The chipset's naming is a departure from Qualcomm's usual for its chipsets for XR headsets, which currently power almost every non-Apple standalone headset on the market.

It's the new flagship offering for powerful standalone XR devices, and is explicitly designed to support multiple form factors, including the chipset being in the headset itself and the chipset being in a tethered compute puck. It's also designed to work in either passthrough or see-through display systems.

Compared to Qualcomm's previous flagship, the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 that's used in Samsung Galaxy XR, Play For Dream MR, and Sony's enterprise headset, Snapdragon Reality Elite promises:

• 60% greater GPU performance.
• 30% greater CPU performance.
• 160% greater NPU performance for machine learning tasks (48 TOPS).
• An expanded EVA (Engine for Visual Analytics) block which accelerates more computer vision tasks such as 3D environment reconstruction.
• Enhanced camera passthrough with 10% lower photon-to-photon latency, 33% less power draw, and advanced image noise reduction.
• Support for faster UFS 4.0 storage.
• Support for 4.2 GHz RAM (up from 3.2 GHz).
• Built-in support for up to 2x USB 3.1 ports.
• Bluetooth 6.0 support.

Qualcomm also claims Snapdragon Reality Elite achieves 20% longer battery life with the same workload as XR2+ Gen 2, and is up to 12°C cooler under load, crucial to making it suitable for tethered pucks that the user might put in their pocket.

When asked by UploadVR whether the chip would perform worse in a user's pocket than on a headset with an active cooling fan, the company declined to directly answer, instead pointing towards this as being the responsibility of device makers, and that the chip is designed to work in various form factors.

The company says that the 160% more powerful NPU enables "entirely new Gen AI experiences" on-device, from photorealistic avatars to LLM agents and rapid real‑time 3D object generation.

Qualcomm says a 3 billion parameter LLM could run on-device at 45 tokens per second, while a 512×512 large vision model could run with around 1.7 seconds of latency.

UploadVR asked Qualcomm whether the expanded EVA block could enable performant real-time continuous scene meshing on headsets without a depth sensor, and the company responded that the answer was essentially yes, from a chipset capability perspective, but that this would be up to developers.

The first confirmed headset to use Snapdragon Reality Elite is the Xreal Aura Android XR, which today at the AWE expo was confirmed as shipping this fall.

Play For Dream also says it will use Snapdragon Reality Elite in its next flagship device.

At last year's AWE expo, the company behind Snapchat declared that it would ship fully standalone true augmented reality glasses in 2026, and at this year's AWE, as announced by Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, the company is opening preorders to make good on its promise, beating giants like Meta, Apple, and Google to the punch.

It's the result of around a decade of work on smart glasses at Snap and its billions of dollars in investment into augmented reality research.

By "true AR glasses", for those not familiar with this space, we mean glasses you could (at least theoretically) wear in daily life that can place virtual objects and interfaces into the real world. This is a major capability jump compared to HUD glasses like Meta Ray-Ban Display, which just add a small fixed display to your view, and a vastly different proposition to displayless smart glasses that focus on cameras and audio. True AR glasses are also different from display glasses like Xreal and Viture, which heavily darken your view and sit out from your face too much to be used as everyday glasses.

Snap has released two true AR development kits in its long buildup to Specs, called Spectacles, giving developers the hardware, all equipped with hand tracking, to build experiences and get ready for the arrival of consumer AR. The first Spectacles, in 2021, was given to a select few developers and had a field of view of just 26 degrees diagonal and active battery life of just 30 minutes. The second, in 2024, was rented to interested developers for $99/month and while it massively expanded the field of view to 46 degrees, and battery life to 45 minutes, it was also much bulkier and weighed 226 grams.

The consumer Specs have a slightly larger field of view of 51 degrees diagonal, similar to Microsoft's HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap 1, yet bring the weight down to 132 grams for the 47mm frame size and 136 grams for the 51mm.

It's definitely describable as a true glasses form factor, and much lighter than the Spectacles developer kit and the AR headsets of the 2010s. However, Specs are still significantly heavier than regular glasses and the less capable smart glasses on the market today. For comparison, Ray-Ban Meta glasses weigh around 50 grams, while Meta Ray-Ban Display, with its 20 degree monocular display, weighs 69 grams, and Orion, Meta's unshippable prototype AR glasses with 70 degree binocular displays, weighs 98 grams.

Beyond the weight and field of view, Snap isn't yet revealing many detailed specifications for Specs, an unusual move for a product available to preorder, and somewhat ironic given its name.

What the company will say, so far, is:

Displays

Specs use proprietary LCoS displays developed in-house (likely a result of its 2022 acquisition of Compound Photonics) that are capable of displaying 16 million colors per pixel, the same as a typical flatscreen. Snap is not yet revealing the resolution.

The company directly confirmed to UploadVR that the 51 degree field of view figure is diagonal, and refused to give the horizontal and vertical values or aspect ratio.

Chips

There are two unspecified Qualcomm Snapdragon chips onboard, a main chipset for the OS and applications, and a secondary chipset for computer vision tasks, which includes head position tracking, hand tracking, environment meshing, and spatial anchoring.

Snap refused to provide the name of the chipsets.

Latency

Specs achieve a motion-to-photon latency of just 7 milliseconds.

That's the lowest publicly stated latency claim for a 6DoF XR product we've ever heard, and a significant upgrade from the 13 milliseconds of the Spectacles developer kit.

Auto Tint & Opacity

Specs feature electrochromic lenses to rapidly automatically adjust to your environment, becoming clear glasses indoors and sunglasses outdoors in the sun.

Snap says the electrochromic tech can adjust to fully opaque in just 10 seconds, significantly faster than photochromic lenses like the Transitions in Meta Ray-Ban Display, which can take around a minute. It also solves the problem of photochromic lenses not working through UV-blocking glass like many car windshields.

However, Snap isn't claiming that Specs can become fully transparent. A major limitation of many last-decade AR devices was that they inherently blocked out a large percentage of light. Snap isn't giving a transmissibility figure, but says that this is noticeably improved over the Spectacles dev kit.

Frame

The frame, which comes in two sizes, is made of Swiss TR90 polymer, which offers an appealing balance of low weight, toughness, and flexibility.

That's a key part of the company bringing down the weight to 132 grams for the 47mm frame size and 136 grams for the 51mm, compared to the 226 grams of the Spectacles developer kit.

Prescriptions

Specs handle vision correction through inserts, supporting an unspecified “wide range” of prescriptions.

This makes shipping a far less complex process compared to glasses that bake in prescription correction at the time of manufacturing like Meta Ray-Ban Display, and also allows for easy sharing of the glasses for demos.

Battery

Snap claims the glasses last for 4 hours of "mixed use", which includes audio playback, video playback, AI assistance, and Bluetooth notifications.

It's an extremely vague figure that isn't directly comparable to the 45 minutes of 6DoF AR use of the Spectacles dev kits. I'd go as far as to say that it's effectively meaningless, since the glasses will use vastly more power in AR experiences than when just playing audio.

Case

As with any good smart glasses, Specs come with a charging case, which the company says provides four full recharges.

Snap OS 2.0 Brings The AR Glasses Closer To Consumer-Ready

Snap OS 2.0 is out now, adding and improving first-party apps like Browser, Gallery, and Spotlight to bring the AR platform closer to being ready for consumers.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Specs run Snap OS, the same operating system as the Spectacles developer kit, which we've been closely tracking the progression of over the past few years.

While on an underlying level Snap OS is Android-based, you can't install APKs on it, and thus developers can't run entirely native code apps or use third-party engines like Unity. Instead, Specs run sandboxed "Lenses", the company's name for apps, developed using the Lens Studio software for Windows and macOS, where developers use JavaScript or TypeScript to interact with high-level APIs, while first-party frameworks handle the low-level core tech like rendering. This approach is crucial to how Snap is shipping 6DoF AR in a fully standalone device with limited compute, whereas some other companies are using compute pucks.

So what will buyers actually be able to do with Specs out of the box?

Out of the box, Specs will include first-party Lenses for web browsing, on-foot navigation, measuring real-world objects and spaces, adding a second screen to your laptop, whiteboarding, and translation. Snap also mentions support for a contextual AI assistant.

Specs can also be used for simpler non-AR tasks like listening to music, audiobooks, and podcasts, as well as getting notifications from your phone via Bluetooth.

Snap's major focus in recent years with its Spectacles kit has been on the developer community, and building out the tools they use to build Lenses, many of which are games. Lenses will be available on a store on Specs, as you'd expect, though when asked by UploadVR whether all Lenses built for the Spectacles dev kit would run on Specs out of the box, Snap declined to answer affirmatively, seemingly suggesting that at least some degree of developer work will be required.

Lenses will be free to download for Specs owners, though to monetize, developers can include in-app payments or subscriptions via Snap's Commerce Kit, so that they can "build real businesses".

Back in October, Snap confirmed a Lens from Synth Riders, a modified port of its popular rhythm fitness title on other XR platforms, as well as official minigames from Star Wars and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

They joined existing Lenses from LEGO (Bricktacular) and Niantic (Peridot), as Snap works to flesh out the third-party AR content in the buildup to launch.

Today Snap also announced an expanded capability for Lens development called the Native Development Kit. This lets developers bring native C and C++ code and libraries into Lenses, which the company says could be used for advanced spatial mapping, physics, audio, networking, and navigation.

Specs are available to preorder now, with a $200 refundable deposit and the remaining $1995 paid when the glasses ship "this fall" to the US, UK, and France. Snap has not announced plans for availability beyond these markets.

Assuming it isn't beaten to market by something we're completely unaware of, Snap Specs should be a landmark moment for the XR industry, the moment where the long-promised idea of true AR glasses finally becomes truly available for those willing to pay for it, though its price and the inherent limitations of it as a first generation product mean that we expect most buyers to be tech enthusiasts and relatively wealthy early adopters, as with Apple Vision Pro.

Japan hosts an entertainment and attractions industry happy to fund VR experiences in theme parks and for corporate uses, giving companies alternative revenue streams, while successful titles from its higher-profile developers with games like Ruinsmagus and Exit 8 VR keep a spotlight on the talent in the country and keep the industry stable. Also a factor is a sense of camaraderie between VR studios, a group brought together not just by nationality but a shared passion and, more recently, a new G-Smash initiative focused on advocating on their behalf and showcasing a united front and varied face to the industry that, they hope, can attract new players to the medium and technology.

Bitsummit, Japan’s biggest indie gaming event, invited 68,000 people to the country’s ancient capital of Kyoto over multiple days to celebrate indie developers and smaller creators. Yet the biggest booth belonged not to console manufacturers like Nintendo or PlayStation, or any of the major publishers of indie games from both inside and outside of Japan. Instead, that belonged to G-Smash, spread across not just a sponsored VR-focused game jam but a shared space for 15 developers from inside and outside Japan to present their games in one united front, showcasing the scale and breadth of what is possible inside the medium.

The initiative is a relatively recent one, started by founder Shun Harashima only shortly before last year’s Bitsummit event before spending the months that followed gaining support from manufacturers like Meta and Pico. G-Smash was founded with the intent to bring developers together, connect them to companies who can provide the funding to bring their games to life, and most importantly, introduce VR to the millions still skeptical or yet to try the medium for themselves. Much of which is inspired by his own childhood, where, after moving from Japan to the US at five years old, Pokemon fever took him from an outcast to a popular kid and helped him make friends in a new country.

That appreciation led him into the Japanese entertainment industry after a stint at toy manufacturer Takara Tomy, and later led to a broader fascination with the medium. “VR has always been my thing,” he explains. “Japan always felt ahead of other countries at the time, with open VR exhibition spaces like the [now-closed] Shinjuku VR Zone, or Bandai Namco’s location-based entertainment experiences. I started working on VR as an actual job when I joined Konami in 2018, helping to launch their first VR game, which led me to being a contact point to Meta and later joining them. There, I got to meeting so many other developers. Unfortunately, sometimes companies pivot, and Japan is not always the first priority, whereas my passion was always here. I wanted to do more for it.”

It’s no secret that the VR industry, like all of gaming, has undergone a turbulent few years, seen more acutely within VR in part due to the tighter budgets and finer margins many developers in the industry have always faced. While Sony have not entirely abandoned VR - they were a sponsor of G-Smash’s XR Yokocho booth alongside Meta and Pico, a first for all three companies to come together to sponsor a collective VR showcase - the underperformance of PlayStation VR2 has made it more difficult to reach new players, while low sales for some titles have led to the closure of studios and numerous canceled projects across all platforms.

Regular news about closures, such as that of Metro Awakening studio Vertigo Studios Amsterdam, highlights how even larger teams are far from immune from these challenges. For all that the industry has its share of successes, it's a space where many are understandably nervous knowing one failed release, or a sudden change in direction from the likes of Meta, could be enough to plunge a company into crisis.

But it’s precisely this that makes a united front from G-Smash important, according to Shun. “The first XR Yokocho event at Bitsummit 2025 was my first act with G-Smash, but I had to put it together in only two months after leaving Meta, and used all my severance package from the company to make it happen. I wanted to grow the VR market in Japan which is why, when I had this huge space, I went international to the US, not just to domestic creators. It has to be something international, it has to be known by everyone in the industry.

“That's why it's very important for Western developers to come over and find opportunities. This is about helping grow the market in Japan, which would ultimately help all developers, everywhere.”

The Japanese industry does have its own unique quirks that have proved to be long-term hurdles in adoption that make these initiatives important. For all consumer-grade VR has its place, it’s harder to sell to the general public as a result of smaller apartments and homes alongside other cultural norms. By contrast, though, in-person event-driven VR experiences succeed both within Tokyo and beyond. Tyffonium and Excurio show that you can maintain these large-scale immersive experiences, with the former even being a domestic company now hard at work on their own Final Fantasy effort with Square Enix to premiere later this year. Even the major developers are willing to give it a chance in these spheres - Capcom’s AR-driven Monster Hunter Bridge was initially developed for the World Expo 2025 in Osaka and made in-house, but its success means it will now receive a permanent exhibition inside the Nijigen no Mori theme park on Awaji Island.

G-Smash’s XR Yokocho booth was about more than merely making itself known with a splashy, large space. A secondary goal is to support creatives in reducing the risk of high-risk projects while promoting innovation that’s low-risk if it fails, but has a chance for viral success within and beyond VR. On one end of the spectrum, you had CharacterBank showing off their latest demo for the upcoming Knights of Fiona, with a layer of polish as they build towards beta tests for the game’s online components. A preview video for the upcoming Evangelion VR game was also shown, as were a number of currently-available big-hitters like Lumines Arise.

Yet for smaller projects, UNIVRS and Character Bank both had titles made in partnership with G-Smash that were defined as small-scale, quick-to-develop experiences with replayability to keep people coming back. For UNIVRS, they developed the fitness-like rhythm punching game Project Punch, while Sausage Batting was the name for the rather hilarious sausage fest the latter team produced.

“Both of those games are ideas we came up with at G-Smash in partnership with those developers, and we want to launch both of them this year. We built these teams two months ago, brainstormed, and just ran with it. We want to create conversations, launch these games, and create conversations that will bring people to take a fresh look at VR. After all, VR is very indie, so we should use that flexibility to create whatever we can to see if we can connect with people.

“I don’t want to do this alone, but I want to make the industry more exciting. If VR is small, we should use it to our advantage. We want variety, but for example, we could launch five sausage games from different companies in the space of a few months, and suddenly everyone can do it. VR is about sausages now! No one can do that on any other platform and shift the entire medium like is possible in VR because of its hyper-indie focus. But if you’re going to do that, you have to make it first. It’s not about who wins or loses. In Sausage Batting, you’re playing with this sausage, and because it’s wiggling it’s really hard to hit, but if you hit it just right it gets hard and you have a home run. Yet, if you wanted, you could create sausage darts, or fish with sausages, or grow sausages in a garden.

“I want a level of quality, but I want conversations to start around VR. If people notice such a movement, they may be confused about all the sausages, but then maybe they look further. The same goes for creating showcases at Bitsummit like XR Yokocho. They may see it one year and wonder what it is, but then when it comes back the next year, they check it out because it’s not a one-time thing. Then, bigger companies in the space like Flat2VR come here, and suddenly XR Yokocho is a recurring thing. That’s how trends are made. I want to make things happen, and try everything without regret. That’s the spirit of G-Smash.”

This philosophy spread to the student-driven game jam with four unique VR experiences made by aspiring devs. Winning the cash prize was Torima Headbang, a game as silly as it was immediately captivating to the audiences who would crowd and stare as people played. It certainly caused the scene G-Smash hoped to create, as you controlled a bird on a skateboard building speed by headbanging while wearing the headset to get the highest score. Perhaps slightly neck pain-inducing if you weren’t careful, but it’s not designed for something too intensive or for a long session. If anything, it’s exactly what VR needed: something just silly enough yet immediately simple to understand that anyone can play, while also being enhanced in manners only possible within VR.

“We found 90% of the people visiting our booths at Bitsummit have never played VR before,” explains Shun. “Maybe they tried it once in 2015 or 2016, but things have changed so much. It’s easy to be in the industry and think everyone knows about it, but the reality is, even in the US, people know about VR, but not many have actually played it. When they’ve played it, then they think about purchasing it, but my role is to do that since companies need to make money to survive to keep playing games. That also means bringing developers together, not just audiences, through mixers and events, or community building, talking to investors and informing them about the current market.

“A lot of people don't even know about Gorilla Tag! Investors in VR, they know about the game, but other people don't actually know about the numbers and the excitement around it and just how popular it is. And for Japanese developers it’s harder when investors are often in English and there’s that language barrier, or maybe they have a good game but are terrible at pitching it to people.”

Was the booth a success? Overall I would have to say yes. Growing in size from last year, with more attendees, if the goal is to introduce the potential of VR to those who, after more than 10 years, either have not tried or do not realize how much VR has advanced in the intervening years, saw a representative sample of the industry in one space. They even saw beyond games - Wrath: Aeon of Ruin VR was showcased with haptic hardware chairs and accessories to further immerse in ways that traditional flatscreen games are unable to achieve.

Bitsummit, beyond being a showcase of games, holds regular stage events where developers can share their games and talk about development. One of the more talked-about of these stages involved Shuto Mikami, the CEO of CharacterBank, speaking with former President of SIE Worldwide Studios and Head of PlayStation Indies Shuhei Yoshida about Knights of Fiona and the VR industry, with the names alone being enough to bring curious onlookers to the show to hear what they had to say.

Over time, maybe the conversation will spread beyond a single event or the whispers of enthusiasts and return to the mainstream once more. G-Smash will likely be key in that change.

It can be difficult to keep up with the rapidly changing, seemingly contradictory claims, especially when they're recycled by outlets that don't fully understand the context behind the decisions. This article is an attempt to break the rumors down, give context of what's been claimed in the past, and help you understand what Apple might be planning.

There are two leading sources that have accurately predicted Apple's future Vision headset plans before: Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and supply-chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Both Gurman and Kuo have also been wrong before, though, and sometimes, as now, they contradict each other.

Since before the first Apple Vision Pro headset was even revealed, both Gurman and Kuo said Apple was already far along in developing a cheaper and lighter followup.

If those reports were accurate, the cheaper and lighter Vision headset was originally set to launch in 2025. But by late 2024 Kuo claimed that the headset was delayed "beyond 2027", and in late 2025 Gurman said Apple "paused" the project to prioritize shipping smart glasses sooner.

Now, in a May newsletter, Gurman reported that Apple is working on a "slimmer and lighter" headset to succeed Vision Pro, but wrote that he doesn't "anticipate" the device to launch until late 2028 at the earliest, and perhaps 2029.

Gurman's report came just weeks after MacRumors claimed in April that Apple has "given up" on Vision Pro entirely and disbanded the visionOS team after the M5 refresh saw poor sales. And earlier this month Kuo also claimed that Apple's incoming CEO John Ternus, set to succeed Tim Cook on September 1, has taken Vision headsets off the roadmap entirely. The MacRumors and Kuo reports led to a wave of secondary headlines claiming Apple will abandon the headset market for good, with endless hot takes and post mortems.

visionOS 27 Is A Much Bigger Update Than Apple’s Keynote Suggested

There’s a whole lot more coming in visionOS 27 than what Apple announced in its keynote. Read our extensive rundown of all the biggest features & improvements.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

However, the idea of Apple abandoning the Vision headset line and visionOS line entirely seems farfetched, and, according to a source with knowledge of Apple's work on a new headset, is wrong.

UploadVR understands that the "late 2028 at the earliest" headset Gurman is referring to is a new and total redesign, moving the main chipset to the external puck to significantly reduce the weight of the visor, a similar strategy to Meta's next headset, and the approach we expect much of the industry to take in coming years. Given the major architectural difference, it will take a lot longer than the previous approach of just moderately reducing the weight of the existing chipset-onboard design.

And back in April, in an interview with Tom's Guide, Ternus himself publicly said the following:

"I think we’re still very much in the early innings of spatial computing. We are super excited about it. The Vision Pro is an extraordinary product. As Joz said, it’s like we reached into the future and pulled it into the present. And people are continuing to find exciting new use cases for it. There’s a lot of compelling stuff in enterprise, in medicine, in other things, and that’s going to continue to grow. It’s fun, we’re at the beginning of the journey."

Do these really sound like the words of an incoming CEO about to cancel the entire product line?

Further, at WWDC 2026 Apple announced visionOS 27 with significant updates and improvements, many of which set the stage for the future, and the company continues to heavily invest in Apple Immersive Video.

These investments simply do not make sense in a narrative of the M5 Vision Pro being the final headset from Apple.

During the event, visionOS influencer Justin Ryan asked Senior Director at Apple responsible for product management and product marketing for visionOS whether Vision Pro is "on ice" and whether the team was broken up. Here was his response:

"It's still early innings for spatial computing. And there's a lot of things that we're doing, and learning, and we're continuing to improve on and continue to invest in. And so I would hope that updates like visionOS 27 and all the things we're adding and all the things that we're unlocking, whether it's for consumer use or it's for business use, serves as evidence that we are investing in this platform and we're invested in this idea of spatial computing and building these capabilities that just can't be done on any other device."

That "just can't be done on any other device" point is crucial. Some argue that visionOS is only being continued because it will one day run on Apple's AR glasses. But this idea too simply makes no sense.

Apple Immersive Video, for example, simply would not work on the AR glasses conceivable to ship any time in the next 5 years due to the translucency and limited field of view, never mind simple smart glasses with a HUD that will come. And the vastly different requirements, form factor, and use case of glasses mean they will almost certainly run a new glassesOS, not the visionOS designed for headsets. It would be akin to the iPhone running macOS – not just the technical core, but the interface itself.

Apple's moves only make sense in a situation where the company is not, in fact, abandoning headsets forever.

Apple Glasses Do Come First

What the reports about Apple's plans do get right is that the company is currently strongly prioritizing smart glasses, and this is indeed affecting the urgency and priority of its headsets.

Both Gurman and Kuo agree that Apple's next face-wearable will be displayless smart glasses, with cameras, speakers, and microphones, to take on Ray-Ban Meta. But even these may be slightly delayed.

As recently as February, Gurman was reporting that Apple Glasses were on track to be revealed this year for an early 2027 release. But late last month, Gurman reported that the release has been pushed back to late 2027, because the core functionality of the product depends on Siri AI and Visual Intelligence, and Apple wants to ensure it's in a highly reliable state at launch.

Gurman's previous reports described the glasses as lacking a display, having cameras, microphones and speakers, and being powered by a new Apple-designed chipset, based on the highly efficient S-series chips used in Apple Watch. The product would be used for phone calls, music playback, live translations, turn-by-turn directions, and multimodal AI, similar to Ray-Ban Meta.

To distinguish from Meta's glasses, according to Gurman, Apple plans to use "high-end materials" and have two oval-shaped cameras, one for high-quality image and video capture, and the other for computer vision.

UploadVR's take on that is that a dedicated computer vision sensor could draw significantly less power than a sensor designed for imaging, and thus be sampled continually for advanced use cases like spatially-aware pedestrian navigation. "Turn left just past that red Honda", instead of "In 200 meters, turn left". It might also enable hand gestures without the need for a wristband – though you would need to raise your arm. This is, though, to be clear, just our speculation.

Meanwhile, Kuo also reports that Apple plans to launch smart glasses with a binocular in-lens heads-up display (HUD) in 2029. While Kuo doesn't say exactly whether this would be capable of true AR, Gurman describes true AR as not coming from Apple this decade, suggesting the 2029 product may be more of a competitor to Meta Ray-Ban Display and its successors.

Adapting mainstay video game genres to VR is not a new concept. Horror is practically ubiquitous in virtual reality. After all, having ghosts, zombies, and monsters in your face enhances the experience to great effect. Soulslikes, on the other hand, are a tricky beast. Nailing impactful combat in VR is incredibly difficult, and those who have taken a stab at it have delivered with varying results. Now, blending these two genres sounds equally ambitious and complex. Bramblefort’s demo, now available as part of Steam Next Fest, seems to have successfully attained the formula.

Bramblefort does not shy away from its survival horror roots from the very start. The main menu is set inside a dilapidated cabin with three decomposing zombies looking straight at the player. The macabre tale begins inside a 1920s movie theater. A short film debrief from an undisclosed intelligence agency details the operation to infiltrate Bramblefort, an island in the northern Atlantic.

They suspect strange occurrences are happening and suspect low resistance. As a field operative, it is your mission to investigate what is behind it. A lean tutorial explains how to grab items and keys to put them over your shoulder for safekeeping and how to load your revolver before leaving.

Things go wrong almost instantly. I should say upfront, Bramblefort is quite gory. As soon as you arrive on a canoe to the isle, your paddler’s head is blown off. The graphics themselves are not too realistic, so it is not exactly traumatic to witness. Kidnapped and locked up in a jail cell, the soulslike elements take shape.

The game’s vertical level design asks you to jump off a ledge, climb, and drop off before fighting your first shambling corpse. Two conveniently placed knives on a table signal that to progress, you must cut your way through. The combat feels a bit flimsy, but in the context of its hectic action, it works well.

Much like Grimlord was able to capture the spirit of Dark Souls, so does Bramblefort seem on its way to being compared to Bloodborne in VR. In action, though, it would be rather comparable to Resident Evil 4. The place is teeming with infected humans craving blood. Knives, hammers, and cleavers are the only weapons available in this area.

After lowering a bridge to escape this hellish medieval prison, a revolver, explosives, and a shotgun also make their way to your arsenal. Many games tout themselves as “made for VR,” but Bramblefort’s pause menu with a giant rusty wheel to pull your weapons off feels particularly appropriate. Shooting the shotgun itself feels powerful but unwieldy. At least loading the shells and gesturing to pull the chamber up is satisfying.

In the tutorial, a door says there are four ways to enter it, and that design philosophy is applied to the game at large. Each level is not what it seems. As you make your way through a Victorian castle, moist marshlands, and an elaborate bathhouse—this is a hefty 2+ hour demo—there are several ways to progress. You can climb through pipes, jump across old buildings, find a key, or shoot your way across: the world is your oyster. This is the first time in a long while I have seen FromSoftware’s level design so well-implemented in a VR game.

Conclusion

To meld two of the biggest genres in gaming successfully is no small feat. Of course, there are small quirks to be ironed out, like tighter combat, but what is on offer here gives much hope. Bramblefort stands out not only because of its intricate level design but also how well it feels like a true soulslike in its approach. The haunting survival horror elements merely add to the tense atmosphere throughout. I will look at its full launch with great interest.

Bramblefort’s demo is available now as part of Steam Next Fest until Monday, June 22nd at 10AM PT. A release date has not been confirmed.

CleanSheet Soccer 2 approaches the ball from a different angle, both literally and figuratively. Rather than chase the fantasy of scoring spectacular goals, here you're trying to stop them. You play as a goalkeeper, using your hands to punch, block, catch, and deflect shots in training missions, mock games, and arcade-style minigames.

What immediately jumps out is just how natural this feels in VR. Every desperate punch to clear a ball, every lunge to catch a perfectly-placed shot, every fingertip stop feels physical in a way that no other medium can replicate. With the PS VR2 Sense controllers tracking your hands, CleanSheet Soccer 2 is so perfectly tuned that reactions become instinctive. It's a cool feeling, even for someone (like me) who's not played soccer since grade school.

When you first launch into CleanSheet Soccer 2, you're given a chance to join one of three soccer clubs. Each of these has its own coach (which is an incongruous anthropomorphized animal?), and its own clubhouse with its own stylized culture. From here you'll launch into training drills, match simulations, and tryouts, where your performance is monitored and recorded to leaderboards.

Completing drills and matches earns you experience, places you amongst your fellow gamers in online leaderboards, and satisfies mission objectives to unlock gear, new soccer fields, stadiums, and the opportunity to leap to new leagues, new clubs, and more.

Drills sharpen specific goalkeeping skills. Modes like Matrix Reflex, where training balls hit a randomizing launcher on their way to your face, and Lightning Hands, in which you must smash a randomized green button to fire a ball, focus on reaction speed and hand-eye coordination. Drills like Pick-A-Save, where you have to punch or catch a color-coded ball on command, prioritize decision-making and quick thinking. Others simply fire faster and faster randomized soccer balls at you to see how long you can survive.

There's enough variety in the Drills to keep things interesting, and as the difficulty ramps up through level after level, the drills very quickly become truly challenging.

Match Play offers something a bit closer to actual soccer games. This mode presents realistic motion-captured players in game-like scenarios ranging from free kicks and dangerous corners to 2-1 breakaways and penalty shot situations. While the mechanics are straightforward (you're only ever trying to stop the ball from getting in the goal), the variety of situations and the well-animated players keep things super engaging.

There's also a shot creator mode in which you build out custom scenarios and tailored drills. Though I didn't mess with this mode too much, beyond simply creating a nearly impossible shot from some extremely aggressive strikers, I could see this becoming a fun diversion from the main game for a certain type of player.

The game makes great use of the PS VR2 hardware. It looks great and runs perfectly. Controller haptics add impact to catches and punches, helping to sell the illusion that you've actually made contact with the ball.

What's most surprising about CleanSheet Soccer 2, for me, is how physically engaging it is. Play this game for any standard amount of time, say 20 minutes, and you'll be feeling the burn in your hamstrings, quads, and shoulders. I'm an active guy, and this game had me sweating.

There's something refreshing about a VR sports game that understands exactly what it wants to be. CleanSheet Soccer 2 doesn't try to recreate every aspect of soccer. It concentrates instead on one position and explores it in remarkable detail. It's a simple idea, executed very well. It's a focused, energetic, and surprisingly authentic goalkeeper experience that feels perfectly suited to VR.

CleanSheet Soccer 2 is available now on PlayStation VR2 for $34.99.

This, along with strong feedback from the PlayStation community, prompted developer Xlab Digital to develop Iron Guard: Day Zero for PS5. Day Zero releases this week on June 18.

As part of this shift in strategy, the original flatscreen Steam version of Iron Guard has been 'retired' and included for free for all existing and future owners of either VR game. Xlab says it hopes to bring Day Zero to Steam at a later date.

Responding to an inquiry about Day Zero on Reddit, Xlab responded with the following:

Not done with VR for sure, but taking a pause as it has been a rough patch trying to find enough players to continue, even after excellent reviews across all VR platforms.

I'm hoping flat-screen might create some more awareness, especially because we are heavily discounting the price and hopefully players can try the VR version ultimately , which I (and many players even not into TD genre games) feel is a whole different experience in VR.

Xlab continued in another response:

... as a small team we are not expecting to retire/own islands, just continue pushing our skills and do more bigger VR titles, for which we don't need a huge number of sales, but even that seems to be a challenge over the last year.

Funny/Sad enough the first IRON GUARD VR game made a decent return, in fact it funded the entire sequel IRON GUARD: Salvation , but the sequel which is a bigger game and with much higher fidelity and more fun gameplay features, etc. seems to be harder to sell and has done 1/5th the sales, which says something about the VR trend over the last 2-3 years

This continues the trend of over a dozen VR developers either going to a hybrid model or flatscreen altogether for upcoming projects due to a struggling VR market. Recently, Polyarc Games laid off two-thirds of its staff and announced a flatscreen port of its Moss series for PC and consoles and Vertigo Games closed one of its studios and announced a flatscreen port of the Arizona Sunshine series on the heels of its flatscreen port of The 7th Guest remake.

Both Iron Guard games are available on SteamVR, PlayStation VR2, and Meta Quest.

As always, this week-long festival features a mix of demos for upcoming games and games that have already released on other VR platforms, like Loop One Done, Fixer Undercover, and Peak Rhythm.

We received this list from Valve nearly two weeks ago, so it is subject to change. Some developers may have registered for the event and subsequently dropped out. We have already seen some participants developing hybrid titles release a demo that is not VR supported. We do our best to catch these ahead of time and exclude them from the list below.

Other developers may also release demos for their games despite not being a part of this event. Games can also be erroneously tagged as VR when they are not planned to have VR support. As always, we will update this list if we come across any changes.

Most importantly, many of these demos may only be available this week, so be sure to jump on the ones that catch your interest.

For now, here's the full list of participants we are aware of:

• Amelia's Escape
• Axe Gang
• Biodetention
• Blind Touch VR
• Bodian's Bay Wash
• Bramblefort
• Construcubes
• Crawler
• Dart Racer
• Dead 4 Now: Rebirth of Survivors
• D.E.C.A.Y.
• Driving Test Simulator
• Edd Skeleton VR
• Exoshock
• Fixer Undercover
• Fruit Golf
• Fuel Cell
• Grab Your Friends
• Gunshot Survivors VR
• Hyperstacks
• King Archer VR
• Kosmass
• Loop One Done
• MechPit
• One Day To Live
• Outpath VR
• Paranatural
• Peak Rhythm
• Snooker Billiard
• Streets of Miami VR
• Tomboy Adventure 2
• Unmourned VR
• Voxel Playground
• Wade
• ZipRush: Surf the Void

Steam Next Fest starts today and runs until June 22 at 1pm ET.

The device replaces the Quest 3’s standard facial interface with a sensor-equipped frame that captures biosignals from sensors around the face and forehead, then streams that data into software to map avatar reactions, mixed-reality effects, and experimental controls.

To be clear, PiEEG XR isn’t a consumer accessory that instantly detects emotions or animates avatars out of the box. It’s meant for developers, researchers, educators, and VRChat experimenters who want to train their own mappings from raw signals.

A Smile Demo Shows The Basic Idea

Developer Ildar Rakhmatulin describes PiEEG XR as an open-source neural face interface for spatial computing. The clearest demo so far shows Rakhmatulin wearing the device and training it to recognize when he smiles. After calibration, the system detects the smile signal and maps it to a VR avatar expression. That’s more grounded than automatic emotion detection, because it shows PiEEG XR learning one expression instead of reading feelings.

Face tracking allows for more natural expression in VR avatars without learning special controls. Meta’s Quest Pro supported eye and face tracking, and Meta later updated its face tracking OpenXR extension to include tongue tracking. Steam Link can also pass Quest Pro’s tracking data through to PC VR apps such as VRChat, but Quest 3 and Quest 3S lack face tracking entirely.

More Than Avatar Smiles

A Reddit discussion around the prototype points to why PiEEG XR could be more interesting than face tracking alone. When one commenter suggested using the interface to control a third virtual arm, the developer said that’s the kind of experiment PiEEG XR is meant to enable.

The idea is to train mappings from facial signals, focus states, and other biosignals, then connect those mappings to avatar mechanics through OSC or WebSocket integrations. The current prototype also supports focus-to-action demos, where signal intensity can trigger mixed-reality effects on digital objects.

Still A Developer Kit

PiEEG XR isn’t the company’s first neural device. IronBCI is an 8-channel wearable brain-computer interface supporting EEG, EMG, and ECG biosignals. However, PiEEG XR is the first designed specifically for VR use, so some caution is warranted.

Meta has been exploring wrist-based neural input with its Neural Band, while VRChat has added support for expressive input such as eye tracking. PiEEG XR takes a different route by putting biosignal sensing directly into the headset’s face interface.

A headset-mounted neural interface has to deal with fit, movement, noise, comfort, calibration, and software support. It also shouldn’t be confused with camera-based face tracking. Meta’s CTO previously argued there wasn’t a credible way to add eye tracking or upper-face tracking to Quest 3 as an accessory, but PiEEG XR is attempting something different by reading biological signals instead of adding cameras.

PiEEG XR looks promising as a hackable kit to explore facial biosignals that could be perfect for developers and researchers.

After years of rumors, Pico and TikTok owner ByteDance officially publicly teased its next headset back in March, calling it 'Project Swan'.

At the time, Pico said the headset will have micro-OLED panels with 4000 pixels per inch (PPI), a dual-chip architecture with a self-developed coprocessor for computer vision and image processing, and a new main processor that will have twice the CPU and GPU performance of the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 in today's Pico 4 Ultra and Meta Quest 3 headsets. It also detailed many of the visionOS-like features of Pico OS 6 and the RealityKit-like Pico Spatial Engine.

Pico’s Next Headset Has 4000 PPI Micro-OLEDs, Powerful New Chip & Next-Gen OS

ByteDance’s Pico announced the key display and compute specs of its next headset, coming later this year, and detailed the revamped XR operating system it will run.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

While the company showed a stylized silhouette of the headset, it did not show an actual image or render, nor did it give any details at all about the design.

But as first reported by XR enthusiast Luna, videos depicting the design are present in a public Pico SDK.

The clips show a headset that is clearly inspired by both Apple Vision Pro and Samsung Galaxy XR, with a rear strap almost identical to the former's Solo Knit Band and a visor and forehead pad strongly resembling the latter.

They show an external tethered puck of some kind, which may be a battery or also contain compute.

Further, they depict the use of tracked controllers that strongly resemble the Pico 4 Ultra controller, including drawing a boundary, though it's unclear whether they'll be included in the box or not.

What's most clear here is that Pico's next headset is taking on Apple and Samsung, not competing with Meta, and we expect a similarly high price point.

Graphics Depicting Meta’s Next Headset Found In Quest Firmware

Graphics depicting Meta’s upcoming ultralight headset with a tethered compute puck, codenamed Phoenix, have been found in Quest firmware.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

We'll keep a close eye on Pico in the coming weeks and months to bring you any official updates on the headset's specs, features, and release plans.

Meta opened its own store in LA late last year, alongside temporary "pop up" stores in New York and Las Vegas. These stores are branded 'Meta Lab', and that's also the branding the company is using for its upcoming section in Best Buy.

Meta Opens LA Store To Sell Smart Glasses & Quest Headsets

Meta just opened a store in LA, its second location after Burlingame, to demo and sell its smart glasses and Quest headsets.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

According to Meta, the Meta Lab section of Best Buy is a "sleek, roughly 900-square-foot store-in-store designed for hands-on discovery" of its Quest headsets and smart glasses.

Meta has sold its hardware in Best Buy for over a decade now, but with a few exceptions, it's mostly been handled by Best Buy employees, and, in our experience, not particularly well.

In contrast, Meta says the upcoming Meta Lab sections of Best Buy will be staffed by "Meta Sales Specialists" experienced in the products and able to offer personalized fittings.

The VR Retail Experience Needs A Hard Reboot

VR retail needs a hard reboot. Trying out a headset for the first time should not be like this.

UploadVRCraig Storm

For Quest, this means a "guided immersive demo".

"Experience your favorite game or movie in theater mode, or the latest HIIT workout like you’ve never experienced it before", Meta writes when describing the VR demo.

For smart glasses, the store section will include an "expansive assortment" of styles, and Meta Ray-Ban Display with Meta Neural Band will be available as a guided demo too.

The first Best Buy stores to get a Meta Lab section will be San Bernardino, CA and San Carlos, CA, both opening this Friday.

They will be followed by Roseville, MN, Woodland Park, NJ, Greenville, SC, and Columbus, OH later in the summer.

By the end of 2026, Meta claims there will be 50 Meta Labs in Best Buy stores across the US and Canada.

Announced by Apple at WWDC 2026 this week, visionOS 27 will be the fourth major operating system version for Apple Vision Pro headsets.

While Apple's main WWDC 2026 barely mentioned the Vision Pro operating system, its documentation and developer talks reveal that visionOS 27 is one of the biggest upgrades yet, with (preconfigured) held object tracking, an IR LED tracked accessories framework, unfoveated screen recording, and a range of other major improvements.

visionOS 27 will arrive "this fall", for both the M2 and M5 models of Apple Vision Pro. The first beta release of visionOS 27 is available now, though it lacks many of the features coming in the stable launch.

visionOS 27

Siri AI & Visual Intelligence

Though not coming with the initial visionOS 27 release, Apple says that "later this year" Siri AI, an LLM-powered overhaul of its digital assistant, will come to its major operating systems, including visionOS.

Siri AI is powered by the next-generation Apple Foundation Models, which were co-developed with Google and based on its Gemini models (reportedly via a $1 billion/year deal). As has always been the case with Apple Intelligence, some tasks run on a small on-device model, while more complex tasks are handed off to Apple's Private Cloud Compute system.

Apple says Siri AI is a "profoundly more capable and conversation assistant" than traditional Siri, with "personal context understanding, broad world knowledge, and more".

In visionOS, Siri AI will take the form of a persistent orb that you can pin to a physical spot in your room. You can start speaking to Siri AI by simply looking at the orb and speaking, bypassing the need to say "Siri", though you can still do that if you want.

Siri AI on visionOS will also support Apple's Visual Intelligence feature, letting you "search, ask questions, and take action" relating to your physical and virtual surroundings. In terms of capabilities, it seems to sit somewhere between Meta AI on Quest 3's Horizon OS and Gemini on Samsung Galaxy XR's Android XR.

visionOS 27 also includes a dedicated Siri app, letting you access previous conversations, and offering a preinstalled alternative to third-party AI chatbot apps like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, and Meta AI.

The next-generation Apple Foundation Models will also bring:

• Significantly more realistic image generation in Image Playground.
• Automatic tab organization in Safari.
• The ability to upgrade the strength of your saved passwords with a single tap.
• Personalized Smart Replies in Messages.

Spatial Panorama Environments

visionOS 2 brought the ability to add synthetic stereoscopy to 2D images, and then visionOS 26 brought the ability to turn 2D images into limited-perspective volumetric spatial scenes, enabled by Gaussian splatting.

visionOS 27 extends this spatial scenes concept to your iPhone-captured panoramas.

You can also set these spatial panoramas as your visionOS home environment, meaning they can be the background for your windows and volumes in the Shared Space.

Higher Frequency Object Tracking

Back in visionOS 2, Apple added the ability for Vision Pro to track specific real-world 3D objects that app developers prespecify.

Developers provide a 3D model of the object they want to be tracked to the Create ML tool on their Mac before app compilation, and over the course of several hours it trains a neural network for the object and bakes it into the app.

While genuinely useful for enterprise applications, the visionOS 2 object tracking system was only designed to be used for static objects, mainly in order to anchor virtual content to them, and responded very slowly if the object moved.

visionOS 27 adds a high-frame rate object tracking mode that is suitable for moving and held objects. While Apple doesn't say exactly what the update rate is, initial reports from developers suggest it may be around 30Hz.

To track held objects, Apple strongly recommends using the new Extended Training mode, which greatly improves tracking performance though also "significantly" increases the machine learning model training time. XR enthusiast Brad Lynch found that it took around 18 hours to train a fish toy, for example.

While high frame rate object tracking is leagues better than what came before, it's important to note that it still has a significantly lower update rate, and thus higher latency, than hand tracking or tracked accessories. And speaking of tracked accessories, we're likely to see a lot more of them soon.

IR LED Tracked Accessories

For visionOS 26 last year, Apple worked closely with Sony and Logitech to add hardcoded support for the PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers and Muse digital stylus, which both have a constellation of infrared LEDs under the plastic of their body.

With visionOS 27, Apple has opened this process up to any interested company by adding the necessary APIs to enable them to make their own IR LED tracked accessories for Vision Pro, similar to how any company can make SteamVR "Lighthouse" Tracking accessories on PC.

Optical tracking runs at 90Hz, and this is fused with the IMU accelerometer and gyroscope data from the object, enabling the same quality of tracking you'd expect from PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers.

There are two possible software support paths available:

• Companion App: The hardware maker can release a visionOS companion app for the hardware, essentially an installer for it, that registers the shape of the object and configuration of its IR LEDs with visionOS so that other apps can use them. This path would be highly suitable for a consumer device.
• Built-In To App: Alternatively, a developer can build the object details into an app that utilizes the accessory, negating the need for a separate device companion app. This path would be ideal for enterprise.

DFRobot and MikroE are making reference hardware and developer kits for this, and will release them later this year. Companies can use these directly, or as the basis of their own accessories, lowering the barrier to entry compared to building from scratch.

Thórsmörk Environment

visionOS 27 will bring a new environment option for the Shared Space: Iceland's Thórsmörk valley. It translates as Thor's Valley, and it's widely considered one of the most scenic places on the planet.

Apple's environments all have day and night modes, and Thórsmörk's nighttime variant features a dramatic aurora borealis.

Thórsmörk will be the 10th virtual environment for visionOS, following the addition of Jupiter from Amalthea in visionOS 26.

Unfoveated Screen Recording

At all times in the Shared Space, and in many Full Space apps too, Apple Vision Pro uses always-on eye-tracked foveated rendering, only rendering the region of the image you're currently looking at in full resolution.

This maximizes visual quality and performance, and is essential to how Apple Vision Pro headsets make good use of their 4K micro-OLED panels, but it has the tradeoff of meaning that in screen recordings, everywhere you're not looking is a low-resolution blur.

It was possible to record unfoveated footage in the visionOS Simulator on a powerful enough Mac, but not on the headset.

visionOS 27 adds a High Quality Recording option, which records up to 3 minutes of unfoveated 4K footage, completely on the headset, no Mac required.

It should make it much easier for developers, journalists, influencers, and content creators of all kinds to show off visionOS, and was one of the most highly requested features for Vision Pro.

Mac 3D Object Preview API

When connected to your Mac via Mac Virtual Display, macOS 27 adds an API to spawn a 3D object on visionOS 27, letting you preview objects in 3D space.

Apple's built-in Preview macOS app supports it, meaning you can open a 3D object from Finder and preview it in seconds. And developers can add it to their own Mac apps too.

This API essentially lets developers add Vision Pro support to their 3D creation Mac apps with just a few lines of code, and without the need to build a visionOS app.

It even supports editing the model on the visionOS side using gaze-and-pinch controls, and these edits will then be reflected on the macOS side. It's a two-way API. SharePlay is supported too, for collaborative spatial editing with Personas.

Apple says Cinema 4D and SketchUp are working on integrating the API, and we expect to see many more Mac apps do so once macOS 27 and visionOS 27 ship.

Microsoft Announces Windows Volumetric Apps For Quest

Microsoft announced Windows Volumetric Apps, a new API for extending elements of PC applications, streamed to Meta Quest headsets, into 3D space.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Microsoft and Meta announced something similar for Windows 11 and Horizon OS back in 2024, but as far as we're aware, it has yet to ship.

New Control Center Look

visionOS 27 updates the look of Control Center, moving it into three panels for a larger and less crowded total space for the interface.

• The left panel shows the date, time, battery level, Wi-Fi status, and playing notifications.
• The center panel shows shortcuts to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AirPlay and Airplane Mode, as well as a volume slider and quick controls like Mac Virtual Display, Mirroring, Guest Mode, and Travel Mode.
• The right panel controls the environment, including its day/night mode and the spectrum between full passthrough and full enclosure in the virtual environment, as you would with the digital crown physical control.

Mac Device Hub

Xcode 27 for macOS brings a Device Hub app for developers.

For developers, Device Hub should make running Apple Vision Pro demos much smoother, as instead of needing to guide the guest through the visionOS gaze-and-pinch interface, they can instead just remotely launch an experience.

It's a significant addition because the iPhone and iPad companion apps for Vision Pro cannot launch apps, for some reason.

3x Faster Wi-Fi Initialization

The M5 Apple Vision Pro is a very fast-feeling device, and in my several months with it I've experienced no slowdowns.

There is one strange exception, though. After booting up the device, for the first 20 seconds or so there is no internet connection. It takes an unusually long time, compared to all of the other devices I own, to fully connect to Wi-Fi.

It seems that Apple is not unaware of this, as in visionOS 27, the company claims Vision Pro headsets will connect to Wi-Fi up to three times faster.

Curved Windows In Safari, Freeform & Multiview

Before visionOS 27, all windows were flat, with the exception of Mac Virtual Display's ultrawide mode which is curved.

visionOS 27 adds curved windows support to Safari, Freeform, and Multiview on Apple TV. Safari also makes use of this for a curved tab browsing experience that somewhat wraps around you, as does the Multiview mode of Apple TV.

Unfortunately, this is a private API for first-party Apple apps. Third party developers cannot make their windows curved – at least not in the Shared Space. In a Full Space, developers can implement a custom rendering solution for this, but this will come with significant tradeoffs in terms of API support and OS consistency.

Extra-Small 'Accessory Widgets'

One of the biggest additions in visionOS 26 was Widgets, bringing persistent mini-windows you can pin to your physical space, including Clock, Weather, Music, and Photos, alongside an API for developers to build their own.

visionOS 27 adds a new kind of extra small widget called accessory widgets. They're smaller than visionOS 26's widgets and could be used for things like a battery level, countdown or timer, a stock price, smart home control button, or shortcut into an app.

The smart home button possibility seems particularly promising. You could, in theory given an app that supports this, add accessory widgets around your home on your physical devices, letting you just look at them and pinch to activate or deactivate them.

Apple has added a first-party accessory widget for Mac Virtual Display, which launches a Mac Virtual Display session for a given Mac, even when it's locked. While visionOS already creates a button above your MacBook, this could be particularly useful for Mac mini and Mac Studio, letting you just sit down at your desk and tap a virtual button to connect.

Web Environments In Safari

Safari in visionOS 27 adds support for Web Environments, letting developers specify a 3D environment for their webpage that users can optionally enable to surround them.

This is separate from WebXR, more akin to how web developers set a favicon than anything involving active JavaScript or anything like that.

Gaze-Expanding Notifications

In visionOS 27, notifications can expand when you simply look at them, exposing more information and available actions without the need to pinch.

It's another example of using eye tracking to reduce user interface friction.

Auto Subtitles For Videos

visionOS 27 adds an Accessibility feature to automatically generate subtitles for any video, using an on-device speech recognition model.

Vehicle Motion Cues

visionOS 27 is bringing the Vehicle Motion Cues feature that Apple added to its other major operating systems in 2024.

On Apple's other devices, motion cues appear as animated dots around the edge of the display that move in response to the acceleration, braking, and turning of the vehicle you're in, with the intention of reducing travel sickness.

It's unclear how Vehicle Motion Cues will work in visionOS, and whether they might have applications for reducing motion sickness in VR apps too.

Eye-Controlled Power Wheelchairs

visionOS 27 adds the ability to natively control select power wheelchairs using eye tracking.

Apple says the feature will launch with Tolt and LUCI alternative drive systems in the US, with support for both Bluetooth and wired connections.

The company says it "will continue to work with developers to expand support for more wheelchair drive systems".

Major RealityKit Upgrades

visionOS 27 also brings major upgrades to RealityKit, Apple's built-in "engine" that powers all experiences in the Shared Space and many Full Space apps too.

RealityKit allows developers to build high-quality VR and mixed reality experiences on Vision Pro without a heavy engine like Unity or Unreal, with consistent rendering, physics, audio, and interactions.

Here are the key upgrades coming to RealityKit in visionOS 27:

Physical Space Lighting

Apps can now cast virtual light on your physical environment.

RealityKit already automatically has virtual objects and interfaces cast shadows into your physical space, based on where it estimates your real lighting is coming from, and this has been a key feature since visionOS. What's new in visionOS 27 is the ability to cast light too.

Under the hood, the feature leverages Vision Pro's LiDAR-scanned 3D mesh of your room, alongside the reading from the ambient light sensor. The rest is clever software.

Developers can add both point and spot lights to the scene, with support for projective textures to add a pattern (optionally animated) to spot lights for effects such as stained glass, underwater caustics, projected stars, or patterned stage lighting.

Native Gaussian Splat Rendering

Over the past few years, to use an analogy, Gaussian splatting – fitting millions of semitransparent colored blobs (Gaussians) in 3D space so that arbitrary viewpoints can be rendered realistically in real-time – has done for 3D reconstruction what transformers did for AI.

We've seen developers do amazing things with it, such as Gracia's streamable moving volumetric captures. Apple itself uses the technology for the spatial scenes feature of visionOS, and it's behind the massive upgrade in visual realism we saw from Personas in visionOS 26.

RealityKit in visionOS 27 adds native support for rendering Gaussian splats, removing the requirement for developers to implement the code for this themselves.

Realtime Cloth Simulation

RealityKit in visionOS 27 adds integrated real-time deformable-fabric simulation.

Developers can create fabric that drapes under gravity, folds and wrinkles, collides with objects, responds to movement, and can be pulled or otherwise interacted with. The stiffness, friction, and material parameters can be set to change how the cloth behaves.

Immersive Audio Upgrades

RealityKit on visionOS 27 adds a Reverb Mesh API, letting apps describe the geometry and acoustic properties of virtual environments.

Developers assign materials to surfaces to specify how each affects sound, including frequency-dependent absorption, frequency-dependent scattering, and reflection and reverberation behavior.

RealityKit then simulates how sound travels and reverberates through that modeled space, making audio correspond more believably to the VR environment you see.

Many of these features were present in Meta's XR Audio SDK for Quest headsets, which the company put "on freeze" earlier this year. Valve's Steam Audio SDK also has many of these features, and Valve continues to update it.

We get it, it happens – you missed the live show. Not to worry! Catch every little bit of the Showcase here. Until then, keep reading for our full list of everything announced. Now, without further ado, let’s dive right in!

Squad up with your buds and fight for the fate of humanity! From VirtualAge, the creators of Guardians Frontline, comes Guardians Planetfall. Players team up in groups of four in this sci-fi online co-op, battle mechs and aliens, and do whatever it takes to win a galaxy-wide war. Guardians Planetfall will enter early access later in 2026 and will be available on both Meta Quest and SteamVR. Read all about it.

Set in the 17th century, Bootstrap Island from MARU VR puts players in the shoes of a survivalist living off the land after being stranded with nothing but what they can scavenge. Battle the weather, wild animals, and a mysterious local tribe without in this roguelike survival adventure. Find Bootstrap Island on SteamVR and be some of the first to play the major update 1.1.0! Read about it here.

Grab your board and your bravery and take on some wild hills in Tomy Horst’s, Board of the Future. Players can choose the pace they play; cruise around and do some cool tricks, or upgrade your board to experience faster and more challenging stages. Wishlist this hoverboard simulator on Meta Quest today before the launch later this year.

This Fall, Singular Perception brings a co-op roguelike adventure set in space to SteamVR: Sol Protocol. Conquer the skies with your squad in a spaceship that you man together and discover parts of deep space you’ve never seen before. Sol Protocol goes into early access in September 2026 and you can join the free playtests through Discord. Read more here. 

Just when you think you’re stuck up a creek without a paddle, Salmon Man comes to the rescue! Embody a man made of salmon in Valem Studio’s physics VR platformer, explore waterways, and climb upstream with nothing but, well, a paddle. This July, Salmon Man goes multiplayer on Meta Quest and SteamVR. Learn more today!

From Hypnos Team and Farmear Games comes the first-ever playable Backrooms metro level, C.A.B.A. Ever wondered what it would be like to explore the Piramides station when no one else should be around? Download the demo today and get ready to experience the metro like never before in the game’s full release coming soon for Meta Quest, SteamVR, and PSVR2.

Retake your power in Master Crowd Games’, The Magician VR: The Cursed Wand. Once disgraced, you need to prove to the magical world that you deserve your powers and that you’re really, really, really… sorry… about that little interdimensional invasion. Grab your wand, battle enemies, and cast spells to keep you safe. Wishlist the game on Meta Quest this September 2026. Learn more here.

Ever wanted to travel the world? Explore things in a new way with Astral Shore Games’, Puzzles of the World. Take a load off, relax your body and mind, and discover dozens of destinations through your own creativity and curiosity in this virtual reality puzzler. Puzzles of the World Version 1.0 goes live on July 23rd, 2026 for Meta Quest. Read about it here.

Feel the need for speed? Can’t find the rush that you’re craving? Push performance bikes to the max in LANESPLIT, by FunkyMouse, set to hit SteamVR on June 23rd, 2026. Feel the power by playing the demo and wishlisting this driving simulator today! Read about it here.

Does your curiosity usually get the better of you? Hone your investigative skills with DetectiveVR, a thrilling virtual reality narrative from Studio CHIPO Y JUAN, Valem Studio, and VRKiwi. Interview key witnesses, explore new venues, and control what happens next. Grab DetectiveVR On September 9th, 2026 on SteamVR and PSVR2. Read about it here.

The fate of the world is in your hands! Team up with friends and take on the Evil Lord Sunder in Heroes Together VR from Basement Bunker Labs. The co-op roguelite combines exploration, teamwork, and challenges that will test your virtual mortality. This September, Heroes Together VR goes into early access for Meta Quest 3.

Fitness meets fun with the arcade-style driving simulator, Pedal Rebel VR, from Toasterface Games. Hop on your exercise bike, dive into the action, and do whatever you can to avoid a collision. Pedal Rebel VR arrives in early access on October 5th to Meta Quest and SteamVR. Read about it here.

Mixed reality sandbox, BrushHammer, brings the popular miniature painting hobby to life. From Soliton Interactive, players can sit in their own space comfortably, choose from a growing collection of mini figures, pair them with accessories, and paint away! Wishlist BrushHammer today on Meta Quest. Read more here.

Feel the freedom of flying in Titan GameZ’, FLYON RC, where players become pilots and fly drones, RC planes, and helicopters in either mixed or virtual reality. The party game flying simulator is set to hit the Meta Quest store this summer.

Are you musically-inclined? Maybe not? No matter, anyone can play Theremin, a mixed reality musical experience by Paul M. Christian. Get in tune with your theremin, express your musicality, and take advantage of an endlessly tuneable instrument. Pick it up on Meta Quest on July 1st, when Theremin will introduce its new Ghost Hands feature, allowing players to drop their controllers for handtracking. Learn more here.

Grab your headset and create your fate in United Games’ VR puzzler, Cards of Destiny. Immerse yourself in a unique tabletop experience where you are a god, and you choose whether the citizens of your world are blessed or cursed – or somewhere in between. Cards of Destiny goes into early access on August 28th for Meta Quest and SteamVR. 

Mixed reality puzzle platformer, Disembodied, comes to Meta Quest on October 15th, 2026, allowing players to experience physics-based hand tracking in their own room. From Middle Man Games, players can use their hands and take on levels that will challenge their stealth and puzzle-solving abilities. Wishlist Disembodied today for Meta Quest. Learn more here.

It’s the VR collab you’ve been waiting for! Combine your love of minigolf and The Brothers Chaps in one out-of-control place. Walkabout Mini Golf and Homestar Runner present the Distraction Pack, full of the characters you love from the hilarious 2000s cartoon. Add the update to your repertoire on June 25th for Meta Quest, SteamVR, and PSVR2.

Get moving in mixed reality with Fantail’s action-packed party experience, Game Night. Fly solo or team up with your besties and discover mini challenges that include arcade action, sports, and puzzles – all in your own space. Grab a copy of Game Night for Meta Quest today and take advantage of the co-op update on June 12th. 

Mixed reality gets a whole new look and it’s spookier than ever! Scan and then transform your entire house into a horror game where evil spirits linger around every corner. Hauntify, from Virtual Go LLC, sets to terrify with ten different supernaturals, adding a multiplayer update in 2027 for Meta Quest. 

Take the beloved color-by-numbers hobby and bring it into mixed reality with Color-A-Cube from AlterEyes! Enjoy hours of free content, including 18 unique voxel models that players can click and color at their own pace in MR or VR. Puzzle people can look forward to a full launch date for Color-A-Cube on June 18th for Meta Quest and PICO. Learn more today!

Can you beat the AI and survive? False Horizon Games presents Project NEOS, a sci-fi VR thriller where the player must escape from a spaceship that is entirely controlled by an AI that’s entirely intent on destroying you. Join the official False Horizon Discord community and sign up for alpha testing today. Learn more here. 

Looking for a first-person-shooter with an all-new, fast-paced twist? Something strange is going on in the Candy Kingdom, and it’s up to you and your best buds to bring the world back to its former glory. Sugar Madness, from JollyCo, transports players into a fantastical place where strategy and skill are paramount to survival. Add Sugar Madness to your Meta Quest library now! Use our exclusive promo code UPLOADVR-224665 at checkout to get Sugar Madness 20% off!

From PMH Interactive LLC comes a VR survival horror game where someone, or some…thing, is always watching. The Obsessive Shadow Chapter 2 is the continuation of the original story where you step into the shoes of 16-year old Justin, trapped in an eerie ghost town, and stalked by a being that isn’t interested in playing games. The scary survival narrative is set to launch on Meta Quest, SteamVR, and PSVR2 later in 2026. Read about it here. 

Explorers, it’s time to pack up and hit the caves! Imagine climbing through the depths of some of the most iconic real-life and VR-created cave systems out there. Immerse yourself in 3R Games’ Cave Crave this July, prepare for another unforgettable simulation – Cave Crave’s addition of the Tham Luang Cave for Meta Quest, and coming to SteamVR and PSVR2. 

Why be yourself when you can be a robot with jets for hands and wheels for legs?! Not only is Jetpack Clankers free, it’s multiplayer, so you can grab your friends and party your own way. WooorldXR invites you to embrace the chaos of massive arenas and high-energy matches, as well as a collection of arcade-style games when you need a break. Jetpack Clankers goes into early access on June 16th. Learn more here.

Become the driver you’ve always hoped to be and drive trucks like a pro in SoloDiveInteractive’s driving simulator, POLY TRUCK. Virtually practice your driving precision, complete challenges to unlock perks, and be on the lookout for the elusive Golden Trucks. Wishlist POLY TRUCK for Meta Quest today! Read more here.

Discover a virtual world where everything around you is made of micro voxels and you have to fight to survive! Voxel Playground by CyDream places players in a state-of-the-art physics sandbox, meaning when you make something go boom, you see it go boom exactly how you’d expect. Build structures, fight creatures, use weapons– the list goes on! Coming soon to SteamVR, players can take advantage of the upcoming update with new maps, items, and mods.

Reimagine the classic 90s style horror game, but in virtual reality! Grab your gear and get ready to discover Already Dead, from Mooncall Games. This spooky old-school survival puzzler offers first-person interactions with fixed-camera, third person gameplay. Learn the game lore and more when Already Dead launches this Fall for PSVR2.

Hold on tight because this is gonna be a fast ride! Hyperlane Highway, from Ryality Studio, invites players to take everything they love about speed and times it by 10. This VR hoverboard roguelite transports players into a neon, cyberpunk-style world where they need to dodge enemy fire, attack with dual wielding blasters, and build a loadout – all while steering through neon hyperlanes. Hyperlane Highway is available to wishlist for Meta Quest and SteamVR, with a full launch scheduled for Q4 2026. Read about it here.

Looking for the next favorite calm, cozy game to add to your collection? Introducing Interlocked: Puzzle Island, from Armor Games Studios, where you can relax on your very own puzzle island and solve tactile, three-dimensional burr puzzles. With your little bird friend, discover handcrafted puzzles you’ll need to twist, pull, and dismantle to complete. Interlocked: Puzzle Island is available now for Meta Quest, and coming soon to SteamVR with brand new puzzles.

Are you up for a new mystery? Do you find yourself asking why and finding clues everywhere you go? iWorlds Studio’s controversial escape room, Dark Trip, invites players indulge in some little pink pills and rely on the hallucinations that follow to solve puzzles and investigate a creepy crime. On June 12th, this psychedelic project drops its latest update - Compartment of Souls - on SteamVR. Dark Trip can also be found on Meta Quest in early access.

So, you like skateboarding, but do you really know skateboarding? Taking from the spirit of the 70s freeride culture, BOMB THE HILL, from Pokodzima Studio, ramps up the nostalgia in a brand new skateboarding experience where players will weave in and out of traffic, race down some killer hills, battle their rivals, and of course, enjoy the whole roadtrip-style atmosphere. BOMB THE HILL is available for Meta Quest today, and will release on SteamVR for the first time later this summer. Check it out here.

And closing out the show was the brand new game announcement of horror first-person-shooter, Rustmourne! This VR sci-fi horror experience is inspired by classics like Half Life: Alyx and Dead Space, with VR-designed interactions at the forefront of the design. Players can explore ancient corridors and discover what waits in the dark – run, hide, or chop ‘em up to survive. Wishlist Rustmourne on SteamVR today! Read more here.

Thank you again for another The UploadVR Showcase. We’re so grateful for everyone involved this season, and already can’t wait to bring you the best the VR has to offer again in December. See you then! In the meantime, if you have info about an upcoming project, don’t forget to reach out to the editorial team and tell them all about it at tips@uploadvr.com.

The psychedelic horror escape room game Dark Trip got a major update today during the UploadVR Showcase. The "Compartment of Souls" update adds the 15th escape room to the game.

The new update is live on Meta Quest where the game has been in Early Access since February 2025. Since then, Dark Trip has seen continuous updates and improvements on Meta's platform. On June 4, Dark Trip's closed playtest on Steam became available, where the game is available both with PC VR support and conventional flat controls.

In Dark Trip, you play as an investigator hired by a retired businessman to locate his missing daughter. This brings you to an abandoned laboratory whose mysteries have to be solved You progress by solving escape room style puzzles, and occasionally by taking pills to force a hallucinatory state that transforms the environment. 

Dark Trip is available now in Early Access on Meta Quest, and will be coming to SteamVR in the future.

The new game reveal trailer, seen here, closed out the showcase:

The developer describes Rustmourne as "a VR Sci-fi Survival Horror with detailed, VR-designed interactions, strongly inspired by Half-Life: Alyx and Dead Space. Traverse the corridors of an ancient, derelict structure, and face the tortured beings in it: hide, run, or cut off their limbs to survive."

Invoking the name of Half-Life: Alyx has been a double-edged sword for developers. Since its release in 2020, Alyx has set a high bar for other VR games to clear, narrative shooter or otherwise, and the results have been mixed at best. Just from the trailer, it does appear to lean more Dead Space in its environments and creature design, albeit with clear VR interactions.

Rustmourne is available to wishlist now on Steam. At the time of this article, there is no news on additional platforms.

During today's UploadVR Showcase, Pokodzima Games announced that their upcoming downhill skateboarding game Bomb the Hill will be racing onto SteamVR this summer. The newly announced SteamVR release of Bomb the Hill will launch alongside the previously known Meta Quest version.

A new trailer includes QR codes to direct would-be skaterbois and skatergoils to the game's shop pages where you can wishlist it today.

Bomb the Hill was born from a prototype built for the Oculus Publishing Ignition program, a funding initiative for Quest games announced by Meta in 2024. This program offered a path to funding projects targeting 'midcore' players with a particular interest in simulation, sports, and social projects.

In Bomb the Hill, you'll race down dangerous mountain roads, weave through traffic at insane speeds, battle desperate rivals, perform tricks, and survive brutal crashes. The game blends realistic downhill skating mechanics with atmospheric storytelling and a road-trip vibe.

Bomb the Hill is coming to Meta Quest and SteamVR this summer. The planned price is $19.99.

We already knew the game was coming to Steam later this year. A new trailer at today's UploadVR Summer Showcase confirmed the neon-soaked FPS will also hit Meta Quest headsets:

Hyperlane Highway is a solo developer project where you lean your entire body to steer your hoverboard through neon-lit hyper lanes while dual wielding blasters. The hoverboard will match your body's movement in a locomotion system designed to minimize motion sickness induced from artificial VR movement.

Playtesting is open right now in developer Ryality Studio's Discord. The Early Access period is expected to last about six months, allowing time to balance the game from player feedback and add new upgrades, weapons, and environments.

Hyperlane Highway can be wishlisted now on Steam and Meta Quest.

Watch the trailer here:

Poly Truck is a physics-driven, tactile truck simulator with an interactive low-poly cockpit where every key turn, gear shift, and cabin control responds directly to your virtual hands. It also supports driving via the analog sticks and face button inputs on the Quest controllers for those who prefer that method.

The gameplay loop requires drivers to navigate the map seeking out and collecting golden trucks until the main trailer required for delivery unlocks. Completing that delivery unlocks the next level. The game was built using Godot, a less popular game development engine among VR developers than Unity and Unreal Engine.

Truck sims like American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator have been popular amongst PC VR players for years and while Poly Truck is obviously not in the same realm of graphical fidelity, standalone VR players have had precious few viable alternatives.

Poly Truck can be wishlisted now for Meta Quest 3 headsets ahead of its planned Q4 2026 release.

The game's website has been up for some time, but the first official trailer dropped at today's UploadVR Summer Showcase:

Jetpack Clankers is the newest title from Wooorld Inc., a departure from its previous titles, Google Earth-based exploration experience Wooorld and Geoguessr-like location guessing game Where On Earth.

In Clankers, players are transformed into robots with jets for hands and wheels for legs racing around huge arenas at breakneck speeds. It also touts a host of activities like arcade games, toys, a special game called Clankball, and creating musical beats with friends.

Jetpack Clankers releases in Early Access on Meta Quest on June 16. Its official website also says "Steam Frame and PC VR support coming soon."

The first Obsessive Shadow game took place in a single home (or your own home in its upcoming mixed reality update) in the 1980s. Chapter 2 expands outside as shown in the reveal trailer:

Chapter 2 is set in 2006, twenty years after the first game. Old Diamond Drive, the street of the home from the first game, and its surrounding neighborhood is mostly abandoned. Players take on the role of sixteen year old Justin, who has lost a bet to a friend and has to stay in the creepy community for one night. In true horror trope fashion, Justin only brings a camcorder and a flashlight. It feels like the setup for a late 90s or early 00s horror film.

The Obsessive Shadow Chapter 2 is expected on PS VR2, Quest, and SteamVR sometime this year.

Watch the reveal trailer here:

Project NEOS (a working title subject to change) is described by developer False Horizon as "John Wick meets Ellen Ripley," taking inspiration from immersive sims like 2017's Prey and 2022's Gloomwood. Taking all of that into consideration with the gameplay shown in the trailer, it's fair to presume you will be armed and able to defend yourself, albeit with a limited amount of ammo that forces a fair amount of stealth gameplay to stay alive.

False Horizon is currently holding alpha playtests on its Discord. The trailer does not specify which VR platform the game is being built for. That said, the cel shaded art style in the trailer has grown popular with developers building for standalone VR platforms and False Horizon has posted about its project in r/OculusQuest on Reddit with the 'Standalone' tag.

As announced during today's UploadVR Showcase, the full release of cozy VR color-by-numbers game Color-A-Cube is coming June 18. Color-A-Cube combines voxel art, crisp interactions, satisfying pops, and sparkling completion effects into a relaxing, creative paint-by-numbers experience.

The full 1.0 release includes over 100 voxel models, new story-driven coloring experiences, weekly free model drops, monthly DLC releases, and crossover content with other games.

A release trailer was shown during today's UploadVR Showcase, embedded here.

Developed by AlterEyes, best known for VR mech action game Big Shots, Color-A-Cube is a free to download app described as a “relaxing voxel coloring experience that brings cube-based worlds to life.” Color-A-Cube is currently available in early access, with various themes and models available.

We'll have a hands-on impression article posted on the full build's release day. Stay tuned for that.

Color-A-Cube is available now on Meta Quest and PICO.

After a lengthy development cycle, Disembodied is coming to Quest this year, on October 15. Disembodied is a mixed reality platformer that turns your real hand movements into precise, physics-driven gameplay. You'll guide a pair of disembodied (!) hands through a range of different challenges, including platforming sections, stealth areas, and puzzle-solving levels, while interacting with the environment in a natural way.

You'll also collect power-ups and use hand gestures to activate them. And there's a level editor, too, allowing you to create your own levels using hand tracking, which can then be uploaded for the community to enjoy.

Disembodied was first shown back in 2024, during UploadVR's Summer Showcase, after which we chatted with the game's developer, Kevin Walker.

"In Disembodied you control your disembodied hands with your... hands," Walker wrote to us. "The game is mixed reality, and uses only hand tracking. Your hand movements are copied 1:1 to the disembodied hands, which you must maneuver through small levels, featuring various mechanics and challenges."

Disembodied finally has a release date and you can wishlist the game on Quest ahead of its release on October 15.

Most VR music apps focus on a single instrument and performance with the game. Solo developer Paul M. Christian aims to change that in Theremin's next update, revealed at today's UploadVR Summer Showcase.

Watch the trailer here:

The Ghost Hands add-on will allow players to record motion loops and perform in ensemble with cloned versions of themselves. This allows players to layer melodies on top of one another in harmony, as shown in the trailer.

A theremin is a hands free musical instrument that typically consists of a box with two metal antennas. These create an electromagnetic field that senses the musician's position. Sound is generated by moving your hands in the proximity of the two antennas, varying the electromagnetic field depending on hand position and distance to the instrument.

Theremin is out now on Meta Quest. The Ghost Hands add-on will be available July 1.

BrushHammer is a mixed-reality game that lets you build, collect, paint, and display miniature figures. You'll pick from a huge collection of minis, kit bash them with different parts and accessories, and paint them using tools like spray cans, airbrushes, shading brushes, decals, and shiny coatings.

Gameplay was shown in a trailer as part of today's UploadVR Showcase, and we've embedded that below.

In addition to painting figures, BrushHammer lets you show off your masterpiece in your space, send photos to friends, and climb from total newbie to legendary painter in Career Mode, where you'll complete commissions, impress picky judges, and spend your hard-earned points in the hobby shop on new tools, accessories, and upgrades for your creative setup.

BrushHammer Miniature Painter is now available to wishlist on the Meta store.

Here's the new story trailer:

The real life exercise bike integration is as low tech as it gets. Simply strap or otherwise attach your controllers to your legs and the game handles the rest of the legwork (pun intended), similar to Dance Dash. The bike is steered by leaning side to side with handling improving at higher speeds.

Dodging traffic also builds up energy to overcharge the bike for higher speeds and increased score multipliers to climb the global leaderboards. Earned points can be used to unlock new bikes, songs, levels, achievements, and challenges.

Pedal Rebel can be wishlisted now on Steam and Meta Quest. It releases on October 5.

Watch the trailer here:

It originally launched only supporting hand tracking. Controller support was added after player feedback earlier this month. The full release will feature seven levels of relaxing miniature building in stylized locations around the world:

• Kyoto, Japan
• Venice, Italy
• Banff, Canada
• Paris, France
• Agra, India
• Cuzco, Peru
• Svalbard, Norway

In addition to the actual building process, each environment has a small booklet with bite-sized facts about the location, offering insight into its history, architecture, and culture.

Typically, pre-order discounts are ten to fifteen percent off. Having been in Early Access for free since January of this year, developer Astral Shores Games is offering an aggressive 33% off for anyone who pre-orders the game before July 23.

Puzzles of the World can be pre-ordered now on Meta Quest 3/3S.

Announced during today's UploadVR Showcase, Detective VR is coming to PlayStation VR2 and SteamVR on September 9. The narrative-driven mixed reality and VR investigation game allows you to control time, collect clues and interview witnesses in passthrough mixed reality mode, where you'll hear unreliable testimonies and confront suspects to find out what happened.

Detective VR has been available on Quest since February 2025. In our review of the Quest version, we called it fun, inspiring, suspenseful, and "a delight to play."

Detective VR focuses extensively on story, mixed reality gameplay, and hand tracking, allowing you to pinch to take photos and thoroughly examine documents and crime scenes with a magnifying glass. It's possible to play with controllers, but hand tracking makes the experience really shine. When Detective VR launched on Quest, we chatted with the game's developers specifically about the way they sought to implement hand tracking.

“Our goal was to create [no] friction between the player and the story; the interactions had to become natural, almost invisible. That's why mixed reality and hand-tracking were so important… you feel at ease, interacting in the comfort of your environment.”

You can unravel the mysteries of Detective VR when it lands on PlayStation VR2 and SteamVR on September 9. It's out now on Quest.

The announcement was made during today's UploadVR Summer Showcase. Watch the trailer here:

Lanesplit rewards daring, faster riding with score multipliers coming from higher speeds and tighter lane splitting. Slow riders and crashes are punished with having their scores reset to zero. The game supports solo and co-op gameplay in multiple traffic conditions and weather settings. Players can select from bikes with different attributes like handling, traction, and stopping power depending on the race at hand.

For those looking for a more chill experience, a Zen mode removes all traffic from the roads for isolated, open road rides.

Lanesplit released in January and currently has a 'Mostly Positive' rating from 322 user reviews. It is currently on sale on Steam for 34% off through June 24, one day after the VR support update.

Salmon Man's description on the Meta Horizon store says it is "made for players who love difficult games and the satisfaction of earning every victory." That is a nice way of saying it is designed to be frustrating and when we reviewed it, it lived up to the billing, though it managed to remain fun in spite of the rage.

Developer Valem Studio will up the ante with a multiplayer update in July. The update was revealed at today's UploadVR Summer Showcase:

Players will have the added stress of competing against each other as well as the environment to make their way upstream using only their paddles. Success will unlock new paddles and achievements. Previous updates added an extreme Lava Mode in February 2026 and a new mountain map in April.

Salmon Man is out now on Steam and Meta Quest.

A new trailer confirming a September release debuted at today's UploadVR Summer Showcase:

Players take on the role of a down-on-his-luck magician attempting to reclaim his former glory. In doing so, he accidentally sparks an interdimensional invasion.

Wielding the titular cursed wand, you are tasked with defending the fantasy city of Crowville in multiple gameplay modes. The Nightmare mode is a take on the classic endless wave mode while Incursions incorporates more strategic methods and tower defense tactics. According to developer Master Crowd Games, both modes connect to the main story campaign.

The Magician VR: The Cursed Wand can be wishlisted now on Meta Quest.

A new trailer was revealed at today's UploadVR Summer Showcase showing more of the co-op gameplay. Watch the trailer here:

Sol Protocol supports up to three players working together to manage the team's spaceship, helm gun turrets to defend against enemy ships, and land to explore abandoned stations for loot and ship upgrades. Players can assume one of three different roles, Captain, Pilot, or Gunner, depending on the task at hand.

Developer Singular Perception (Epyka) has been running open alpha playtests on Quest 3/3S since March and originally planned its Early Access release for April. At the time of this article, the Early Access release is only planned for Meta Quest, with no news on the planned Steam version.

Sol Protocol can be wishlisted now on Quest and Steam.

C.A.B.A. (Center of Anomalies of Buenos Aires), is a short first-person survival horror experience launching with full VR support on PlayStation VR2, Meta Quest, and SteamVR, plus flat versions for PS5 and Steam.

Set in a Buenos Aires subway station that shouldn't exist, the game is a terrifying trek through a subterranean liminal space. You can't fight what walks the tunnels down here; you can only try to escape.

A trailer has been shown during the UploadVR Summer Showcase 2026, and we've included that below.

Survival games taking place in liminal spaces have seen massive popularity in recent years, as the phenomenon of basements and office buildings being extra spooky takes hold in the public consciousness. The Exit 8, a terrifying walking simulator, has been scaring players in record numbers, while Backrooms, a feature-length film based on a post on an internet forum, has found exceptional success in recent days.

Though an exact release date has not yet been revealed, you can wishlist C.A.B.A. now on Quest, PlayStation VR2, and SteamVR.

Maru VR has revealed the release of Major Update 1.1.0 for Bootstrap Island, the Robinson Crusoe-inspired VR survival adventure game. The update adds a new cumulative progression system, an early-game inventory solution, dangerous new nocturnal predators, bHaptics support, and several gameplay improvements.

A new trailer for Update 1.1.0 was shown during today's UploadVR Showcase, which you can see below.

Our review of Bootstrap Island's 1.0 release was complimentary. Mike wrote, "Bootstrap Island exits Early Access as a fully realized VR survival adventure that stands up to any top game in the genre."

However, survival games can be extremely challenging for new players. Today's update seeks to ease the early game friction. To start, new tools and unlocked items are now tied to a player's cumulative survival time across all playthroughs. This means that every day survived contributes toward future unlocks, ensuring that even when a run ends in failure, it's not pointless.

Managing resources in early game is easier now, too, with the addition of a crate that can be filled with resources and supplies and carried around the island.

Bootstrap Island is available now on SteamVR. A PlayStation VR2 port has been announced, and can be wishlisted here.

First revealed during December 2025's UploadVR Winter Showcase, Guardians Planetfall is an ambitious new cooperative shooter that throws players into a desperate battle for humanity’s survival across a war-torn galaxy. We got a closer look at the upcoming game via a new trailer during today's UploadVR Showcase.

The trailer is embedded here:

Designed for fast-paced tactical combat, Guardians Planetfall allows players to assemble into squads of up to four soldiers and take on dangerous missions across procedurally generated planets and sprawling space installations. Every deployment will present new challenges, with dynamic environments and unpredictable encounters ensuring that no two battles play out the same way.

Players will face a wide range of threats, including relentless alien forces, elite Void soldiers, and towering war machines capable of turning the tide of battle in an instant. Success will depend on teamwork, strategy, and quick decision-making as squads fight to secure objectives and push back enemy advances across multiple fronts.

Building on the foundations established by Guardians Frontline, the new title aims to deliver larger-scale engagements, deeper cooperative gameplay, and a richer science-fiction setting tailored specifically for virtual reality.

Our earlier coverage of Guardians Planetfall described the game as "Helldivers 2 for VR," and this latest trailer only reinforces that idea. It also (if I may be so bold) looks cool as hell.

Guardians Planetfall will launch in early access on Quest 3/3S and SteamVR in 2026. Players eager to join the fight can wishlist the game now, and join the game's Discord to keep updated on future announcements from the development team.

In a Discord statement, Mighty Eyes detailed what led to this decision:

The last few years have been tough. For VR as a market, for Wanderer, and for our studio. We had ambitious plans and for the most part we think we executed them as well as we could. Sadly, it wasn't enough. The game performed solidly on console but we just didn't see the mobile uptake we'd counted on. What we'd banked on didn't pay off.

We're eternally grateful for the chance Sony took on us – their belief in this IP from the start (and their continued commitment) made so much of what we achieved possible. We're also thankful and humbled by the support we received from Meta and Pico along the way. There are genuinely good people behind these platforms who backed us through and through.

We're still figuring out what's next for Mighty Eyes amidst this (very) volatile market. But we won't be developing Wanderer 2, and ongoing support for Wanderer: The Fragments of Fate isn't something we're able to continue.

Wanderer: The Fragments of Fate was first announced in 2023 with sequel Wanderer 2: The Seas of Fortune revealed in February 2024 with a teaser clip of a pirate flag. Fragments of Fate had a troubled development process with multiple delays until its eventual release in April 2025 on Meta Quest & PlayStation VR2. A SteamVR port followed in October 2025.

We played Fragments of Fate at release, saying the puzzles were still top notch, but technical issues and a poor combat system hurt the overall experience.

Wanderer: The Fragments Of Fate Review - An Ambitious Puzzle Adventure In Need Of More Time

Wanderer: The Fragments of Fate is an ambitious puzzle adventure with amazing potential, but is sorely let down by performance issues. Our full review.

UploadVRPete Austin

Shortly after release, Mighty Eyes laid out a roadmap to address the concerns of players and upgrade the Quest 3 version. Its last update, Patch 1.5, was eight months ago at the time of this article. Fragments of Fate currently sits at a score of 3.4 with 486 ratings on Quest, 3.94 with 772 ratings on PS VR2, and a 'mixed' rating with 132 on Steam.

We learned very little about Wanderer 2 after its announcement, with Fragments of Fate taking center stage in Mighty Eyes' development updates and third party VR showcases.

We will continue to monitor Mighty Eyes' development and report any additional updates.

Wanderer: The Fragments of Fate is available on Meta Quest, PS VR2, and Steam.

When revealing Steam Frame back in November, Valve said it would ship in "early 2026". For pricing, it told UploadVR it was "aiming" to sell Steam Frame for less than the $1000 Index full-kit.

But given the global memory shortage resulting from the rapid growth of AI, come February the company announced that it would need to "revisit" its "exact shipping schedule and pricing".

This month, in a blog post launching the 'Steam Frame' Verified program, Valve confirmed that both Steam Frame and the Steam Machine consolized PC will launch "this summer", meaning sometime in the next three months.

Steam Frame Hands-On: UploadVR’s Impressions Of Valve’s New Headset

UploadVR’s David Heaney and Ian Hamilton went hands-on with Steam Frame at Valve HQ, trying both standalone use and PC VR.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Steam Frame Verified

Just as Steam Deck has a 'Steam Deck Verified' tag for Steam store listings to note games that Valve has tested to work well on the handheld, there is now a 'Steam Frame Verified' program too.

Valve says the 'Steam Frame Verified' tag "focuses on the experience customers will have with the device out-of-the-box in standalone mode", and doesn't apply to how a game will perform when rendered and streamed by a gaming PC.

The program was announced at GDC 2026 in March. But whereas back then Valve said the tag would require VR titles to hit 90FPS, as you can see in the slide in the linked article, the company has since reduced this requirement to 72FPS, matching the store requirements of competing standalone headsets like Meta Quest and Pico.

Valve now lists the requirements for VR titles as "a minimum of 72 fps at 1728×1728 during normal play", while for flatscreen titles running on Steam Frame on a giant floating virtual monitor, the requirement is 30 fps at 1280×720.

Developers can read about the Steam Frame Verified requirements on the Steamworks website.

Pallets Arriving In The US

XR enthusiast Brad Lynch's Discord team of dataminers and sleuths has noticed pallets of Steam Frames are already arriving at Valve's warehouses in the United States.

The shipments were spotted on the supply chain intelligence website ImportYeti.

When the new Steam Controller was spotted arriving via the same method, the product ended up launching just over 3 weeks later.

That doesn't necessarily mean the same will happen for Steam Frame, but it does suggest that the headset may launch closer to the start of summer than the end. We'll keep an extremely close eye on Valve in the coming weeks to find out.

Article updated after publication to note Valve changing the Steam Frame Verified tag's VR FPS requirement and pallets of Steam Frame being spotted arriving in the US.

Developers have been able to extend their smartphone apps to access the camera and microphone of Meta's smart glasses since December, if the user enables developer mode and grants permission, through the Wearables Device Access Toolkit SDK. But the only output they could send to the glasses was audio via Bluetooth.

Last month, Meta added support for bringing apps to Meta Ray-Ban Display's heads-up display (HUD), through two separate paths: Extended Smartphone Apps and Standalone Web Apps.

Extended Smartphone Apps

The same Wearables Device Access Toolkit SDK developers have been using to access the glasses camera in their smartphone apps can now send UI content to the display.

Within the display area, developers can show text, images, buttons, icons, and videos, using Meta-provided UI components, styled and laid out within FlexBox containers.

Developers implement these components in the same language they likely already use for the rest of the app, Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android.

For the extended smartphone apps path, raw input from the Meta Neural Band is handled by Meta's operating system. The user can navigate between and click on the buttons developers placed using the same finger swipe gestures they use for the rest of the operating system, and the smartphone app will receive these click events to run code on the phone and update the display.

Essentially, the extended smartphone apps path just lets the HUD be used as a highly managed and controlled external display with button navigation and input, but the core of the app continues to run on the user's smartphone.

Interested developers can find the documentation for this here. Distributing these apps still requires the user to enable developer mode.

Standalone Web Apps

The Web Apps path for Meta Ray-Ban Display is a completely new stack for development on the Meta Ray-Ban Display, where apps made with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can run natively on the glasses.

This path is far less constrained, letting developers use whatever kind of user interface web framework they want, and provides access to Meta Neural Band swipes and taps, motion and orientation data from the IMU in the glasses, GPS location of the connected phone, and local on-device storage – all using open web standards. And the apps can run without the smartphone connected.

Technically, what Meta did here was just give the glasses the ability to open any web URL in a lightweight on-device browser. But given that the in-lens display is 600×600 and the only available inputs are directional swiping and tapping, most websites are effectively unusable, so the idea here is to build mini web apps specifically designed for Meta Ray-Ban Display.

Developers are responsible for hosting these web apps, and can use any hosting solution they want, as they would with any other website, as long as it supports HTTPS. Meta does not provide hosting. Free options include GitHub Pages.

This approach has the advantage of meaning the apps can be easily and instantly tested and iterated upon without putting on the glasses, using the arrow and enter keys on a keyboard to simulate Meta Neural Band swipes and taps.

The path for adding web URLs as apps to Meta Ray-Ban Display is to navigate to the smartphone app settings, then tap App Connections, then Web Apps, and add the URL. The Codex and Claude Code plugin can also generate a QR code that developers can share to launch into the phone app's Web Apps section, which will automatically ask to add the URL. The user needs to have developer mode enabled for their glasses.

Interested developers can find documentation here.

Full AI Coding Agent Support

For both development paths, Extended Smartphone Apps and Standalone Web Apps, Meta fully supports AI coding agents.

This includes installable plugins for OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude Code, auto-loaded instructions for GitHub Copilot and Cursor, and a fallback AGENTS.md file for other systems.

Meta also has a public Wearables MCP server for live documentation search, meaning agents can always reference the most up-to-date details on how to properly develop for Meta Ray-Ban Display.

This all makes it possible to "vibe code" apps for the glasses, meaning any owner with basic technical knowledge can build their own information overlays, real-time data displays, micro-apps, utilities, and media streaming tools.

(If you're unaware, AI coding agents have significantly improved in the last year or so, and are now capable of building entire apps without the user ever needing to write their own code).

Display Recording

The firmware update that brings support for building visual apps also brought support for display recording on Meta Ray-Ban Display.

A major issue I faced when reviewing Meta Ray-Ban Display at launch was the inability to show you, our readers, what I was seeing. Sure, you could stick a camera up to the lens, but the waveguide is designed for a human eye, not a sensor, and I've never seen any attempt at this accurately depict what I saw. These camera capture techniques also preclude actually wearing the glasses.

Now, Meta Ray-Ban Display owners can record the display, with the output showing it superimposed on the camera view, and including any playing audio.

This was arguably an essential feature for Meta to ship alongside visual apps, as it lets developers show the world their experiments on social media. It also makes it easier for journalists, influencers, and creators to show off the capabilities of Meta Ray-Ban Display.

Interesting Apps So Far

Since support for building and testing visual apps went live last month, we've seen a number of incredibly impressive initial experiments from developers already.

Some remain private solo demos, while others are available for any Meta Ray-Ban Display owner to use.

While by no means a comprehensive list, here's just a small collection we've noticed:

Ghost Run: Racing Your Past Self

Software developer Stijn Spanhove, of In The Pocket, built a web app that let him race his past self by manually hardcoding in a GPX (GPS Exchange Format) file from a past run recorded by Strava.

The screen leverages the compass of the glasses for orientation and the GPS of the connected smartphone for the location, tracking you and your past self on a blue line representing the path.

Spanhove says he's planning to make a public version of this connected with Strava.

YouTube, TikTok & Twitch Clients

While I don't personally find Meta Ray-Ban Display's monocular display system visually comfortable enough to want to watch videos on it, owners willing to put up with the eye strain had been crying out for wider support than just the built-in Instagram Reels app.

A pseudonymous developer going by the handle AeroSummit has satisfied this need by building Meta Ray-Ban Display web apps for YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch.

While it's technically already possible to access this site, AeroSummit has crafted a simplified interface designed to fit into the 600×600 display space and work well with only the swipe and tap inputs of the Meta Neural Band.

They're available through Herald Hub, AeroSummit's unified app launcher for the glasses.

DOOM

The original 1993 DOOM has become one of the most widely ported pieces of software in history, and getting it to run on every kind of digital device from thermometers, calculators, and even HDMI adapters has become a fun challenge for hacker-minded developers.

So naturally, XR developer Timur Abdrakhimov has already ported it to Meta Ray-Ban Display.

An AI Agent That Orders Uber & DoorDash

The most impressive part of Google's I/O demo of the upcoming Warby Parker and Gentle Monster smart glasses was Gemini's ability to agentically operate your connected smartphone to do things like order Uber and DoorDash.

Developer Rohan Arun is building a cross-platform agent called Super, designed to perform agentic actions without the need for a phone, and the first glasses Super supports is Meta Ray-Ban Display.

Arun shared a clip of the app being used to order Starbucks, with no input required beyond voice.

Smart Home Control

The ability to control smart home devices by simply looking at them and tapping your index finger to your thumb is an ideal future use case of XR.

Unfortunately, it's not possible today, at least not without significant manual setup. But the next best thing is being able to control your devices from your glasses with a few swipes of your fingers, without getting up or having to call out to a speaker with your voice.

Krzysztof Wrona, a developer at Mondly, shared a short clip of a demo of exactly this. It's not currently publicly available for others to try.

A Reader-Mode Web Browser

As we described earlier in the article, the technical foundation of web app support on Meta Ray-Ban Display is essentially that the glasses now have a built-in web browser to access web URLs. But given that the in-lens display is 600×600 and the only available inputs are directional swiping and tapping, most websites are effectively unusable.

Another one of AeroSummit's creations is a web browser, a web portal with a simplified interface for DuckDuckGo search that implements a simplified reader mode for the websites you access.

Let Us Know!

If you have an interesting experiment or published web app for Meta Ray-Ban Display, please contact us to let us know.

I'm actively writing on UploadVR again, and this article is one in a series of "catch-up" pieces where I report on some of the interesting things that have been happening in the industry in recent months. And yes, VR Download is coming back soon!

The filing with the Maine Attorney General's office alleged that account usernames, associated emails, VRChat+ subscription status, and login history including device information, hardware identifiers, and IP addresses were exposed, while passwords, payment information, and government ID documents for age verification were not compromised.

It was submitted by a "Scott Caruso", listed as a 'Director" with an official VRChat email address of scaruso@vrchat.com. And multiple news outlets reported it as a VRChat data breach, without verifying that it was real.

Shortly after the reports surfaced, a VRChat community manager dropped a rebuttal on VRChat's Discord service:

This same messaging was posted in response to messages inquiring about the breach on Reddit:

We emailed scaruso@vrchat.com to check whether the address even existed, and it bounced back immediately as nonexistent. We also cannot find a single mention online of a Scott Caruso working for VRChat, or any social VR company at all.

We reached out to VRChat directly for an official statement and it replied with the same statement regarding the alleged breach and the employee who reported it:

"VRChat did not submit this Notice of Data Incident, and the employee/email cited does not exist.

We have no reason to believe that our data or systems have been compromised.

We are in the process of contacting the Maine Attorney General's office to have this removed."

We will continue monitoring this situation and update this article if any new information emerges.

The CleanSheet games overall have reached over 180,000 paid players across PS VR2, Meta Quest, and Pico. Developer Incisiv says CleanSheet Soccer 2 was built for PlayStation fans who pushed for a version of Quest's CleanSheet Soccer Pro to play on their platform. Incisiv ditched the subscription model of the original for a self-contained premium offering.

Here's the release trailer:

CleanSheet Soccer 2 has multiple training modes to target specific goalkeeping drills. Examples are Lightning Hands, which targets hand speed, while Matrix Reflex challenges players to stop rapid-fire deflections. All of the match situations are motion-captured for better realism. The game also has a Shot Creator mode where players can build their own custom training drills. Aside from drills, there are global leaderboards to chase and performance tracking to measure your improvement.

The career mode offers one of three fictional clubs, Stanton United, Forgehill Rovers, and Waveport City, with their own stadiums, identities, and progression tracks. Being that this is a PlayStation title, there is a full trophy system as well for the platinum trophy collectors of the world.

CleanSheet Soccer 2 is out now on PS VR2. We have a copy of the game and will post our impressions soon.

Connect is Meta's annual XR conference, its primary event since the last F8 in 2021. Originally called Oculus Connect, from the first in 2014 until the sixth in 2019, the event sees the company announce VR, AR, and smart glasses hardware, software, and new developer tools, as well as show off some of its research towards the future of XR.

"Come join us at Connect September 23–24 at our campus in Menlo Park, California, and get the first glimpse of what's coming to the next computing platform. We'll have an evening keynote and developer sessions where we'll share the latest in VR, wearables, metaverse, and AI."

When teasing the event last month, Meta pointed to the fact that its smart glasses are "one of the fastest-growing consumer electronics categories in history", with over 7 million units sold in 2025 and daily usage tripling year-over-year, and that it "pushing VR forward as the biggest investor in the industry".

So what might we expect at Connect 2026?

On the VR/MR side, it's likely that Meta will at least tease, if not formally announce, the ultralight headset with an open periphery design and tethered compute puck that leaked internal memos from December revealed is set to launch in the first half of 2027.

Graphics Depicting Meta’s Next Headset Found In Quest Firmware

Graphics depicting Meta’s upcoming ultralight headset with a tethered compute puck, codenamed Phoenix, have been found in Quest firmware.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Earlier this year, following the scaledown of Meta's VR spending, closure of most of its acquired studios, and retreat of Horizon Worlds from VR, multiple executives confirmed that the company is still working on building future headsets, despite rumors to the contrary.

Meta CFO: We’re “Building Future Headsets” & Still “Have Optimism” In VR

Meta CFO Susan Li says the company still has “optimism in the future of VR”, and confirmed that it’s still “building future headsets”.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

On the smart glasses side, The Information recently reported that Meta plans to launch four new models this year, codenamed “Modelo”, “Luna”, “RBM2 Refresh”, and “Mojito VIP”.

It's unclear what “Modelo”, “Luna”, or “Mojito VIP” are, though one of them may be the Prada Meta Glasses that CNBC reported last year were in the works. Meanwhile, “RBM2 Refresh” almost certainly refers to a refreshed version of generation 2 of the regular Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which launched at Connect 2025.

The Information also reports that Meta will start testing Artemis, the codename for its first consumer true AR glasses. Previous reports have suggested Artemis will be sleeker than the Orion prototype but with a narrower field of view. And it seems as if Meta will be beaten to the punch by Snap.

We'll bring you full coverage of Meta Connect 2026 in September.

I'm actively writing on UploadVR again, and this article is one in a series of "catch-up" pieces where I report on some of the interesting things that have been happening in the industry in recent months. And yes, VR Download is coming back soon!

The claims were made by Mark Zuckerberg speaking to investors during the company's Q1 2026 earnings call.

In February, Meta's fashion, branding, and hardware partner EssilorLuxottica (which Meta owns a stake in) revealed that 7 million units of Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta glasses were sold in 2025 alone, and that the devices had become the "dominant driver" of its wholesale growth.

For comparison, Quest 2 sold an estimated 20 million units in two and a half years, while Steam Deck sold around 4 million units over the same timespan.

Near the start of this year, Bloomberg reported that Meta and EssilorLuxottica were discussing doubling or even tripling smart glasses production capacity. It's unclear whether this has yet happened.

It's undeniable at this point that smart glasses are a successful consumer product category, both in terms of sales and retention. The question now is whether Meta will maintain its lead once serious competition from Apple and Google arrives.

Google Gemini Smart Glasses Launching In Fall To Take On Meta

Google-powered smart glasses from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster are launching this fall to take on Ray-Ban Meta.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

At I/O 2026 Google confirmed that smart glasses with Gemini, from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, are launching this fall.

Apple is also widely rumored to be launching its own smart glasses in 2027, and this could further squeeze Meta's market share – though the company may be hoping that the total future market for smart glasses is large enough to have space for all three companies in the long term.

I'm actively writing on UploadVR again, and this article is one in a series of "catch-up" pieces where I report on some of the interesting things that have been happening in the industry in recent months. And yes, VR Download is coming back soon!

Gentle Monster and Warby Parker are rising competitors to EssilorLuxottica, Meta's partner, which owns the Ray-Ban and Oakley brands, is the largest eyewear company in the world by far, and has almost 4000 stores in the US alone. While far smaller in scale, they offer similar stylish designs. The US-based Warby Parker has over 270 physical stores in North America, while glasses from the South Korean Gentle Monster brand have become popular with younger people in the US and are worn by celebrities like Beyoncé, Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, and Billie Eilish.

Google first announced that it was working with the two companies on smart glasses to compete with Ray-Ban Meta back at I/O 2025, though at the time didn't share a specific release timeline or hardware details.

At I/O 2026, Google revealed that the first Warby Parker and Gentle Monster smart glasses powered by its technology will arrive "later this fall", and confirmed that these first devices will not feature a display, despite the company's repeated 2025 demos focusing on the in-lens display of its prototypes.

The Warby Parker device resembles the Ray-Ban Meta Scriber style, and could easily be mistaken for it, while the Gentle Monster option looks nothing like anything Meta and EssilorLuxottica have put out so far, instead bringing Gentle Monster's own design language to smart glasses.

Google previously said it will also work with Kering Eyewear, another one of EssilorLuxottica's competitors, in the future.

As with Ray-Ban Meta, the Warby Parker and Gentle Monster glasses have cameras, speakers, and microphones, and communicate with your phone. But Google's two major advantages over Ray-Ban Meta are Gemini and Android.

While Meta's Muse Spark model has mostly closed the intelligence gap, Gemini 3.5 Flash more deeply integrates into existing services like Google Maps for turn-by-turn audio directions and Nano Banana to edit the images you capture.

When connected to your Android phone, Gemini can also launch and take agentic action in apps like DoorDash and Uber, letting you order food or a ride with a command to Gemini, without needing to manually interact with your phone.

This capability stood out as a highlight of Google's live demo, wherein Google's Android XR lead Shahram Izadi and Android XR PM Nishtha Bhatia once again took the stage to show off what smart glasses can do, including asking Gemini to provide turn-by-turn directions and to order "my usual order at that coffee shop", prompting the AI system to take control of her phone, launch DoorDash, and operate it to order her coffee. Remarkable.

Unlike all the past demos from the duo, this time the glasses lacked an in-lens display. But the demo showed how this can be partially made up for through integration with Wear OS, Google's smart watch platform. After taking a photo using the camera glasses, and asking Gemini to edit it, Bhatia was able to preview the captured image (albeit a very tiny preview) on the Pixel Watch on her wrist.

Google hasn't yet said what kind of pricing to expect, nor any real specifications of the hardware. While the renders seem to show two cameras on the front, Google refused to confirm whether there are one or two cameras present, or any other specific technical details.

With Meta Connect 2026 set for September 23, Google could be facing an uphill battle to enter the market. Meta and EssilorLuxottica sold 7 million units in 2025 alone, and the Ray-Ban brand has become synonymous with the category. It's still very early days, though, of course, and the advantages of Gemini and deep Android integration could be a serious threat to Meta's position later this year.

I'm actively writing on UploadVR again, and this article is one in a series of "catch-up" pieces where I report on some of the interesting things that have been happening in the industry in recent months. And yes, VR Download is coming back soon!

Outblast can be played on flatscreen or in a VR headset, at least for the Steam version. Playing in VR gives you a 360 view of the environment, increasing the challenge as enemies can come from literally anywhere. Sometimes hazards fill the screen, other times you have to search the widened battlefield for any stragglers in order to advance to the next wave.

While playing with VR controllers, you steer your cutting edge C11-28 ship with the left joystick and fire by holding down the right joystick. While you can move in any direction, the weapons only fire left and right - something to keep in mind during the intense shootouts to come.

When starting Outblast, you have the option of playing through Arcade Mode, in which you attempt to clear through the game in a single run, or Stage Select, which unlocks after you clear the first level. There are five different levels, or “districts” for you to clear through, each ending with a punishing boss battle. The objective of each level is to shoot away each wave of enemies before they can annihilate your fighter.

You only have a limited number of lives, and you lose one whenever you are hit by an enemy or laser blast. Likewise, you are given a set time limit, but you gain extra time whenever you clear a wave. If you run out of lives or the time expires, the mission ends and your score is tallied and ranked on an online leaderboard. You can view the leaderboards for Arcade Mode and each individual stage in the main menu.

As you blast away the mechanized cubes and robot centipedes in your way, you collect data fragments that increase your score and build up your energy meter. Once your meter is full, you can spend it to unleash a special weapon attack with the left trigger. You can also use a boost with the right trigger. Boosting is handy while trying to move past the falling block enemies, and you can chain bursts for added distance by timing your trigger presses just right - just make sure not to crash into an enemy while speeding.

There are various power-ups you can collect that grant you extra lives, increase your ship’s rate of fire, or even cause data fragments to fly toward you with a magnet pick-up. Some of these power-ups are contained in a force field that you need to shoot at before you can safely access them.

Outblast’s graphics and visuals go for a Tron-like retro-future vibe, with cyberpunk backdrops, neon outlines and a synthetic soundtrack. Be warned though, it can be easy to lose track of your ship amidst the numerous glowing projectiles and the fact that your ship itself blends a little too well into the background. This is especially true when playing in VR Mode, and spinning around to get your bearings in a 360 space can get dizzying at times.

All in all, Outblast is a fun and challenging throwback to the arcade stick-shooters of old, with the added dimension of being fully immersed in the high-tech battlefield thanks to virtual reality. As I've noted before, the game is every bit as difficult to clear through as those classic coin-munchers, so be prepared to repeat the first district over and over again as you struggle to take on Outblast's swarms of machine enemies.

That sense of presence is what makes story-driven VR games so memorable. Whether they ask you to solve a mystery, survive a haunting journey, or step into the shoes of an unforgettable character, the best of them do more than entertain. They make you feel like part of the story.

Here are some standout story-driven VR games that prove just how powerful interactive storytelling can be. These have been selected by Mike and James, UploadVR's games writers, and we'd love to hear about your favorites in the comments section.

Before Your Eyes (PlayStation VR2)

As I (James) get older, I often find myself thinking about how quickly time seems to pass. My kids are growing up faster than I ever expected, and I wish I could slow things down and hold onto the little memories that seem to disappear almost as soon as they happen. This phase of life that I'm in has made Before Your Eyes resonate with me in a way few games have. It's also one of the most mechanically interesting games I've ever played in VR (or anywhere).

Before Your Eyes tells the life story of a recently deceased soul being ferried to the afterlife. Using eye-tracking (or simple controls in non-VR versions) the game advances whenever you blink, causing moments to slip away whether you're ready or not. It remains one of the most powerful stories I've ever experienced, using its unique mechanic to reinforce themes of memory, loss, family, and the fleeting nature of life.

It's only about 90 minutes long, but can obviously be experienced over and over, and each time is a bit different. Our review said it well: "there’s nothing else quite like Before Your Eyes."

Get it on PlayStation VR2.

RuinsMagus (Quest, PC VR, PlayStation VR2)

A JRPG-inspired dungeon crawler in which you take on the role of a novice mage exploring ancient ruins in search of powerful artifacts. Through spell-casting combat, dungeon exploration, and interactions with a colorful cast of characters, the game gradually uncovers the mysteries surrounding the city's past and the secrets hidden there.

While it was often knocked for repetitive level design, it features high production value and fully realized side characters. The story is strong, including a touching love story at the midway point of the game, and a terrific arc for your sidekick Iris and the game's villain. Overall, it's a great game for fans of fantasy anime and character-driven stories.

Get it on Quest, PC VR, and PlayStation VR2.

Dyschronia: Chronos Alternate (Quest, PS VR2, PC, Pico)

A three-part time-traveling murder mystery that plays more as an interactive visual novel than a fully realized VR game. It takes place in a future city where crime has supposedly been eliminated. You take on the role of Hal Scion, who uses a unique ability to dive into memories and reconstruct past events while investigating an impossible murder that threatens the foundations of this seemingly perfect society.

Through detective work and narrative-driven puzzles, the game unfolds into a complex story filled with twists, conspiracies, and questions about truth and free will. This one won't be a good fit for everybody (visual novel-style games are polarizing). Still, it features fantastic characters and an intriguing plot for those patient enough to play it.

Get it on Quest, PlayStation VR2, PC VR, and Pico.

Ghost Giant (PlayStation VR, Quest)

Our review said it well: "Ghost Giant has all the warmth and wonder you’ve come to expect from VR storytelling."

In this story-driven VR adventure, you play as a gentle giant spirit helping a young boy named Louis navigate life in the small town of Sancourt. Through light environmental puzzles and interactions with the world around him, you gradually form a bond with Louis and uncover a surprisingly emotional story about friendship.

Beneath its charming storybook presentation is a heartfelt and mature tale that tackles difficult themes, such as depression and neglect, with uncommon sensitivity.

Get it on PlayStation VR and Quest.

Call of the Sea VR (Quest)

Call of the Sea is set in the 1930s, and follows Norah Everhart as she journeys to a remote South Pacific island in search of her missing husband. As she explores ancient ruins and uncovers the secrets of a lost civilization, she begins to unravel the mysteries of the island.

The game combines environmental puzzles and exploration, and while these elements are strong, they're not the game's greatest strength. Its terrific story and gorgeous visuals help to elevate its somewhat basic puzzle gameplay.

Get it on Quest.

Edge of Nowhere (Rift)

Edge of Nowhere is a third-person VR adventure from Insomniac Games that follows Victor Howard, an adventurer who travels to Antarctica in search of his missing fiancée. What begins as a rescue mission quickly turns into a descent into madness as Victor encounters strange creatures, impossible landscapes, and horrors inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft (specifically, At The Mountains of Madness, a story written in 1931).

This game came out over ten years ago, and yet it's still one that we think about often enough. While it certainly is not perfect, it's worth playing even a decade later.

Get it on Rift (Meta Store).

Lies Beneath (Quest)

This survival-horror game follows Mae, a college student who returns to her hometown of Slumber, Alaska, after learning that her father has gone missing. As she searches for answers, she uncovers terrifying secrets lurking beneath the town and finds herself trapped in a nightmare filled with monsters, mystery, and psychological horror.

The game's striking comic book-inspired presentation gives the story a unique and memorable style. Its combination of engaging storytelling, distinctive visuals, and effective horror makes it one of VR's standout story-driven experiences. But it's spooky and scary, so beware...

Get it on Quest.

Red Matter 2 (Quest, PlayStation VR2, Steam, Pico)

Red Matter 2 is a stunningly presented sci-fi VR adventure in which you explore a lunar base and uncover the truth behind the mysterious substance known as Red Matter. Combining environmental puzzles, exploration, platforming, and light combat, the game builds an intriguing Cold War-inspired mystery within a richly detailed retro-futuristic universe.

The game will initially draw you in with its stunning visuals (indeed, Red Matter 2 presents some of the best graphics on Meta's headsets). But its engaging story is what will stick with you. While the narrative can be mysterious and occasionally cryptic, it delivers a compelling sci-fi adventure filled with twists, strong atmosphere, and a constant sense of discovery.

Get it on Quest, PlayStation VR 2, Steam and Pico.

Hidden Memories of the Gardens Between (Quest, PC VR)

Hidden Memories of The Gardens Between is a puzzle adventure that follows childhood friends Arina and Frendt as they revisit key memories from their past, manifested in the form of stunning thematic islands. Through time-manipulation puzzles, the game explores themes of friendship, growing up, and the lasting impact of shared experiences. It's also super gorgeous to look at!

The game is especially worth playing not just for its heartfelt story, which deals with nostalgia and memory, but also for its amazing implementation of time-based VR puzzle elements.

Get it on Quest and PC VR via Steam.

The Last Worker (PC VR, PSVR 2, Quest)

An immersive narrative adventure set in a bleak future where you play as Kurt, faithful employee of the world's largest retailer, Jüngle. The game blends first-person exploration, stealth, and work-simulation elements as Kurt is pulled into a moral conflict between obedience to capitalism and activism, with a story built around automation, labor, and the human cost of efficiency.

It is worth playing today primarily because the story feels sharp and timely. The game’s writing leans into satire, and critics singled out its narrative as one of its biggest strengths. Our review noted, "By taking aim at late stage capitalism, this over-the-top journey offers a fine narrative and great satirical humor, coupled with tense but enjoyable stealth missions."

Another bonus: it's a hybrid game, playable in VR or on a standard screen.

Get it on PC VR via Steam, PSVR 2, and Quest.

And those are just ten of our favorite story-driven VR games. Was your favorite included? What did we miss? Please share your favorites in the comments section below, so more people can enjoy the special storytelling potential of VR.

Individual immersive experiences can be difficult for headset owners to find unless there is a strong campaign behind them, or they are easy to spot inside apps that people are already browsing. For smaller immersive studios, being featured by Apple in the App Store or Apple TV app can offer a temporary lift in views before other content is rotated in to be promoted, but without internal or external discoverability support beyond that, studios often struggle to get their content seen.

There is some great narrative immersive content out there and Amplium offers a way to make it easier for Apple Vision Pro owners to discover more of it once they download the app.

Helping More Immersive Video Become Discoverable

Amplium is currently home to just over 10 immersive video experiences, each of them free to watch, and more titles are actively being added from studio partners. The app itself is also free to download.

Hibiki Sato, Co-Founder & CEO of Amplium, shares that their focus is to help to make it easier for the studios behind immersive video content to “encode, host, and distribute it.” While all content is free for now, there will be paid content added soon. “Since the market is still very new, the priority for our current creators has been reach and feedback, getting their work in front of a wider audience …rather than charging for it right away.”

Right now, Amplium is focused on work that benefits from the visual fidelity and spatial audio possible for immersive video on Apple Vision Pro.

Sato shares “We only work with content shot on the Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive, run it through our own encoding pipeline, and play it back in our own player. Owning the whole chain, from source to playback, means each piece looks as close to the creator's original as possible.” Amplium also intends to integrate live immersive streaming “as the Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive 100G arrives.” That focus on visual and audio fidelity gives Amplium a sense of consistency across the catalog, even as the types of experiences and directing styles vary.

The Curated Mix Makes Amplium Worth Visiting

The best reason to get Amplium is the variety of types of experiences that it is adding, some extremely different from what you may find in Apple TV. Amplium is not confined to a certain type of content like a platform like Apple TV may be. The current catalog already ranges from short thrilling documentaries to more experimental immersive experiences.

There are some immersive videos on there that got me so excited because of the quality of direction in which the creators clearly consider how it feels to visit each live-captured story, and subtle elements that can make the virtual visits feel more real. For example, Shibuya Freefall by Chiaki Mayumura from NHK Technologies is an enjoyable music video experience that takes you to some incredible city views as well as a fun, colorful dance performance. KICK from altitude.101 takes you to the French Alps so you can get a glimpse into what it's like for freeriders up there, and enjoy the views and sounds of everything from the sunrise to their daring ski jumps.

More content including sport-related immersive videos is coming such as a short documentary that follows an athlete during the Ironman. Amplium is also producing immersive video for the app, starting with an experience featuring Japanese football legend Keisuke Honda alongside other national team stars.

A Simple Interface Keeps The Focus On The Experiences

Amplium is intuitive to use. Simply scroll through the available videos to select what you would like to experience. As with other immersive video on Apple Vision Pro, you can also easily pause, rewind, fast forward, jump between scenes and adjust the audio while watching.

As more titles are added, along with paid experiences, the browsing experience could benefit from more structure to ensure content is still simple to browse and discover, based on interests. And if Amplium chooses to add features like categories for genres, and the ability to search across a growing catalog, this could give them more insight into what viewers are looking for to help inform what content to add next.

Amplium integrates Sign in with Apple, making sign-in easy for users and also empowering them with the ability to personalize the user experience as they learn more about individual behaviors. This also gives Amplium a way to send email updates based on users’ interests, alerting them to immersive videos they may not have discovered yet.

What I didn't fully appreciate at the time was how the temple arrived in New York City. Surrounded by crowds and moving between galleries, I never stopped to consider that the massive structure before me had been carefully dismantled stone by stone in Egypt and reconstructed inside the museum.

It wasn't until I explored Dendur Decoded, a new immersive experience from The Met, that the story truly clicked.

Developed in partnership with immersive exhibition platform Atopia, the immersive exhibit is available as a free VR experience through the Atopia app on Meta Quest headsets, while also being accessible through a standard web browser. It allows visitors to explore the Temple of Dendur from anywhere in the world through interactive storytelling, historical context, and digital reconstruction.

That deeper understanding was exactly what The Met hoped to achieve.

"We have been telling the story for a long time about why it was at The Met, and it just isn't clicking for a lot of people," Brett Renfer, Project Manager for Emerging and Immersive Technology at The Met, told UploadVR. "Let's bring it to a new medium. Let's do a lot more showing rather than telling."

Why Dendur?

The Temple of Dendur wasn't chosen at random.

According to Renfer, the monument consistently generates some of the most common questions visitors ask at The Met. Many wonder whether the structure inside the museum is real. Others question how an ancient Egyptian temple came to reside in New York City.

Those questions helped make Dendur a natural starting point for The Met's first internally developed immersive experience. Rather than asking visitors to absorb the temple's history through exhibit text and displays, the project places them inside the story itself.

For The Met, the project serves a broader purpose than visitor engagement alone.

The same digital assets used to create the immersive experience can also support conservation, research, documentation, and future interpretation of the collection. Renfer described the work as having multiple lives, serving both public-facing experiences and the museum's long-term preservation goals.

Building The Met's First Immersive Experience

While Dendur Decoded is delivered through the Atopia platform, Renfer said The Met played a central role in shaping both the experience and its educational goals.

The project began as an exploration of how the museum's growing archive of 3D assets could be used in new ways. Renfer created early prototypes using The Met's existing scans to demonstrate how visitors might interact with digital representations of artifacts and environments in immersive spaces. Many of those assets were created through photogrammetry and other 3D capture techniques originally developed for conservation, research, and documentation purposes. In the case of the Temple of Dendur, The Met's imaging team combined more than 28,000 photographs to create a detailed 3D model of the monument.

"We had never done an in-house VR project," Renfer said. "We did all the content and the concept and all the scanning."

Atopia ultimately became both a development partner and distribution platform. According to Renfer, the collaboration combined The Met's curatorial expertise and archival research with a team that brought experience from game development and immersive design. The two organizations worked together to translate historical research, photography, audio, and 3D scans into an experience designed specifically for virtual environments.

The collaboration also extends beyond Dendur Decoded. The Met's second immersive experience, Oceania: A New Horizon of Space and Time, takes a different approach. Rather than recreating a physical museum space, it places visitors inside a purpose-built immersive world inspired by the cultures and landscapes of Oceania, connecting artworks to the broader geographic and cultural context from which they emerged. 

The partnership also reflected a practical reality of museum technology projects. While The Met maintains extensive 3D capture programs for conservation and research, those highly detailed scans are not automatically suitable for real-time rendering in VR. Atopia's team helped optimize and adapt those assets while preserving their historical accuracy.

For Renfer, the project was as much about building institutional knowledge as it was about launching a single experience.

"We need to build this tacit knowledge," he said, describing the project as an opportunity to learn how audiences engage with immersive content and how the museum might approach future initiatives.

Why The Met Prioritized Reach Over Hardware

One of the more surprising lessons from the project had little to do with virtual reality itself.

While Dendur Decoded and Oceania: A New Horizon of Space and Time are available on Meta Quest headsets, The Met deliberately avoided treating VR as the primary destination for the experiences.

Instead, the museum focused on accessibility and reach.

"We need to pick the platform that just has the biggest reach," Renfer said. "A lot of people have been like, 'Don't you think the content was better for the Vision Pro audience?' I hear you, but we were doing our first thing and then there's the reach kind of thing."

That decision appears to have been validated by the data.

According to Renfer, roughly 85% of traffic to the experiences comes through web browsers rather than VR headsets.

For a project built around immersive technology, the numbers reinforce one of The Met's core goals: reach. While VR headsets offer a uniquely immersive way to experience the content, web access makes it possible for far more people to engage with it.

The web-first approach also aligns with The Met's broader mission of accessibility. Renfer said the museum wanted to ensure the experiences could reach students, educators, and curious visitors regardless of whether they owned a headset.

That philosophy also influenced the design of the experiences themselves.

As someone who spends a significant amount of time in VR, one of the first things I noticed was how approachable the controls felt. Navigation options were clearly explained, interactions were straightforward, and the onboarding process never assumed prior VR experience.

According to Renfer, that simplicity was intentional.

The Met conducted extensive user testing throughout development and embraced a universal design approach aimed at welcoming newcomers without creating barriers for more experienced users.

"We really believe in universal design," Renfer said. "Something that's good for helping any user into it is good for everybody."

The result is an experience designed to welcome newcomers without alienating more experienced VR users.

The experiences also make room for quieter moments of reflection. In Dendur Decoded, visitors eventually find themselves alone with the temple beneath a moonlit sky, while Oceania: A New Horizon of Space and Time concludes with a peaceful ocean vista at sunset. Neither sequence is primarily focused on teaching historical facts. Instead, they encourage visitors to pause and absorb what they have just experienced, using atmosphere and presence in ways that traditional exhibits cannot easily replicate.

Taking The Long View

Unlike a startup chasing the next hardware cycle, The Met approaches immersive technology with a very different timeline.

The museum's 3D imaging teams are already creating detailed digital records of artifacts and environments through photogrammetry and laser scanning, often for conservation and research purposes rather than public-facing experiences. Those digital assets can then be repurposed for projects like Dendur Decoded while continuing to serve archival functions behind the scenes.

That long-term perspective also influences how the museum evaluates emerging technologies.

During our conversation, Renfer discussed growing interest in technologies such as Gaussian splats, which have become increasingly popular for creating highly detailed 3D representations of real-world environments. While The Met is experimenting with the technology, its preservation teams remain focused on standards and formats that can remain useful for decades.

"The team is really focused on what is the standard because everything we're doing is trying to be archival," Renfer said.

The same philosophy shapes how the museum thinks about platforms.

Although Dendur Decoded and Oceania: A New Horizon of Space and Time were developed with Atopia, The Met was careful to ensure that the work would not become permanently tied to a single vendor.

"We built this as our IP," Renfer said. "Everything we built in the platform came back to us."

For a museum that traces its history back more than 150 years, that level of portability is important.

"We're a 155-year-old institution," Renfer said. "Let's make this and then we'll use it somewhere else in five years."

Beyond The Museum Walls

When I visited the Temple of Dendur with my daughter, I saw an extraordinary monument. It wasn't until I explored Dendur Decoded at home that I fully understood the journey that brought it to New York.

That outcome reflects what The Met hopes immersive experiences can accomplish. Projects like Dendur Decoded and Oceania: A New Horizon of Space and Time are designed not to replace the museum experience, but to extend it, giving visitors new ways to engage with art, history, and culture beyond the gallery walls.

"We have been telling the story for a long time about why it was at The Met, and it just isn't clicking for a lot of people," Renfer told UploadVR. "Let's bring it to a new medium. Let's do a lot more showing rather than telling."

Dendur Decoded and Oceania: A New Horizon of Space and Time are available free through the Atopia app on Meta Quest VR headsets and can also be accessed through a web browser.

Put simply, that means the main structures of the virtual world will occupy the same space as your real walls and furniture. The developer, PikPok, calls this "hyper reality", and it works by leveraging Quest 3's scene understanding feature.

Quest 3’s Latest Update Brought Two Undocumented Features

The Quest v64 update brought two undocumented major new features: furniture recognition on Quest 3 and simultaneous hands & controllers in the home space.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

The PC VR version of the game, on the other hand, will have fully developed immersive environments, as most PC VR headsets don't have the ability to generate a mesh of your physical environment.

The game is the latest entry in its Into the Dead series. The original Into the Dead was a 2012 smartphone game, and the series made the jump to VR with the Samsung Gear in 2015 and Oculus Rift in 2016, and recently to Steam with Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days, a 2D side scrolling survival game currently in Early Access. PikPok also has prior VR experience with Rival Stars Horse Racing: VR Edition.

Here's the trailer for the new game:

We have seen many games utilize your play space for mixed reality gaming like Drop Dead: The Cabin's Home Invasion, Resolution Games' Spatial Ops, Vanbo BV's Laser Dance, and Cyborn's Wall Town Wonders. But all of those examples start with camera passthrough and add virtual elements to it, whereas Into the Dead: Crimson Heights is a fully VR experience that uses the scene mesh, and the recognized furniture within it, to guide how entirely virtual levels are created.

The basic idea PikPok is implementing here is not new. There were a few prototypes of it on research hardware in the 2010s, and it was presented by Meta's Reality Labs Chief Scientist Michael Abrash as an interesting future use case of VR headsets with environment meshing back in 2018, at Oculus Connect 5. But as far as we're aware, this is the first VR game from a studio, not counting solo developer experiments, set to actually be built around the idea.

Sometimes eight years is the length of the path from research to products. Keep that in mind when you read about new XR research on UploadVR and elsewhere.

Into the Dead: Crimson Heights comes to Quest 3 headsets and SteamVR sometime in 2027.

PikPok says more details will be revealed at Gamescom in August.

The Boys: Trigger Warning is out today on PlayStation VR2. The made-for-VR game is adapted from the successful Amazon TV show, and features a totally new story set in the world of The Boys, and voice acting by several of the show's cast.

In The Boys: Trigger Warning, you'll choose stealth or chaos, use unstable Supe powers like telekinesis and laser eyes, and engage in brutal fights against enemy Supes.

You play as Lucas Costa, a normal dude whose life is ruined when the Armstrongs, a washed-up but still lethal family of Vought Superheroes, turn his family's day out into carnage. The Boys drag you back from the brink, juice you with powers, and throw you headfirst into their underground war against Vought and its Supes. With Butcher and Mother’s Milk guiding from the shadows, you set off on a no-mercy quest for revenge.

We reviewed the game when it launched on Meta's headsets in March, with Mike concluding that, "Trigger Warning mostly plays it safe, delivering a run-of-the-mill stealth game lifted by the world it is set in. [...] the game strikes a good balance between power complex and a genuine sense of danger." You can read the full review here.

The Boys: Trigger Warning is available now on the PlayStation Store. The game normally costs $29.99, with a limited-time price of $23.99 for PlayStation Plus subscribers. The game is also available on Meta's Horizon Store.

Announced in April, Muse Spark is the first AI model publicly released by Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), the group formed last year by Mark Zuckerberg with billions of dollars in hiring of top talent across the AI industry. It includes employees with the largest salaries in history.

Meta says Spark is the first in its Muse series, which succeeds its Llama series. While Llama models were open-source, Muse Spark is not, though the company says it "hopes to open-source future versions of the model".

The Llama series had fallen significantly behind the AI models of OpenAI (GPT), Google DeepMind (Gemini), Anthropic (Claude), and xAI (Grok), a failure that drove Zuckerberg's decision to lay off much of the team behind it and embark on the series of billion-dollar hires.

Despite being a relatively "small and fast" model, benchmarks suggest Muse Spark rivals larger models from leading AI labs in some areas, though it's still significantly behind in others.

Meta says it matches the performance of Llama 4 Maverick, its previous best model, while using 10x less compute. Its small size makes it suitable for "instant" responses on both traditional platforms and on smart glasses, where response time can be crucial for real-world queries.

"Meta Superintelligence Labs rebuilt our AI stack from the ground up, moving faster than any development cycle we have run before.

Muse Spark is the first model in our new Muse series — a deliberate and scientific approach to model scaling where each generation validates and builds on the last before we go bigger. This initial model is small and fast by design, yet capable enough to reason through complex questions in science, math, and health. It is a powerful foundation, and the next generation is already in development."

On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Muse Spark scores 52, compared to the 57 of Gemini 3.1 Pro, 60 of GPT-5.5 and 61 of Claude Opus 4.8.

The move from Llama to Muse also brings a visual rebrand of Meta AI, with the old blue-purple gradient ring being replaced by a segmented ring of eight 3D, purple-pink gradient ovals.

In May, Muse Spark replaced Llama 4 in powering Meta AI on all Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses – with the notable exception of Meta Ray-Ban Display.

Meta AI on Meta Ray-Ban Display is still powered by a custom version of Llama 4. Replacing Llama on the display is likely taking extra time because in this context the system also generates a visual response for many queries, drawing on web images, not just a spoken text output.

In our review of Meta Ray-Ban Display we described how Llama 4 felt like an anchor on the AI features of the glasses, and noted that the superiority of Gemini could be a major advantage of the upcoming Google-powered smart glasses from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster.

With Meta's Muse series, that gap may be narrowing. However, Google isn't resting on its laurels either, with Gemini 3.5 Flash released in May at Google I/O. Whether Meta can truly compete and reestablish its place as a fifth leading AI lab remains to be seen, yet this will be crucial to achieve its long-term goals of smart glasses with always-on "contextual AI" before, or at least at a similar time as, Google and other looming competitors.

Abrash & Zuckerberg: Future Meta Glasses Will Have Always-On “Contextual AI”

Michael Abrash described how future Meta glasses will have always-on “contextual AI”, and Mark Zuckerberg thinks this will arrive in less than 5 years.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

I'm actively writing on UploadVR again, and this article is one in a series of "catch up" pieces where I report on some of the interesting things that have been happening in the industry in recent months. And yes, VR Download is coming back soon!

Announced in April, Unity said the extension "deepens the companies’ long‑standing collaboration in virtual reality".

“Meta is the world’s leading VR platform, and we’re proud that Unity powers the majority of its top‑selling VR games,” said Alex Blum, COO, Unity, in a prepared statement. “Great content is what makes VR successful. By pairing Meta’s hardware and OS leadership with Unity’s role as the assembly point for interactive content creation, we’re making VR accessible to more developers so they can develop, deploy, and grow their games and business applications on Meta’s VR devices.”

“Unity is a critical partner for Meta across multiple initiatives, including our investment in the VR developer community,” said Ryan Cairns, VP, Virtual Reality, Meta, in a similar statement. “By extending our long-standing partnership, we’re making it easier for developers to bring high‑quality, performant experiences to the millions of people who use Meta’s VR devices.”

Meta Will Recommend Using Unity & Unreal’s Built-In OpenXR Support

Meta will recommend developers use the built-in OpenXR support of Unity & Unreal from next week. The news comes after developers complained that Meta’s integrations blocked other PC VR headsets.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

The announcement came just over a year after Meta deprecated its proprietary XR Plugin for Unity and recommended that developers use the built-in Unity OpenXR plugin, alongside Meta-specific OpenXR extensions and the higher-level optional Meta XR Core SDK.

The close partnership between the two companies was strained at Meta Connect 2025, however, where Meta's flagship VR announcement was the release of its own Horizon Engine for Horizon Worlds, Horizon Hyperscape, and Horizon Home, which it said was technically superior compared to Unity and could support 4x faster loading and 100+ users in the same instance.

"This engine is fully optimized for bringing the metaverse to life. It is much faster performance and to load things, much better graphics, much easier to create with", Zuckerberg claimed.

Meta Horizon Engine Brings 4x Faster World Loading & 100+ User Instances

Meta Horizon Engine replaces the Unity runtime of Horizon Worlds, and Meta says it brings 4x faster loading and 100+ users in the same instance.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Of course, in March, Meta announced that Horizon Engine would fully refocus on flatscreen platforms, smartphones and the web, dropping support for virtual reality, as part of the wider retreat of Horizon Worlds from VR.

With Horizon Engine out of the picture for VR, Meta seems to be rebuilding its partnership with Unity, and the engine has once again become the company's primary recommendation for building games for its headsets – though it now recommends its Meta Spatial SDK for bringing flatscreen apps to Horizon OS.

I'm actively writing on UploadVR again, and this article is one in a series of "catch up" pieces where I report on some of the interesting things that have been happening in the industry in recent months. And yes, VR Download is coming back soon!

Since the release of Oculus Go in 2018, Meta's standalone VR operating system has seen numerous visual changes, but the general interface architecture remained essentially the same.

You had a floating horizontal menu bar slightly below you, called the Universal Menu, showing the time and your device battery levels on the left, and a combination of shortcuts to pinned and recently launched apps on the right. Almost all operating system interfaces, including core features like the app Library, Quick Settings, and Notifications, opened as regular 2D windows, treated like any other, meaning any regular 2D app would cause these core interfaces to shift around.

Imagine if your phone's app library, or control center, or the Windows Start Menu, was just another windowed app. That's how Meta's XR operating system used to work.

Then, in May last year, Meta started a very slow rollout of a full Horizon OS UI overhaul, called 'Navigator', which moves the main system interfaces like Library, Quick Settings, Notifications and Camera into a new large overlay that appears over both immersive and 2D apps.

With Navigator, system interfaces no longer shift around when opening other windows, and it's far quicker to launch new apps because the library is the default UI panel.

Navigator has gone through a number of refinements since its rough initial version. For example, it originally had a murky gray background with an oval shape that severely obscured your view of what was behind it, which just didn't look good, and this was replaced by simply dimming the background.

Navigator also launched with both Apps and Horizon Worlds listed in the central launcher interface, and without a Friends list interface.

In October, Meta added a separate Worlds tab, meaning the App library was no longer polluted with Horizon Worlds. And then earlier this year, following the announcement that Horizon Worlds is moving away from VR, Meta removed the Worlds tab from Navigator entirely.

Meta also got rid of Horizon Feed, the default 2D app that used to launch when you cold-booted your Quest headset, meaning that Quest headsets now boot straight into a grid of your apps, just as you expect a mobile computing device to do.

The 7 tabs of the Horizon OS Navigator, as of June 2026, now stand as:

• You: lets you switch users and set your online status, and also has shortcuts to edit your avatar and profile.
• Notifications
• People: a grid of your friends, linking to their profiles.
• App Library
• Quick Controls: brightness, volume, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Screenshots/Recording, Travel Mode, and other core settings & toggles.
• Show/Hide Windows
• Toggle between Passthrough & VR Home

And in the App Library, you can now reposition the app icons where you want them, and create folders to organize them, just as you can on pretty much any other major consumer operating system.

Quest PTC Update Adds Hand Movement And App Sorting

Latest Quest PTC update adds hand gesture movement in Horizon Home, custom app sorting, folders, and more.

UploadVRAlan Truly

Arguably, the biggest remaining flaw of Navigator is that it still doesn't fully incorporate all system-level features as part of the overlay. In the above bullets, by "shortcuts to" I mean that it opens a regular 2D window straight out of the previous Horizon OS interface paradigm. With all the same issues. It's somewhat surprising to see Meta roll Navigator out widely before solving this. But it's still a net improvement compared to what came before.

I'm actively writing on UploadVR again, and this article is one in a series of "catch up" pieces where I report on some of the interesting things that have been happening in the industry in recent months. And yes, VR Download is coming back soon!

Khalifa plays Taylor Graves, a former boxer and Muay Thai fighter invited to compete against the Ark Society's Tim Quinn, a corporate CEO who dabbles in fight sports. In the mission, titled 'The Wizard,' Agent 47's mission is to intervene and keep the in-over-his-head Quinn alive.

Here's the trailer, partially narrated by Khalifa himself.

The Wizard is the latest in Hitman: WOA's Elusive Target series, free short-time missions that date back to the 2016 Hitman game. This mission revisits the Isle of Sgàil, a popular location in the Hitman community repackaged for a new mission by fan request.

Past Elusive Targets have starred known performers like actors Milla Jovovich, Sean Bean and Jean-Claude Van Damme, rapper Eminem, and MMA fighter Conor McGregor.

Hitman World of Assassination is available in VR on Steam and PlayStation VR2. The Wizard is a free add-on to the game available now until July 5.

In Inwigo, players will explore haunted mansions to unlock gameplay mechanics, outsmart adaptive monsters, uncover treasures, and survive an interactive ghost story where choices and teamwork shape the narrative, according to Dirty Pearl.

Here's the trailer:

Each mansion has its own threat with different attacks. Per Dirty Pearl's press release:

Every house has its own supernatural threat. Some stalk you when you’re alone. Some are excited by your fear. Others turn the house itself against you. Learn how they behave, or become part of the house.

Additionally, no two runs are alike as treasures and secrets will shift locations and threats will adapt to players to keep the gameplay fresh. Like most extraction scenarios, all loot is lost if the players do not survive.

Following the playtest, Inwigo is currently planned to launch in Early Access on Meta Quest on June 23. It is available to wishlist now. The playtest is live now through June 7.

Note: The game is also listed on Steam. We've reached out to the developer to clarify if the Early Access launch includes Steam. The press release we were sent only specifies Meta Quest.

Vertigo Games was, until now, comprised of two different studios: Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The Amsterdam team was formerly Force Field Entertainment before becoming Vertigo Games Amsterdam in 2021.

This team had been together since 2015 with a portfolio including the following games and apps:

Metro Awakening (2024)

Easily Vertigo Games Amsterdam's highest profile title, Awakening was one of several planned VR titles in partnership with Deep Silver and Oculus Studios. Meta announced this deal at Meta Connect in 2021. The whole of Vertigo Games was acquired by Koch Media, also the parent company of Deep Silver, in 2020.

We reviewed Metro Awakening, saying "Vertigo Games has once again delivered a mesmerizing VR gaming experience. One that serves as a testament to the studio’s proven record of creating adventures geared to provide atmospheric immersion and deep storytelling."

Metro Awakening Review: A Mesmerizing Tale of Survival in Moscow’s Dark Underworld

Go deep underground into the Metro and experience the dystopian future of a post-nuclear apocalyptic Russia in Metro Awakening.

UploadVRDon Hopper

Time Stall (2019)

Time Stall is a time-manipulated physics based puzzle game published by Oculus Studios.

National Geographic: Explore VR (2019)

Based on the now Disney-owned company, Explore casts the player as a photographer sent to document and photograph Antarctica and Machu Picchu, Peru for National Geographic magazine.

Anne Frank House VR (2018)

Anne Frank House is an educational app exploring the life of Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl who hid in the annex of an old office building in Amsterdam with her family for 2 years during the Second World War. It remains one of the best historical apps in VR and is still available for free.

Coaster Combat (2017)

Originally a Samsung Gear & later Oculus Go VR title, this on rails target shooter was ported to Quest in 2020.

Combat Coaster Review: A Rollercoaster With More Downs Than Ups

Combat Coaster was one of the better games available on the Oculus Go back in 2018. So how does the newly released Oculus Quest version hold up in 2020? Have enough changes been made to give you exciting thrills, or is this a bumpy ride? Check out our Combat Coaster

UploadVRHarry Baker

Landfall (2017)

Landfall was a tactical shooter for Oculus Rift that has since been delisted.

Vertigo Games Rotterdam, the remaining studio, is the team behind the Arizona Sunshine games, The 7th Guest VR, After The Fall, Skyworld & Skyworld: Kingdom Brawl, and recently published Maze Theory's Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow. At the time of this article, there is no word on if the Rotterdam team has been affected.

This continues a rough 2026 of layoffs and studio closures in the VR ecosystem following Meta shuttering most of its first-party studios, the closures of two nDreams studios, layoffs at Polyarc Games, Cloudhead Games, Mighty Coconut, and Kluge Interactive, and Rec Room shutting down. Also, the aforementioned Maze Theory is currently in administration in the UK, a process meant to potentially rescue a failing business.

Creator Marc Zimmermann has spent years exploring that side of VR.

Zimmermann approaches VR from the perspective of an immersive filmmaker and environmental artist. His work focuses on mood, movement, sound, and emotional immersion rather than traditional gameplay systems.

That philosophy first took shape in his award-winning VR short film Conscious Existence (Meta Quest | Steam) before evolving into Realms of Flow, a highly customizable immersive experience built around meditation, breathing, spatial audio, and surreal environmental design.

After speaking with Zimmermann recently, it became impossible to see Realms of Flow as just another VR meditation app. It reflects nearly a decade of experimentation with immersive cinema, environmental storytelling, and emotional atmosphere in VR.

From VFX To VR

Zimmermann's path to VR began long before headsets entered the mainstream.

He studied animation and visual effects at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg in Germany, where he developed a passion for digital environments, atmospheric filmmaking, and visual storytelling.

"I always loved to create my own personal projects and use environments to tell stories and create emotions," Zimmermann explained. "I want to create an atmosphere with a place, with a landscape, with a space."

At the time, he was more interested in traditional filmmaking and visual effects work inspired by large-scale environmental cinema.

"Like Lord of the Rings," he said. "Replacing green screens and creating epic landscapes."

VR only entered the picture near the end of his studies after experimenting with an Oculus DK1 headset sitting inside the school's R&D department.

Initially, Zimmermann attempted to adapt one of his earlier short films into VR before realizing the medium demanded an entirely different approach.

Instead, he created Longing For Wilderness in 2016, an early three-minute 360-degree VR experience designed to move viewers from a noisy city into a calm natural environment.

That project eventually led to Conscious Existence, the stereoscopic VR short film that would shape everything that followed.

Why Conscious Existence Still Connects

Even today, Conscious Existence remains one of the more memorable immersive experiences available in VR. What stays with you isn't interaction. It's the atmosphere, narration, movement, and the incredible sense of scale.

Zimmermann sees much of VR's emotional power in presence itself.

"There were a lot of users complaining about the non-interactiveness of the short film," he said. "But at the same time I saw there was an opportunity there to create dense atmospheres and emotional spaces."

When I showed Conscious Existence to my wife recently, despite her general discomfort with VR headsets, the experience immediately connected with her emotionally. The child narration, environmental scale, and sensation of floating through forests and landscapes created a surprisingly powerful reaction.

"I get messages from people saying they are tearing up or that a certain scene reminds them of something in their life," Zimmermann said. He hears it a lot.

Why Zimmermann Stepped Away From Traditional VR Design

After the success of Conscious Existence, Zimmermann attempted to move further into interactive VR through an Unreal Engine project called DeepStates (available on Steam, though development has ceased).

The idea was ambitious.

He wanted to combine high-end realtime environments with meditation systems, breathing exercises, binaural audio, and evolving environmental effects that transformed as users relaxed.

But eventually, the technical demands started crowding out everything he actually cared about.

"I noticed that working in Unreal Engine and creating these realtime optimized environments was 80% technical stuff and only 20% actual concept and art and sound design," Zimmermann said.

Users increasingly demanded deeper interactivity, gameplay systems, and exploration mechanics.

For Zimmermann, that was never the goal.

"I just want to create these dense atmospheres," he explained. "This kind of journey that you go into and get sucked into."

That realization eventually led him toward Realms of Flow.

Building Realms of Flow

Rather than turning Realms of Flow into a more game-like experience, Zimmermann intentionally moved in the opposite direction.

Realms of Flow builds directly on the atmosphere and emotional immersion of Conscious Existence. The same emphasis on movement, environmental immersion, and emotional pacing runs throughout the app. But this time, Zimmermann built customization systems around those experiences.

Breathing synchronization, humming exercises, spatial sound design, environmental depth adjustments, meditation timers, visual modulation, and interactive focus elements all work together to create highly personalized experiences.

The app can feel overwhelming at first because of the sheer number of available settings.

Zimmermann is aware of that.

"There's a lot of settings," he admitted. "But I try to hit the sweet spot between accessibility and allowing people to fine tune things for themselves."

What surprised me was how technically deliberate many of the visual decisions are.

Zimmermann uses 180-degree stereoscopic presentation instead of 360-degree video to maximize perceived image quality on standalone headsets like Quest 2 and Quest 3.

He also uses dark environments strategically.

Darker scenes allow video compression systems to dedicate more bitrate toward important visual details rather than wasting bandwidth on bright peripheral imagery.

Other visual tricks include slightly pushing environmental spheres farther away from the viewer to increase perceived clarity and dynamically modulating environmental depth based on breathing rhythm.

The result is an unusually sharp and visually convincing immersive experience on standalone VR hardware.

VR As Reconnection Rather Than Escape

The most interesting thing Zimmermann told me had nothing to do with any technical decision. Despite creating deeply immersive virtual environments, he does not see VR as a replacement for reality.

"You take the headset off and reality feels even more vivid afterward," he said. "You appreciate life even more."

For Zimmermann, the goal isn't to escape the real world. It's to help people experience it differently when they return to it.

Beyond Consumer VR

While Realms of Flow exists primarily as a consumer app today, Zimmermann has already started exploring broader wellness and commercial applications.

The app is currently being integrated into sensory pod systems created by Amsterdam-based company Sensiks, which combines immersive visuals with environmental effects like wind, scent, and temperature changes.

Zimmermann also described conversations involving hospital wellness programs and enterprise XR management systems.

"I hope more businesses will use it for hospitals, retreats, elderly homes, and wellness spaces," he said.

He's careful not to overclaim. He views it as an atmospheric tool, not a clinical one.

Looking Forward

Zimmermann says Realms of Flow is nearing completion, with only a small number of planned experiences remaining before he moves toward future projects.

He's not sure yet what comes next.

Marc Zimmermann is not particularly interested in chasing mainstream VR trends.

In a VR industry still largely driven by games and constant interaction, he's continuing to focus on atmosphere, emotional immersion, and experiences designed to slow people down inside the headset.

Realms of Flow is available on Meta Quest for standalone VR, as well as Steam and the Meta PC VR Store for PC VR.

A Fisherman's Tale put players in a matryoshka doll-like lighthouse controlling a small, medium, and large sized version of the titular fisherman simultaneously. Maskmaker brought interdimensional traveling by putting on and removing different masks. A Fisherman's Tale 2 (formerly Another Fisherman's Tale) allowed players to detach their head and parts of their body. Innerspace has always created unique games with mechanics not likely to be replicated in other titles. Spymaster's time manipulation system is another triumph for innovative gameplay with endless possibilities for mission scenarios.

Not surprisingly, I found Spymaster incredibly charming. The low poly art style, light & breezy voice acting, sound design, and the missions themselves all connote a world that doesn't take itself too seriously, even if the subject matter itself is serious. Much like the I Expect You To Die series, Spymaster wants you to smile and have a good time as you're saving the world.

The basic gameplay loop combines precision, time manipulation, situational awareness, and a bit of speed running into a tidy package that can be picked up and put down in short sessions. Each mission can be accomplished in just a couple of minutes, but expect to spend an extended amount of time fine tuning your run to hit all of the main objectives (and optional side objectives). The first couple of missions are admittedly very easy to allow time for the mechanics to settle in, then the game kicks into gear.

Spymaster has multiple characters, each with their own tools/weapons and personality quirks. You will hop back and forth between them, rewinding time via a wristwatch on the operator's (i.e. your) wrist to retake control at a point of your choosing.

As an example, a mission based in a Venice, Italy inspired location has multiple drones stationed throughout that will end the mission if either spy is in their line of sight for more than a few seconds. That alone means moving one spy, Tic, forward first to gun it down. This allows Mulligan, the second spy, to zip line to a building in what would have been plain sight of said drone. As Mulligan, you land from the zip line and race downstairs to zap two drones waiting in an alcove with your taser and another on a bridge over the canal.

Back to Tic, who has other guards to take out in a central building before lowering a drawbridge to let Mulligan into the room to secure a briefcase. Mulligan, briefcase secured, gets on a gondola for a gondolier to very slowly paddle towards the extraction point, while being attacked by drones on other gondolas and building patios. Back to Tic, who can either race from building to building to the extraction spot, or stop to take out all of the drones attacking Mulligan. Oh by the way, Mulligan's taser has unlimited charges, but a short range of effect and a cooldown time. Tic's pistol is more effective from range, but she has limited ammo.

This entire scenario can be completed in less than 90 seconds. I know because one of the side objectives challenges you to beat that time. I spent nearly a full hour in this mission, constantly rewinding and swapping characters to figure out which agent needed to take out which drone for maximum efficiency. I had Tic do most of the combat, which came back to bite me at the extraction point when I ran out of bullets and got killed. So I turned back time and made Tic pause long enough for Mulligan's gondola to arrive to tase the final drone. Dying isn't a threat here with the time rewind feature so much as an inconvenience. I thought I had the run figured out, only to have to make more adjustments.

After each mission, a cinematic replay of the successful run from multiple camera angles plays. This is a bit dicey in places because depending on your timing, there may be several seconds of no action because the spy is elsewhere at that time. It's an interesting presentation idea that needs more time in the oven before the final release. After this, it's back to the boat that serves as the spy team's hub for the next mission or to replay a previous mission to complete missing side objectives or get a faster time.

It's tough to put a gameplay time on this game because you could just as easily race through it in a couple of hours doing the bare minimum or spend upwards of eight hours if, like me, you are a bit Type A and care about efficiency.

Spymaster - Final Verdict

Innerspace's flair for eccentric, surreal gameplay continues with Spymaster. It's a fun romp of an espionage adventure that is not like anything I've played in VR. The formula also lends itself to expansions with new, more intricate mechanics and different spies. It lives and dies on the mission gameplay, which thankfully is executed very well.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines. As an early access release, this review is unscored.

CleanSheet Soccer Pro, the follow up to the original goalkeeper-focused CleanSheet Soccer, launched as a training simulator with a subscription fee attached. James Stafford of developer Incisiv said this new entry was built in direct response to demand from the PlayStation community.

Here's the trailer:

The new game has been rebuilt specifically for PlayStation, removing the subscription fees and relaunched as a premium (read: paid) standalone experience. CleanSheet Soccer 2 features enhanced visuals, full trophy support, a retooled career mode, and interactive coaches that assign challenges based on how players perform.

The original CleanSheet Soccer is available on PS VR2, Meta Quest, and Pico XR. Per Stafford, the first two games have reached a combined 180,000 players.

CleanSheet Soccer 2 can be wishlisted on PS VR2 now ahead of its June 11 release.

CM Games has announced that they've lowered the price of their time-twisting VR puzzle game UnLoop, available now on Quest, SteamVR, and Pico. The price drops from $24.99 down to $17.99.

UnLoop is a VR puzzle game that tasks you with proceeding through a series of compact, room-based puzzles, each designed so as to be impossible to pass. At least, impossible on your first try.

Each time you die or run out of time, a ghost of yourself will appear and replay exactly the actions you took in the last life. You'll use as many lives as you need to choreograph sequences of interactions between your current self and past selves in order to clear the puzzle. Our hands-on impressions piece called it "a great premise for a puzzle game." At the new, lower price, it's an even better buy.

UnLoop Hands-On: Sci-Fi Puzzling On Repeat

UnLoop is a fresh, time-bending VR puzzle game from the creators of Into the Radius, launching you into a clever self-co-op experience with a dash of sci-fi espionage.

UploadVRPete Austin

UnLoop is available now for Quest, SteamVR, and Pico, at the new price of $17.99. At time of writing, SteamVR is offering an additional 20% off.

The official Vision Pro support for the two PC VR simulators leverages the OS-level foveated streaming feature Apple added to visionOS 26.4, a feature that Nvidia's CloudXR SDK leverages. Foveated streaming leverages eye tracking to maximize visual quality in the region of the display you're currently looking at.

To be clear, while the name CloudXR implies the PC is in the cloud, and this is Nvidia's primary focus for the technology, in the case of X-Plane 12 and iRacing, the visionOS client apps connect to your local gaming PC as the rendering source.

When the visionOS streaming clients for X-Plane 12 and iRacing were announced in March, it was thought that their major advantage over existing tools that let you stream PC VR content to Apple Vision Pro, primarily ALVR, would be the foveated streaming.

Since then, however, we've seen multiple tools released that enable this for your entire PC VR library, with the free and open-source Clear XR supporting OpenXR titles and $15 KRVR now supporting SteamVR content too.

KRVR Supports Apple Vision Pro’s Foveated Streaming For SteamVR Games

KRVR, a $15 visionOS app, lets you play any SteamVR game from your PC on Apple Vision Pro with foveated streaming.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Still, there are some advantages to the dedicated streaming clients for X-Plane and iRacing.

Both offer a simplified launch process, directly connecting to the simulator software on your PC with essentially no friction.

iRacing's client also automatically tracks your physical racing wheel and segments it out with passthrough, leveraging Apple's ARKit SDK. Meanwhile, the X-Plane client lets you manually mark out a passthrough cutout, as you can with KRVR.

You can find X-Plane Streaming Link and iRacing Connect on the visionOS App Store. Both apps are free, though you'll need to own the sims on your PC to connect to them.

The tradeoff of using Nvidia's CloudXR SDK is that every foveated streaming solution so far exclusively supports Nvidia's Ada and Blackwell GPU architectures, meaning RTX 40-series and 50-series graphics cards, and this is the case for X-Plane and iRacing too.

Supernatural was originally created by Within, the immersive technology company founded by Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin, before being acquired by Meta in 2023. The new company, called Supernatural Health, says it plans to launch a new Supernatural experience on Quest this fall. In its FAQ, the company describes the new version as retaining the “same coaches, same DNA, same mission” as the original service, while also making clear that the transition will not simply continue the existing Meta-owned platform unchanged. 

The announcement comes five months after Meta halted development of the service. In January, the company said Supernatural would no longer receive “new content or feature updates” as part of a restructuring that also saw multiple VR studios shut down. At the time, UploadVR reported that subscribers could continue accessing the existing workout library, but the coaches who helped define the service would no longer appear in new content.

While the existing workout library remained available, Meta's decision left the platform's long-term future unclear. UploadVR later reported that Supernatural continued ranking near the top of the Meta Quest charts even after Meta paused content updates and laid off much of the team behind it. The same report noted that Supernatural’s subscription model, brand recognition, and strong engagement made it one of the few clear consumer success stories in VR fitness, even as users began exploring alternatives.

Now, Supernatural Health says the platform is being rebuilt by original Within founders Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin alongside returning coaches and a small core team. The company says the existing Meta-operated version will remain available through December 3, 2026.

The return of the coaches addresses one of the biggest concerns raised by subscribers after Meta halted development earlier this year. When Meta halted new content earlier this year, UploadVR noted that subscribers could still work out with Supernatural’s existing library, but only through archived coach recordings. The coaches, who had become a defining part of the platform’s identity and community, appeared to have no future role in the service.

Supernatural Health is also warning users that the transition will not be seamless. Existing accounts and subscriptions will not automatically transfer to the new platform, which will use fresh accounts and a new privacy policy. The company says it is exploring ways to preserve user history such as streaks, badges, join dates, favorites, and workout history, though it has not guaranteed that all account data will carry forward.

Music licensing remains another challenge for the new company. UploadVR previously identified expiring music rights as one of the biggest uncertainties surrounding Supernatural’s long-term future. Supernatural Health now says the new service will include “as much of the original catalog” as possible while continuing to expand and evolve its music library over time.

The company also confirmed pricing will increase under the new independent structure. The service will return to its pre-Meta pricing of $20 per month or $200 per year. Users who join as Founding Members will be eligible for a discounted first-year rate of $180 annually. Supernatural Health says the higher pricing is intended to support employee salaries and benefits, music licensing, new features, and a sustainable career path for coaches.

Supernatural Health did not disclose financial terms surrounding the transition away from Meta ownership. In its FAQ, the company described the move as reflecting “a shared belief that Supernatural’s community is best served by a focused, independent team,” while also saying Meta had been “supportive throughout” the process.

The transition is notable because Meta has historically retired VR services rather than transferring them to new ownership. Supernatural's continuation under an independent company marks a different outcome for a Meta-owned VR property.

Supernatural Health says additional details regarding account migration, signup procedures, and the launch timeline will be shared in the months ahead.

On May 6, I Am Cat surprise launched onto PlayStation VR2, and it seems it's done well in its first month on Sony's headset. I Am Cat has claimed the number one most-downloaded spot in both North American and EU markets.

I Am Cat is a sandbox adventure game in which you play as a cat, use arm-based locomotion to scamper and claw your way around Granny's house, completing quests and causing mischief as only a cat can. The game has been a massive success on Quest, Steam, and Pico, and holds a nearly perfect 4.9 out of 5 stars rating based on over 77,000 user reviews on Meta's Horizon Store.

I Am Cat Heads Into The Yard & Garage On Quest & Steam

Become cat in the yard and garage in I Am Cat on Quest & Steam.

UploadVRIan Hamilton

The full sales chart for May 2026 shows buyers in the EU and North America still enjoying VR mainstays like Moss and Moss II, Job Simulator, Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge, and the ever-popular Beat Saber.

The complete chart is embedded below.

It shouldn't be surprising that a highly-anticipated game like I Am Cat would claw its way to the top of the charts in the same month that it shadow dropped on the system. It will be interesting to see if the game can maintain this momentum through June and beyond.

I Am Cat can be found on the PlayStation Store for $14.99. It's also available on Quest, Steam, and Pico.

Since the launch of the original Vision Pro, the iPad version of Steam Link has been available on visionOS through the App Store. While this allowed for easily playing your flatscreen Steam library in the headset, it limited you to having a window with the 4:3 aspect ratio of an iPad, yet streaming the wider aspect ratio of your PC, leading to black bars on the top and bottom of the window – something entirely unnecessary in XR.

The iPad app also limited the window's resolution to that of an iPad, around 2732×1537 for 16:9 content.

With the visionOS app, released on the App Store a few weeks ago, the Steam Link window supports up to 4K streaming resolution, dynamically matches the aspect ratio of the PC you're streaming from, and lets you adjust the curvature of the window to your liking.

Valve Launches Steam Link On Pico Headsets & Vive Focus Vision

Valve launched Steam Link on Pico headsets and HTC Vive Focus Vision, making it easier to wirelessly stream SteamVR games from a PC.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

As well as supporting gamepad or mouse & keyboard navigation in the Steam Big Picture interface, the new app lets you use the gaze-and-pinch interaction system of Vision Pro to launch games, looking at an entry in your Steam library with your eyes to select it and pinching your thumb to your index finger to launch it.

Valve also says the native visionOS client "improves network performance" compared to the iPad app.

Testing the app out on Vision Pro, I found the 4K quality to be a massive improvement over the iPad app, and the latency feels lower too. The gaze integration, however, awkwardly snaps a mouse-like cursor between library items, so I disabled that and stuck to navigating with a connected Bluetooth gamepad.

No VR Support

The glaring omission, of course, is PC VR support. While Steam Link on Meta Quest, Pico, and Vive Focus Vision headsets lets you play your SteamVR games, the visionOS client is entirely limited to flatscreen content.

There seem to be two distinct versions of "Steam Link", one for flatscreen devices and the other for VR headsets, and Apple Vision Pro's client is very much so a variant of the former. It seems similar to the tvOS version, with the above-noted XR additions.

KRVR Supports Apple Vision Pro’s Foveated Streaming For SteamVR Games

KRVR, a $15 visionOS app, lets you play any SteamVR game from your PC on Apple Vision Pro with foveated streaming.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Third-party developers have addressed the demand for PC VR streaming on Apple Vision Pro, though. The open-source PC VR streaming tool ALVR has been available on the App Store since a few months after the M2 Vision Pro launched, and recently Clear XR and KRVR have launched with support for the foveated streaming feature introduced in visionOS 26.4.

X-Plane and iRacing also recently launched their own dedicated visionOS clients for their PC VR simulators, also leveraging Nvidia's CloudXR, offering seamless automatic connection as well as automatic alignment and passthrough cutout of your physical peripherals, your HOTAS or racing wheel setup.

I'm actively writing on UploadVR again, and this article is one in a series of "catch up" pieces where I report on some of the interesting things that have been happening in the industry in recent months. And yes, VR Download is coming back soon!

This is not the only visionOS app for playing your SteamVR games, and nor is it even the first to support the foveated streaming feature Apple introduced in visionOS 26.4. ALVR, which has been available on the App Store since a few months after the M2 Vision Pro launched, supports playing SteamVR games from your PC, and in March a Canadian software engineer released Clear XR, which lets you play OpenXR games from your PC. Both are free and open source, with the ALVR client available on the App Store and Clear XR available on TestFlight, while both have a streaming server on GitHub.

KRVR is a paid closed-source app, which, with its most recent updates, delivers the two best aspects of ALVR and Clear XR in one solution: it lets you play any SteamVR game, even non-OpenXR titles, with foveated streaming to maximize visual quality in the region of the display you're currently looking at.

As with Clear XR, KRVR's developer leverages Nvidia's CloudXR SDK, which has full ready-to-go support for Apple's foveated streaming feature.

The $15 app has a relatively polished interface and a few standout features compared to ALVR, which still doesn't support foveated streaming, and Clear XR, which hasn't been updated since March:

• Passthrough Cutouts: Similar to Virtual Desktop on Quest, KRVR lets you trace out portions of your space, which will display real-world passthrough instead of VR. This lets you bring your racing wheel, HOTAS, desk, or other physical areas of your room into VR. You can edit these passthrough cutout zones at any time.
• PC Desktop: You can view and interact with your PC monitors, with multi-monitor support. While playing a VR game, you can interact with your PC's other physical monitors.

As with ALVR and Clear XR, Sony's PlayStation VR2 Sense tracked controllers are fully supported, though you can also use other input devices like a gamepad or mouse and keyboard.

The tradeoff of using Nvidia's CloudXR SDK is that it exclusively supports Nvidia's Ada and Blackwell GPU architectures, meaning RTX 40-series and 50-series graphics cards. The current PC I'm using has an RTX 3090, so unfortunately, I can't test KRVR at the moment.

If you do have the required GPU and an Apple Vision Pro and want to try it, you can find the KRVR visionOS client on the App Store for $15, and the Windows PC server app on GitHub – though note that the source code is not available.

X-Plane and iRacing also recently launched their own dedicated visionOS clients for their PC VR simulators, also leveraging Nvidia's CloudXR, offering seamless automatic connection as well as automatic alignment and passthrough cutout of your physical peripherals, your HOTAS or racing wheel setup.