It has been a familiar story of late for aging multiplayer experiences in VR. OrbusVR. A Township Tale. Quantaar. Skyworld: Kingdom Brawl. Rec Room. Online games are expensive to maintain and in light of dwindling player counts and lower ongoing revenue, decisions like this have to be made.

To hear it straight from Triangle Factory:

Simply put, Hyper Dash is no longer generating enough revenue to cover its ongoing server and maintenance costs. As the game has grown older, the time and resources required to support it have continued to increase, and unfortunately we can no longer justify those costs. Additionally, the game relies on some third party software that doesn’t allow us to open up the game for community hosting.

Triangle Factory released the final Hyper Dash build today, an update to the game it says will keep the game playable offline after the servers shut down this fall. All DLC sales have been discontinued and players will receive six thousand credits for free to check out skins and other available items.

Hyper Dash Review: Dynamic And Intense Competitive VR Shooter

Hyper Dash is out now on Quest and PC VR with full cross-play and after spending a couple of weeks with the full release version on Quest 2, we’re excited to report it’s a great competitive VR shooter. Read on for our full Hyper Dash review! At

UploadVRDavid Jagneaux

Hyper Dash is Triangle Factory's longest-running VR game, first publicly playable in alpha testing in 2019 and going free to play in 2022. The reality is older games built on older engines become more difficult to maintain and update. Developers like Triangle Factory have a choice to either update that engine, a time and resource-intensive process, or face a continuously lowering ceiling on what can be done with the game. We recently reported on Deep Type Games facing the same issues with Hellsplit: Arena.

Meanwhile, its newer titles demand attention. Forefront went to its full 1.0 release earlier this year and Triangle Factory recently announced Breachers: Outbreak. Thankfully for those who wish to continue playing Hyper Dash into perpetuity, the game will be available for offline play. That is more than we can say for other games that land in this situation.

Hyper Dash is available now for free on Meta Quest and Steam.

The game turns your living space into a futuristic gauntlet. You'll scan your room and the game transforms your walls into tactical corridors, at the center of which is a control hub which you must defend. You'll place defense units in key locations, and engage with enemies personally using melee and ballistic weapons. You'll defend yourself against nine enemy types, powerful bosses, and across 45 levels as you descend deeper with every level.

An announcement trailer has accompanied the release, which you can see here:

I've really enjoyed mixed reality games which flood your living space with attacking enemies. Mythic Realms, in particular, was a favorite, and I'll be diving into Cybercore Protocol this week to see if it's as strong an offering as that great game. We should have an impressions piece posted in the next day or two.

Cybercore Protocol is available now in Early Access on Meta Quest for $9.99.

Mythic Realms Review: A Brilliant Mixed Reality Roguelite Fantasy RPG

Mythic Realms is an inventive and well-made roguelite fantasy RPG which successfully blends VR and MR gameplay.

UploadVRJames Tocchio

Hyperstacks developer Squirrel Bytes has announced that their action platformer is coming to SteamVR and leaving Early Access on Meta Quest on July 30. The game, which combines combat, parkour action, and logic puzzles, has been in development for over eight years and has been available on Quest Early Access for some time.

Check out the Steam release announcement trailer here:

Some finer details from the developer follow:

In Hyperstacks, you'll progress through campaign levels shaped by a cast of distinct characters, each bringing their own personality and style of challenge. Between campaign levels, return to the lobby to interact with them, take on small quests, and unlock new mechanics before diving back into the next challenge.

The Hyperstacks experience is built around three core pillars:

Combat - you'll wield a variety of weapons all built to feel great in VR, and fight against melee and ranged enemies through bullet-hell battles.

Parkour - You'll climb, swing, and improvise your way through obstacle courses using grappling hooks, ziplines, and teleporters.

Logic - You'll interact with simple puzzles and elaborate contraptions.

There's also a level editor in which players have access to the same tools that each campaign level is built with. Custom levels can be shared with the community, creating a growing library of levels and challenges.

Hyperstacks releases in full on Meta Quest and SteamVR on July 30. A SteamVR demo is available now.

After spending time with VR's latest shooter, it is clear that Geronimo is an Early Access title; but, despite the occasional bout of jank, it succeeds in getting the most important parts absolutely right. Beneath those rough edges lies a tactical shooter built on genuinely excellent core mechanics that already make every successful room breach feel satisfying.

Gearing Up

Every mission begins with preparation, with players assembling a tactical loadout before deploying. Loadouts have plenty of options for customization, with cosmetics, adjustable equipment placement and specialist gear ranging from night vision goggles to breaching equipment allowing players to express themselves tactically – and otherwise.

Missions take place in a variety of environments, from buildings to tunnels and even onboard a giant tanker ship. Many of the maps feature multiple objectives so whether you're clearing hostile forces or rescuing hostages, the changes in mission types add welcome replay value.

At the heart of almost every encounter is the process of breaching and clearing rooms.

Choosing how to make your entrance becomes just as important as what happens afterwards. You can kick open a door, blast it from its hinges or rely on specialist tools such as battering rams, breaching shotguns and sledgehammers. Every option carries risk. Make too much noise and enemies will open fire before you've even crossed the threshold.

Life’s A Breach

The strongest element of Geronimo is undoubtedly its gunplay.

Weapons carry convincing weight and an excellent physics system ensures collisions with the environment feel believable and fair. Geronimo forces proper positioning before entering confined spaces and encourages thoughtful weapon selection based on the mission at hand.

That authenticity extends throughout the experience. This isn't an arcade shooter where you can just soak up incoming rounds. One or two well-placed shots are enough to end your mission. During my time with the game I couldn't find any revive mechanic, meaning that once you're down, you're out, leaving you to spectate your teammates for the remainder of the operation.

Geronimo can be played solo or in co-op with up to five other players. While the fun factor is clearly higher with a group, I often found solo missions to be more tense. Without teammates covering angles or correcting my (many) mistakes, every decision carried additional weight and every doorway presented another opportunity for heroics - or disaster.

For all that the gunplay represents Geronimo at its best, the game still has plenty of ways to remind you it's still a work in progress.

Doors are currently the biggest offender. I regularly blew doors from their hinges only to have them visually remain in place despite no longer behaving as solid objects. Elsewhere, battering rams became stuck in doorways and sledgehammers occasionally floated away into mid-air.

Enemy AI is similarly inconsistent. At their best, enemies intelligently reposition, retreat under pressure and even flank from unexpected angles. At other times I'd clear a room only to discover another enemy standing immediately behind me who simply chose not to react. The foundations are clearly there, but a little more consistency would dramatically elevate the experience.

The same applies to onboarding. While the training area introduces the basics, it is far from a complete tutorial. Players familiar with tactical VR shooters will likely find their feet quickly, but newcomers may struggle with systems the game simply expects them to understand. Thankfully, several experienced players were more than happy to explain the basics during multiplayer sessions, softening what could otherwise have been a disorienting introduction.

Alpha Squad

While single-player provides plenty of tension, multiplayer is unquestionably where Geronimo shines.

Few VR shooters rely on communication quite as heavily as this. Geronimo actively punishes poor communication and in most of my online matches, friendly fire proved considerably more dangerous than enemy fire.

Forgetting to call out "Frag out!" is a quick way to see a teammate innocently round a corner just in time to walk face-first into the blast. Likewise, unexpectedly standing up after crouching could easily earn you a stray round to the back of the head from the teammate providing covering fire.

Far from being frustrating, these moments reinforce exactly what Geronimo is trying to achieve. Success depends on trust, communication and discipline. When a squad works together properly, clearing rooms becomes incredibly rewarding in a way few VR shooters currently manage.

Pretty Violence

Visually, Geronimo already presents itself well. Lighting and shadow work are particularly effective, helping establish the slow, methodical atmosphere while ensuring environments remain readable during tense engagements.

Performance, however, still needs attention. Despite running on a capable PC, I encountered regular stuttering and ultimately reduced the settings to Medium to maintain smooth frame rates. Given the game's Early Access status, this feels like exactly the sort of optimization that can be expected over time, but it's something players should be aware of today.

Have A Blast

Geronimo is still rough around the edges, but it's also great fun. Sure, the onboarding could be stronger, the AI behavior needs greater consistency and technical polish remains a clear priority. Yet none of those issues undermine what Dark Matter Studios has already achieved.

The difficult part - creating tense, believable and satisfying tactical combat - is already here.

If you're happy embracing a little Early Access jank, Geronimo already offers more than enough compelling gameplay to justify jumping in today, particularly if you enjoy co-op tactical shooters and don't mind learning alongside other players.

Those wanting a fully polished experience may be better served keeping an eye on development. Based on the foundations already in place, Geronimo feels far less like an unfinished game and more like an excellent tactical shooter that's just finding its final polish.

With over 150 million records sold and 170 industry awards including multiple Academy Awards and Grammy Awards, Rahman is excited about immersive experiences because of how they “demand your full presence in a way no other medium does.”

ARR Immersive offers original content blending music, dance and performance in formats including 360- and 180-degree experiences. More releases are currently in production for the app such as a “making-of” for a song from an Indian film called Peddi, live captures from his concerts, and also experiences tied to “carnivals”, “rituals” and “rare talents.” I’m looking forward to experiencing moments like these that we have not yet been able to visit through Apple Vision Pro videos. While the subjects will range, it is clear that the music will still be a key component of the content.

Some of the app’s experiences are 360-degree video, but Rahman explains that his preference for immersive storytelling is for 180-degree experiences because “with 360, you're constantly wondering if you missed something, you keep looking behind you. But we only have 180-degree vision as humans, so it goes beyond us. 360 is beautiful for a place or a monument, something you want to look around. But for storytelling, 180 3D is where it's at.”

ARR Immersive launches with a small but diverse set of video experiences. The app is free to download but many of the experiences require individual purchases with different price points. The pricing is rather high given the length of each video and comparative pricing, and there is currently no discount for purchasing many of them which I hope is reconsidered as more content is added. The free experiences include live concert and dance videos as well as a few short 3D videos.

For Rahman, each video is special for a different reason. For example, Clair de Lune, Rachmaninoff, Für Elise (Kathak Piano Series): “...came from something unexpected. I found extraordinary young Western classical piano players from my conservatory, and we were celebrating my mother's birthday. I saw a Kathak dancer and a piano in the same room and thought: what if we put these together? We did a test shoot, and it was fascinating to see how these two worlds collide. Then we shot all three pieces in VR.” The Dance of Unity features Ambika Gomez interpreting the Bombay Theme in a moving way. Several of the immersive videos available in the app which were completed in 2017 were part of his project Le Musk which premiered at Cannes XR in 2022. And, there is a teaser and trailer for the highly anticipated Indian film Ramayana available on the app for the first time ever in 3D, which includes some music from the upcoming feature film by the legendary composer Hans Zimmer and Rahman.

Rahman and team have been using a range of methods to create the experiences so far. He explains “We shoot on multiple different rigs simultaneously, usually four or five sets at once. We have a Panasonic rig we've assembled ourselves, shooting at 60 frames.. A Blackmagic VR camera… Canon and Sony VR lens cameras for cutaways, close details, fingers, things like that. We intercut and layer those together to get the full experience. When you have that many capture points running at once, you can create something that feels genuinely alive.”

Remnant Protocol casts players as the commander of Sanctuary, a secret location serving as the base of operations for a galactic rebellion, the Remnant Forces, against the oppressive authoritarian Usurpers. It all sounds very Star Wars.

The full image is below, detailing two different sandbox modes, a 'conquest' mode where players capture and hold control zones, and a flagship mode where your flagship must be defended while destroying the opponent's ship.

The sandbox modes, Attrition and Last Stand, are already live with the rest expected to come later in 2026. PC playtesting is expected to begin soon.

Procedurally generated missions and a roguelite mode are also being considered. The game was first announced as a hybrid title in 2022. Somewhere along the way, Progenitor acquired funding from Meta and listed Meta as an 'official publishing partner.' It released in Alpha Early Access on Quest in June and has a 3.3 score from 21 ratings.

Reading through the reviews, the lack of VR interactions in the cockpit and early state of the game were the common negatives attributed to the game. Progenitor has noted both in the 'Known Issues' and said updates are coming to address both concerns.

The Early Access period is generally intended to be used to gather community feedback and help shape the future of a project. Games like Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades, both Into The Radius games, Ghosts of Tabor, and Bootstrap Island all greatly benefitted from a productive stint in Early Access. The common link between these titles was a highly engaged development team actively soliciting and reacting to player feedback.

Remnant Protocol is available now in Early Access on Meta Quest and can be wishlisted on Steam.

The game was featured in March's VR Games Showcase and released the following month on April 27. Here's the 1.0 trailer:

The 1.0 release adds a fifth dungeon (with difficulty settings) and Flintlock pistols as a new weapon, along with new clothes and weapon models. One More Delve started with three dungeons at initial release. The fourth came with an update in May alongside new bosses, regular enemies, weapons, and armor sets.

We played One More Delve in Early Access, saying "One More Delve still has a few rough edges to smooth out during this Early Access phase, such as ... collision issues and visual glitches. Still, there is plenty of potential here for a solid VR dungeon crawler..."

One More Delve Impressions: A Promising Start For This VR Dungeon Crawler

One More Delve gives classic dungeon crawler fans a VR option for up to three players to team up for quests featuring physics-based combat.

UploadVRJ Brodie Shirey

One More Delve is available now for Steam and Quest 3 headsets.

This follows a playable demo featured in June's Steam Next Fest. Amelia's Escape follows the titular Amelia, a teenage girl kidnapped by a time-travel obsessed scientist.

Here is the trailer:

Amelia's Escape was built by a single developer studio, Reality Syndrome Symphony, over several years with an emphasis on immersive environmental puzzles. This is Symphony's debut title.

I played the demo during Next Fest and found it promising with a minimal amount of "grab jank," a common issue with escape room games in VR such as this that do not lean on a telekinetic grab system like the I Expect You To Die games. The demo is still available on Steam for anyone curious. I am currently playing the full game and will have a full review soon.

Amelia's Escape is out now on Steam and Meta Quest for $15.99.

Flat2VR Studios has launched Roboquest VR on Meta Quest 3 and 3S, bringing its acclaimed roguelite shooter to Meta's platform alongside a major free update that introduces cross-platform co-op across all supported VR platforms.

The co-op update allows players on Meta Quest 3/3S, PlayStation VR2, and SteamVR to team up in two-player cooperative game sessions. Players may team up through Quickplay, Room Codes, or direct friend invites. Co-op mode includes shared campaign progression, weapon trading between teammates, individual loot drops, cooperative revives, and support for joining hosts regardless of basecamp progression.

A trailer for the co-op mode has been released, and you can see that here:

Roboquest VR Review: An Instant Classic

Roboquest VR takes an already exhilarating FPS roguelite and delivers a near-flawless VR adaptation.

UploadVRJames Galizio

Flat2VR Studios had originally intended to release the Quest version and co-op feature in May, but these releases were delayed in order to improve the Quest release and more closely align the quality and user experience across all platforms.

Roboquest VR takes RyseUp Studios' 2023 roguelite FPS and thoroughly overhauls it for VR. You control a Guardian robot taking down waves of hostile enemy machines, blazing a path for your human companion Max towards Haven 8 - an oasis in the desert that makes up most of the post-apocalyptic Earth.

We reviewed Roboquest VR when it debuted late last year, calling it "a near-flawless adaptation," and "one of [our] new favorite games to experience in a VR headset." In our end-of-year roundup, Roboquest VR earned "PC VR Game of the Year 2025."

Roboquest VR is available now for Meta Quest 3 and 3S, SteamVR, and PlayStation VR2.

Developer Black Beach Studio announced its plans for Faction Wars, a long-requested single-player and co-op PvE mode, this spring, with most of its subsequent updates working towards fully realizing that goal.

The Observer Update introduces a spectator mode, allowing players to watch live matches with a free-fly camera and special controls only available for those watching a match, including an adjustable comfort vignette. The idea is to open up options for better gameplay footage and possible community events. Game hosts can toggle the spectate option when setting up a lobby.

For those players in actual combat, the game's minimap has been completely overhauled with the following features:

• New minimap rendering with proper height shading, built for every map.
• Cleaner boot-up animation and refreshed marker visuals.
• Teammates and friendly turrets are always visible to your team.
• Conquest points tint red/blue (depending on your team) with live capture ownership, matching the in-game UI.
• Pings show as green markers for your team. 
• Enemy mechs and turrets don't appear on the map automatically. Ping them to reveal them in red.
• Artillery impact zones show as rings on the map, but only for shells fired by you or your teammates. Enemy artillery stays hidden.
• Repair pickups now show as green pills.

Iron Rebellion is available now on Steam and Meta Quest.

Cooperative games are thriving more than any other genre in virtual reality. It is easy to see why. From the medieval roguelike Crossings to military shooters like Forefront, hopping online with friends never gets old. Yet, it seems like there is a genre oft forgotten that Daumier: Lila & Ghost is dead set on reviving: the co-op puzzle adventure. Classics like Portal 2 or It Takes Two come to mind. While still not revealing its full hand, the Alpha Test is a strong indication of its inspirations.

While only the first of five chapters was available, it was enough to see what developer Prism Games is going for. Daumier: Lila & Ghost starts by telling the story of Lila. In an old memory, she reads a letter from her recently passed away father. The voice acting is only slightly distracting because of their heavy accents, but the message is stern. Lila must go to the Daumier Art Gallery to free herself from a family curse that has afflicted them for centuries.

As she arrives at the gallery, she is greeted by a strange man who goes by Dupont. This butler explains to her that the Duponts have been serving the Daumiers for a long time, and it is his duty to aid her in this endeavor. Again, it must be said that the graphics and character models do not do the game any favors, but Daumier: Lila & Ghost has an ace up its sleeve: its art style.

Long story short, Lila has the ability to enter the paintings. You do this by reaching your arm to the five paintings in a long corridor, presumably of each chapter in the full game. This is where Daumier: Lila & Ghost finally begins to take shape. Looking quite similar to Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night, the artwork’s environments are striking without sacrificing visual fidelity. Once setting up the exclusively co-op session, the gameplay takes center stage.

Every canvas develops a story of a previous time. In the first one, you witness how a plague is ravaging through a European town. The clergy, eager for culprits, are throwing people to the bonfire to save themselves. Only being able to teleport from one place to the next, the set pieces show the gruesome landscape unfold. This is where Lila feels a presence who will accompany her through the journey. The titular Ghost, who one of the two players can be, has a special vision to look at things those who play as Lila cannot. Each one has its own role to play. This reveals a focus on communication that only synchronized partners will be able to solve.

In my experience as Lila with the game’s community manager, the puzzles were direct enough. A hint system with the press of a button is available if not. At first, it was to grab an old wheel and put it back on a carriage. Later on, a lock that had a specific pattern only Ghost could see had me attentively listening to instructions to match it. The most complex of them all was rotating a wooden adornment in a specific way. That last one was particularly amusing because the CM said most people took 30 or so minutes to figure it out, whereas we solved it rather quickly. Teamwork is essential to progress.

The game’s concept of heavy cooperation is a refreshing one. With no time limit or violence to speak of—apart from what is seen in the cutscenes—it all boils down to clear dialogue. Playing as either Lila or Ghost offers a unique perspective. The story itself alludes to bigger risks as the player uncovers the family mystery. It was hinted that Ghost’s identity has great narrative implications and that the puzzles would progressively ask for even more tight-knit collaboration between the girl and the spirit. Looking forward to seeing if those promises live up to expectations.

Daumier: Lila & Ghost has a tentative September release period for Quest, and interested players can try the Alpha Test by joining the developer’s Discord server for the next two weeks at the time of writing.

If you're a gamer of a certain age (meaning old, like me) you may remember G-Police, a PlayStation game from 1997 in which you pilot a VTOL and shoot stuff. G-Rebels, which released on Steam today, feels like a love letter to that classic action game.

Developed by Reakktor Studios, G-Rebels is an action-packed combat flight-sim set in a dystopian open-world. As part of an elite unit of the most powerful city-state, it's your job to make sure law and order are upheld in the city and its colonies. But when a secret mission goes awry, you begin to question if you're fighting for the right side.

Beyond the striking visuals and fun-looking gameplay in the game's trailer, G-Rebels grabbed my attention for its inclusion of VR support. Combat flight sims are such a great fit for VR, and I can't wait to give this one a test flight. Happily, the developers at Reakktor Studios have sent a review copy and I'll have a full review written up shortly.

G-Rebels is out now on Steam.

The game listing dropped on the Meta Horizon store a couple of weeks ago with an August 2026 release window, but at the time of this article, we cannot find a Steam listing. This despite developer Immersmind's press release listing SteamVR as a supported platform. We have reached out to the developers to clarify this discrepancy and will update if we get a response.

Here is the trailer:

Rogue Planet takes place on Rogax, a frontier planet filled with aggressive aliens and dangerous environments. Players will take up risky missions in abandoned settlements, forgotten mines, swamps, and heavily guarded cities while unraveling the world's secrets.

The release also states it is not an arena or wave-focused VR shooter. However a recent video on Immersmind's YouTube channel shows a separate Arena mode with that exact gameplay, presumably meant to be a separate mode from the main campaign.

Discovery: Rogue Planet can be wishlisted for Quest 3 now.

Earlier this week, we covered Tactical Assault VR developer HammerFire Interactive losing its publishing agreement with 2080 Games & a working relationship with Ghosts of Tabor developer Combat Waffle Studios. This followed the VR community being made aware of lead developer Sangco's criminal history.

The nature of the arrest touches on a potentially sensitive topic, so rather than summarize it here, we invite anyone curious to read our prior article here:

Tactical Assault VR Partners Cut Ties After Disclosure of Past Legal Conviction

Tactical Assault VR’s partners dissolve their relationships with the game following the news of one of its lead developers’ arrest in 2020. CONTENT WARNING for the full article.

UploadVRMike Johnson

In light of this and the community's response to the news, HammerFire developer 'Puddle' issued the following statement on Discord. A shortened version was also posted to Tactical Assault's Steam and Meta Horizon storefront listings:

In light of recently released news and documents regarding the game owner and developer, JARVIS, this project has taken a fatal hit in reputation and confidence. The outrage of the community was fierce and justified, though I would urge everyone to cease any death threats to JARVIS or his family.

While the actions of JARVIS are indefensible, we do not want this to be the end of the game, and we are doing everything we can to come up with an acceptable solution for the community that would allow the game to continue development. After many talks between different parties, we have come up with the following changes:

As of now JARVIS is stepping down as game developer, thus ending his involvement with Tactical Assault VR's development, leadership and decision making processes.

Ownership of the Discord server is transferred over to Puddle, allowing JARVIS to exit this community.

The Tactical Assault VR project will continue under the leadership of Puddle and Black Canto and without the involvement of a publisher.

There will be a delay until the next game update will come out while the handover of project development and ownership are in progress.

The game will of course remain playable during this transition period.
Planned future DLCs will be put on hold in favor of expanding on existing DLCs.

Canto and I are confident that these changes will allow us to keep the game going and allow us much more creative and directional freedom to secure the game's future. The game's future is currently uncertain at best, but we will do everything in our power to come back from this tragedy in due time, and we will continue working on this game for as long as we can.

Mod support for the game will unfortunately be delayed due to the restructuring that is taking place, but is absolutely something that is still planned.

We hope that these changes will help us regain the confidence of the players and the community, and we hope that you choose to stay with us and help us on this uphill battle to save this game.

The post also included a 'thank you' message from Sangco directly to the game's community.

We have been monitoring the VR community's response since the news broke. There have been multiple reviews from upset players on Steam and Quest swearing off the game due to Sangco's involvement. The Discord community has been fairly divided, with some saying that they would continue to support and play the game, even before the above statement was issued.

One thing not entirely clear right now is ownership of the game itself. If Sangco fully owns the legal rights to Tactical Assault VR, as the 'owner' title attributed to him in the statement would imply, the statement does not specify that those rights are being transferred to another party. The only property changing hands is the Discord itself.

However, if Sangco retains the legal rights and ownership to Tactical Assault VR, then future revenue from the game still goes to him, after platform fees and other associated costs like server hosting. It is very possible this is also underway, but transferring ownership of an intellectual property is a legal matter that takes considerably longer than Discord ownership.

That said, none of that is mentioned in the statement. We will continue monitoring this story for any further developments.

Incuvo dropped the news in a post on X:

At the time of this article, the new port is not listed on the Meta Horizon store yet and Incuvo's announcement does not have an expected release window.

StarRupture released in Early Access on Steam in January and currently has a 'Very Positive' rating from 6,620 reviews. It is slated to leave Early Access sometime in 2027.

Here's the trailer:

My immediate reaction was twofold. First, just from watching the trailer, how much of the original game's graphical fidelity will be reduced to get the game running well on a standalone VR headset? Second, how much of the game's open world will be retained?

Incuvo has ported games to VR before with Green Hell and Bulletstorm and it is the former that I look to when considering StarRupture's potential as a Quest game. Green Hell's massive open map was severely scaled down for Meta Quest (and later PlayStation VR2), making it a more streamlined, linear experience than the original game.

Visually, the original standalone VR release, built for Meta Quest 2, was a very noticeable step down from PC. This was expected, but putting the two VR versions side by side was night and day. To its credit, Incuvo did release a visual update for Quest 3 headsets last year that showed massive improvements. Meanwhile, StarRupture is an Unreal Engine 5 game and reading through some of the Steam reviews, players on lower end PCs struggled with frame drops and lag in places.

That said there are not a great deal of games similar to StarRupture available in VR. We have native support for No Man's Sky on SteamVR and PlayStation VR2 and titles like Satisfactory can be played in VR using mods, but native options are quite slim. If Incuvo can produce a quality port that retains all of the elements and features of the original, it can fill a significant gap in the standalone VR catalog.

For those on PC VR who may be disappointed by the Quest exclusivity, StarRupture was built in Unreal Engine 5 and can be played in VR using the Universal Unreal Engine VR tool (UEVR) and already has profiles available.

Forefront has just launched a major update which adds a new map, new weapon, and new mechanics to the 32-player Battlefield-style VR first-person shooter.

A New Map - The new map is a desert-based Conquest map called Mojave. Here, you'll battle amongst a production and refinement plant that's been retrofitted into an ICBM development facility by the O.R.E., attacking or defending, depending on your faction.

A New Weapon - The Marshal-6 revolver sidearm is a six-shooter which you'll load, spin, flick, and shoot via the game's physicality-focused weapon controls. The highly interactive revolver also comes with plenty of unlockable attachments, including a "Speedloader" which lets the player reload all six bullets in one move.

New Mechanics - Following calls from the community, Triangle Factory has added the ability to drag perished players around the battlefield. The mechanic applies to both friendlies and enemies, so that teammates may drag their comrades to a safe revive spot, or keep enemies from reaching their fallen pals.

In addition, the game has received several PCVR enhancements, including more dynamic foliage and environmental particles added to certain maps.

A PS VR2 version remains in the works.

The full patch notes are included below:

Changelog | v4.0.153

Featured

• Added New Conquest Map: Mojave
• Added New Secondary Weapon: Marshal-6 Revolver
• Added Dead Player Dragging
• Added Ambient Particles for PCVR and Moving Trees for all platforms

General

• Updated the whiteboard in the main menu
• Added ping restrictions to Quickplay, fixing US players getting assigned to EU or AU servers
• Added trigger finger animation based on controller trigger touch state
• Improved Quickplay behavior fixing false “Game Is Full” results
• Improved friend system recovery in case something went wrong booting the game
• Improved arm IK when two-handing a pistol
• Re-enabled and improved team balancing
• Reduced memory usage by reducing light probes density
• Fixed a bug where the objects near you were synced a lower networking rate if you were in a vehicle with third person camera enabled
• Fixed friend list join button being unresponsive
• Fixed functioning WASD and Spacebar controls

Weapons & Attachments

• Increased KLAV-6 max spread by 50%
• Increased KLAV-6 spread increase per shot by roughly 50%
• Reduced KLAV-6 post-falloff damage from 20 to 17
• Fixed incorrect and blurry zoom levels in sniper scopes
• Fixed red dot size being bigger on pistols than on rifles
• Fixed being able to scope through geometry
• Fixed gun not moving when snap turning
• Fixed gun pointing down aggressively while smooth crouching during hold breath
• Fixed no bullet casing visuals exiting a gun beyond the base bullet count when equipped with an extended mag

Gadgets & Perks

• Added slight auto-targeting of teammates for the stim gun
• Added green laser sight to the stim gun (only visible for teammates and length matches the range)
• Added bullet impacts for missed stim gun shots
• Added instant 35HP damage when hitting an enemy with the stim gun
• The Engineer’s Mechanic perk’s auto-repair is now percentage based on helicopters like it is on the other vehicles, meaning auto-repairs in helicopters will now take much longer to be more in line with other vehicles
• The stim gun now regenerates 50HP over 3 seconds instead of instantly
• Fixed the green vignette of the stim remaining after screen transition
• Fixed claymores and mines becoming invisible when dying and respawning after deploying it
• Fixed not being able to hear someone else’s repair tool
• Fixed friendly drone losing its blue name tag
• Fixed C4, Ammo Boxes, and Med Kits disappearing when thrown far away
• Fixed invisible C4 brick while holstered and grabbing it
• Fixed flying spawn beacon placement hologram

Vehicles

• Decreased max spread of the Anti-Air Tank main turret by 15%
• Increased projectile fall-off end distance of the Anti-Air Tank main turret by 15 %
• Increased projectile post fall-off damage of the Anti-Air Tank main turret from 10 to 11
• Increased projectile speed of the Anti-Air Tank main turret from 800 to 900
• Fixed vehicle ducking while using third person
• Fixed not being able to exit the gunner seat with grip toggle enabled
• Fixed transport helicopter not being clickable on the spawn map
• Improved repairing inside vehicles by allowing more margin on where to touch the colliders

Maps

• Added more cover to Paradise Rush
• Reduced attacker spawn time from 15 to 13 seconds on Paradise Rush
• Reduced defender bounds on Paradise Rush
• Removed the first objective on Paradise Rush
• Swapped out the Little Bird with an APC on Paradise Rush
• Increased spawn protection bounds for cave-side HQ on Tunnels
• Increased HQ bounds on Fjord Conquest
• Fixed a spot in Tunnels where Quads could glitch out the level

UI

• Added control point capture progress UI to the ammo counter UI
• Added reticle scale slider to the in-game settings
• Added a warning in the voice settings when microphone permissions aren’t enabled
• Fixed health bars being hard to read when dead
• Fixed high-quality water rendering on top of UI
• Fixed revive UI showing on ragdolls who can no longer get revived

Audio

• Added a small sound for the popup when an enemy captures a neutral point
• Fixed no stow sound when placing back the drone over the shoulder

Forefront’s New Map Makes It Feel More Like Battlefield VR Than Ever

Large-scale VR shooter Forefront launches in full tomorrow. We tried out the new Clearwater map, which makes it feel more like Battlefield VR than ever.

UploadVRJames Tocchio

Last week, we covered Deep Type Games' new project, Hellsplit: Labyrinth, a dark fantasy roguelike set in the Hellsplit universe. Deep Type also clarified to us that its other upcoming project, Cute & Dead, was delayed to this fall after missing its original July 1 release date.

That said, what about Hellsplit: Arena? While introducing Labyrinth, Deep Type went into more detail about why the team has been mostly radio silent since porting Arena to Meta Quest in March 2025, leading to speculation the game was no longer being supported.

Rather than paraphrase, here is Deep Type's direct statement:

Many of you have probably come to the conclusion that we've abandoned Hellsplit: Arena and have no plans to return to it. If that were true, we would have told you honestly.

The real reason for our silence is much simpler: for a long time, we simply had nothing meaningful to share.

To be completely transparent, our studio has spent the past year facing a great deal of uncertainty about its future. As many of you know, indie game developers around the world are going through extremely difficult times. The ongoing challenges in the global economy have affected countless studios, and unfortunately, Deep Type Games is no exception. Unlike larger companies, we don't have the luxury of cutting costs by laying off employees or canceling projects.

Deep Type continued:

First and foremost, we significantly reduced active support of Hellsplit: Arena. The truth is that we simply didn't have the resources to deliver all the ambitious ideas we originally envisioned for the game.

At the same time, it became clear that a single niche title - even one as successful as Hellsplit: Arena - could not sustainably support the studio or allow it to grow.

We truly love Hellsplit: Arena. It has earned the respect of players and received good reviews. But it's also a hardcore VR experience made for a relatively niche audience. Games like this rarely become mainstream.

This sobering reality led to the aforementioned Cute & Dead, a zombie shooter reminiscent of the 1990s cult classic Zombies Ate My Neighbors, and Hellsplit: Labyrinth.

As for Arena, Deep Type stated in a separate post on Discord in December 2025 that Arena only has two people currently working on it while the rest of the team was onto new projects. Arena already supports mods on Steam and Deep Type will create a separate 'legacy' branch locked to the game's current 1.24.1 build, ensuring that the pending 1.3 update will not break any existing mods. Separately, update 1.3 will bring mod support to Quest. Also planned is a long requested sandbox mode and achievements for Steam.

This may prove to be the final content update for Arena, as Deep Type has acknowledged the game's age:

Unfortunately, the project's aging architecture and technical limitations prevent us from implementing many of the larger ideas we've wanted to pursue for years. Sooner or later, every game reaches the end of its lifecycle.

Hellsplit: Arena is available on Steam and Meta Quest.

Ragnarock's previous music update was the Viking Music Pack last summer, a paid add-on with five new tracks.

The two new tracks are 2020's 'Strangeland' by Mister Misery and 2006's 'Hard Rock Hallelujah' from Lordi.

Additionally, the game's tutorial song has been changed from 'Call of the North' to 'To Erebor' due to the former's licensing agreement expiration. Ragnarock has been slower to add new music than fellow rhythm games Beat Saber and Synth Riders, both of which have dropped new music multiple times in 2026 alone.

Developer Wanadev Studio (Propagation: Paradise Hotel, Vestiges) detailed the months-long process required to acquire new officially licensed music in the announcement post:

Before we can even start mapping a track, we first need to contact the rights holders, secure their approval, and make sure the artists are fairly compensated. Unfortunately, those pieces don't always come together, which means some songs simply can't make their way into Ragnarock. Hopefully this gives you a better idea of why adding new songs to Ragnarock isn't quite as simple as it may seem!

Every song included in Ragnarock has been officially licensed from its rights holders, most often the bands themselves or their publishers, including royalties in various forms.

This process is likely easier and faster for a company like Beat Games with a huge parent company like Meta available to do some of the heavy lifting. Wanadev has also been busy with other projects of late like its upcoming flatscreen co-op survival horror title Species Unknown.

Ragnarock is available on Steam, Meta Quest, and PlayStation VR2.

Starting today and continuing until August 12, PlayStation's Summer Game Sale is offering big discounts on approximately 200 PlayStation VR and VR2 titles and DLC. Sony's sale follows similar sales from competing VR ecosystems; Meta's Peak Summer Sale and Steam's annual Summer Sale have already begun.

While it would be virtually impossible to list every deal here, a quick glance through PlayStation's Summer Sale page shows strong discounts on basically everything, including games discounted up to 88%. You can browse the entire catalog here.

Some standouts include:

• Gran Turismo 7: $29.39 (58% off regular price of $69.99)
• No Man's Sky: $23.99 (60% off regular price of $59.99)
• Creed: Rise to Glory Championship Edition: $13.99 (65% off regular price of $39.99)
• Tetris Effect: Connected: $19.99 (50% off regular price of $39.99)
• Aces of Thunder: $19.49 (35% off regular price of $29.99)
• Star Wars Squadrons: $4.79 (88% off regular price of $39.99)
• Alien Rogue Incursion VR: $9.99 (75% off regular price of $39.99)
• Metro Awakening: $14.99 (50% off regular price of $29.99)
• Lumines Arise: $29.99 (25% off regular price of $39.99)
• Red Matter 2: $15.89 (47% off regular price of $29.99)

And the list goes on and on!

In addition to discounts on individual games, PlayStation is also offering discounts on bundles that combine games and experiences into one purchase. There are also single purchases that offer access to both PS VR and PS VR2 versions of certain games. There are also hybrid bundles which combine VR titles with flatscreen titles as well.

See the entirety of the PlayStation Summer Sale's VR offerings here.

From blockbuster franchises to ambitious new experiences pushing the medium forward, there's no shortage of exciting games on the horizon. Throw in a healthy number of inventive indie projects, and the second half of 2026 is shaping up to be an exciting time to own a headset.

Here's ten of our most anticipated games coming to headsets in 2026.

The Lightkeepers (Meta Quest 3)

The Lightkeepers is an upcoming Lovecraft-inspired co-op action game from the makers of Medieval Dynasty New Settlement which combines exploration with visceral melee and projectile combat. During the day, you'll travel by boat to scattered islands across the seas, solve puzzles, explore caves and dungeons, gather resources, and craft survival items. When night falls, you'll secure your surroundings and fend off a wide range of enemies and bosses.

The combination of exploration and overnight tower defense-like survival gameplay looks like a great mashup that we're looking forward to playing.

It's coming this year to Meta Quest 3 and 3S.

The Signal: Stranded on Sirenis (PC VR via Steam)

This single-player survival/crafting/shooting game is a Flat2VR Spark project planned as a hybrid release (flatscreen with VR support). You play as a space-faring explorer stranded on a sentient alien planet. You'll scavenge, build, extract, and survive as you slowly discover the true intentions of the living planet, and its reasons for holding you captive.

The trailer hints at what's most interesting about The Signal, as the sentient planet recites an almost desperate monologue. Can a planet go insane? And what does that mean for those who walk its surface?

And the shooting elements remind us of Destiny, so that can't hurt!

For now, a demo (not VR supported) is available on Steam.

Knights of Fiona (Meta Quest and SteamVR)

We love Japanese-style role playing games (JRPGs), a genre sadly in short supply in VR. Knights of Fiona seeks to bring to VR what its developers call "a full-scale VR JRPG."

Made by Character Bank, the creators of RUINSMAGUS, KoF is a built-for-VR JRPG playable solo or with up to two pals. It promises a world full of hand-crafted detail, plenty of quests, intense and physical VR combat, and a rich and deep story.

Knights of Fiona is coming to Meta Quest and SteamVR this year.

Knights Of Fiona Aims To Be An RPG You’ll Keep Coming Back To

The developers of Ruinsmagus build a bigger role-playing game in Knights Of Fiona.

UploadVRAlicia Haddick

Echoes of Mora (PC VR via Steam)

An exploration-driven mystery with high emotional stakes, Echoes of Mora fuses Subnautica's atmospheric aquatic exploration and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture's melancholic storytelling.

You follow and guide Mora. After her brother disappears near a cursed lake, Mora sets out to find him. As the lake's water rises, threatening the village, your help is crucial. You'll share clues you find in the underwater world, guide Mora in the past, and accompany her on a time-bending journey that could decide the fate of her family and village.

This one has been delayed before, but it's planned to release in Q3 this year. You can wishlist the game now on Steam where a VR-supported demo is available to play.

Echoes of Mora Hands On: Approachable Underwater Puzzler With An Emotional Heart

Echoes of Mora sees you solve a mythical missing persons case in a dreamy aquatic puzzler.

UploadVRSarah Thwaites

Adrian's Quest (SteamVR)

In this single-player action-adventure game built for VR, you'll play as an android stranded on a largely abandoned alien world, caught in the crossfire of four rivaling factions. You'll explore fantastic, interactive environments full of puzzles and enemies, and engage in heavy gunfights with bizarre weapons.

From what we've seen of Adrian's Quest, we're very much reminded of Insomniac Games' Stormland, one of Mike's favorite games.

This one's coming to SteamVR, where you can wishlist it now.

Sol Protocol (Meta Quest and SteamVR)

Sol Protocol is a co-op roguelike with procedurally generated star systems that's hitting Early Access in September. You and up to two other players will work 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.

Developer Singular Perception (Epyka) has been running open alpha playtests on Quest 3/3S since March. At the time of this writing, the Early Access release on Meta Quest is coming in September, with the Steam version's EA release coming in October.

Sol Protocol can be wishlisted now on Quest and Steam.

Automa (SteamVR, Meta Quest 3, PlayStation VR2)

Automa is an ambitious sci-fi action-adventure game set in a dystopian Southeast Asian city where autonomous AI-powered forces have seized control. You've made a deal to save your family, but at what cost?

Built for VR, Automa is heavy on exploration and immersion. Taking inspiration from Half-Life Alyx, Automa leans on believable physics and intuitive interactions, with nearly every object in the game being fully interactive. There's lots to touch and even more to explore. Plus, there's plenty of shooting.

It's the sort of game that really speaks to VR's strengths, and we can't wait to see if it lives up to its potential.

Automa is coming to SteamVR, Meta Quest, and PlayStation VR2. As of now, it's planned to be released in 2026.

G-Rebels (PC VR via Steam)

If you're a gamer of a certain age (ahem, old) you'll likely remember G-Police, a game from 1997 in which you pilot a VTOL and shoot stuff. G-Rebels feels like a love letter to that classic action game, except with VR support.

G-Rebels is an action-packed combat flight-sim set in a dystopian open-world. As part of an elite unit of the most powerful city-state, it's your job to make sure law and order are upheld in the city and its colonies. When a secret mission goes awry, you start to wonder: are you fighting for the right side?

The game looks stunning, and combat flight sims are such a great fit for VR that we can't wait to give this one a shakedown.

It's coming to PC VR via Steam, and we don't have long to wait. G-Rebels takes to the skies on July 20.

The Warp - Cephisso (SteamVR)

The Warp - Cephisso is a narrative-driven sci-fi horror game heading to Steam this year. Expanding on 2022's free-roam LBE experience The Warp, you're tasked with exploring the titular derelict spaceship that's now become infested with “grotesque, mutating horrors” across a single-player campaign.

The voice acting is great, the atmosphere is amazing, and the game's big mechanical hook comes from its limited arsenal; rather than carry multiple guns, you're instead armed with one weapon called the JDE, a semi-automatic bolt-action handgun that requires you to manually chamber each bullet. The physicality of VR combines with the deliberate pacing of this design choice to create extreme tension in the horrifying corridors of the derelict starship.

It looks so good, and so terrifying.

You can wishlist the game on SteamVR now. A PC demo is available now.

Guardians Planetfall (Quest 3 and SteamVR)

Guardians Planetfall is an ambitious new cooperative shooter that throws players into a desperate battle for humanity’s survival across a war-torn galaxy. Our earlier coverage of Guardians Planetfall described the game as "Helldivers 2 for VR," and the more we see of it, the more we're looking forward to it.

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. Success will depend on teamwork, strategy, and quick decision-making as squads fight to secure objectives and push back enemy advances across multiple fronts.

Guardians Planetfall will launch in early access on Quest 3/3S and SteamVR in 2026.

And there you have it. Ten upcoming games that we can't wait to try. Was your most anticipated title included? What did we miss? Please share what you're waiting for in the comments section below.

You can also check out everything coming in 2026 and beyond via our upcoming games list here.

The tournament tees off on July 16 in conjunction with the 154th Open Championship. Watch the trailer here:

Players will compete on the new Royal Birkdale course, the latest DLC addition to GOLF+'s lineup of well over a dozen replications of real-life courses for VR players. The Royal Birkdale is also the host of this week's Open Championship. With the two events coinciding, GOLF+ has included grandstands, spectator areas, and Championship branding throughout the new course for a more authentic experience.

Awaiting the winner is a grand prize of a VIP trip for two to 2027's 155th Open, including Open Championship tickets and hospitality. Entry into the grand prize drawing will be open to all GOLF+ players that compete in the VR Open. All players who complete each of their VR Open tournament rounds will be entered to win the grand prize.

The Royal Birkdale course is available now for $11.99. Players can also subscribe to the GOLF+ Pass service for $9.99 a month (or $99.99 per year) to get access to all courses.

GOLF+ is out now on Quest for $29.99 and comes with three original courses. It is also available as part of Meta's Horizon+ subscription service. It can be wishlisted on Steam now ahead of its upcoming release on that platform.

CONTENT WARNING: This article addresses the commercial sexual exploitation of children, which may be distressing to some readers. Please engage at your own discretion.

Xerxes Jarvis Sangco, known online and in the Tactical Assault community as Jarvis, was arrested in Nevada in the summer of 2020. The records show that Sangco communicated with and attempted to meet with an undercover officer posing as a fifteen-year-old prostitute. He was arrested along with three other people and charged with first-offense soliciting a child for prostitution and luring a child/mentally ill person to engage in a sexual act.

Clark County court records show Sangco later pleaded guilty to a gross misdemeanor of conspiracy to solicit or engage in prostitution. He was sentenced to up to twenty months of probation and required to register as a Tier 2 sex offender until his probation was completed. Sangco was released from probation upon completion in August 2022. His sex offender registration was subject to a dropdown at that time, a term referring to the lowering of a tier and loosening of restrictions.

Credit to YouTuber 'TiredInfantryman' for a detailed video regarding the allegations and links for our follow-up and fact-checking.

Publisher 2080 Games, whose clients include Gunman Contracts, Memoreum, and Miracle Pool, released a brief statement on X:

Yesterday we became aware of a past incident related to the developer of Tactical Assault VR. Consequently, we have made the decision to terminate our publishing agreement with the developer and the game.

Scott Albright from Combat Waffle Studios (Ghosts of Tabor) stated the following in a post on Discord:

Effective immediately, we are removing all Tactical Assault content and promotional material from Ghosts of Tabor. We have learned that Jarvis, the lead of Tactical Assault, is a convicted child sex offender.

He continued:

That said, do not direct your anger toward the Tactical Assault development team or their families. They found out about this only this morning, and they are not responsible for Jarvis's actions.

Our relationship with Tactical Assault is over. We will not promote, support, or associate with the project going forward.

At the time of this article, neither Sangco nor Tactical Assault developer HammerFire Interactive has released an official statement. We will follow up if/when that happens.

Editor's note: UploadVR was not aware of this information when Tactical Assault VR was included in our recent UploadVR Summer Showcase game bundle on Humble Bundle.

If you or anyone you know is a victim of sexual assault, please consider using the following resources:

• National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN): Call 1-800-656-4673 or chat online at rainn.org (Available 24/7).
• National Human Trafficking Hotline: Call 1-888-373-7888, text "HELP" or "INFO" to 233733, or chat at humantraffickinghotline.org.
• National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC): Report online at cybertipline.org or call 1-800-843-5678

An inevitability with long-running games is a segment of the community wishing for the "old days" when the game was "better." Among new maps, weapons, rebalancing, and other updates, shooters are especially prone to this sort of fan response. Sometimes, as in this instance with Ghosts of Tabor, this outcry gets too loud for developer Combat Waffle Studios to ignore.

Enter Ghosts of Tabor: Legacy. Here's the announcement trailer:

Legacy is a return to the 2024 version of Ghosts of Tabor. The Old Island map returns to its original form. The original time-to-kill and damage model return. The neck snapping in close quarters combat is the same as it was then. It is, in essence, a snapshot in time for the players who miss Tabor in this form.

Ghosts of Tabor: Legacy will not receive any new content, though Combat Waffle will maintain it for any necessary bug fixes and troubleshooting.

Legacy releases on July 31 on Meta Quest and Steam. Quest players can pre-order now for $9.99, a 33% discount from the full price of $14.99. The Steam version does not have pre-orders available, but it can be wishlisted and Combat Waffle says a similar discount will be available at launch.

The app's July update also brings Profile Levels, revamped sound design, a new Oceana environment, and a daily streak system designed to encourage more consistent habits.

After spending several days with the update, I found Journey to be an interesting addition, though its recommendations didn't always line up with the way I already use FitXR.

Journey

FitXR offers more than 1,000 workouts across Boxing, Combat, HIIT, Dance, Sculpt, Flow, and other workout types. That breadth is one of the platform's biggest strengths, but it can also make deciding what to do next surprisingly difficult. Journey is designed to simplify that decision by recommending workouts based on a member's goals and activity.

When I spoke with FitXR CEO Sam Cole ahead of the update, he described Journey as part of a broader effort to remove friction from the fitness experience and help members build sustainable habits rather than treating each workout as an isolated session.

Journey begins by asking users about their fitness goals before recommending their first workouts. According to FitXR Vice President of Product Rob Mayes, recommendations for existing members also draw on workout history, preferred studios, coaches, music, and recent activity, while new members answer additional questions during onboarding.

Some recommendations matched the workouts I was looking for. Others consistently steered me toward higher-intensity HIIT sessions than I would normally choose. While Journey lets users adjust workout duration and overall intensity, I still found myself sometimes returning to the Explore menu to manually browse and select the classes I wanted.

Although FitXR says Journey learns from a member's workout history and ongoing activity, I found it difficult to communicate workout-specific preferences. I generally enjoy intermediate or advanced Boxing, Combat, and Flow classes, while preferring lower-intensity HIIT workouts, yet Journey still treated those preferences as a single fitness profile.

Even when I chose a different workout, I appreciated what Journey is trying to solve. As FitXR's library continues to expand, reducing the time between putting on a headset and starting a workout becomes increasingly valuable.

"The main aim of Journey is to support and guide people toward the workouts we believe will help them reach their goals, but that guidance only works long-term if people don't feel they've lost their say in it," Mayes told UploadVR.

He said Journey continues learning from user behavior over time. If members consistently bypass its recommendations and instead choose different classes through Explore, those choices become one of the strongest signals shaping future recommendations. FitXR is also actively exploring giving members more control over the types of workouts Journey recommends.

Based on FitXR's design and my experience as an existing member, Journey appears particularly well suited to newcomers still discovering the platform's library. Longtime members with established routines may find themselves wanting more flexibility before relying on it as their primary way of choosing workouts.

Profile Levels

Profile Levels transform accumulated Move Points into a permanent progression system recognizing a member's complete FitXR history. Rather than existing as a number on its own, Move Points now unlock milestone titles ranging from Starter to Olympian.

Those levels reflect a member's entire workout history, giving longtime users recognition for years of consistency instead of rewarding only current streaks.

It finally gives Move Points a clearer sense of purpose.

Sound Design

The updated sound design was one of the first changes I noticed.

FitXR says it revisited audio throughout the app after receiving consistent community feedback, refreshing everything from interface interactions to workout sound effects.

During my testing, punches carried noticeably more impact, and power targets became easier to distinguish by sound. In Flow, rapid target sequences stayed in sync with the music more consistently, helping the workout feel smoother during faster combinations.

The updated sound design noticeably improves the feedback throughout each workout. Every strike feels more deliberate, making workouts more satisfying and responsive. For me, the sound overhaul ended up being one of the standout improvements in the entire update.

Oceana

The update also introduces Oceana, a new underwater environment available across multiple workout types.

Surrounded by coral reefs and marine life, Oceana expands FitXR's collection of workout environments with a vibrant underwater world. The colorful setting feels lively and immersive, giving returning members another fresh place to exercise.

The underwater theme extends beyond the environment itself. For the first time, Flow workouts include an alternate baton design, with coral-inspired controllers that match the Oceana environment. It's a small detail, but one that makes the experience feel more cohesive.

FitXR is also refreshing its existing workout environments, rebuilding five legacy spaces with updated lighting, textures, skies, and atmosphere. The company says additional environment updates are planned in the coming months.

Community Feedback

Early discussion in FitXR's official Facebook community has been generally positive, with many users welcoming the convenience of personalized workout recommendations. Others, however, said they still prefer choosing workouts manually, suggesting Journey may appeal most to those looking for a simpler starting point.

Daily streaks have also drawn mixed reactions. According to Mayes, FitXR spent roughly a year testing the feature with new members before rolling it out more broadly. The goal is to encourage consistent daily habits while allowing members to preserve progress through Freeze Days when life interrupts a routine.

Some community members, however, have asked for weekly streaks to return, particularly those who intentionally rotate between multiple VR fitness apps or expect to be away from home longer than their available Freeze Days.

Final Thoughts

After several days with Journey, I still found myself occasionally using the Explore menu to find the workout I wanted. At the same time, I could already see the recommendations beginning to reflect my preferences. Since Journey is designed to adapt over time, I'm interested to see how those suggestions evolve over the coming weeks.

If it continues to become more personalized, Journey has the potential to make finding the right workout faster and more intuitive, reducing the time spent searching and helping users get into their workouts sooner.

Carmack first revealed that he made the offer regarding Team Beef’s id Software mods last year. At that time, Carmack said that he even personally guaranteed “a million dollars in sales" to allow Team Beef to sell its ports on Quest's store.

Today, in a post on X, Carmack stated that he's still willing to put up a $1M guarantee.

The message was part of a longer thread aimed at Microsoft, who recently laid off 136 members of id Software (reportedly 73.5% of the studio’s staff) during a massive “reset” of its video game business. Microsoft plans to eliminate 3200 jobs across multiple studios. (id Software was sold to ZeniMax in 2009, and ZeniMax was acquired by Microsoft in 2021.)

Team Beef has ported a range of classic PC games to VR, including id Software’s Doom, Doom 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3. They’ve also released VR ports of Tomb Raider, Duke Nukem 3D, and the Star Wars Jedi Knight series. Currently, these ports require purchasing the original games on PC and then using SideQuest to install them to Quest along with Team Beef's modified code.

In addition to founding id Software, Carmack was also once Oculus’ CTO, and has shown great support for bringing id Software’s games to VR.

John Carmack Offered A $1 Million Guarantee To Bring Team Beef’s Ports To The Quest Store

“I tried” John Carmack says he offered id Software a $1 million sales guarantee to allow Team Beef to sell its VR ports on the Quest store.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

"I had some hope,” Carmack wrote about his offer last year. “But that was still too small potatoes to make anything happen in a Microsoft company.”

You can admire them, sit inside them, learn about their unique features and even hear the engines rev. It offers some truly memorable moments. What is missing is more of an immersive storytelling experience that could spark a deeper aspiration among virtual guests to one day become collectors of the cars.

A Private Walkthrough of Vehicles Few Can Access

The app opens with a short 2D Lamborghini brand video celebrating ‘the courage to imagine’, ‘the power to create’ and the ‘instinct to go further.’ It welcomes visitors to what is positioned as the ‘new dimension of Lamborghini’ which is an exciting premise, especially as an introduction to a premium Apple Vision Pro experience with one of the most elite vehicle brands on the planet. I was surprised that the opening did not leverage the magic of immersion to create an immediate memorable moment, especially as it repeats each time the app is opened, but the beautiful stereoscopic images of the Lamborghini vehicles in the spatial carousel appear immediately after and invite visitors into the showcase environments for the Lamborghini Temerario, Revuelto, Urus SE and the soon-to-be-released Urus SE Performante.

Each vehicle showcase includes a voiced introduction which plays alongside its matching text transcript. It can be skipped, but unlike Apple Immersive Video, it cannot be paused or moved to a selected part of the overview. It is worth listening to in order to understand some of the details that make each vehicle unique, at least the first time you visit each environment. Guests are then presented with a range of immersive or mixed reality views to select from, often paired with facts. The most memorable moments for me were getting virtually inside the Lamborghinis, seeing the premium interior and details of its textures up close, and being able to hear the engine rev in a manner that made me feel like I was actually there. Where you are automatically positioned in the virtual seats once you choose to see the interior varies by experience, so you may just need to sit up and move around a bit to get into the right position depending on where you are sitting in reality.

Lamborghini shares in their release that the app is intended to redefine ‘how enthusiasts and collectors connect’ with the brand through an ‘immersive digital journey.’ There are many details that are shared with visitors throughout the app to reinforce the high-end quality of the vehicles, as well as some memorable views and moments. There are just a few elements that stood out that did not enhance the immersive experience as much as they could have such as finding an image of a living room in a rearview mirror when I was in a different environment, and the opportunity for more of a narrative to further develop the virtual guest experience and brand story.

An Immersive Showcase with Room for More Story

The app gives virtual access to the vehicles, but the elements do not work hard to acknowledge users as virtual guests or potential customers, and the Lamborghini story and vehicle origin stories are not included. Including this could help nurture more enthusiasts and also elevate the experience to be what one may expect from Lamborghini. The brand is not only admired for its technical details. The script in the opening video celebrates imagination, creation, instinct, and a new dimension of Lamborghini. Additional details in the narrative of the experience could help to act as added proof points for its statements.

Interaction Makes the Vehicles Feel More Within Reach

Interacting with the app interface as well as the vehicles themselves is intuitive. When I can lift, place, walk around and step into the vehicles, paired with the high visual fidelity of Apple Vision Pro, the overall experience feels more real. I caught myself reaching out to try to open a door to get in and attempting to interact with elements of the models as the voice-over explains the different features, sometimes paired with a layer of animation. I wanted more interaction, but I guess that is reserved for those lucky enough to get an actual Lamborghini sales experience, preserving many of its exclusive benefits.

Bring some Lamborghini models home for free. Subtitles are currently available in English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

During an "ask me anything" session on his Instagram page, when asked "Did you guys give up on VR?", here's how Bosworth responded.

"No.

We've talked about this a lot this year - kind of an odd comment.

We've just updated the user interface profoundly for the first time in years. We've talked openly about the fact that we're building multiple next-generation headsets.

We did get ourselves into more sustainable shape, that's true. But no. We continue to invest quite a bit there.

So, stay tuned for Connect and we'll have more to share then."

Bosworth's claim that Meta has "talked about this a lot this year" is indeed accurate. During the company's Q4 2025 earnings call in January, CFO Susan Li told investors that the company still has "optimism in the future of VR", and confirmed that it's still "building future headsets" – plural.

Shortly after, when asked about VR during an interview, Bosworth himself stated that "I think it's officially leaked we've got two devices on the roadmap that we're super excited about coming out over the course of a period of time".

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

The "leak" Bosworth mentioned was clearly the December internal Meta memos that revealed the company is working on a gaming-focused headset set to be a "large upgrade" over Quest 3, but without subsidization, suggesting a notably higher price.

That, to be clear, is in addition to the widely reported ultralight mixed reality headset with a tethered compute puck that the memo suggested should launch in the first half of 2027.

UploadVR's understanding is that the more traditional Quest 4 should then arrive in late 2027 at the earliest, though Meta's plans and schedules constantly shift.

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

In February, low resolution graphics depicting the ultralight headset were discovered in the Quest firmware, giving us our first real indication of what it should look like.

As for the other parts of Bosworth's response, the "profoundly" updated user interface refers to the Horizon OS 'Navigator' rollout. Meanwhile, the "more sustainable shape" is essentially a corporate euphemism for Meta's shutdown of three of its acquired VR game studios, significant layoffs at a fourth, cancelation of the Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel, retreat of Horizon Worlds from VR, and deprecation of Horizon Workrooms and Quest headsets for business offering.

Meta’s New ‘Navigator’ System UI Finally Rolled Out To All Quest Headsets

The new Horizon OS ‘Navigator’ system UI finally rolled out to all Quest headsets, more than a year after Meta began publicly testing it.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

The mention of "more to share" at Meta Connect 2026, set for September 23, is arguably the most interesting part of Bosworth's response.

While all signs point to Meta's ultralight headset launching in 2027, we've long suspected that the company could at least tease it, or perhaps even formally announce it, at Connect 2026. Bosworth's sentence is the first public sign that this might, perhaps, be the case. Though it's also possible that he's just referring to new VR software announcements for existing Meta Quest headsets.

We'll find out in September.

The Information first reported on Meta's plans to launch smart glasses that could recognize faces and run continuous AI sessions for "hours" over a year ago. The new Financial Times report directly states that it is referring to the same device.

Both reports claim Meta internally refers to the always-on AI feature as “super sensing”. The Financial Times report describes how it would work on a technical level: the system would capture an image from the camera every few seconds and constantly capture audio, and an AI model would continually analyze the images and audio to upload its analysis as text to Meta's servers.

On a recent Meta earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg told investors that he wants Meta AI on smart glasses to evolve from “being able to answer questions to being able to be a personal agent that’s with you all day long, helping you remember things and achieve your goals”.

According to the Information's report from last year, the "super sensing" feature could, for example, remind you to pick up your keys if you forgot, or to stop in a store to pick up ingredients for dinner as you walk past it. The report also noted Meta was "exploring" a facial recognition capability, which could for example remind you of someone's name.

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

At Meta Connect 2025, the Chief Scientist of the company's Reality Labs division, XR veteran Michael Abrash, openly described the company's eventual goal of shipping glasses with always-on "contextual AI" that can even continuously create a dynamic 3D map of your physical environment, and your movements and actions within it, including the objects you interact with. The glasses will store a log of these actions and interactions, and use it to provide "contextual AI", he said at the time.

For example, you could ask "how many calories have I consumed today?". And without needing to have logged anything in advance, the AI will be able to answer – as long as you were wearing the glasses at the time.

It's unclear how wide the gulf between Meta's first "super sensing" glasses and the eventual device Abrash hopes to ship will be. It seems unlikely, for example, that the first-generation technology will be creating a dynamic 3D map of your physical environment.

Meta Is Improving Its Smart Glasses Privacy LED Tampering Detection

Meta says it’s improving the ability of its smart glasses to detect if the privacy LED has been tampered with and disable the camera, via a mandatory firmware update.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

The more pressing issue, according to both reports, is how the privacy issue of "super sensing" would be handled, and how the general public, including bystanders, might react.

One point of internal debate, reportedly, is whether having the feature enabled should continually flash the privacy LED. Meta just announced that it's improving its detection of buyers tampering with the LED, but the current plan is to not activate the LED during "super sensing".

The rationale behind this is that the images and audio captured during this mode would not be available to the user, and not even stored after processing. An AI would see almost every moment of your glasses-wearing life, in other words, but no human would – in theory at least.

However, as the report makes clear, a final decision has not been made, and internal debate is still ongoing around how to handle privacy.

In a statement to The Financial Times, Meta said it declines to comment on “internal prototypes” but claimed that it focuses on “privacy built in from the ground up”, and pointed to how its Project Aria Gen 2 research glasses “uses privacy-protective technologies to help people without capturing photos and videos the way traditional cameras work”.

Hinkson and I met at AWE in June for a demo of CONNECTOME on Apple Vision Pro. UploadVR met Hinkson last year at AWE for a demo of the same game on Meta Quest shortly after its May 2025 release. At the time, Hinkson expressed his desire to bring the game to Apple Vision Pro.

The Connectome Demo At AWE Shows How Connect The Dots Can Be Spatial

Connectome on Quest is a meditative version of Connect the Dots.

UploadVRDon Hopper

Like Don Hopper's experience last year, I found myself mesmerized by the elegant simplicity of the app, bolstered by AVP's eye tracking to feel more connected to what I was doing. Practically, CONNECTOME is a straightforward series of tasks of connecting dots with hand tracking to create different shapes and progress further into the world, in a soothing spatial environment anchored with a zen musical score. It is the type of app where time disappears. It felt like I was only in the app for a few minutes when it turned out to be over twenty.

After my demo, I asked Hinkson a simple question: what were the challenges in building the same application on Apple Vision Pro versus Meta Quest?

Due to the lack of connectivity of some tools and libraries available for Vision Pro in Unity, Hinkson faced a number of obstacles he did not anticipate. I will do my best in this next section to avoid getting too deep into the weeds.

The primary driver of CONNECTOME is a Unity library called Shapes, built by Freya Holmer and this presented Hinkson's first AVP hurdle. In contrast to Meta Quest, Shapes was not compatible with PolySpatial, Unity's default toolkit for developing for visionOS. PolySpatial renders through a kit that does not accept the custom shaders Shapes uses. Hinkson found a workaround for this by switching the Unity app mode to Metal, a different rendering service. This solved one problem and created another.

Metal apps built in Unity do not provide eye-based hover effects, a foundational part of Apple Vision Pro's user experience. In layman's terms, this is what you see in an eye tracked headset when the cursor moves to whatever icon you are looking at. This is no fault of Apple, who introduced an API for Metal developers at its annual WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) in 2025. Instead, the gap here lies with Unity, who has not implemented support for it. For its part, Unity has acknowledged this and confirmed it does not plan to add integration.

Faced with this new obstacle, Hinkson built a custom bridge from scratch, one that drilled down to the native level of Unity's compositor, registered the necessary eye tracking information in each frame, and wrote the texture for visionOS to render the expected hover effect. Unfortunately, this workaround would be wiped out every time a new build of the app was generated as Unity regenerates its visionOS on each build. So a post build patcher had to be built that runs after the Unity export completes.

Then, there were the colors. Each room in CONNECTOME has a single hue as its anchor point, one of the best parts of moving room to room. For this, a second bridge had to be built as the system used, SwiftUI, has APIs that are also not exposed by Unity. Another post-build patcher was necessary to ensure the Unity scene maintained the SwiftUI modifications.

Hinkson's experience is illustrative of the challenges of building for a new platform and offers some insight as to why app development for new XR devices takes longer than consumers expect. Hurdles like those detailed here are not known until the developers get knee deep into these projects and run full speed into the proverbial brick walls. Only then, after seeking alternative solutions, including building their own from scratch, do these projects see the light of day.

As previously stated, Apple was at least aware of these obstacles and provided tools to aid developers. Meta has had a long standing partnership with Unity and multiple software development kits available for Unity and Unreal Engine. Snap is doing the same with its upcoming Spectacles, making all efforts to ensure teams have what they need, but this only goes so far. Without fully integrated support from engines like Unity, Unreal, Godot and others, developers will continue to find themselves seeking workarounds due to the lack of said integrations.

As adoption of XR technology becomes more ubiquitous and the demand for more robust applications increases, these game engines will either have their hands forced or developers like Hinkson will make their custom tools and libraries publicly available, sometimes at a price, to bridge the gaps. That said, until adoption gets to that level, developers for new hardware platforms will continue to face these issues and spend significant time and resources reinventing the wheel in order to stay on the cutting edge of new tech.

CONNECTOME is available now on Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest.

We first learned about Squingle Arcade, a faster-paced evolution of the original Squingle, at the VR Games Showcase in March.

Watch the release trailer here:

Squingle Arcade tasks players to guide glowing orbs through fluid glass-like 3D mazes while avoiding traps, collecting colored pods, and defeating enemies. It supports controller and hand tracking inputs with a choice of immersive or mixed reality environments.

At launch, Squingle Arcade has over sixty levels with more reportedly planned post release. Competitive players can chase others in asynchronous multiplayer for a place on the global leaderboards. New orb skins can be unlocked by completing full sets of levels.

One of the most interesting features of Squingle Arcade is the levels are scalable, meaning the mazes can be shrunk to a compact desktop-friendly size or expanded to fill an entire room. I have done this with other mixed reality supported games like Demeo and being able to scale up and walk through a virtual environment in my own home like this is a sight to behold.

Squingle Arcade was also slated for release on Steam, Apple Vision Pro, and Pico headsets, but we have not received any updates on release dates for those platforms. The game can be wishlisted on Steam now with a Q3 2026 release window. The official press release from developer Squingle Studios and publisher VRAL Games simply says it is releasing 'first' on Meta Quest.

Squingle Arcade is available now free-to-play on Meta Quest.

An article from yesterday on MP1st stated that a Tomb Raider VR project, internally codenamed Project U, was canceled at Vertigo Games Amsterdam in January 2026 several months before the studio's closure in June.

The article cites an unnamed former developer's website saying a vertical slice milestone, an industry term for a small portion of a game produced during a game's development to demonstrate its art, mechanics, and features, was praised 'internally and externally.'

The report goes on to say the project's cancellation was not a direct result of the studio's closure, rather a reorganization occurring at that time. It also includes several concept art images and a 30 minute video of game footage. The first few minutes show a first person view walking through a canyon. The rest of the video is much rougher looking environmental footage with some parkour, puzzle solving, interacting with a large flower (more on this later), and a fight against a large creature.

In our fact checking, we located the artwork from the article, but at this time, we cannot verify this was intended to be a Tomb Raider VR game as reported.

We found the concept art from the article, including those pictured before, on the ArtStation profile of Felipe Paim de Barros, all with Vertigo Games Amsterdam logos:

A concept art version of the interactable flower shown in the gameplay footage was found on the ArtStation page for Davi Van Den Berg, a Brazilian concept artist living in the Netherlands. Van den Berg's LinkedIn page says they worked as a Concept Art Intern at Vertigo Games and is currently open to work.

The ArtStation album description included a thank you to other concept artists and a former Art Director at Vertigo Games.

Some of Van Den Berg's concept art can be seen here:

We investigated further and came across the ArtStation page and MyPortfolio website belonging to another concept artist. The ArtStation page did not contain any images we could cleanly link to a Vertigo Games project, but an unnamed album on the MyPortfolio website did:

There are a lot more images, but of particular note in this portfolio are depictions of a male character, not the female Lara Croft, the star of the Tomb Raider series, as the footage in the original article is purported to be. I should note that a feminine sounding 'oomph' can be heard when the player mantles at the top of a rock wall they climbed in the video footage.

In the history of the game series, only four males have been playable characters: ex-Legionnaire Kurtis Trent in Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness in 2003, ancient Mayan warrior Totec in Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light in 2010, rival archaeologist Carter Bell, and Egyptian god Horus, both of whom are from Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris in 2014. The latter three were only playable as secondary co-op characters alongside Croft. Trent was playable for three levels independent of Croft.

All four are pictured here in listed order as seen in their respective games. None of them closely resemble the character from the above images:

That said, the lead could be an entirely new character, but again, the MP1st article says the footage is of Lara Croft herself in a first person view. All of the artists list the concept art as from an untitled or unannounced project at Vertigo Games.

Also, remember that in 2021, Meta announced that Vertigo Games was signed for five new VR projects based on Deep Silver's franchises. We know the first was 2024's Metro Awakening VR and never got any additional information about the others. While not a direct line, Deep Silver's parent company is Embracer Group, who also owns Crystal Dynamics. Crystal Dynamics is currently developing two new Tomb Raider flatscreen games, both due out in 2027.

We have independently reached out to multiple former employees at Vertigo Games Amsterdam for comment and will update this article with any additional information.

Editor's Note

Following publication, UploadVR was contacted by one of the developers whose publicly accessible portfolio was referenced in this piece. While UploadVR stands by its right to report on publicly available information, we have made the editorial decision to remove their name as a professional courtesy.

All of Meta's smart glasses feature a white LED on the front, at the end of one temple, which flashes when the wearer captures an image and pulses while they're recording a video, livestreaming, sharing their view during a video call, or using Live AI.

Since the first-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses (meaning all the company's glasses so far except for 2021's Ray-Ban Stories) the LED has also included an ambient light sensor, which prevents the camera from operating if the owner tries to cover the LED, for example with black tape.

However, as veteran tech journalist Joanna Stern exposed in her reporting last month, a market has cropped up for physically taking the glasses apart and modifying them to remove the LED and sensor. Other easier-to-apply accessories available online, though far less subtle as they add noticeable bulk, can obscure the LED from certain angles.

Some owners have leveraged these services and products to record people without their consent, either to make social media video content, for reasons of personal perversion, or, in rare cases, to covertly record police and other authorities. And while Meta and EssilorLuxottica's smart glasses continue to be one of the fastest-selling new consumer tech hardware above $300 of all time, these non-consensual recordings have given them a bad name amongst segments of the population, with some branding them "pervert glasses" or "creep glasses" and even calling for them to be banned in law.

Now, Meta says it's "updating the glasses to disable the camera if they detect the LED was physically tampered with or destroyed". This will arrive as a mandatory firmware update, and retroactively apply to glasses which have already been modified.

"No other kind of camera has done this and we’re proud to lead the industry forward", Meta said in a prepared statement.

The company says it's also removing ads and posts advertising smart glasses LED modification across Facebook and Instagram, alongside banning the accounts.

Meta even claims it's taking legal action against people selling LED removal services, though it's unclear on what grounds this action would be – and this may be a space where future government regulations are needed.

18Birdies is a popular assistant app for golf. On your phone, they offer course maps, yardages (via GPS), scorecards, tracked stats, and, for paying subscribers, club recommendations based on factors like distance, wind, slope. Arccos takes this same concept much further, for serious golfers, with hardware sensors you carry around the course to give you in-depth analysis of your play, with a subscription effectively required.

You can now connect either service to your Meta account, in the Meta AI app, and say "Hey Meta" on your smart glasses to start a session and query it.

Here are examples of what 18Birdies says you can ask Meta AI on smart glasses:

• “Hey Meta, start a round at Torrey Pines from the blue tees.”
• “Hey Meta, put me down for a four with two putts.”
• “Hey Meta, how am I doing?”
• “Hey Meta, how far am I from the green?”
• “Hey Meta, what club should I use?”
• “Hey Meta, where should I aim my tee shot?”
• “Hey Meta, what’s the wind direction?”

And here's what Arccos says you can ask:

• "Hey Meta, what's my score right now?"
• "Hey Meta, what club should I use for this shot?"
• "Hey Meta, how far am I from the pin?"
• "Hey Meta, how is the wind affecting play right now?"

You don't need to memorize these exact commands, though. Meta says the Muse Spark model is capable of understanding you no matter how you word your request, as long as your 18Birdies or Arccos session holds the information you're asking about.

Meta’s Muse Spark AI Model Replacing Llama 4 On Its Smart Glasses

Meta’s Muse Spark is replacing Meta AI on most of its smart glasses, a significant upgrade over Llama 4 that narrows the gap to leading AI systems.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

To use the 18Birdies and Arccos integrations, you need to be in the US or Canada, and your phone needs to be within Bluetooth range, though it doesn't need to be unlocked, and nor do you need to keep any particular app open on it.

All of Meta's displayless smart glasses are listed as supported. It's unclear whether Meta Ray-Ban Display would work too.

Until now, all built-in software features of Meta smart glasses have been entirely free to use. But as a Meta support page describes, the company is moving to a model where "certain features" have limited free usage and longer usage if you pay for 'Meta One Premium'.

Meta One is the company's subscription that offers extra usage and features across all its main services: Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Meta AI. Meta One started rolling out last month in select regions, with two subscription tiers and the following stated benefits:

Meta One Plus
• "Access to Facebook Plus, Instagram Plus, and WhatsApp Plus benefits, such as custom app icons, story previews and exclusive messaging enhancements, at a discounted price compared to subscribing separately."
• More AI usage across eligible Meta technologies: Get more monthly AI usage allowance for eligible AI features in order to think deeper and create more:
• Generate more images and videos: Get more access to advanced image and video models for image and video generation and editing.
• More advanced Meta AI reasoning: Get more detailed answers to your questions and complex tasks with Thinking mode

Meta One Premium:
• Premium plan includes benefits from the Plus plan, and more:
Expanded AI usage across eligible Meta technologies: Get expanded monthly AI usage allowance for eligible AI features in order to think deeper and create more.
• Generate more images and videos: Get expanded access to advanced image and video models for image and video generation and editing.
• More advanced Meta AI reasoning: Get more detailed answers to your questions and complex tasks with Thinking mode

According to TechCrunch, Meta One Plus will be priced at $8/month in the US, while Meta One Premium will be $20/month.

(Meta One should not be confused with Meta Verified, a separate per-platform subscription that offers a blue checkmark on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads.)

According to the support page, Meta One Premium will also offer 15 hours of Conversation Focus, compared to 3 hours for non-subscribers.

Conversation Focus is a feature that amplifies the voice of the person in front of you, so that you can hear them better. It started rolling out in early access back in January, the result of more than six years of research into “perceptual superpowers” at Meta.

Meta Glasses Get ‘Conversation Focus’ Early Access

Meta is rolling out the Conversation Focus accessibility feature to the Early Access program of its smart glasses in the US & Canada.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Despite the widespread outrage already seen around this decision, we should point out that many consumer tech devices require a subscription for select features.

PlayStation and Nintendo Switch consoles require a subscription for cloud saves and on-platform multiplayer. Most smart home cameras require a subscription for detection of people, pets, and vehicles. And many fitness wearables require a subscription for the most advanced tracking features.

The rational distinction driving the outrage, however, is that most of the aforementioned features leverage the company's server, whereas Conversation Focus runs locally.

Facebook Researching VR/AR ‘Hear-Through’ Technology For ‘Perceptual Superpowers’

Facebook researchers are investigating AR glasses featuring “hear-through” technology powered by specialized in-ear monitors for “enhanced hearing.” The technology “would be able to recognize different types of events happening around you: people having conversations, the air conditioning noise, dishes and silverware clanking. Then using contextualized AI, your AR

UploadVRIan Hamilton

Still, it could be argued that this is Meta trying to recoup its massive research investment into features like this, and to make its massively capital intensive smart glasses project into a more sustainable business element in the long term.

Meta may also simply be running an experiment, as it often has with pricing, to gauge the public reaction to adding smart glasses features to its subscription.

We'll keep an eye out for any signs of further features being added to the Meta One subscriptions.

As of this article, a large portion of Labyrinth's description is a direct copy from Arena, but the additional text details the gameplay loop where players must retrieve seven pieces of a magical crystal in a roguelike mode.

Other notes include a 'deep' progression system, eight different biomes in the same dark fantasy style of Hellsplit Arena, procedurally generated levels, and a full story with multiple endings determined by players' choices during runs.

We should also note that the description claims the game is roomscale, copying the same line from Arena's synopsis:

A full-fledged, room-scale VR experience - the game requires the player to be standing, with the ability to move through real space over an area of 1.5 x 1.5 meters, and supports VR controllers.

That said, Hellsplit Arena is playable with artificial stick-based movement, so it is fair to assume Labyrinth will follow suit and allow for both movement styles.

In regard to other platforms, there are no listings for Hellsplit: Labyrinth on PlayStation at the time of this article.

Hellsplit Arena was ported to Meta Quest in March 2025, five and a half years after its original September 2019 SteamVR version. A PlayStation VR2 port was said to be in development, but to date no listing has shown up on Sony's storefront.

In June 2025, a moderator in Hellsplit Arena's Discord post mentioned that the PS VR2 version was delayed into late 2025 or 2026:

Arena was last updated in summer 2025 with no official word from the developers until this Discord post from a developer back in June about a coming update on '2 platforms' with no mention of PlayStation VR2:

Hellsplit: Labyrinth can be wishlisted now on Meta Quest and Steam.

The game was first teased by showcase hosts Damien and Bryan Ruffy without a trailer or any sort of gameplay footage. Survive The Night was intended to be a game show-themed roguelite with players working together to complete challenges and fend off enemies for rewards and upgrades.

Survive The Night Is A VR Co-op Roguelite From The Developers of Into Black & Resist

Survive The Night is a free-to-play co-op action roguelite coming to Meta Quest from The Binary Mill (Resist, Into Black).

UploadVRMike Johnson

Developer The Binary Mill (Into Black, Resist) stated the following on Discord:

After a lot of internal discussion and deliberation, we've decided to move on from the Survive the Night project. While it was shaping up into something pretty cool, multiplayer freemium games have never really been our thing as a company, so we're putting this game on indefinite hiatus. Apologies to any of you who were really looking forward to it, but on the plus side we have decided to go back to our roots in making more premium, single player, story-driven games. And while it's too early to talk about just yet, it's already looking incredible in early development.

Survive The Night would have been The Binary Mill's first foray into an increasingly crowded freemium market on Meta Quest, but the team thought better of it and seems to have moved on to a different project.

Rust Ltd's Anton Hand thanked the H3VR community in a lengthy developer post on Steam before detailing the official Update 120. Setting aside the decade long development cycle, Update 120 itself spent nearly a year in the experimental branch of the game dating back to October 2025.

With twenty-three different versions of that update pushed before the full release this past Saturday, a lot of the new weapons and features were already available months ago and several versions featured time-specific events, like an Easter Egg hunt in April, so quantifying it here is a bit tricky.

That said, in terms of content, Update 120 'officially' includes the following:

• The signature Take & Hold game mode supports two more focused modifiers. Blitz focuses on the 'take' part with attacking densely patrolled control points while Rampart centers on defending points.
• The Lucky Looter character archetype in TNH (Take & Hold) completely bypasses the item shop and standard weapons progression, only picking up ammo, supplies, and new weapons from enemies and supply crates.
• H3VR Studio is in full release. This is an officially supported alternative to fanmade modding tools that allows players to upload custom Sosig NPCs, Take and Hold characters, weapons and more. Rust has always openly supported modding for H3VR and this tool bridges the gap.
• The Gameplanner, a sandbox specific system that allows sandbox players to set up specific scenarios as makeshift gameplay modes, has added multiple new objects and enemy options. These can be saved and shared with other players.
• A new sandbox scene, the BBQ Range, is a recreational hangout where players can relax and play minigames like horseshoes.

A sequel, Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades 2, was announced for PC VR and Meta Quest 3 in May.

Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades Is Getting A Sequel, With Quest 3 Support

The award-winning VR sandbox FPS Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades is getting a sequel, and as well as SteamVR, it’s coming to Quest 3 standalone.

UploadVRMike Johnson

Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades is available now on Steam.

Seemingly out of nowhere, survival horror Bramblefort started making the rounds on social media last month by being compared to Resident Evil 4 and Bloodborne due to its gameplay and aesthetic. Set during the Victorian era, it immerses players in a desolate island in the North Atlantic beset by a ravaging plague caused by macabre rituals. As a field operative, your goal is to uncover its secrets by shooting, fighting, and exploring its labyrinthine levels. Imbuing immersive sim elements like offering multiple pathways next to its horror aspects, it is certainly a fresh formula in today’s VR landscape.

After trying its Steam Next Fest demo mid-June for our hands-on preview, we walked away impressed. “To meld two of the biggest genres in gaming successfully is no small feat.” Intrigued by the story behind such a promising title, UploadVR took the time to interview Helsinki-based studio False Member over email.

Made from the ground up for VR since the winter of 2024, team manager Jesse Aalto explains the reasoning behind the game’s concepts, “Being big fans of immersive sims, we noticed there wasn't much representation of that style of game in VR. In a lot of ways, virtual reality feels like a perfect fit for the genre, and the amount of interaction it can offer when compared to flatscreen games is something we all found very exciting.”

Because interacting with everything in a virtual environment offers its own set of challenges during production, he went further about how they went about implementing meaningful systems, “The way space and proportion are perceived from a computer screen feels totally different when compared to using a headset.”

“Layers can also physically get a lot closer to objects when compared to flatscreen games. It is possible to reach out and grab basically anything, so everything in the world has to be believable and responsive, or immersion is disturbed. In a flatscreen game, background props are often just that, but in VR you can't just have a cup be a static cup in the background. You need to be able to pick it up, and what happens if you throw it or put something inside it?”

As there are various moving parts in game development and the sheer amount of well-thought-out design choices incites curiosity, the fact this is their first full-fledged release is nothing short of surprising. Jesse confirms that “most of what we've learned about VR has come from developing Bramblefort itself.” But this nimble back-and-forth among the tight-knit team helps, as “a lot of the gameplay ideas and decisions come from testing and iterating on things we think could work well in VR.”

It is expected for games to be iterative. In truth, it should be encouraged to borrow from renowned works of art. False Member is candid about their impeccable inspirations: “Resident Evil 4 and Bloodborne are definitely on the list of inspirations. Some others are Dishonored, Dark Souls 3, and the movie The Wicker Man. There are a ton more, some very specific; for example, the way the shooting range target explodes when shot is inspired by the Jak 2 shooting range.”

Witnessing Bramblefort’s clever level design in motion proves how it is not a facsimile that steals from other games’ ideas, but a carefully crafted design philosophy of their own. Being able to find a key, walk around to find a window, and shoot the lock or take another path entirely brings a plethora of options to the player. This was not a coincidence. The studio knows offering such an unprecedented amount of freedom also comes with constraints of their own, and they have made their peace with it.

A good lesson we took from Dishonored is that it is okay that not all the different ways you can approach an obstacle are equal. Some ways can be faster, others slower, some are tedious, and some are more exciting. Giving the player the option to skip things they have no interest in doing, while still allowing them to get past an obstacle by finding a different way through, is something very core to the type of game we are making.

Another lesson we took is that it is okay if players miss content. There are quite a few different events and secrets hidden in the game which some players might never see depending on how much they explore and what choices they make. Even in the demo, there is a certain sequence that most likely has the most work put into it out of any portion of the demo, and it is totally skippable.

Looking at the favorable comments of the demo on Steam, players were eager to praise Bramblefort. Earning a “Very Positive” rating, most reviewers rave about the atmosphere, amount of content, and physicality. As an independent studio, Jesse and Co. are grateful for the reception in more ways than one.

“People seemed genuinely excited about the game, which meant a lot to us. It is also great how much feedback we have received.” The benefit of having a sizable player base is twofold, as he mentions, “Testing a game with a small team has its challenges, and suddenly having a large number of players helping us find bugs and issues has been amazing.”

Finally, wondering if they would consider launching on other platforms besides SteamVR, we receive a sensible response: “We need to focus on one platform at a time, but we're definitely interested in bringing the game to other platforms in the future.”

Bramblefort's story is only just beginning, with the full game still on the horizon with no set release date as yet. But it seems like morale is at an all-time high at False Member. “It is still a bit early to say on release, but we do have plenty of plans for the full game. We want to add light RPG elements like character and weapon upgrades, smarter and more varied enemy types, many different weapons, new levels, and more story elements. We are really excited about where the game is heading.”

The Bramblefort demo is available on Steam.

This system not only transforms the real-world objects in your play space into in-game assets, but also brings other players into your scanned rooms for remote shared space co-op.

We featured the new multiplayer mode for Hauntify at the UploadVR Summer Showcase. I had a chance to chat with VirtualGo's CEO, David Montecalvo, at AWE (Augmented World Expo) about the technology his team developed to realize the multiplayer experience.

Hauntify On Quest 3 Now Uses Lasertag’s Continuous Scene Meshing

Hauntify on Quest 3 now uses Lasertag’s continuous scene meshing, avoiding the problems of Meta’s official room scanning system.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Scene understanding has been used to create transformative experiences in other games like Espire: MR Missions, Drop Dead: The Cabin: Home Invasion, and the upcoming Into the Dead: Crimson Heights. The difference here is the shared space co-op gameplay.

Per VirtualGo, remote Hauntify players will be able to enter the host's scanned play space, seeing their transformed real world space in real time. I asked about the latency for the remote players and Montecalvo said it was negligible. I did not have a chance to test it live, a logistical impossibility in a convention setting, but the video and what this represents was my big takeaway.

Here's the video:

Many people, including my colleague David Heaney, are on the record saying XR technology is still in its infancy, its Atari-level era. Hopefully, we can skip seeing landfills stacked with headsets in the near future. In terms of gaming, mixed and augmented reality both lag behind virtual reality, in part because the 'transformative' experiences of MR & AR have lacked both the visual fidelity heights virtual reality has seen and the true social experience of a shared world. VirtualGo's system addresses the latter.

In VR, players have been exploring immersive worlds for years in apps like VRChat and Gen Alpha-focused experiences like Gorilla Tag and Animal Company. Similarly, asymmetric VR experiences like Acron allow players outside of a headset to still participate in immersive gaming.

MR and AR have been more limited. Portal-based experiences like Soul Assembly's Last Stand and asset-driven party games like Grokit are perfectly fine, but each player is still in their individual play space, only seeing the game generated assets in their rooms. Co-location, the XR equivalent of couch co-op, does exist and developers like Resolution Games have utilized it in games like Demeo and Spatial Ops. That said, headsets are not so ubiquitous that the common household has multiple XR devices available. As such, that's not a viable lane for developers to pursue as a primary feature at scale.

VirtualGo's system removes that adoption requirement. We have already been joining our friends and family in fully realized VR spaces for years now. Being able to do the same in mixed reality is that specific corner of XR's next step forward, especially if it opens up the potential for mixed reality user generated content.

Montecalvo says the system will not be limited to horror games and shooters, VirtualGo's current projects. It will translate across any genre: cozy games, RPGs, etc. The multiplayer updates for VirtualGo's Hauntify and shooters Mission Rift and FPS Enhanced Reality are planned for 2027.

All three of VirtualGo's current projects, Hauntify, Mission Rift, and FPS Enhanced Reality are available on Meta Quest. There is a temporary AWE promo code VirtualGo shared to get 25% off each game: AWE2026-878AEE.

In The Castle, users take on the role of an apprentice to Nigel Kupferman, a retired baron who was obsessed with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and went as far as purchasing the actual castle to reenact the infamous experiment.

As explained by Chameleon Studios Managing Director, Cecil Colvin, the amount of power that would've been required to bring life to Frankenstein's monster would've blown out everything in the castle. The Castle starts the apprentice just after that blowout. It plays out as a series of story-driven tasks, but unlike a traditional game, Kupferman narrates directions on how to make repairs and explains the physics behind it all.

The exhibition floor where I did this was very loud and I did not have headphones available, so Colvin and another booth attendant filled in Kupferman's lines for me. Signs on the dungeon walls lay out the tasks required to complete each room's challenge and proceed to the next one. This included setting amperages, taking measurements, connecting batteries, locating and replacing blown fuses, and other hands-on activities.

It only took about 15 minutes to complete the dungeon, but this was not meant to be a challenging experience. Education was first and foremost and that was evident in the level design and the simplicity of the controls. There was no inventory system and no controls to memorize other than basic VR locomotion and grabbing objects. Anything more complicated than that, like taking measurements, was a straightforward button press that was clearly explained.

This section, titled The Basement, was just the first of four planned levels that increase in complexity as the user progresses. Colvin also mentioned the possibility of ulterior motives behind Kupferman's directions, keeping the narrative underscoring the instruction.

The Castle is remarkably well made. I could imagine a later version that takes away the guardrails and tests the user's retention of the knowledge because the physical actions required to complete each room are intuitive if the science behind it is understood. Taking this approach distills what can be complex physics concepts into immersive, tactile experiments that turn theory into action. For those like me, who learn by doing instead of reading or listening, applications like this could be tremendously useful in the education sector.

You can learn more about The Castle and Chameleon Studios on its website.

While my twenty-minute demo didn't present anything new or special, I am curious if we are approaching or already at the point of diminishing returns in the free-to-play social hangout VR market.

High Horns is the fifth game since December 2024 from XORWire. Its previous titles are BreakoutVR, Chemp Physics, Stupid Chimp Slop, and Munkie All-Stars. All-Stars was just launched on May 29, less than a month from my trip to AWE.

My time in the game was fine with only two issues: a peculiar 'sticky hands' issue where my virtual hand seemed to disengage from its grab point later than expected, causing a jerking motion while climbing, and the climbable mountain faces were indistinguishable from the non-climbing walls. I gave this feedback to the developer via the marketing team and moved to my next demo. I am very much not the target audience for High Horns and games like it, but playing it and meeting the team did offer some food for thought.

The five titles in a year and a half is an eyebrow-raising fact though. We at UploadVR have been actively reporting on all of the layoffs and shutdowns of VR games and studios. Many developers in those situations have pointed to a softer-than-expected VR market for these actions or the decision to pivot to flatscreen development after disappointing sales. With the notable exception of Rec Room, these studios have all been developing premium, paid titles. Meanwhile, the most popular games in VR these days are free-to-play.

This is a screenshot I took of the 'Most Popular' titles on the Meta Horizon Store just before starting this article. Note that only two titles in the top ten are paid apps: Beat Saber and Blade & Sorcery: Nomad.

That number only increases to four apps when looking at the top twenty overall, adding Bonelab and Job Simulator. We are not sure what its current numbers look like, but Gorilla Tag at one point not too long ago had over one million daily users. Animal Company has half a million, according to its website. Those are numbers most flatscreen game studios on any platform would love to have and flatscreen developers have access to a pool of players upwards of ten times larger than virtual reality.

Hence why companies like XORWire continue to take swings at the proverbial plate, hoping to hit a home run. In recent years, Owlchemy Labs, My Dearest, Fun Train, and The Binary Mill have all dipped their toes into the free-to-play social experience market. Both the Ruff Talk VR Showcase and our own UploadVR Showcase featured a new title in the free-to-play category, OogaBonk and Jetpack Clankers respectively.

This is not unlike the push for live service games we have seen on the flatscreen side of gaming with some notable big budget failures like Concord, Redfall, and about a dozen other titles I could name. The general theory is the same. Even with a flop or three, finding lightning in a bottle on the level of a Fortnite or in VR terms, a Gorilla Tag or Animal Company, and the revenue such a unicorn brings, is worth the failed attempts and resources burned. The endgame for all of these is the same: a single title with steady recurring revenue without the increased development needs or finite gameplay of a premium title.

The catch with VR is the player base remains so much smaller than the flatscreen world, so the number of free-to-play titles (and their studios) it can reasonably support is much lower. One of the reps at XORWire told me it has a Discord of five thousand users, a perfectly respectable number for a single, hobbyist developer likely to drop another title within the next year. For a full studio though, even a small one with a handful of employees, that number is not viable long term, given only a percentage of them will be actively spending money in the game on a regular basis. It's a volume game, where the app's player pool has to be so large that even just a single digit percentage of it paying money into it is enough revenue to be profitable. The free-to-play model relies on in-app purchases of game add-ons and cosmetics for income, so only having a few hundred or so active spenders cannot support a sizable team. The math does not work. Just ask Rec Room.

Meta itself, it can be inferred, seems to be seeing this plateau coming, given its recent actions with its own free-to-play social hangout app Horizon Worlds. The market leader, armed with all of its data about user counts, ages, playtime, and so on, made the call to shutter VR support for Horizon Worlds (even though it pivoted later). That lone action, not even factoring in the closure of several of its first-party studios, is very telling. If the overall number is not growing fast enough to keep pace with the number of developers entering that specific category of VR, how much longer will developers continue to chase the golden goose?

High Horns is expected to release sometime this fall on Meta Quest.

TactGlove is a haptic glove, meaning it provides the sensation of texture to your fingers and palms through the use of vibration motors. To be clear, though, it isn't a resistive glove – it can't make you feel as if you're holding an object.

Compared to the previous iteration the new DK3 increases the number of motors in each hand from six to eight, adding two new contact points in the lower part of the palm of your hand. At release they will come with a set of inner gloves, but for the demos at AWE, the reps were using disposable gloves. I was thankful for this when I finished my demo and noticed how sweaty my hands were.

The game I played was Galactic Repair, a short Quest exclusive experience built by bHaptics to show off the gloves. In this short, 10 minute experience, I was an interstellar pilot whose ship was damaged while traveling through space. I worked through a series of modules to repair systems and reconnect the power, all via hand tracking. One of the first actions was a hand scanner that sent feedback through the entire glove to set the tone for the rest of the session. Every activity after this, grabbing handles, plugging cords into sockets, and moving electric balls into their pedestals, was all well made. After repairing the ship, I was shifted to a series of sandbox-like tabletops with multiple cubes of different weights to pick up and other interactable objects. The largest cube required both hands to lift and the intense feedback in the gloves if I tried to lift it with one hand was easily my favorite part of the demo. Overall, the experience got the job done in terms of proving how much the gloves add to immersion, but therein lies the issue.

While I waited for my turn at bHaptics' booth, I asked the technician about app support and he admitted game developer adoption for glove support has been slower than they would prefer. This is no fault of bHaptics, mind you. The company provides official SDKs (software development kits) with support for Unity and Unreal Engine. The underlying issue is hand tracking itself. The ratio of hand tracking to motion controller applications in VR gaming is fairly drastic, with most of them being on standalone VR headsets. It's not reasonable, given the size and flexibility of the gloves, to expect to play a game with controllers and gloves comfortably.

I checked the bHaptics PC application for glove-supported applications and got eleven results, one of which, curiously, was Half-Life: Alyx. That is an experience I'd be curious to try if Upload can secure a pair of review units. Of the remaining ten, one is the official bHaptics app on Quest and Pico, two were bHaptics demos including the one I played, and a third is a volumetric video player. Alyx aside, other supported games include Synth Riders, Rogue Ascent, Masters of Light, and Pathcraft. All of these are perfectly fine games, but player options are limited.

While the haptics suit can use the audio-to-haptics feature to simulate feedback in games without official support, that feature simply adds general feedback using the in-game sound. I use it all the time with my TactSuit Pro, but that is not exactly viable for gloves.

It's no secret game developers in VR have been struggling. We have been actively monitoring and covering the multitude of layoffs, studio closures, and developers pivoting into flatscreen development in the hopes of keeping themselves afloat, with mixed results.

Hand tracking in XR has come a long way and some developers like Owlchemy Labs are bullish on it, but it is fair to say controllers will remain the predominant input system of choice in VR gaming for the near future. It feels like a tough ask, in the current VR gaming ecosystem, to expect game developers en masse to not only adopt hand tracking as a primary input, but take it a step further and devote time and resources to adding support for a fairly reasonable, but still costly accessory in a struggling market. It is telling that many developers who have already added hand tracking support to their games, like Owlchemy Labs and Resolution Games with the Demeo series, have not already taken this step.

That all said, the DK3 gloves are great, addressing the user feedback that the haptics were limited to fingertips and thankfully offering enough size options to fit most players. Like all of bHaptics' products, modded game support is available for those willing to put in the time to develop it as well.

The TactGlove DK3 can be preordered now on the bHaptics website for $385. Shipping is expected to begin on June 28.

CES Hands-On: bHaptics TactGlove Brings Feeling To Quest Hand Tracking Games

At CES 2022 I tried bHaptics TactGlove, an upcoming $299 product for Quest 2 (and, apparently, PC VR too). bHaptics is the same company behind the TactSuit, supported in games like Onward. Unlike the force feedback gloves I tried, TactGlove doesn’t actually restrict the movements of your finger. Instead

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Developer Gamitronics added the new system after players expressed wanting more to do in the game beyond leaderboard chasing. This follows the announcement of league mode tournaments back in May. I played Bullseye when it released in Early Access and found the general gameplay fairly addictive aside from the zombies mode, which felt a tad outdated.

Darts VR2: Bullseye Impressions: Of Course There Are Zombies

Darts VR2: Bullseye, out now in Early Access, keeps it simple, making it easy to repeatedly return for one more round.

UploadVRMike Johnson

XP can be earned in both solo and competitive multiplayer with twenty-five unlockable levels packed with rewards, including several brand new ones. New dart designs and avatars are joined by new rewards like visual effects, titles, voice packs, and custom dart board designs.

XP is earned from small amounts with a single hit up to larger progression on every 180.

Kevin Joyce, CEO of Bullseye's publisher Evolution Publishing said the following in a statement:

We’ve been listening to player feedback and requests, asking for a more rewarding experience. That naturally led us to develop the XP progression system, unlocking new features and rewards the more you play. It’s an exciting addition that we can’t wait for players to enjoy. And this is just the start!

At the time of this article, the XP system update is only available on Meta Quest headsets and is listed as 'coming soon' to PlayStation VR2 and PC VR players.

Darts VR2: Bullseye is available now in Early Access on Meta Quest, Steam, and PS VR2.

Let's break down everything included in the update:

New Missions

• A new questline built around Leopard Global Security sees players investigate a new armed force on the island with Leopard-themed gear skins to unlock as players progress.
• The Warzone Supply Agreement is now live. Players can log in to complete missions for rewards including gear vouchers and one of this update's new items, the grenade box.
• The new DLC casts players as an agent investigating the disappearance of a colleague on the island and uncovering a dark conspiracy in the process. This new playable character comes with two skins to choose from and new revolver variants. The new DLC can be played solo or co-op.

Quality Of Life Upgrades

• Armor repair has been added for greater player flexibility during raids. Armor can be repaired both in headquarters and during active raids. Developer Caveman Studio says this system has been balanced to avoid abuse in active combat.
• The player headquarters has been expanded with new storage rooms, racks, weapon walls, and gear stands.
• Two new storage boxes have been added: a dog tag box to collect and show off kill records and a grenade box for easier grenade storage and raid preparation.
• A new colorblind crosshair mode has been added in the Settings menu.
• AK-74 series first person weapon sound effects have been updated.

Contractors Showdown: ExfilZone is available on Quest and Steam.

Meta first announced that Discord was coming to Quest during its Connect 2025 conference back in September. Then, in December, the two companies rolled out the ability to link Discord to your Meta account to share to your status which Quest app you're currently in, letting your friends know what VR game you're playing.

Now, the Discord app for Quest has arrived on the Meta Horizon Store.

You Can Now Share Your Quest Activity As Your Discord Status

You can now link your Meta account to Discord to share what Quest app or Horizon World you’re currently in as your status.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

With the Discord app you can participate in both text and voice chats on the platform, as well as watch friends' livestreams – and even stream your own first-person VR perspective to friends. Previously, this required a janky workaround of casting your Quest's view to your PC's web browser, and then using the desktop version of Discord. But now you can do it completely standalone.

To be clear, you have been able to use Discord on Quest via the web browser for a long time now. The Horizon OS web browser can run in the background, either minimized or pinned. But the microphone behavior for the browser isn't always consistent, and the app seems to affect the performance of your VR game less, as well as uniquely supporting the streaming feature and proper system-level notifications.

And by downloading and signing into the Quest app, until September 30, you should get one month of Nitro, Discord's premium subscription which offers perks like HD streaming, larger file uploads, and greater profile customization. For me, this appeared as a notification for the Meta Horizon smartphone app, where I could redeem it.

(Unfortunately, some user reports suggest that if you already have Nitro, you don't get an extra month – you just get nothing.)

The problem with the Discord app for Quest is that it just doesn't work all that well, particularly the streaming feature.

The app is currently sitting at 3 stars on the Meta Horizon Store, with reports of it randomly causing your running VR game to crash, alongside significant bugs and hitches.

UploadVR's Mike Johnson tested the streaming and found that while friends said the quality was fine, it frequently caused crashes. In Asgard's Wrath 2 and TMNT: Empire City everything would crash when a new location was loading, while in Deadpool VR heavy fight sequences took it down.

It sounds like the Discord app for Quest currently requires a lot of RAM, and Quest 3's 8GB may simply be reaching its limit.

Meta and Discord seem set to keep working on the app, though. XR enthusiast Luna reports that the two companies recently added a permission referencing being able to join Quest multiplayer sessions from Discord, suggesting an even deeper integration between the two platforms could be coming soon – hopefully alongside improvements to the app.

Developer Urban Wolf Games announced the roadmap in April with these two new features as its planned summer updates following the recent Meta Quest port. The friendly fire mode can be toggled on or off when creating a multiplayer session, opening up some potentially chaotic co-op gameplay. Urban Wolf reiterated that friendly fire was not intended to be a makeshift PvP mode, though it expects some players to use it in that way.

Legendary Tales Planning A Sandbox Mode & Friendly Fire Feature Later This Year

After the release of its recent DLC, VR ARPG Legendary Tales has laid out its future roadmap, including a sandbox mode and friendly fire feature expected later this year.

UploadVRMike Johnson

The sandbox mode functions as a long requested option for players to create custom builds and test equipment in an environment that doesn't require hours of grinding and repeated dungeon runs to tweak and tune to perfection. Sandbox characters can be set to any level with any equipment and skill point allocations and tested in an arena. Any regular monster or champion, the latter with up to three special abilities, can be spawned in any quantity to test players' skills.

In the dev post, Urban Wolf also followed up on the possible roguelite mode it mentioned in the roadmap post in April. Originally an exploratory research project, it has now entered full production. There was no news on a possible release date, though it is very likely to be a paid DLC.

Legendary Tales is out now on PlayStation VR2, Steam, and Meta Quest.

Meta has once again bolstered its Horizon+ subscription service with two new monthly games and an addition to the games catalog. Gun Club VR lets you test your aim at the shooting range with tons of real-world weaponry, while Dragon Fist tests your might against world-class martial artists.

Here's a closer look at the Monthly Games for July.

Gun Club VR

Kicking off July, we have Gun Club VR, a fully interactive shooting simulator. Gun Club VR offers players the chance to play around with some of the world's most iconic real firearms. Emphasizing mechanical realism, you'll rack slides, load mags, flick safeties, and manage recoil while experiencing all types of firearms across hundreds of target-shooting challenges.

Dragon Fist: VR Kung Fu

Experience the golden age of martial arts cinema in Dragon Fist: VR Kung Fu. In this physics-based VR fighting game, you'll kick and punch your way through opponents, practice and combine strikes, dodges, blocks, and combos on your way to becoming a kung-fu master. There's a single-player campaign, co-op mode, and even PvP battles.

Lastly, Phantom: Covert Ops joins the Meta Horizon+ catalog this month. This stealth-action game has a unique mechanic in that it's played entirely seated, as you take on the role of an elite military operative moving via kayak through hostile waterways. You'll paddle your military kayak through flooded terrain and enemy bases.

Mike and I recently chatted about this very game during one of our recent UploadVR Gamescast episodes, where Mike recommended it as a thrilling and unique stealth game.

Horizon+ Games Catalog Games

Horizon+ continues offering a Games Catalog of Quest titles that any subscriber can access. Meta can add new games to and remove games from the catalog at any time.

Here is the current Horizon+ Games Catalog in the US:

• Beat Saber
• GOLF+
• Walkabout Mini Golf
• Ghosts of Tabor
• Job Simulator
• Green Hell VR
• Titans Clinic
• Thrill of the Fight
• Asgard's Wrath 2
• Angry Birds VR Isle of Pigs
• Dungeons of Eternity
• Breachers
• Action Hero
• Shave & Stuff
• Crime Shop Simulator
• I Expect You To Die 3
• Deisim
• After the Fall
• Zero Caliber: Reloaded
• Outta Hand
• Blacktop Hoops
• Spatial Ops
• Onward
• Into the Radius
• Pets & Stuff
• The 7th Guest VR
• War of Wizards
• Racket Club
• The Light Brigade
• Red Matter 2
• Premium Bowling
• Puzzling Places
• Demeo
• In Death: Unchained
• Thief Simulator VR: Greenview Street
• Vacation Simulator
• Project Demigod
• The Climb 2
• Les Mills Bodycombat
• Maestro
• Synth Riders
• Dragon Fist: VR Kung Fu
• Pistol Whip
• iB Cricket
• Medieval Dynasty New Settlement
• Fruit Ninja
• Table Troopers
• Moss
• Real VR Fishing
• Escaping Wonderland

10 Best Story-Driven VR Games On Meta Quest, PlayStation VR2 & More

Check out our list of some of our favorite story-driven VR games of all time.

UploadVRJames Tocchio

Horizon+ Indie Catalog Games

Meta also continues to add new games to the separate Indie Games Catalog, and you can see the entire list here.

Meta Horizon+ is a subscription service that gives players access to a monthly selection of games for $7.99 USD per month, or $59.99 USD a year. New Horizon+ users can enjoy a one-month free trial.

Hybrid games supporting both flatscreen and VR are a tricky balancing act. Particularly in situations like Lanesplit, No Man's Sky, and several Resident Evil games where VR support is added post-release, developers have to figure out how to bring the immersive gameplay VR players expect without overextending themselves or hurting the much more financially lucrative flatscreen experience.

As such, I went into Lanesplit with tempered expectations. I made it a point to play the game on flatscreen first so I could take note of any issues or criticisms about the game itself aside from the VR experience. When I finally put the headset on, it felt like slamming into a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour.

There is no motion controller support for turning your bike in VR. I specify turning because the left and right triggers can be used to brake and accelerate, respectively. This alone was baffling. Why do the triggers work if motion doesn't?

Right away, this felt like a miss. It's a first person racing game in virtual reality. To pass on adding hand poses and physically gripping the handlebars with the grip button would have been fine if the controllers were still able to at least control the bike. I have no problem using a traditional game controller for a VR game. Games like Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice and Edge of Nowhere were perfectly fine experiences. It just felt wrong to be riding a motorcycle in VR without motion controller support, like the immersion was stripped away.

The two primary issues I noted in my flatscreen run were unfortunately highlighted by being in VR. Lanesplit is more or less a score-chasing endless runner with options for weather conditions and traffic volume. The latter sticks out like a sore thumb. Vehicles in Lanesplit move at painfully slow speeds. At one point, I had to slow down because both lanes were occupied during a long turn and I did not have the space to squeeze between them, so I waited for the semi truck in the right lane to pass the car in the left lane. This felt like an eternity, riding the bike at roughly twenty miles an hour. Every car moves at a snail's pace in this game, presumably to heighten the sensation of zipping and cutting through traffic at high speed. It was impossible to unsee after noticing this and VR just made it feel worse.

Then there is the performance. I use a performance meter whenever I review a game and Lanesplit never exceeded thirty-six frames per second with a heavy amount of reprojection. This combined with the turtle-like vehicles kills any sensation of speed in the game.

Looking out to my sides at the admittedly well designed city was also problematic. The low framerate meant every building, guardrail, etc. stuttered in the headset while riding at top speed. I could look to either side for a few seconds at a time before I started to get dizzy. There are options to tune the graphics to match your PC's capabilities, but nothing to boost the framerate.

The last thing to note is the menus. The main menu, and Steam has a pop up warning for this when you boot the game, presents in a theater mode. This was begrudgingly acceptable, but bringing up the in game menu during a run does not work in VR. That menu, to continue racing or return to the main menu, only comes up on the PC monitor. This was a perplexing design decision, hopefully an unintentional one. Fastest way to ruin a VR experience is to force the player to take the headset off to perform any in-game action. That annoyance capped off an entirely forgettable, at times frustrating VR session.

In the end, Lanesplit's VR support comes up woefully short. I will revisit the game if future updates promise a better experience. If you are seeking a fun motorcycle escapade in VR, there are far better options like VRacer Hoverbike available. Right now, it is hard to recommend Lanesplit to any VR user.

Citing "consumer preferences" and the broader entertainment industry's shift away from physical discs to digital, Sony has announced that it will no longer release physical games on PlayStation consoles beginning January 2028. Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and through retailers that will sell digital formats only.

Existing games and games that release prior to January 2028 will not be impacted.

Over the last decade there has been no shortage of instances in which legally purchased digital copies of games, movies, music, and media of all kinds are delisted without warning, rendering the purchased media unplayable.

The sentiment amongst commenters on PlayStation's blog post indicates widespread irritation at the decision.

PlayStation has released dozens of PlayStation VR and VR2 games on physical discs, including Vertigo 2, Tetris Effect: Connected, Humanity, The Last Worker, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, C-Smash VRS, and others.

Beginning January 2028, we will never again see a physical game release for Sony's headsets or PlayStation consoles.

It wasn't the first time he'd looked for a virtual museum experience. Years earlier, after buying an Oculus Go, he immediately searched for a VR version of Google Arts & Culture. Google Arts & Culture had already made millions of artworks available online, and he assumed a VR version would eventually arrive.

"I said, 'That's okay. They'll release it soon,'" he recalled. "Then I got the Quest 2 and they didn't have it."

Eventually, he decided to build the museum experience he wanted himself.

"A museum is just a cube with JPEGs on the walls," he joked. "How hard could it be?"

"It turns out that it's very, very hard."

Fortunately, he added, "I'm very stubborn."

That idea eventually grew into ArtQuest VR, one of VR's most ambitious virtual museums. Its latest expansion adds two new DLC collections, Sculpture & Decorative Arts and Ancient Art & Archaeology, bringing more than 1,400 three-dimensional sculptures and artifacts spanning prehistory through the modern era.

If you're new to ArtQuest VR, you can also read our previous hands-on impression, which takes a closer look at the app's core museum experience.

The collections draw from digitization projects and publicly available scans from institutions including the Louvre Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, and the Pergamon Museum.

Building The Museum He Couldn't Find

Mosinger isn't a professional game developer. He's a university professor who taught himself enough Unity to build the museum experience he couldn't find. ArtQuest grew from a simple desire to spend more time with the artwork that had inspired him during museum visits.

The Getty Museum, in particular, left its mark on the app. The default gallery inside ArtQuest is modeled after one of the museum's Impressionist galleries, complete with gray walls and skylights.

His earliest prototype used artwork from Google Arts & Culture before he realized he couldn't use those images in a publicly distributed app. He rebuilt the project using public domain artwork from Wikimedia Commons, gradually expanding the collection while teaching himself Unity and everything else required to build a virtual museum.

Adding sculpture required a completely different workflow.

Unlike paintings, which can often be sourced through public domain archives, sculptures and archaeological artifacts had to be gathered individually from museum digitization projects and public photogrammetry collections. Each model then required careful optimization before it could run smoothly on standalone Quest hardware.

Many scans begin with millions of polygons.

"They need to be decimated down to about 150,000 polys at most without completely destroying them," Mosinger explained. "You can look at a model or an image whose resolution looks fine on a computer screen. Once you're in VR and you can get right up to it, suddenly it just snaps you right out of VR."

Mosinger doesn't just import everything he finds. He curates every addition himself, checking licenses, evaluating scan quality, repairing models when necessary, and deciding whether each piece meets the standard he wants users to experience.

Seeing Art A Little Differently

Spending time in ArtQuest changed the way I looked at paintings.

I kept finding myself lingering in front of works that I probably would have walked past in a museum. Walking right up to a canvas, I could study individual brushstrokes, the raised texture where paint had been layered over centuries, and even the subtle weave of the canvas beneath. They were details I'd never noticed before.

The Mona Lisa was a great example. While nothing replaces seeing the original, ArtQuest offers something museums often can't: the ability to quietly spend as much time as you want with a single painting, free from crowds, glass barriers, or the pressure to keep moving.

The new Sculpture & Decorative Arts and Ancient Art & Archaeology collections expand that experience beyond paintings. The range is impressive, from tiny carved figures that invite close inspection to full-scale sculptures like Michelangelo's David and monumental archaeological works such as the Temple of Dendur. Many sculptures can be explored at your own pace by walking around them, or you can set them to rotate, making it easy to study every angle without moving around your play space.

Whether I was studying a painting or circling a centuries-old sculpture, I found myself slowing down and spending more time with each work than I normally would.

When I described that experience, Mosinger smiled.

"It's what I had hoped to accomplish."

Designed For Curiosity

Although ArtQuest naturally appeals to museum enthusiasts, Mosinger hopes it also reaches people who never considered themselves interested in art.

"I kind of hope that one thing ArtQuest does is when a teenager stops playing Gorilla Tag and starts thinking about what else they might do on a Quest, they might look at that and say, 'Hey, I want to check out whatever that is.'"

Early in development, Mosinger recruited his parents, both in their seventies, to test the app.

"I experimented on my parents," he laughed.

His father spent eight to ten hours inside ArtQuest working through the interface and pointing out anything that wasn't intuitive. That feedback helped refine everything from seated play to movement controls.

As ArtQuest found its audience, older adults turned out to be one of its largest user groups, according to Mosinger. Today, the app is also being used by at least one library in France as part of an art appreciation program.

Multiplayer support lets families and friends tour galleries together, and Mosinger said some users regularly meet inside ArtQuest despite living hundreds of miles apart.

Asked what comes next, Mosinger said he's more interested in helping people discover art than adding a virtual guide.

"The most commonly requested features involve navigation," he said, pointing to search tools and better ways to surface related works. He'd also like to see museum curators eventually host live guided tours inside virtual galleries.

Looking For The Holodeck

Eventually, our conversation drifted beyond ArtQuest. Mosinger reflected on some of VR's early educational experiences, many of which are no longer available in their original form.

For him, VR has always represented something closer to Star Trek's Holodeck than another game console.

"I have always imagined VR as the Holodeck," he said.

Inspiring Real Museum Visits

I told Mosinger that after spending time in the app, I found myself wanting to visit art museums more often.

He smiled.

"The very best thing that anybody could ever tell me about ArtQuest is that they used it and loved it and then they went to a real-world art museum," he said.

"That is what I want more than anything else."

ArtQuest VR is available on the Meta Quest store for $9.99. The new DLC collections are available separately for $4.99 each, or as a bundle for $7.99.

Back in February we reported on a preview video showcasing a fan-made port of Perfect Dark running on Meta Quest hardware. Today the first public build of Perfect Dark VR has been released for PC VR and Meta Quest.

Created by Alex Le Tux, the VR port is derived in part from the Perfect Dark decompilation project from 2022. Since unveiling the project in February, Alex Le Tux has occasionally uploaded footage of the VR port to their YouTube channel. Today's release shows the player running through many of Perfect Dark's memorable areas and appears to be running beautifully with head tracking and motion control aiming.

A trailer for the project has been published by YouTube user Graslu00, which we've embedded here.

VR ports of classic games have become an increasingly popular idea in recent years, almost exclusively driven by fans, indie devs, and open-source communities. Among the notable contributions are those from Team Beef, whose unofficial VR ports of classic PC games like id Software's Doom, Quake II, and LucasArts' Jedi Knight games have been so well-received that they even grabbed the attention of id co-founder John Carmack.

Beyond ports alone, excitement around VR emulation of classic games and consoles has also blossomed in recent years. For instance, Virtual Boy Go is an open-source emulator that allows Nintendo's infamous foray into "VR" hardware to live on via Quest headsets. Projects like this demonstrate the ways that VR can serve not only as a preservation tool for classic games, but as a better, more immersive way to experience the classics.

Open-Source Emulator Plays Virtual Boy Games On Quest, No Switch Needed

Virtual Boy Go is a nearly perfect Virtual Boy emulator for Quest headsets, no Switch console required.

UploadVRJames Tocchio

First reported by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Paul Meade has just left Apple and will now work on hardware at OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

Meade joined Apple in 2010, where he started as a key manager for the iPad, and in 2012 he became the head of iPhone program management. In 2017 he joined the Technology Development Group (TDG), Apple's A-team working on virtual and augmented reality devices, and by 2019 he was leading hardware engineering for the headset.

By the Vision Pro launch (after which the TDG was renamed to Vision Products Group), Gurman's reporting described Meade as the top lieutenant of Mike Rockwell, who led the group and acted as its public face during Vision Pro's announcement. Under Rockwell, Meade was the key figure who got the complex and groundbreaking Vision Pro hardware ready to ship.

Last year, Meade's responsibilities became even greater. Apple moved Mike Rockwell out of the VPG to lead Siri, replacing the AI assistant's former chief in a "rare shake-up" after his failures left the company far behind competitors in the AI race. Rockwell took the visionOS group with him, bringing it into Apple's regular structure, while Meade remained to lead the hardware development of future Vision headsets – and smart glasses.

Apple Is Splitting The visionOS Team From The Vision Hardware Team

Apple is moving the visionOS team out of the Vision Products Group, with the VP who founded it, as part of a shake-up to get Siri back on track.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

As many reports have indicated, over the past few years Apple has been strongly prioritizing shipping smart glasses over future Vision headsets, and Meade was the key figure leading work on the Apple Glasses.

Expected to ship next year, Gurman's previous reports suggest Apple Glasses will be displayless glasses, like most of Meta's glasses, with cameras, speakers, microphones, and an Apple chipset based on the S-series used in Apple Watches. 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.

OpenAI Reportedly Considering Making ChatGPT Glasses

OpenAI is now reportedly considering making ChatGPT glasses, despite CEO Sam Altman’s public rejection of the form factor.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

At OpenAI, Meade may be working on something very similar.

While CEO Sam Altman publicly stated that he didn't like smart glasses, last year The Information reported that OpenAI had at least "considered" the form factor.

Meade may have a more general hardware role at OpenAI though, and reports suggest its first hardware won't be a wearable at all. Instead, if the reports are to be believed, it will be a screenless, pocket-sized, contextually aware AI companion, intended to sit somewhere between a phone, smart speaker, and ambient AI assistant.

June might have been lighter on new VR releases after a very busy spring, but we had no shortage of announcements in VR gaming. Our own UploadVR Summer Showcase returned on June 12 and the VR Games Showcase aired its summer edition. Both were packed with new announcements for later in 2026 and beyond. We also gave our thoughts on CleanSheet Soccer 2, Color-A-Cube, and Starvault.

Lastly, don't miss out on some discounts for games you may have on your wishlist. Our UploadVR Summer Showcase Humble Bundle is still live until July 8. The Steam Summer Sale & Meta Quest Summer Sale have both already kicked off and we expect to see PlayStation VR2 follow suit in July.

That said, here is our current rundown of new releases on Meta Quest, SteamVR, PlayStation VR2, and other XR gaming platforms in July. We will update this article throughout the month if we see any changes or updates. If we missed anything, be sure to let us know in the comments section below. Also, we keep a running list of upcoming VR games through the rest of the year and into 2027 here.

Games marked with an asterisk (*) are slated to release in Early Access.

Enigmo - July 7 (PC VR)

Enigmo is an award-winning mobile puzzle game 'spatialized' for VR by developer Fortell Games. The Steam listing has a July 7 release date with a demo from February's Steam Next Fest still available to download. The Meta Horizon store listing has 'Fall 2026' as its target date.

• Store links - PC VR, Quest

Geronimo* - July 10 (PC VR)

GERONIMO is a tactical close-quarters-battle shooter inspired by games like Ready or Not, Insurgency Sandstorm, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. This game has been in development since at least 2023.

• Store links - PC VR

One More Delve 1.0 - July 13 (PC VR, Quest 3)

One More Delve is a three player cooperative dungeon with physics-based hack and slash combat. It launched in Early Access in April and currently has a 4.1 score on the Meta Horizon store and a 'Mostly Positive' rating on Steam.

• Store links - Steam, Quest

One More Delve Impressions: A Promising Start For This VR Dungeon Crawler

One More Delve gives classic dungeon crawler fans a VR option for up to three players to team up for quests featuring physics-based combat.

UploadVRJ Brodie Shirey

Fixer Undercover - July 16 (PC VR)

Spy thriller-themed escape room puzzler Fixer Undercover makes the jump to PC with a flatscreen/VR hybrid port, featuring better graphics and improved world interactions for VR players. If you are interested to try the game first, there is a VR supported demo available. We reviewed the original Meta Quest version, giving it 4 out of 5 stars.

• Store links - PC VR

Fixer Undercover Review: This Escape Room Puzzler Nails It

Fixer Undercover drills down on the basics of VR puzzle solving, resulting in a great puzzler that comes up just short of brilliant.

UploadVRMike Johnson

Roboquest VR - July 23 (Quest 3)

Roguelite FPS Roboquest VR finally comes to Quest 3 headsets after a delay in May. As explained in the above video, the delay was to further polish the Quest version and make sure the speed and fluidity matches its PC VR & PS VR2 counterparts. This is important because July 23 is also the planned co-op update, which would presumably be cross platform.

• Store links - Quest

Roboquest VR Review: An Instant Classic

Roboquest VR takes an already exhilarating FPS roguelite and delivers a near-flawless VR adaptation.

UploadVRJames Galizio

Puzzles of the World - July 23 (Quest 3)

Originally a free-to-play Early Access title, cozy miniature builder Puzzles of the World moves to a paid full release with seven locations worldwide and a larger-than-usual 33% pre-order discount.

• Store links - Quest

Cybercore Protocol - July 26 (Quest)

Cybercore Protocol is a mixed reality action game where your scanned play space is transformed into a central control hub that must be defended from enemies appearing via portals in your walls and hallways.

• Store links - Quest

Hyperstacks - July 30 (Steam)

Initially released in Early Access on Meta Quest in 2021, Hyperstacks is an action game driven by parkour, combat, and puzzle challenges in handcrafted levels using developer Squirrel Bytes' Greenlink system. The game also supports user-generated levels for added replayability. There is a demo on SteamVR for those who are interested.

• Store links - Steam

Streets of Miami VR - July 30 (Steam)

Wearing its Grand Theft Auto influence on its sleeve, Streets of Miami VR is a 1980s-based crime-action game. Players start from nothing and have to build up their resources in a semi-open world version of Miami. This game is also slated for release on Quest with a 'Summer 2026' tag, so we will see if it hits both platforms in July or does a staggered release.

• Store links - Steam

If you are a developer or otherwise know of a game releasing in July, feel free to reach out to us at tips@uploadvr.com.

Not to be outdone by the Steam Summer Sale, Meta's Horizon Store for Quest headsets has a Summer Sale of its own. The Peak Summer Sale will run until 11:59 pm PT on July 5, so make sure to browse the shop before the deals disappear.

While it would be virtually impossible to list every deal here, a quick glance through Meta's Peak Summer Sale page shows phenomenal discounts on basically everything, including some great deals on some of the best VR games ever made. You can browse the entire catalog here.

Some standout games include:

• Crime Shop Simulator: $9.99 (50% off regular price of $19.99)
• The 7th Guest VR: $9.99 (50% off regular price of $19.99)
• Synth Riders: $12.99 (50% off regular price of $24.99)
• Retropolis 2 - Never Say Goodbye: $5.99 (75% off regular price of $24.99)
• Vader Immortal: $6.99 (30% off regular price of $9.99)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Empire City: $18.99 (25% off regular price of $24.99)
• Moss: $13.99 (30% off regular price of $19.99)
• Forefront: $21.99 (20% off regular price of $27.99)
• Ghost Signal: $1.99 (80% off regular price of $9.99)
• The Climb 2: $13.99 (53% off regular price of $29.99)
• Star Trek Infection: $20.99 (30% off regular price of $29.99)
• Dungeons of Eternity: $14.99 (50% off regular price of $29.99)

In addition to discounts on individual games, Meta is also offering themed bundles that combine games and experiences into one purchase.

The Walking Dead Bundle, for example, packs The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners and its sequel, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners — Chapter 2: Retribution into one purchase, while the Stealth Masters Bundle combines Assassin's Creed Nexus VR with Metro Awakening. There are a number of additional bundles as well, and you can explore those here.

In Color-A-Cube, voxel models made of tiny cubes appear in your environment and your goal is to relax and paint them. Each cube has a number on it which corresponds to a palette of available paint colors. You'll chill to some peaceful music, select your next favorite voxel model and while away the hours painting each cube the correct color. When all the cubes of your model are painted, you'll have completed the painting.

The premise is simple, and the execution is polished, especially in the game's latest Version 1.0 release, which dropped last week.

Your dominant hand takes care of the coloring while your non-dominant hand controls the model itself. Twiddling the thumbstick rotates the model on both X and Y axes, or you can simply reach out to grab, hold, and maneuver the model as if it were a real object. Grabbing it with both hands allows you to resize it instantly, making it easier to grab those awkward little corners where an uncolored cube rests annoyingly.

It's an intuitive setup that rarely gets in your way. As you finish every cube belonging to a particular number, a progress ring on your hand fills to show how close you are to completing that color. Once you've painted them all, your brush automatically switches to the next color in the sequence. There's also a handy hint button that briefly highlights any remaining cubes of your current color if you happen to miss one.

None of these mechanics are exactly revolutionary, but together they create an experience that's smooth, relaxing, and surprisingly satisfying (I defy you to dislike the varied reactive sound effects they've used for when a cube gets painted). Color-A-Cube isn't going to change your life. But it may make it a calmer one.

Of course, simplicity is a double-edged sword. Players seeking deep progression systems, narrative experiences, or any kind of challenging gameplay may find Color-A-Cube a somewhat limited experience. But Color-A-Cube knows what sort of game it's trying to be, and it never deviates. Its appeal lies more in the immediate satisfaction of its core concept. If the idea of sitting down with a cup of coffee (or whatever you like) and spending time with a color-by-number book sounds appealing, chances are you'll feel right at home here.

There's also no shortage of content. Now that the game has left Early Access, the base game costs $7.99 on PICO and Meta Quest (with a free trial). This base game version comes with over a hundred voxel models to paint. New free models drop weekly, plus monthly paid DLC packs often pop up. There's also a paid "Color Pass" that unlocks all available DLC for players who know they're going to stick around.

And, of course, the models themselves are varied and impressively designed. There are aliens, pirates, transportation, animals, technology, architecture, fossils, living fossils, alien eggs, monsters, foliage, cultural objects, weird characters, food, toys... the list goes on and on. There is, to put it simply, something for everyone.

Perhaps the game's biggest strength is that it makes excellent use of mixed reality without making a fuss about it. Seeing a brightly colored voxel sculpture floating above your coffee table or desk (or even under a maple tree) feels surprisingly natural, and because the mechanics are so straightforward, the technology fades into the background. You're simply focused on painting cool models, while also being present in or around your home. (Don't judge my grungy furniture- we still haven't pressure-washed after a brutal winter.)

Ultimately, Color-A-Cube succeeds by embracing simplicity. Rather than burying players beneath complicated systems, it builds around one central idea and executes it with confidence. In a market still discovering what mixed reality games should look like, that's a welcome direction. It may not be the flashiest or most ambitious MR title available, but it's incredibly satisfying and very well made. Sometimes simple can be very good.

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

That defines Zeus as an important part of the immersive video pipeline. Headsets like the Apple Vision Pro can already display very high quality immersive video, but capturing, processing, and delivering the dense data stream of live video at these high standards is often a serious production challenge.

Built For Live Immersive Production

Zeus is designed around ProRes 2110 live operations. SpatialGen’s public specs list support for 16K ingest, 90+ FPS, 100 Gb/s peak sustained throughput, and distribution through diverse content delivery networks like AWS CloudFront, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Akamai, and SpatialGen’s own network.

The system includes hardware, a software license for the lifetime of the system, and one year of direct access to SpatialGen engineers. Live immersive production can involve different cameras, routing, encoding targets, digital rights management, key management, and monitoring needs, so good support is essential.

Zeus supports Blackmagic’s URSA Cine Immersive 100G camera, an 8K stereoscopic 3D system designed for Apple Immersive Video production.

Why SpatialGen Matters To Vision Pro Video

In an AWE preview meeting, SpatialGen claimed it streams more than 90% of third-party immersive video on Apple Vision Pro. The company also said its system can ingest and encode multi-terabyte ProRes footage, including live immersive Lakers footage for Spectrum Front Row.

Live sports streaming is one of the clearest examples of why this infrastructure matters. Apple and Spectrum brought select Los Angeles Lakers games to Vision Pro in Apple Immersive, with the experience available through Spectrum SportsNet and the NBA app.

Immersive video isn’t new to headsets, but Apple Immersive Video raises the bar with 180-degree 3D footage, high resolution, high frame rate, HDR, and spatial audio. That quality is a big part of why Apple’s format stood out early on, and why tools for capturing and delivering it matter.

The Invisible Infrastructure

SpatialGen Zeus's value is in an integrated system that combines hardware, software, infrastructure, and support in a live workflow. A full-stack service is ideal for live streaming of immersive experiences with ProRes quality.

While traditional streaming apps can place 2D video inside VR, including DIRECTV on Quest, apps like Xtadium have shown the appeal of immersive sports viewing. SpatialGen aims to simplify the complex path from professional cameras to VR headsets in real time, without treating every production like a one-off technical experiment.

The details of Zeus may not matter much to Vision Pro owners, since it’s not a consumer product. But as live immersive concerts, sports, ceremonies, and events become more common on Vision Pro and other headsets, systems like this are the kind of invisible infrastructure that could help make that happen.

Steam's annual Summer Sale has kicked off and will run until July 9 at 1pm ET, and it's bringing discounts on hundreds of VR games, titles with VR support, DLC, and more. Now is the perfect time to take another look at your wishlist!

The full list of discount games can be found here. On that main landing page you can scroll down to the filter options and enter 'VR' in the search box to filter the list down to just VR titles, or find the platform listed under "Visuals and Viewpoint."

The following is by no means a comprehensive list as there are well over 800 games on sale, both native and hybrid. At a glance, I've seen incredibly steep discounts as large as 90% off!

Here are some highlights:

• Phasmophobia: $13.99 (30% off regular price of $19.99)
• Half-Life Alyx: $14.99 (75% off regular price of $59.99)
• Hitman World of Assassination: $27.99 (60% off regular price of $69.99)
• Assetto Corsa Competizione: $3.99 (90% off regular price of $39.99)
• Blade and Sorcery: $23.99 (20% off regular price of $29.99)
• Five Nights at Freddy's Secret of the Mimic: $19.99 (50% off regular price of $39.99)
• Bonelab: $31.99 (20% off regular price of $39.99)
• Into the Radius 2: $27.99 (30% off regular price of $39.99)
• The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim VR: $14.99 (75% off regular price of $59.99)
• The Midnight Walk: $14.99 (50% off regular price of $29.99)
• Project Wingman: $12.49 (50% off regular price of $24.99)
• Five Nights at Freddy's Help Wanted 2: $19.99 (50% off regular price of $39.99)
• MYST: $20.99 (40% off regular price of $34.99)
• Riven: $20.99 (40% off regular price of $34.99)
• Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked: $23.99 (20% off regular price of $29.99)
• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024: $52.49 (25% off regular price of $69.99)
• Vertigo 2: $14.99 (50% off regular price of $29.99)
• Walkabout Mini Golf: $14.99 (40% off regular price of $24.99)
• Arizona Sunshine 2: $13.99 (65% off regular price of $39.99)

The list truly goes on and on, with an almost overwhelming number of amazing VR experiences getting deep discounts.

Check it out for yourself, but be aware that the sale ends July 9.

Many VR developers are feeling the sting of a continued downturn in the gaming ecosystem, and that trend continues this month.

Layoffs At Combat Waffle Studios

Combat Waffle Studios CEO Scott Albright released a statement detailing the staff reduction for the team behind extraction shooter Ghosts of Tabor:

Today we made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team.

As part of this, we are saying goodbye to a number of talented individuals who have contributed meaningfully to our work. We are grateful for their efforts and are committed to supporting them as they transition to new opportunities. Any studio would be fortunate to have them.

We came to this decision after having a project we were working on with a large platform partner get cancelled.

These actions are part of a broader effort to align the company with the current state of the VR industry and ensure we are positioned for long term sustainability.

Our focus remains unchanged. Ghosts of Tabor continues to be our core product, and we will continue expanding that universe alongside our partners.

We remain confident in the future of VR and our role within it.

Tabor was an early access success, reaching $10 million in revenue and $30 million by the time it was ported to PlayStation VR2. Since release, it has seen multiple collaborations with popular franchises like The Terminator and stealth series Splinter Cell.

The 'large platform partner' in the statement has not been publicly identified, though the early speculation points at Meta.

Open World RPG A Township Tale Shutting Down Next Month

Developer Alta ended development of its co-op dungeon crawler Reave earlier this year and now its previous title, A Township Tale, is closing up shop. Here's the full statement from Alta co-founder Joel van de Vorstenbosch:

It’s with a heavy heart that I’m announcing the closure of A Township Tale and its live services.

The game will become unavailable to download, and its backend services will be taken down, on the 20th of July.

Like many others, we’ve been impacted by the state of the VR industry in ways we didn’t foresee. As many of you know, we discontinued our second game, REAVE, at the start of May. We have explored various avenues to keep A Township Tale live, but unfortunately none are realistic in our situation.

A Township Tale began in 2016, launched in pre-alpha in 2018, and launched on Quest in 2021. Across that journey, we had the privilege of building what we believe became one of the most special experiences in VR, with one of the best communities in VR.

Reave was first announced in March 2025 at the VR Games Showcase and spent months in open playtesting before Alta announced the end of active development. A Township Tale, as detailed in the statement, has been available to play since 2018.

Smash Brothers-Inspired Quantaar Shuts Down This Fall

Developer Pumpkin VR has announced that its competitive VR brawler Quantaar will end in September. Here's a snippet of the statement:

Since the launch of QUANTAAR, we have witnessed countless epic battles in the arenas and social hubs. We have also received an overwhelming amount of passion and valuable feedback from our global community. The entire Pumpkin VR team would like to express our deepest gratitude—thank you for your unwavering support, which allowed us to bring this thrilling and hilarious VR party experience to life.

However, every epic journey eventually comes to an end. After long and careful consideration by the development team, it is with a heavy heart that we announce the official sunset of QUANTAAR. All game servers will be permanently closed on September 5, 2026, at 11:00 (UTC+8).

Quantaar has already been delisted on Quest, Steam, and Pico's storefronts.

Memoreum Ends Full-Time Development Due To Poor Sales

Lastly, a developer from Patient 8 Games had this to say on Discord about the fate of its Dead Space-inspired story-based sci-fi shooter, Memoreum:

We’ve been trying to make updates and fixes, but unfortunately the reality is that the game didn’t sell enough copies to justify continued full-time development.

At the moment, we still have one person occasionally working on the Steam version. However, we can’t make any promises regarding when—or even if—it will be released.

We built this game with passion and love, and we’re incredibly grateful for everyone who supported us. But passion alone doesn’t pay the bills or keep the lights on.

We’ll continue to do what we can with the resources we have, and we’ll share any meaningful updates if and when they become available.

Memoreum was first announced at Gamescom in 2023 from Patient 8, with publisher 2080 Games, a then-new company headed by content creator Mike of VR Oasis, announced later. It released in October 2025 on Meta Quest and currently has a score of 4.4 from 353 ratings.

It has had a listing on Steam since last year and updated its planned release at least two times, first from '2025' to 'Q2 2026' and now its current 'Q3 2026.'

This drop follows earlier shock drops of tracks by Bad Bunny and Twenty One Pilots and three new free original songs added late last month for Beat Saber's eight year anniversary.

Here's the release trailer:

Yungblud's songs have a combined four billion streams on Spotify. "Zombie," first released in 2025, is a departure from Yungblud's signature punk rock sound.

The new track is available now on Meta Quest and Steam for $1.99. Meta announced the end of Beat Saber support for PlayStation VR2 last year, though it has not stopped the game from appearing in Sony's top ten list of most downloaded PS VR2 games every month.

Beat Saber is available on Quest, Steam, and PlayStation VR2. It also joined the Horizon+ games catalog earlier this year.

The full list of playable activities is as follows:

• Tourist Crap Character Introduction
• Bubs' Many Golfs
• Dangeresque Foxhunt
• Burnination Valley
• Strong Bad Zone
• Duck Pond Simulator

For the hidden ball collectors, Bubs' Many Golfs contains 18 collectible golf balls to find. Bubs' course does not have the standard courses' Hard Mode with the accompanying scavenger hunt for a new putter. That said, there are three custom putters unlockable elsewhere.

The 'takeover' concept is illustrated in the promotional art below, with Homestar Runner paraphernalia over the starting island and other courses like Cherry Blossom, Upside Town, 8-Bit Lair, and Quixote Valley.

Strong Bad's Basement is a new hangout area to spend time between rounds of golf with throwable darts, Cheat minifigures, and a Stinkoman Arcade Machine. It should be noted that all activities are not multiplayer. The ones that can be enjoyed with friends are Bubs' Many Golfs, Tourist Crap, and the Dangeresque Foxhunt.

The Distraction Pack is akin to a combination of the standard DLC course and the cosmetic packs developer Mighty Coconut has also been releasing. In addition to the six activities, collectible balls, and putters, the pack also has three hole celebrations, two of which must be unlocked to use, a custom ball trail, and six player avatars. The Brothers Chaps also lent their voices to the welcome island message and over thirty animated scenes spread throughout the game.

One final note: this pack does not count as one of Mighty Coconut's six planned DLC courses for 2026. The next official DLC course is slated for release in August.

Walkabout Mini Golf is available on Steam, PSVR2, Quest, Pico, Samsung Galaxy XR, and Apple App Store. The game is also available as part of Meta's Horizon+ subscription service. The Homestar Runner Distraction Pack is available now.

This is the third consecutive month with new music packs from developer Kluge Interactive after Crypt of the NecroDancer in May and Dua Lipa in April. The popular rhythm game also saw a new player progression system added in March.

The Music Pack includes the following tracks:

• In the End
• Numb
• Faint
• One Step Closer
• The Emptiness Machine (Radio Edit)
• Bleed It Out (Radio Edit)
• Breaking the Habit
• Battle Symphony
• Papercut
• Castle of Glass
• Heavy Is The Crown
• Up From The Bottom
• Over Each Other

Kluge Interactive's Sahin San had this to say in a prepared statement:

Linkin Park defined a generation of music fans, and we couldn't be more excited to bring their music into Synth Riders. Whether you grew up on Hybrid Theory or discovered them through their latest album, this pack is going to hit hard.

Tracks can be purchased separately or as a bundle for a small discount per song. The Synth Riders Linkin Park Music Pack is available now on Meta Quest, Steam, and PlayStation VR2.

The Apple Vision Pro (M5) price increases are as follows:

• 256GB: $3499 –> $3699 (a $200 increase)
• 512GB: $3699 –> $3899 (a $200 increase)
• 1TB: $3899 –> $4199 (a $300 increase)

Those are eye-watering price hikes for what was already an incredibly expensive headset. Whereas we once hoped for more affordable Vision headsets to have slashed the entry price of visionOS by now, we're instead in a much darker timeline where the cost is going up.

Apple applied similar price increases to its Macs, iPads, and HomePod speakers.

No, Apple Didn’t Cancel The Vision Headset Line Forever - Here’s What’s Happening

Multiple reports this year claimed that Apple, and particularly its incoming CEO John Ternus, has canceled the Vision headset line altogether. But that just isn’t true.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook blamed the price increases on the global memory crisis, telling The Wall Street Journal that it's a situation unlike anything he's ever seen in his 40 years in the tech industry.

If you're unfamiliar with the situation: the enormous demand for server-side inference of AI frontier models is far outpacing the global supply capacity of RAM chips, leading to a massive increase in their price.

A similar situation is happening for storage, given that agentic AI systems are generating and storing data at an unprecedented rate.

Meta Is Increasing The Price Of Quest 3 & Quest 3S

Meta is increasing the price of Quest 3 to $600 and Quest 3S to $350, citing the global memory chip crisis that has seen other tech prices rise.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Apple is far from the only tech company to increase its prices due to the crisis, and in fact was one of the main holdouts until now.

Sony has raised the price of PlayStation 5 consoles multiple times over the past year, while Microsoft has done the same for Xbox, and Meta even increased the price of Quest 3 and Quest 3S in April.

Earlier this week, Valve opened reservations for its hotly anticipated Steam Machine consolized PC, announcing a poorly received $1050 starting price that it also says is driven by the memory crisis. Estimates suggest it would have landed around $750 under original component costs.

Valve To “Revisit” Steam Frame Shipping Schedule & Pricing

Valve says it needs to “revisit” its “exact shipping schedule and pricing” for Steam Frame and Steam Machine amid the global memory shortage.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Valve is expected to launch its Steam Frame headset sometime in the next few weeks, recently confirming that it will launch "this summer", and it too will be affected by the crisis.

When revealing Steam Frame back in November, Valve told UploadVR it was "aiming" to sell it for less than the $1000 Index full-kit, but it's unclear whether the company can still hit that target.

When Will This End!?

Unfortunately, the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.

As advanced AI agents that run in loops for minutes or even hours become more capable and therefore more widely used, the memory requirements of the industry are set to increase exponentially.

Memory manufacturers like SK Hynix and Micron are urgently working to scale up production, of course but this will take years, and demand will significantly outpace supply during this time.

As such, it's likely we'll continue to see consumer technology increase in price through 2027, and relief, if it does happen, won't arrive until 2028 at the earliest. Expect this to impact Meta's next headset too, as well as any other new entrants to the standalone XR market for the next two years at least.

The age of low-cost consumer hardware is over. At least for now.

Sometimes a game catches you completely off guard, even if it’s on the second time around.

When I first played STARVAULT during early access, I thought it was good. Polished, well made and full of potential, certainly, but not a game I expected to spend much time with. Well, fast forward about a year and I have somehow logged more than thirty hours into the Steam version in just two weeks.

Considering MOBAs are usually my least favorite type of online shooter, that should tell you everything you need to know. Theia Games have crafted something genuinely special here and, much to my surprise, I have found myself completely hooked.

Zero To Hero

The objective in Starvault is simple: destroy the enemy base before they destroy yours. However, it's never really that simple, as almost every minute of every match presents another decision that could influence the outcome. Your friendly NPC units – known as ‘Creeps’ – constantly push down the lanes, applying pressure to enemy defenses and creating opportunities for your team.

Venture away from the lanes and you'll find more powerful ‘Jungle Creeps’ that offer perks for your team. Timed objectives can swing momentum in your favor, while portals create new strategic opportunities throughout a match. Then there is the Titan, a giant stone automaton that, once defeated, can be piloted directly into the enemy's defenses with devastating results.

What makes Starvault so compelling is the way all of these systems interact. Every match becomes a constant balancing act between farming experience, securing objectives, supporting teammates and knowing when to commit to a push. The game rewards skill, certainly, but the teams that consistently succeed are usually the ones making the smartest decisions. Understanding where you should be, what objective matters most and when to abandon one fight in favor of another often proves just as important as killing the enemy in front of you.

Fifty Shades Of Slay

At its heart, Starvault is a game about progression, both within individual matches and across your broader playtime. Every creep you defeat, every objective you secure and every enemy hero you bring down contributes towards making your character stronger. Leveling up unlocks new abilities, currency unlocks new items and before long your carefully chosen hero begins to evolve into something uniquely suited to your playstyle.

What I particularly enjoyed is that progression never feels automatic. Every match asks you to make meaningful decisions about how you want to develop your character. Do you lean harder into survivability? Double down on damage output? The item shop and ability upgrades provide enough flexibility that the same hero can feel quite different from one game to the next.

The game currently offers fifteen playable heroes and this is where Starvault truly excels.

While it follows many traditional MOBA conventions, the roster feels much closer to a hero shooter in practice. There are tanks, supports and damage dealers, but those labels only tell part of the story.

There’s a fully airborne drone, heroes that throw energy balls, blade-wielding assassins, heavy machine gunners and even mech units that move using arm-swing locomotion reminiscent of Gorilla Tag. One hero might use a grapple hook to reach inaccessible high ground and take the enemy apart from a distance, while another literally backflips into the enemy team hurling knives with deadly precision. No two characters feel alike, even when they fulfill a similar role within a team composition.

Even more impressively, all of them feel viable.

Balancing a roster this diverse cannot be easy, yet Theia Games have done an exceptional job of ensuring that every hero feels like they have a place within the game. Throughout my time with Starvault I never encountered a character that felt obviously overpowered, nor one that seemed remotely redundant.

Regardless of whether you're piloting a hoverboard-riding healer armed with twin pistols or a heavily armored frontline tank wielding an axe and shield, every character feels capable of contributing to victory. Moreover, in the right hands, each hero can become an absolute menace on the battlefield.

Playing The Long Game

I was fortunate enough to have access to all fifteen characters on Steam, allowing me to appreciate just how varied the roster is. On Quest, however, I followed the intended progression route and have unlocked a few characters the hard way – by grinding through gameplay.

While unlocking heroes requires a reasonable amount of grind, Starvault remains entirely devoid of pay-to-win mechanics. Every character can be earned simply by playing the game. Players can choose to accelerate progression with real money if they wish, but there is absolutely no requirement to do so.

The onboarding process is also very well thought out. Players have access to a hub world where they can experiment with every character before purchasing them. Tutorials, practice spaces and even a dedicated deathmatch arena allow you to familiarize yourself with heroes before committing your hard-earned currency.

This feature wasn't available when I first played the game and its inclusion has gone a long way towards making Starvault's considerable complexity more approachable for new players.

My only real criticism is that evenly matched games can become battles of attrition. Matches regularly stretch into the thirty-to-forty-minute range and can occasionally exceed that. For players like myself who often squeeze gaming into small windows of free time, this can be difficult.

If I could request anything from the developers, it would be to add a second, smaller map with all the same gameplay elements but designed around fifteen-to-twenty-minute matches. This would go a long way towards making Starvault even more appealing, particularly to those of us perennially short on time.

Strength In Numbers

Part of being an online title is the need for an active player base and I have been genuinely impressed by how healthy Starvault's community appears to be.

Whether jumping in during a lunch break or playing during peak evening hours, I consistently found other players online. In situations where player numbers are lower, bots can fill out the remaining slots and perform reasonably well, even if they don't replicate the communication and strategic thinking of human teammates.

The game also supports a thriving competitive scene, with regular tournaments and cash-prize events helping to foster a high-level player base.

Perhaps more importantly, the matchmaking experience is excellent. During my earliest matches I was consistently paired with players of an appropriate skill level, allowing me to learn without feeling overwhelmed. Compared to many competitive online games, Starvault does an exceptional job of easing new players into its systems.

Pretty Fly For A MOBA Guy

Graphically, Starvault is an impressive achievement on Quest hardware.

The map is large, varied and packed with verticality. More importantly, the art direction strikes an excellent balance between looking good and playing well. Performance has been rock solid throughout my time with both the standalone and PC versions.

It is clear that Starvault was designed with standalone hardware as its primary focus, and as such the Steam version does not dramatically transform the visual experience. Much like Population: One, the strength of Starvault's presentation comes from its effective art direction rather than cutting-edge graphical effects.

Quest players will be thoroughly impressed, while PC players may simply find themselves with a cleaner version of an already strong visual package.

The sound design delivers exactly what it needs to.

Spatial audio cues are excellent, allowing players to quickly identify attacks, abilities and threats during chaotic engagements. Every hero possesses distinct audio signatures that help communicate what is happening on the battlefield and where it is happening.

While the sound design may not stand out in quite the same way as in games like Breachers, it succeeds across every area that matters and contributes to an experience that feels consistently polished and high quality.

Final Verdict

Starvault has truly impressed me.

I went into this experience expecting very little. In fact, I assumed I would play for an hour or two before moving on. Two weeks later I have a new favorite shooter and absolutely no intention of stopping anytime soon.

The incredible diversity of its heroes, the depth of its strategic gameplay and the strength of its online community combine to create something genuinely special. It is not perfect though; matches can run a little too long and unlocking heroes can require a chunky time commitment, but these are relatively minor criticisms within an otherwise outstanding package.

If you have any interest whatsoever in online shooters then Starvault is an exceptionally easy recommendation. I certainly wasn't expecting to fall in love with it, yet here I am, thirty hours later, annoyed at you for making me write about Starvault when I could be playing it.

Article updated after publication to remove references to "free to play". Theia Games had described the game as free to play, and at no point until launch disclosed that it would be paid on Steam.

All Meta smart glasses come with a charging case, featuring a built-in battery that provides extra charges on the go, as well as passthrough charging when plugged in via the USB-C port.

As such, the new Charging Stand isn't a strictly necessary product, in the sense that simply plugging in the charging case already provides the same functionality. But it offers a slightly lower-friction option to quickly grab the glasses, and may be more aesthetic for some setups.

Meta says the stand is made out of stainless steel for the main body and silicone rubber for the footpad, weighing 108 grams.

The stand has a USB-C port but does not come with a cable or adapter. You'll need to provide your own USB-C cable and USB-C power adapter.

The Meta Glasses Charging Stand is compatible with Ray-Ban Meta glasses (Gen 1 and Gen 2), Oakley Meta HSTN glasses, and the newly announced Meta Glasses, including the Starfire Kylie Edition.

It is not compatible with Meta Ray-Ban Display and Oakley Meta Vanguard.

Ray-Ban Meta Optics Styles Promise “All-Day Comfort” For Prescriptions

The new Ray-Ban Meta Optics Styles promise “all-day comfort” for prescription wearers, with overextension hinges, interchangeable nose pads, and optician-adjustable temple tips.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

The stand could be a good match for owners of the Ray-Ban Meta Optics Styles who use them as their all-day eyewear with prescription lenses, letting them more easily grab the glasses in the morning and dock them at night.

You can find the Meta Glasses Charging Stand on the Meta Store.