Meta continues its reign as the XR industry’s dominant player, with its most recent moves signaling a shift into a new era for the company—and thus the industry at large. This year saw the introduction of the Meta Orion AR glasses prototype and the Quest 3S headset—two pieces of hardware that are not only crucial to Meta’s future but will be pivotal in shaping the industry’s direction as a whole.

Meta Orion AR Glasses Are a Flag in the Ground

Image courtesy Meta

The News

One of Meta’s most significant announcements this year was the unveiling of the Meta Orion AR […]

Cisco updated its Webex networking app to include even more immersive support for meetings on Vision Pro, which now marries the app with its spatial video streaming hardware.

Cisco released Webex on Vision Pro back in February, allowing for mostly everything you’d expect from a Vision Pro version of the cross-platform video chatting app, letting users meet via Webex using their Persona avatars, and do things like place 2D chat windows around their mixed reality environment.

Now the company has gone one step further with the release of Cisco Spatial Meetings for Vision Pro, which now lets users stream stereoscopic […]

PlaySide Studios, developer behind the upcoming Quest 3 party game Dumb Ways: Free for All, announced it’s releasing a psychological thriller on later this year that turns your physical space into a mixed reality escape room.

Called Shattered, the single-player MR game promises to turn your living room into a labyrinth of escape rooms and mind-bending puzzles.

“Investigate and alter memories to bend reality itself to your will as you collect evidence to expose the secrets of Greyvale and escape to safety,” the studio says.

The 2024-25 NBA season is here, and Meta has again partnered with the NBA to bring a fat slate of 180-degree immersive games to Quest.

Now in its fourth consecutive year, Quest users will be able to watch 52 immersive games in the Xtadium app (US only) and the NBA Arena in Meta Horizon Worlds.

In addition to watching those 180-degree immersive games from virtual courtside seats, NBA League Pass holders will also be able to watch live 2D game nightly in Xtadium, complete with real-time stats. Xstadium also includes the ability to hold a […]

Batman: Arkham Shadow stays true to the series formula, but did developer Camouflaj manage to make the game feel truly at home in VR? Read our full review to find out.

Batman: Arkham Shadow Details:

Publisher: Oculus Studios
Developer: Camouflaj
Available On: Meta Horizon (exclusive to Quest 3 & Quest 3S)
Reviewed On: Quest 3
Release Date: October 21st, 2024
Price: $50

Gameplay

Image courtesy Camouflaj

Batman: Arkham Shadow is a lot like Half-Life: Alyx. No, not in the gameplay. Or the story. Or the graphics.

It’s a lot like Half-Life: Alyx in the way that the creators managed to completely reimagine how the game actually works, without losing the essence […]

Apple appears to be scaling back production of Vision Pro, and may even halt manufacturing entirely by the end of the year, The Information reports.

According to the report, Apple started reducing production this summer, with supply chain sources maintaining that the company has built up enough inventory to meet projected demand for the foreseeable future.

Apple hasn’t released overall sales figures for Vision Pro, which launched first in the US in February 2024 before coming to a select number of countries. Independent research firm Counterpoint Research however maintains the company has sold 370,000 […]

Blade & Sorcery: Nomad, the physics-based combat sandbox for Quest, has essentially been the little brother to the PC VR game ever since it released in 2021. With the addition of the game’s long-awaited ‘Crystal Hunt’ campaign on Quest next week, that’s set to change.

Warpfrog announced that Quest users can expect Blade & Sorcery: Nomad’s ‘The End Update’ on October 28th, which the studio calls the game’s “final major update.”

Crystal Hunt marks a clear departure from Nomad’s sandbox-focused arenas, serving up a campaign with full narrative, progression upgrade system, and a ton of linked maps to battle through, explore and loot for […]

Mojang announced last month it was dropping PSVR support for Minecraft in 2025, which was mostly understandable considering the headset is now eight years old. In the release notes of the latest Bedrock update though, the studio says PC VR is getting the boot too.

Like PSVR support for Minecraft, the popular block-building game will end support for PC VR headsets after March of 2025.

“After you receive the final update, you will still receive updates on your PC and be able to play without a VR/MR device,” the Bedrock 1.21.40 changelog reads, echoing […]

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth revealed last week a mysterious wide field-of-view (FOV) headset prototyped in the Redmond, Washington-based Reality Labs offices. Bosworth now reveals the research prototype had something close to a 210-degree FOV, however wide FOV displays are a critical tradeoff the company isn’t ready to make.

And if you were hoping this was the wide FOV Quest yet to come, you’ll probably be disappointed. Bosworth revealed in a recent Instagram Q&A the device is actually a mixed reality headset, however he tempered expectations by calling the prototype “very, very, very low resolution,” which notably featured “giant […]

The Washington Commanders’ offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury is all-in on VR training, something the team’s star quarterback Jayden Daniels credits for accelerating his development, the New York Times reports.

A former quarterback for Texas Tech himself, the intense realism was clear to Kingsbury from the snap.

“The first time I put [the VR headset] on, I backed into the wall,” Kingsbury told NYT. “It felt like the [pass] rush was coming.”

Daniels is a big driver behind the Commanders’ adoption of the app, which was initially developed by German company Cognilize for top flight soccer players. Daniels says he owes […]

Camouflaj, the studio behind upcoming Quest 3 exclusive Batman: Arkham Shadow, revealed that none other an Elijah Wood both voiced and did motion capture for Scarecrow, aka Dr. Jonathan Crane.

“When Camouflaj initially approached me about joining the cast for [Arkham Shadow], I was super intrigued for a few reasons,” Wood revealed in a video message during the studio’s latest Q&A. “I’m a massive Batman fan, both in films, games, [and] comics. I’ve collected the toys when I was young, and I was super intrigued at the notion that the next chapter in the Arkham would be done entirely in VR.”

Microsoft’s contract with the U.S. Army to build a combat-ready AR headset is worth up to $22 billion, but only if the company can deliver the goods at “substantially less than” the projected $80,000 per unit, the Army tells Bloomberg. Requirements also include definitively positive field testing, set to take place early next year.

Based on HoloLens 2, Microsoft’s specially-built Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) has faced multiple challenges since being awarded the Army contract in 2019, including poor field testing results due to reliability and ruggedness issues. Despite recent improvements in the […]

I was asked recently for my thoughts on Meta’s Orion AR glasses, specifically whether or not such glasses stand a chance of becoming as big as (or replacing) the smartphones in the future.

I was asked for my thoughts recently for a Lifewire article about Meta’s Orion AR glasses and the future they may or may not point at. Only a small snippet of my overall response was used, and in a way that supported the article’s (reasonably) skeptical take on the future of AR glasses. However, considering my position is that I do indeed think AR […]

The spooky season is upon us, and there’s no better time to rattle ‘dem bones in VR. Here we take a look at some of the best VR horror (and horror-adjacent) games across Quest, PSVR 2, and PC VR.

Many of our top picks below support all three platforms, although you’ll see a few mentionable exclusives you should consider grabbing this Halloween.

Whatever the case, make sure to deadbolt the doors, lock the windows, ready your adult diapers, and consider warning everyone in earshot—because it’s VR fright night!

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners 1 & 2

Whether you choose the original […]

Phasmophobia(2020) is one of the scariest PC VR-supported games, and now developers Kinetic Games announced a release date for PSVR 2.

Phasmophobia is coming to PS5, PSVR 2, and Xbox consoles on October 29th, bringing its four-player online co-op psychological horror along with cross-platform play.

Letting you explore haunted houses filled with various paranormal activity, you and your team use all the ghost-hunting equipment at your disposal in order to gather as much evidence as you can.

There are over 10 different houses to take on—alone or with up to four players—and over 20 different ghoulies to detect (and avoid), using the whole kit […]