In this edition of XR News Bits we see a newly released Walkabout Mini Golf DLC course, a big update to Contractors Showdown, game director Hideo Kojima exploring Vision Pro, the release of VR action-arcade game Thrasher, and signs of life from cooperative WWII VR bomber game The Mighty Eighth.

XR News Bits

An incredible amount of exciting XR news comes our way every day. Very often we see news come across our desk that’s worth highlighting, but we don’t always have the bandwidth for a full article on every one of them. XR News Bits is our occasional roundup of stories we think […]

Following Meta’s big v67’s multitasking update earlier this month, the company announced it’s now rolling out its v68 software update for Quest, which features experimental access to Meta AI, a new utility app centered on home improvement, and some performance boosts too.

Previously only available on Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses, Meta AI lets you do your standard assortment of AI voice chat stuff through Bing, but it also taps into the headset’s camera sensors so you can ask it questions about what it sees.

It’s now launching on v68 in experimental mode on Quest 3, although […]

Meta announced its released a new Acoustic Ray Tracing feature that will make it easier for developers to add more immersive audio to their VR games and apps.

Released in the Audio SDK for Unity and Unreal, the new Acoustic Ray Tracing tech is designed to automate the complex process of simulating realistic acoustics which is traditionally achieved through labor-intensive, manual methods.

With Meta’s Acoustic Ray Tracing, the company says in a developer blog post it can simulate sound reflections, reverberations, and things like diffraction, occlusion, and obstruction—all critical to making spatial audio closer to the real […]

Alien: Rogue Incursion just got its first gameplay trailer, showing off its first real look at the game’s Xenomorph enemies, weapons, setting and more.

When it was revealed back in April, Veteran VR studio Survios said the upcoming action-horror game was set to include an “all-new storyline full of heart-pounding action, exploration, and terrifying Xenomorphs.”

Now, the studio released a first look at gameplay centered on protagonist Zula Hendricks, a fearless ex-Colonial Marine turned ultimate Xenomorph hunter. As the game’s main protagonist, the studio reveals Zula Hendricks is on her way to the uncharted planet Purdan, accompanied […]

Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable is here, officially bringing the hit anime to VR for the first time, albeit in early access. We got an eye-full last month when developer UNIVRS released its first trailer, which admittedly looked pretty rough. While that’s still true for the game in its current state, it actually packs in some fun mechanics, leaving me holding out hope for the AoT VR game that it might become.

In its current state, Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable feels very much like a tech demo, offering up a single mission (aka ‘chapter’), a […]

PSVR 2 has landed its biggest sale yet, dropping the price by a solid 37%, less than two weeks ahead of its forthcoming PC VR adapter.

PSVR 2 launched in early 2023 with a $550 baseline pricetage. While the headset saw a sale that dropped it to $450 earlier this year, now there’s an even better deal.

PSVR 2 is now on sale at Amazon US (and several other Amazon regions) for $350, a full 37% discount from the MSRP.

The Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle, which includes the headset and the best games made for it so far, […]

CM Games, the developer behind the single-player survival shooter Into the Radius (2020), have released its long-awaited sequel via Steam Early Access today, bringing us back to the deadly Pechorsk Security Zone.

Like the original, Into the Radius 2 is an immersive VR survival shooter set in a surreal landscape filled with deadly anomalies. Serving up both single-player and two-player co-op (four-player to be added at a later date), you arm yourself with realistic weapons and venture deeper into the mysteries that lie within the Pechorsk Security Zone.

CM Games says the sequel retains some beloved features from the original, including “meticulously […]

HTC released a new video promising something “coming soon,” teasing what promises to be the next XR headset from the company.

The video is largely a sizzle reel of its recent standalone headsets, Vive XR Elite (2023) and Vive Focus 3 (2021), focusing on their use for both enterprise and gaming.

“Soon, out innovation will offer you a new kind of power. Prepare to pioneer the next reality,” the video states, flashing to teasers of the headset’s profile. Check out the video below:

While HTC hasn’t officially detailed anything about the device beyond teasing the headset’s profile, rumors suggest it could […]

Arken Age, the upcoming single-player sci-fi shooter from Shadow Legend VR (2019) studio VitruviusVR, is almost here.

The team announce it’s completed the first large beta test with SteamVR users, and are currently sending out a second batch of codes, noting that a release date will be revealed in the “next couple weeks.”

With it, the studio also teased a new bit of gameplay, seen below:

Arken Age Update – For the past week we’ve been beta testing with a larger group of players on Steam VR and everything is looking great so far! We’re sending out the second round of keys today and hope […]

Meta today announced plans to update Quest 3 with AI vision features similar to what’s on the company’s latest Meta Ray-Ban glasses. Meanwhile, Apple still hasn’t confirmed if Apple Intelligence features will hit Vision Pro at the same time as other Apple devices this Fall.

Meta has pointed to AI investments as its other major area of R&D alongside XR, and now the company is starting to bring the two together with consumer-facing AI features.

Sometime later this Summer in the US and Canada, Meta says it will roll out an update to Quest 3 enabling the ‘Meta AI with […]

You might have noticed an unfamiliar icon in your app drawer today. Don’t be alarmed, because that’s the new logo for Meta’s XR content store, and it’s setting the stage for more changes yet to come.

Two short years ago, Quest’s content store was simply called ‘Oculus’, making for one of the last holdouts of Oculus branding after Facebook rebranded to Meta in 2021.

The mobile app eventually got the rebrand too, renaming it from ‘Oculus’ to ‘Meta Quest’ in August 2022.

Image courtesy Google

Now, Meta is preparing for another strategic shift as it readies its XR content […]