porting old classic games over to VR headsets. They are made up of groups of different mod teams that have already brought some amazing games to our headsets. You have probably already tried a few, but here is some of games they have already done amazing VR ports for:

Half Life 2 VR Port
Outer Wilds
Doom
Doom 3
Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast
Firewatch

If you have played any of these ports you would know that they almost feel like native VR games, they are pretty much jank free, run fantastically, and all the systems have been adapted to work in VR as well as they can be. The Half Life 2 port in particular almost rivals Half Life Alyx in terms of quality, and Alyx had some of the best VR devs on the planet working on it with a huge budget.

It's no secret that Zenith: The Last City has had a difficult time gaining players since its launch back in 2022. After confirming that the game was running at a loss, developer Ramen VR re-launched the game as Zenith: Nexus as a free-to-play co-op game, with The Last City becoming optional DLC. However, the studio stopped development on both modes last month.

Now, Ramen VR has dropped the Season 4: Infinite Realms update. In a blog post, the developer confirmed Infinite Realms has received new gate layouts, a new gear set, and new cosmetic rewards. The Last City brings back the original Fast Fly, a reduction in player requirements for some missions and raids, and basic trading between players. It may not fix all the issues players had with the game, but it's a nice update for the community left in the MMO.

Zenith: Nexus is available on Steam, Meta Quest, and PlayStation VR2. If you've not played Zenith yet, you can now pick up the game with a permanent discount. Infinite Realms remains free-to-play but The Last City now costs $9.99, down from its previous $29.99 price.

Quest has been an increasingly popular choice for Steam users since the release of the original in 2019, now accounting for over half of all connected VR headsets. Now Valve’s latest 2.8.3 SteamVR update includes a few new features that’s making Quest a better PC VR headset than ever.

Released in late 2023, Steam Link allows users to easily connect their Quest wirelessly to SteamVR to play PC VR or flatscreen PC games, essentially letting you bypass Meta’s own Air Link.

Now, the Steam Link for Meta Quest Beta update (2.0.11.1197) introduces a few new features for the Steam Link for Quest, allowing hand-tracking passthrough and some limited hand-tracking functionality too.

Granted, Valve says it’s not the “full hand-tracking” support you’d expect on native Quest applications, but it’s at least letting users experiment. The update allows users to create custom input bindings via its Binding UI in Controller Settings, so you can tool around making your own control scheme based on hand gestures.

Additionally, Steam Link 2D streaming has been re-enabled in the Steam Link app for Quest, which you can nab for free over on the Horizon Store. You’ll need to opt-in to the SteamVR Beta first to play PC VR games via Steam Link, but it’s a super simple process.

This follows the release of one of the most major Steam Link updates late last year that included ‘Advanced Supersample Filtering’, which majorly improved wirelessly streaming video quality when using high supersampling rates. An update in March also brought a significant improvement to overall stability.

Don’t confuse the constant stream of useful updates to Steam Link as a favor to Meta though. While the cheap and plentiful Quest 2 now accounts for nearly 40% of VR headsets connected to Steam alone, no doubt keeping Quest users happy, Valve is rumored to be full steam ahead on releasing its own standalone headset, codenamed ‘Deckard’, which ought to benefit from all of the quality of life stuff we’re seeing come to Quest via Steam Link today.

Batman: Arkham Shadow shows immense potential. The atmospheric quality of the environment, excellent voice acting, and engaging use of gadgets and overall narrative are set to immerse you in Batman's world like never before. Combat may prove divisive, especially among VR enthusiasts who prefer less scripted experiences, but it stands as a sincere homage to the Arkham legacy. Batman: Arkham Shadow is shaping up to be a must-play for VR gamers and Batman fans alike and we’ll keep you updated with more insights as we get closer to launch day, so stay tuned!

If there was a genre of games you would immediately think is perfect for VR, you would probably say it is Flight Sims. For starters wearing the headset feels like wearing a helmet adding to the immersion, no other medium is capable of making you feel like you are actually flying and you can gain so many advantages just by being able to naturally move your head to look around.

There are already a few good VR flight combat games available for PC like VTOL, DCS or War Thunder. The PSVR 2 however is lacking in this category, but that is about to change with Gaijin Entertainment’s new game Aces of Thunder.

Aces of Thunder is a flight combat game set in the middle of the chaos of World War 2. This means you will get to explore the Pacific, European and African theaters of war across 15 varied maps.

And you will be doing this in historically accurate recreations of WW2 combat aircraft. So far the planes confirmed are the American P-51 Mustang and P-63 Kingcobra, the German Bf 109 and Fw 190, the Soviet Il-2 and Yak-9T, the British Spitfire and the Japanese A6M3 Zero. Being British myself I can’t wait to sit in the cockpit of a Spitfire, hopefully in a Battle of Britain setting if that’s not too much to ask.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is raising the prices of the PS5 console, PlayStation VR2 headset, and various accessories in Japan on September 2, 2024. "We have come to this decision based on the impact of recent changes in the global economy and challenging external influences on our business," stated SIE in a Japanese PlayStation Blog post.

Standard PS5 consoles will now retail from ¥66,980 ($463) to ¥79,980 ($553), while the PS5 Digital console price will increase from ¥59,980 ($415) to ¥72,980 ($504). As for the PlayStation VR2 headset, that's being increased from ¥74,980 ($518) to ¥89,980 ($622), while the Horizon Call of the Mountain PSVR 2 headset bundle will rise to ¥94,980 ($656).

Chernobyl Again (September 12) Mannequin (September 12) Neon Squad Tactics (September 17) Iron Trails: Outlaw Pursuit (September 20) Car Detailing Simulator VR (September 26) Virtual Driving School (September 30) Chernobyl Again (September 12)

There’s no shortage of speculation when it comes to all things Valve. Tyler McVicker, YouTuber and one of the leading voices dedicated to deciphering Valve’s various internal developments, however now reports that not only is the company’s long-awaited standalone VR headset still coming, but it may arrive alongside its own Half-Life game.

Valve’s much hyped standalone, known only as ‘Deckard’, is “still very much in production,” McVicker maintains, saying that according to his sources that Valve “still intend[s] on shipping this piece of hardware.

In this vid I try out nearly every VR Full Body Tracker (Vive 3.0, Slime, Axis, HaritoraX Wireless, Tundra, Vive, Ultimate! Can IMU tracking beat lighthouse?? Let's fine out!

Attributions Fluffing a Duck by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Avatar during comparison Cutes~ by Kiwi

INTRO- 00:15 EOZ STRAPS - 01:04 Tracking Test - 01:58 Variables - 4:22 Vive/Tundra - 05:12 HaritoraX Wireless - 06:56 SlimeVR - 09:52 Vive Ultimate Trackers - 11:59 Axis - 14:28 Outro - 16:48

The Information reported over the weekend that Meta has abandoned plans to launch a premium headset and competitor to Apple Vision by 2027.

The device, codenamed "La Jolla," would have succeeded the disastrously failed Meta Quest Pro if it had actually become a product. But that's not going to happen, at least not in the next few years.

However, it would be premature to conclude that this is the end of the Quest Pro 2 as a device category. After the report appeared, Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth spoke out on Threads. He did not deny the news, and stressed that it was only the end of one particular prototype.

"Just your regularly scheduled public service announcement: we have many prototypes in development at all times. But we don't bring all of them to production. We move forward with some, we pass on others. Decisions like this happen all the time, and stories based on chatter about one individual decision will never give the real picture," Bosworth wrote.

Meta's decision to shelve the Quest Pro 2 for the time being is a good one. Why should the company spend valuable resources and attention on a class of devices for which there is not yet a significant market? Meta's goal is to bring VR and AR to the masses, not to sell a few hundred thousand highly specialized headsets. Meta is leaving that market to the OEMs. Overall, it is better for the industry if Meta focuses on lowering the barriers to entry rather than raising them.

Pico has unveiled its next XR headset, the Pico 4 Ultra, which is slated to launch in China next month starting at around $600.

It was reported early this year that Pico was preparing some sort of XR headset based on the Pico 4 platform following a supposed leak.

Now Byte Dance’s XR subsidiary Pico Interactive has finally announced Pico 4 Ultra, the promised ‘next-gen’ platform refresh of its Pico 4 headset, replete with color passthrough cameras and depth sensors for mixed and virtual reality, and a second gen version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2 chip—notably the same chipset used in Meta Quest 3.

Jio has around 1800 physical retail stores in India, which it could potentially use to demo the headset to prospective buyers.

It's unclear exactly how a Jio headset would achieve a significantly lower cost than the upcoming Quest 3S without making major compromises, though. Jio's smartphone does it by using a very low-end chipset, so it's possible the headset could use the original Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 from Quest 2. Over time this would notably restrict the percentage of Horizon Store content that could run on the headset, and limit its mixed reality capabilities, but these compromises might be seen as necessary to sell well in the Indian market.

The Information reports that Meta has scrapped plans for a premium headset and Vision Pro competitor. The decision was reportedly made after a product meeting attended by Mark Zuckerberg, CTO Andrew Bosworth and other Meta executives.

The planned device was codenamed La Jolla. Meta began work on the device in November 2023 and planned to release it in 2027. Meta wanted to use OLED microdisplays, the same type of display used in the Apple Vision Pro. However, the company struggled to keep the price below $1,000 due to the expensive displays.

The Information reports that Meta plans to use the technology it has developed, including the display and eye-tracking, in other upcoming devices. Work continues on lower and mid-range headsets, including the Quest 4. The device is scheduled to be released in 2026.

The developer of Gorilla Tag, one of VR’s most popular and commercially successful games, has revealed the first clear look at its next game. Previously codenamed ‘Project AR’, the title has been officially dubbed Orion Drift, and aims to take Gorilla Tag’s social structure to the next level.

Another Axion is the indie studio behind Gorilla Tag, the viral VR game that’s taken on a life of its own and earned more than $100 million in revenue—making it one of VR’s most successful titles.

And while most studios would be reluctant to disrupt such a massive success with their own new title, that looks like exactly what Another Axiom is up to with Orion Drift. A newly released teaser shows how it will work.

VIVERSE, the spatial computing platform by HTC, today announced VIVERSE Create v1.0: a suite of tools that gives creators the ability to build and share interactive multiplayer worlds to any device, anywhere - no code required. Users can share their worlds to any device—VR headset, mobile, PC, or Mac—thanks to VIVERSE Create's cross-platform, “no install” feature, allowing anyone to enjoy interactive entertainment without needing a gaming machine.

“Gone are the days of keeping your creations locked in your virtual world. With VIVERSE Create v1.0 launch, we’re giving creators the tools to create any world and share it with their friends, parents - even their grandparents - to experience with one simple, secure, joinable link,” said Andranik Aslanyan, Head of Growth, HTC VIVERSE. “Whether virtual hangs, live events, or multiplayer match-ups, everyone can hang in VIVERSE Create beta, proving that the metaverse isn’t dead; it's just waiting for the rest of us to catch up.”

There are two ways to build in VIVERSE Create. First, with a no-code building tool on the VIVERSE Create website, users can quickly compose virtual worlds with assets and media files directly in their web browser on flat devices. This allows for seamless integration with the Sketchfab library, giving users easy access to millions of free models without specialized 3D expertise. Additionally, it offers native support for the VROID VRM format, enabling users with advanced skills to easily import and utilize their existing models.

The second way to build is with PlayCanvas, an advanced game engine-style building tool that allows users to create more interactive experiences directly in the browser. PlayCanvas seamlessly deploys your builds to VIVERSE and can be used with and without code.