Today Snap Inc, the company behind Snapchat, announced the latest version of its Spectacles AR Glasses which the company is calling Spectacles ’24. The new device makes notable improvements to field-of-view, resolution, and hand-tracking, and overhauls its software stack. But it’s limited enough to remain targeted at developers. Spectacles ’24 is available starting today, and the company is selling it to developers for $100 per month on a one-year commitment (ultimately totalling $1,200).

More than three years after releasing Spectacles 4—the first in the Spectacles lineup to include displays and real AR capabilities—Snap Inc is doubling down with a new generation of AR glasses. Spectacles ’24 makes key improvements as it inches its way toward a consumer-ready version of such a device.

Spectacles ’24 Specs and Pricing

Spectacles ’24 is a pair of standalone AR glasses. That means everything that powers the device is built directly into the glasses with nothing needing to be tethered to the device. Here’s a look at the Spectacles ’24 specs side-by-side with the prior generation.

While we can see considerable improvements like a near-doubling of the field-of-view, more cameras for improved head and hand tracking, and increased battery life, this has come at the cost of the device’s overall weight. Spectacles ’24 weighs 226g while its predecessor weighs just 134g. The new Spectacles aren’t just heavier, they’re a bit bulkier too, still looking more like ‘goggles’ than ‘glasses’.

Spectacles ’24 inches closer to something that would be acceptable to consumers (in both specs and size), but isn’t there yet.

For now the company is focused on getting the device into the hands of developers to start building compelling applications. To that end, the company is offering an interesting pricing model: Spectacles ’24 is priced at $100 per month, over a one-year commitment—starting today. So while the company is ultimately asking $1,200 for the device, it hopes the monthly approach will lower the barrier to entry.

Software Overhaul & Social Focus

While the hardware is inching slowly toward consumer-readiness, Snap Inc is making larger strides on the software side. Spectacles ’24 is paired with a huge overhaul of the software layer.

The new ‘SnapOS’ effectively guts and replaces the software stack of the previous Spectacles, now with a common interface and interactions built around hand-tracking.

The company is trying to infuse SnapOS with social capabilities, including the ability for Spectacles ’24 to recognize other nearby glasses and seamlessly join their session for a co-located AR experience.

The glasses also support a ‘spectator’ mode which allows someone with a smartphone to look into your AR session to see what’s happening. Unlike spectator views on headsets like Quest and Vision Pro, the smartphone viewer actually sees the AR content from their own perspective, rather than just seeing a first-person view from the headset. However, that basic ‘see what I see’ mode of other headsets is also supported.

There’s some other interesting tie-ins for your smartphone too. Like the ability to use it as either a motion controller, virtual gamepad, or to mirror apps from your phone into Spectacles so you can have a floating (but non-interactive) view of the app inside the headset.

Of course these social and smartphone-extensible functions will only work for apps and experiences that are specifically designed with them in mind, but having these capabilities supported at the OS/SDK level opens up some interesting possibilities.

Lens Studio is the tool developers use to build AR experiences for both Snapchat and Spectacles, and today the company also just revealed the latest version.

The modern foundation of Lens Studio 5.0 supports even more complex, robust Lenses with TypeScript, JavaScript, and improved version control tools for team-based development. Additionally, SnapML makes it easy for developers to use custom ML models directly in Lenses to identify, track, and augment objects. We’re also excited to bring the power of cloud-hosted multimodal AI models to Spectacles through a new partnership with OpenAI. Soon, this will help developers bring new models to their Spectacles experiences to provide more context about what you see, say, or hear.

Snap Inc says the Spectacles software platform has “no developer tax,” meaning the company won’t take a cut of revenue from developers making money on the platform. Considering there’s currently no way to sell software on Spectacles (and no audience to speak of), that announcement might seem a little strange, but clearly the company is hoping to set developer expectations for what it eventually hopes will become a consumer product platform.

Revealed back in May, the first official Warhammer VR game for out-of-home VR attractions is now set to launch next week, coming to Zero Latency locations worldwide.

Update (September 16th, 2024): Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine VR – Warriors of Avarax is officially coming to Zero Latency September 25th, with pre-bookings now available.

Based on Space Marines 2, in 30-minute Warhammer VR experience lets you and up to seven others take the fight to Tyranid forces, promising plenty of co-op exploration and combat.

The original article detailing the initial announcement follows below:

Original Article (May 23rd, 2024): We knew as of 2022 that a Warhammer 40K experience was in development for VR attraction Zero Latency. It was initially expected in 2023, but it seems we’ll have to wait until October this year to jump into our very own Power Armour.

The teaser for Warhammer 40K: Space Marine VR reveals very little, save for Space Marines, Tyranids, and an October release date (see update).

But we know that Zero Latency is a VR attraction with experiences that are typically designed to last around 30 minutes. So while this won’t be a full-blown Warhammer 40K VR game in the traditional sense, it’s likely to be a fun time (with you and up to 7 of your friends!). Here’s the text teaser for now:

In Space Marine VR: Defenders of Avarax, you will play as a Space Marine, a genetically enhanced super-soldier. Exploring the Hive City of Fervastium, players will delve deep into a vault on an important mission that could turn the tide and help beat back the Tyranids, an all-consuming alien swarm from beyond the known galaxy. Using a wide range of weapons from the Space Marine arsenal, players will fight off voracious swarms of Tyranids as they step into the shoes of these highly disciplined and indomitable warriors.

Zero Latency is one of the leading VR attractions with 93 locations across 26 countries. We’ve been impressed previously with the company’s internal development talent, and hope to see their work taken to the next level with Warhammer 40K: Space Marine VR. Designing experiences for VR attractions is a surprisingly unique challenge compared to building in-home VR applications—especially with multiple players in the same physical playspace.

“The Warhammer 40,000 universe and Space Marine in particular has such awesome lore and history, we just couldn’t wait to dive into it,” says Tim Ruse, CEO at Zero Latency. “With Space Marine VR: Defenders of Avarax, we are pushing our technology to the limits, and our talented development team is creating our most immersive and thrilling experience yet. We can’t wait for players to step into the Warhammer 40,000 setting and take on the Tyranids in this epic adventure.”

While it’s a shame this experience can’t also be enjoyed on in-home VR headsets like Quest, luckily there’s already a few ways to dive into the Warhammer universe from the comfort of your own VR headset with the likes of Warhammer 40,000: Battle Sister (2020) and Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Tempestfall (2021).

The Unity Cube is an objectively terrible game that was built to test the limits of what Quest content Meta would allow into its uncurated App Lab program. The experiment continues to prove its worth; now that Meta has dissolved App Lab, The Unity Cube has moved to the main Quest store and shown that Meta is truly hands-off when it comes to the scope or quality of what can get listed in its VR game store.

For a long time the only official way to distribute an app on Quest was to submit it to Meta for manual review. But Meta would only accept applications which met opaque quality criteria, like how much content the app offered and whether it was appropriately polished. This made it difficult for developers to get smaller or experimental apps in front of the Quest audience, leading to significant developer outcry for a more open process.

That prompted the creation of ‘App Lab’, an alternative distribution approach for Quest which allowed developers to submit applications for distribution without any judgement on quality or scope. But it came with the caveat that App Lab apps wouldn’t be shown in the main Quest store, leaving it up to developers to point their audience to the app’s page.

To test whether Meta was going truly hands-off when it came to the quality of App Lab apps, developer Tony “SkarredGhost” Vitillo created The Unity Cube.

As the name implies, the app is simply a blank Unity environment with a grey cube—that you can’t even interact with. Even at the great price of free, this app would have never stood a chance of making it onto the main Quest store. But could it make it onto App Lab?

Indeed, Meta allowed The Unity Cube into App Lab, proving it would let just about anything into the program, as long as technical requirements were met and content guidelines were respected (ie: no adult or illegal content).

It was good news that developers could submit any app to App Lab for distribution on Quest without worrying that Meta would block an app on the grounds that it wasn’t complete or polished enough. But sentiment remained that having this ‘unlisted’ Quest store made it unnecessarily difficult for developers to find customers.

After several years of App Lab, developer pressure finally pushed Meta to dissolve the program, ultimately merging the App Lab store with the main Quest store. This meant anyone could submit an app of any quality to the main Quest store where it would be visible to customers through browsing and searching.

Last week The Unity Cube completed its journey and became listed on the main Quest store, along with other App Lab apps, again proving that Meta would be truly hands-off on curation.

And though it’s still possible for developers to mark their Quest apps as “Early Access”—to tell customers to expect something experimental or incomplete—The Unity Cube’s creator joked that “it’s not even in Early Access because it is perfect as it is!”

The developer of Gorilla Tag, one of VR’s most popular and commercially successful games, has revealed the first clear look at its next game. Previously codenamed ‘Project A2’, the title has been officially dubbed Orion Drift, and aims to take Gorilla Tag’s social structure to the next level.

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

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

Orion Drift is built atop Gorilla Tag’s signature arm-based locomotion system, but players will inhabit robot bodies rather than gorillas. But that simple change of avatar is far from the disruptive part. The game is taking Gorilla Tag’s seamless social lobby navigation and ‘playground’ gameplay and turning it up to 11.

Orion Drift is promised to feature space stations upon which up to 200 players can roam simultaneously. The space stations consist of multiple large arena spaces where players can play a wide variety of different games, from something that looks not far from ‘Gorilla Tag’ itself to ‘Tackleball’, which looks a lot like soccer or Rocket Race, but of course using your hands for movement and controlling the ball.

We also get a glimpse of another part of the station which includes something that looks like a golf course and pickleball courts. And still another area hosting an event called ‘Scrap Run’ which looks like an obstacle race.

Although this would already be plenty of space for activities, the cylindrical space station has at least seven additional huge modules that are shown as being ‘under construction’—the implication is that these will all fill out to support more unique activities and game modes.

And it might even be players that build out the rest of the station. Another Axiom previously said about the game that “[…] players can run their own servers, control their own stations, host their own rule sets, moderate and customize the look and feel of activities, posters, game modes and more,” and also mentioned plans for a level editor which would allow players to build their own maps and activities.

And if that wasn’t enough, at the end of the trailer the camera pulls way back and reveals not just the one floating station, but nearly 20 floating through space together.

It’s an ambitious concept that’s clearly inspired by the seamless social structure of Gorilla Tag, where game lobbies are ‘places’ and changing game modes is as natural as walking between rooms.

In Orion Drift, however, the idea isn’t just to wander down the hall into a new room, but traverse a whole space station full of people—and maybe even jump from station to station to find new game modes and people.

For now Another Axiom is calling this first look a “development snapshot” comprised of “early gameplay footage.” There aren’t yet hard plans for a release, but the studio is taking sign-ups for a closed early access period on its official Discord.

Behemoth from Skydance and Alien: Rogue Incursion from Survios are two of the most anticipated VR games coming in 2024, and both are headed for release on Quest, PSVR 2, and PC VR. And now we know when we’ll first be able to get our hands on them.

Behemoth Release Date on Quest

Starting off with Behemoth, the highly anticipated VR title from Skydance Interactive is set to debut on November 14, 2024, on Quest. Although the game is also planned for release on PSVR 2 and PC VR, release dates for those platforms have not yet been confirmed and may come at a later date.

Skydance, the studio behind the critically acclaimed The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, has shown Behemoth to have a dark fantasy setting with intense combat mechanics.

Alien: Rogue Incursion Release Date

Next up is Alien: Rogue Incursion, which is now set to launch on December 19, 2024, simultaneously on PSVR 2, PC VR, and, among Quest headsets, exclusively on Quest 3.

The game is being developed by Survios, a longtime VR studio known for their work on Creed: Rise to Glory and The Walking Dead Onslaught, and a range of other early VR titles.

Alien: Rogue Incursion promises to immerse players in the terrifying world of the Alien franchise, and the recent pre-order and release date trailer shows us a clear look at the game’s shooting gameplay and Xenomorph enemies.

Bonus – Batman: Arkham Shadows Release Window

One more game on our list of the most anticipated VR games of 2024, Batman: Arkham Shadow, doesn’t have an exact release date yet. But this week we got a pretty specific release window: October 2024.

Batman: Arkham Shadow is a Quest 3 headset and platform exclusive, meaning it will only run on Quest 3 or later, and isn’t planned for release on other VR platforms.

First released eight years ago, SUPERHOT VR is not just a notable VR classic—it’s still a great game. Although it never got a sequel, it left enough of a mark for not just one but several spiritual successors. The upcoming Quest game Action Hero from Fast Travel Games revisits SUPERHOT’s innovative mechanic with a smart premise. But to meet or surpass its predecessor, Action Hero will need to take it to the next level.

If you’ve never played Superhot, it’s built around a core mechanic where time only moves forward when you are physically moving. So if you stay completely still, the game more-or-less freezes. That means if there’s a bullet heading for your face and you freeze in place, the bullet freezes too. That gives you time to observe the situation and make a calculated decision about what to do next. It’s basically ‘bullet time’ from The Matrix, but you’re in control of it.

Action Hero isn’t exactly trying to hide its inspiration… in fact I’d say the unique ‘time moves when you move’ mechanic from Superhot is the really the heart of the game and the main reason to play it. After playing Action Hero for myself I can confirm that dodging a bullet as it wizzes inches from your face—while its path through time is directly related to your movements—is still an incredibly unique and engaging VR experience.

But where SUPERHOT had an intentionally low-poly look and consisted of a setting that was little more than a vague backdrop for the game to exist, Action Hero is built around the idea that you’re an action movie stunt person doing all these crazy moves because you’re being filmed for a movie.

It’s a clever idea. Levels are packaged as ‘movies’ which consist of a series of scenes strung together under one umbrella. For instance, there’s a level that’s roughly in the vain of Indiana Jones, where you’re in an ancient temple-like environment shooting baddies. Each ‘scene’ within the ‘movie’ is a moment of gameplay where you’re tasked with dodging, shooting, etc.

When you complete a scene, you move forward to the next one, and so on, with a logical progression that follows a basic movie narrative (ie: hero enters temple, kills goons, stops bad guys from stealing the important thing, then escapes).

This structure not only increases the cohesion of the scenes, but also allows for a bunch of different settings, enemies, weapons, etc., by letting players jump from one ‘movie’ to another.

The basic ‘time moves when you move’ mechanic is executed well, and generally feels as awesome as it does in Superhot.

But to really deliver something that feels like a next-gen version of Superhot, Action Hero needs to seriously bump up the variety and polish—otherwise, why not just play Superhot instead?

The whole premise of Action Hero is that you’re a stunt person acting out spectacular action scenes in movies. But spectacle is lacking. The game doesn’t feel particularly polished visually or audibly.

Of course this is an unfinished build of the game and hopefully more polish comes later. But if the marketing tells us this game is supposed to be a “blockbuster VR FPS with explosive set pieces and cinematic design,” then those elements should really be in place before showing off the game. With Action Hero planned for launch by the end of this year… there’s only four months, at most, for that to fall into place.

It’s not just visual and audio polish either. SUPERHOT succeeded not just because it had a really cool fundamental mechanic, but also because the level design—the specific scenarios the player has to conquer—were very well crafted. They were challenging and varied throughout.

Action Hero has proven that it can nail the fundamental mechanic, but it’s going to need to tighten up its level design and bring more variety—in weapons, enemies, and scenarios—into the mix if it wants to have a genuine value proposition when put next to Superhot itself.

I, for one, would love to see Fast Travel Games pull this off. Conceptually, Action Hero is genius. It revives a truly unique mechanic and builds it atop a framework that allows for unlimited creativity in what kinds of scenarios the player could be put in—be that contemporary action, horror, sci-fi, western, and a million other possibilities. But when it comes right down to it, quantity isn’t quality. The studio needs to nail the depth of gameplay before it’s worth leveraging the breadth of gameplay.

According to a report by The Verge, both Snapchat and Meta will each reveal new AR glasses for the first time next month. Both companies have been working on such projects for years.

According to The Verge’s Alex Heath, Snapchat parent company Snap Inc. will reveal its fifth generation of ‘Spectacles’ AR glasses on September 17th at the company’s annual Partner Summit conference in Los Angeles. Just a week later, Meta will debut its own pair of AR glasses (codenamed Orion, according to Heath) during its annual Connect conference on September 25th.

Snap has been building out its ‘Spectacles’ line of smartglasses for several years now, but it wasn’t until the device’s fourth generation in 2021 that it actually gained proper AR capabilities. Now the company is said to be poised to reveal the fifth generation of Spectacles which will further enhance the device’s AR uses.

Similarly, Meta has been building and improving upon its Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses since the first generation in 2021. A second generation of the device launched late last year, but the company has yet to add a display or sensors for any kind of AR capabilities.

While both companies are racing toward a future where they believe AR glasses will be mainstream, the devices to be shown off next month aren’t yet ready to be productized, Heath writes. At best they’ll be released to developers for experimentation before some future version of the products reach consumers.

According to Heath, Snap’s latest pair of AR glasses will be pretty similar to the previous generation, but with an improved field-of-view and battery life. That would surely be welcome considering the first pair had a mere 26.3° diagonal field-of-view (not even half of what you’d find on a modern MR headset) and a 30 minute battery life (also not half of what you’d find on a modern MR headset!).

As for Meta’s first true AR glasses, we’ve heard the company tease that “nothing prepares you for the high field-of-view immersion,” but it’s still unclear if the field-of-view will be large in comparison to other AR glasses, or actually approach the current bar set by VR headsets. It’s also unclear if Meta’s AR glasses will be presented as another partnership with Ray-Ban, or if it the device will use Meta-owned branding, similar to Quest.

While both companies ultimately aim to create AR headsets that match the incredibly immersive capabilities we see in MR devices like Vision Pro and Quest 3, fitting those capabilities into something that’s even close to a pair of glasses remains a huge challenge.

Best-in-class devices like Magic Leap 2 are still more like bulky goggles than glasses, and that’s even with much of the compute and battery being offloaded into a ‘puck’ that goes into the pocket.

Check out Alex Heath’s report for more background and insight on Snap and Meta’s plans to reveal new AR glasses next month.

In development by Meta first-party studio Camouflaj, Batman: Arkham Shadow is one of the most highly anticipated VR games of 2024, and one the first title from the company to be Quest 3 exclusive. A new trailer for the game gives us quite a bit: the first look at real gameplay, what we can expect from Quest 3 graphics, and a Fall release window.

Batman fans with a Quest 3 will be happy to see a newly revealed “October 2024” release date for Arkham Shadow, which means we’ll be able to play the game in less than two and a half months.

The trailer also gives us a first look at real gameplay, which certainly looks on-brand both mechanically and thematically compared to the other Batman Arkham games.

We can see Batman’s grappling launcher cleverly used as a vehicle for both distant interactions with enemies (pulling them closer for a smackdown) and locomotion. We also see lots of classic Arkham gameplay tropes like gliding, stealth, combat dodging, and ‘detective vision’.

The trailer’s fine print specifies “Captured in-engine. Actual gameplay may vary.” This likely means the footage was actually captured from a PC development build. However, given that we know this game is exclusive to Quest 3 and is very unlikely to launch on PC, it’s fair to assume the trailer represents the graphical bar the studio is aiming for when running on Quest 3.

Assuming that’s the case, the game is visually looking very impressive compared to the average Quest title, and will hopefully be a great showcase of what Quest 3 is capable of when pushed to its limits.

If you’re looking for some fun on Quest this Summer, there’s a lot happening. In this roundup we’ve got a look at new Quest game launches, upcoming titles, and big updates.

XR News Bits

An incredible amount of exciting XR news comes our way every day. Very often we see news come across our desk that’s worth highlighting, but we don’t always have the bandwidth for a full article on every one of them. XR News Bits is our occasional roundup of stories we think are worth a shout-out, even if we can’t take you in-depth.

Launch: Gravity League – A Sparc-inspired 1v1 VR Sport

Originally released in 2017, Sparc was a VR cult classic, but unfortunately didn’t live long enough to make it to the Quest era where it would have shone.

Luckily Gravity League is here with similarly inspired gameplay that plays like a cross between 3D Pong and some futuristic sport.

Gravity League is now available on Quest and is free-to-play, and the studio has plans to bring it to PC VR in the future.

In a world where gravity is no longer a limitation, the Gravity League has become the ultimate test of skill and endurance for athletes from all corners of the galaxy.

The rules are simple: 2 players, 1 ball, zero gravity – the first player to 11 goals wins.

• Compete online with opponents from across the galaxy
• Play with your friends and compete in custom private matches
• Explore all our wacky party modes
• Make your way to the top in the epic Solo Campaign mode
• Customize your gear with gloves in all shapes and sizes
• Mix and match gloves to find the best playstyle for you
• Unlock unique new athletes, balls, gloves, and stadiums
• Team up with your friends for a 2v2 action

So strap on your Gravity Gloves and get ready to take on the competition!

Launch: Zero Caliber 2 – Campaign Shooter Action with 4-player Co-op and 10-player Multiplayer

Looking to sink your teeth into a new VR shooter? Zero Caliber 2 is the next big shooter from XREAL Games. We love to see that its purported eight hours worth of campaign can be played with up to four players total in co-op. A perfect way to ‘git gud’ with your squad before diving into competitive multiplayer.

Zero Caliber 2 is now available on Quest for $30 and also planned for launch on PC VR at a later date.

News: Township Tale Developer Shares Updates on New Game, ‘Project 2’

We first reported on the unnamed ‘Project 2’, the next title from Alta Studio, back in April. Alta Studio is the developer of Township Tale, a very unique social VR game that’s available on Quest and PC VR.

The studio has been sharing occasional developer updates showing a transparent look at the creation of ‘Project 2’, a multiplayer dungeon crawler extraction game.

The latest updates, #11 and #12, show progress on enemy behaviors, sounds, and visuals. They also look at the current gameplay loop which involves players finding markers on the map which steadily point them toward a boss. Once the boss is slain it will drop a key which players can take to a certain location to open a portal and extract with their loot.

The updates also show the game will feature a branching skill tree which allows players to specialize into different classes with different skills. All players start as a ‘recruit’ but will become more diverse over time as they choose a direction in the skill tree.

Discount: Dungeons of Eternity is 50% Off on Quest

While we’re on the topic of dungeon crawlers, co-op dungeon crawler Dungeons of Eternity is celebrating the approach of its one-year release anniversary with a massive 50% discount on Quest until August 25th.

Dungeons of Eternity launched last October and has had a great reception from users, holding down a 4.7 out of 5 score across 3,100 reviews—making it one of Quest’s best-rated games. The game has seen several updates since launch, adding new weapons, environments, and more. It supports co-op play for up to three players.

Upcoming Update: Underdogs ‘Sandboxxer’ Update

VR mech brawler Underdogs is getting a big update on August 29th. The ‘Sandboxxer’ update will add sandbox tools so players can set up their own challenging battles. There will also be leaderboards to fight over, challenges to conquer, and a practice gym to experiment and train.

Underdogs launched in early 2024 and employs a unique locomotion and combat system that puts players in direct control of a mech with fun smash-and-crash gameplay. The game is exceptionally well rated by players on both available platforms, Quest and Steam.

Fresh off of its announcement of joining the A16Z SPEEDRUN accelerator program, Flat2VR Studios has announced four existing flatscreen games that are getting official ports for all major VR headsets.

Flat2VR Studios exists to adapt existing flatscreen games for VR. Today the studio announced the first four titles that are in the works, all planned for release on Quest, PSVR 2, and PC VR. Check out all the trailers below.

WRATH: Aeon of Ruin VR

The original WRATH: Aeon of Ruin (2024) is a “hardcore FPS inspired by the icons of the ’90s, powered by the legendary Quake 1 Tech. Taking place in a realm left to rot, take up arms, unearth long-forgotten secrets and hunt down the Guardians of the Old World.” The game is rated “Mostly Positive” (77% favorable reviews) by Steam users.

The VR port will put players in direct control of their weapons. We’ll be interested to see if the studio builds out a manual reload system or sticks to simple button-based reloading animations. No release date has been announced yet.

Roboquest VR

The original Roboquest (2023) is a “is a fast FPS Roguelite in a scorched futureworld. You’re a rebooted Guardian, ready to kick some metal ass! Fight with your buddy or by yourself and annihilate hordes of deadly bots in ever-changing environments.” The game is rated “Overwhelmingly Positive” (95% favorable reviews) Steam by Steam users.

The original game includes full-featured co-op support for up to two players and we’re hoping that will carry into the Roboquest VR port from Flat2VR Studios. Maybe even with cross-play? Fingers crossed. Roboquest VR does not yet have a release date.

Flatout VR

The original Flatout (2004) is said to “deliver a thrilling combination of high-octane racing, smash-em-up demolition derby action, and death defying stunts propelling the driver through the windshield!” The game is rated “Very Positive” (92% favorable reviews) by Steam users.

The Flatout VR port will put players directly in the driver’s seat as they crash and smash their way around raceways. With the sudden stops of crashing, and the possibility of “propelling the driver through the windshield”, comfort design for the VR port will surely be a high priority. Flatout VR doesn’t have a release date yet.

Trombone Champ: Unflattened 

And last but not least, Trombone Champ, the meme-game of 2022 where even the very best players sound like amateurs. This is a rhythm game where messing up can be just as fun as hitting the perfect notes. The original game is rated “Overwhelmingly Positive” (98% favorable reviews) by Steam users.

The port, titled Trombone Champ: Unflattened, puts the trombone directly into players hands. With motion controls, VR offers a more authentic way to play the instrument by moving your hand the same way you’d move the slide on a real trombone. There’s no release date for Trombone Champ: Unflattened yet.

Veteran VR studio nDreams has made several shooters with innovative mechanics over the years. That experience seems to have guided the studio’s publishing interest as well; the newly announced VENDETTA FOREVER, developed by MeatSpace Interactive and published by nDreams, uses a unique movement mechanic to create fast-paced VR gameplay. We jumped into the Quest demo that’s available to all starting today.

Update (August 15th, 2024, 3:46PM ET): Vendetta Forever is being published nDreams and developed by MeatSpace Interactive, a one-man studio run by Zander Dejah.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that VENDETTA FOREVER was being developed by nDreams itself.

Vendetta Forever is an arcade shooter through and through. Though it has the ‘auto-aim’ vibes and bullet trails of Pistol Whip and the slow motion bullet dodging of SUPERHOT VR (and shares aesthetics of both), Vendetta Forever is far from being a clone. It brings something new and interesting to the table: a movement mechanic where you can teleport to any gun you can see, whether sitting on the ground or still falling from a dispatched enemy’s hands.

And this isn’t just an occasional thing, the game is built around your ability to rapidly move from one gun to the next, not just to get around, but to avoid all the bullets that were headed right for your face. And because there are almost always bullets headed for your face, rapidly the game sets a frenetic pace of jumping from gun to gun.

Even on the base ‘Normal’ setting, you’ll almost certainly find yourself dying a few times when you start a new level. But the fun part is knowing what to expect the next time around… after a few tries you’ll be moving with the speed of a superhero and shooting like a sharpshooter that can see the future.

Though this pace can definitely make you feel like a badass superhero, it never really lets up. If you aren’t moving, you’re dead. That means not only jumping from gun-to-gun, but also physically moving your body to dodge incoming bullets, similar to Pistol Whip.

There was at least one part in my hands-on with the game where things slowed down for a minute—I was shooting a big machine gun out of a helicopter—which was a nice change of pace, but it only lasted briefly. I hope the game will include more moments like this to break up the pace. I also wouldn’t mind an outright ‘freeze’ ability to freeze the action and give myself a few seconds to think about what my next move should be. Perhaps this would be an ability with a long cooldown to give players that breather moment when they need it, but not reduce the challenge too greatly.

Levels in the game are largely deterministic. The same enemy will round the same corner at the same moment. As mentioned, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it turns you into a future-seeing gun-god. But levels also have some alternative paths which you can take depending upon which gun you decide to teleport to.

Ultimately this didn’t change very much about the level, but it might add a little replayability for those aiming for high scores on the leaderboards. Hunting for new and potentially faster paths through a level could be an interesting aspect of the game.

The levels that I played in Vendetta Forever are, so far, quite short. If you know the path they might take you 30-60 seconds to complete. But those first few times dying while exploring the level expands that time a bit. But if you aren’t interested in optimizing your score or completion time, you’ll be blasting through levels pretty quickly, so it remains to be seen if the developer can create enough to feel like there’s really some meat to the experience for those not interested in improving their leaderboard rank.

And a final note that didn’t really fit anywhere else… I’m fine with the game’s stylized look, but was very surprised at the significant amount of aliasing. Given the low-poly aesthetic, this really feels like a game that should be running at maximum resolution and native 90Hz or 120Hz on a Quest 3. It’s possible the build I played has yet to be optimized for Quest 3, or perhaps a significant optimization pass will land before the game launches.

I’m sold on the underlying mechanics of Vendetta Forever. Moving by teleporting from one gun to the next, combined with some generous auto-aim to make you feel like you’ve got action-movie aim, definitely works.

The success of Vendetta Forever is likely to hinge on the quality of the levels if there’s enough (and enough variety) among them to keep the game interesting. I’m hopeful the developer can pull it off!

The demo for Vendetta Forever on Quest is available today, and the game will launch on Quest 2, Quest Pro, Quest 3, and PSVR 2 this October.

Metal: Hellsinger VR, a port of the unique flatscreen rhythm shooter, is getting a VR version, bringing its frenetic action and metal-heavy soundtrack to all major VR headsets.

Funcom today announced that Metal: Hellsinger VR will launch on Quest 2, Quest Pro, and Quest 3 on September 26th, while the PSVR 2 and PC VR version will launch a few days later on October 3rd.

The game will launch with a $30 price tag, though anyone that pre-orders is promised to get the ‘Dream of the Beast’ for free, which adds two songs to the soundtrack, a new weapon, and three outfits with passive effects.

We tried an early version of Metal: Hellsinger VR earlier this Summer and found a game that felt like it nearly hit the mark in porting its unique gameplay to VR, but still needed some tuning to get right on key. We’re hopeful the time between the early demo and next month’s launch will have given the developers time to make those improvements.

Google Earth VR was an early and enchanting app for the first generation of modern PC VR headsets, but unfortunately it never made the leap to the standalone era. Now a new app, FLY, brings the magic of exploring Google Earth in VR to Quest and Vision Pro.

Now available on Quest 2, Quest Pro, Quest 3, and Vision Pro, Fly aims to bring the magic of exploring Google Earth in 3D in a fully immersive way. Beyond just being able to explore the globe to your heart’s content, Fly aims for a more immersive feel than its spiritual predecessor. While the original Google Earth VR essentially had you floating around as a disembodied camera, Fly is thematically built around the idea that players are piloting a drone that can take them anywhere.

“Fly is our idea of a personal flight simulator that lets you travel on ground, above cities, and across countries to explore places you’ve never seen. Our focus has been on a seamless experience with intuitive comfortable controls, smooth loading, and detailed rendering of Google Earth Tiles,” says Eric Malafeew, CTO and Co-Founder of VirZOOM, the studio behind the app.

The studio says that Fly uses Google Earth’s 3D Map Tiles, offering a massive Earth-sized space for players to explore, including full 3D geometry in many major cities. The project was purportedly started in collaboration with Google, but was put on hold for years.

“Originally created in collaboration with Google for a PC VR release in 2018, we had to shelve it after they paused Google Earth API development,” says VirZOOM Co-Founder and CEO Eric Janszen. “So when we saw them announce the Google Earth Tiles API this past year we were excited to complete the product. This new version takes what we created in 2018 and benefits from our years of knowledge in VR development since then. This version of Fly is everything we had hoped for in PC VR, but available on standalone headsets.”

While the app is available on Quest headsets—and gets a boost in quality on Quest 3—the developer says the added headroom on Vision Pro means it can deliver the optimal experience.

“The 3D Earth tiles, which Google provides, have the same maximum quality on both Quest 3 and Vision Pro. But the Vision Pro version is rendered at 2.5x the max resolution of Quest 3, and we draw tile details out to 2.5x greater distance, with none of the performance hits you get from maxing out the Quality option on Quest 3,” says Robert Collins, COO of VirZOOM. “This means the tiles, UI and overall experience in the game look significantly better on Vision Pro and provide a smoother experience as the user moves through the world.”

PSVR 2 got its first big sale the other week which resulted in a large lift in sales volume for the headset in the US.

At $550 MSRP, PSVR 2 is actually more expensive than the PS5 console that powers it, at $500. That’s made it a tough sell for some, especially with Quest 3, its nearest  competitor, priced at $500 and not requiring a tethered console.

Demand for Sony’s VR headset may be greater than it appears however, with many seemingly willing to buy once the price is right.

Sony discovered this after its first big sale on PSVR 2 the other week, which dropped the price of the headset alone to $350 (37% discount), and the price of the Horizon bundle to $400 (a 33% discount).

In just the week or so that the sale was active, we can see that sales volume for headset more than doubled on Amazon US compared to the prior months.

PSVR 2’s short-lived Summer sale may tell us something about the forthcoming holiday period, the time of year when the most VR headsets are sold and the biggest sales are generally seen. Sony now has a clear idea of how much its headset sales could ramp up if it offers the same deal during the holiday, or perhaps an even better one.

While the discount appears to have resulted in a nice boost in unit sales for PSVR 2, to put things into perspective we can see that it’s still a far cry from the number of Quest 2 and Quest 3 units Meta has been selling.

Meta’s first-party VR studio Ready at Dawn—the developers of Lone Echo and more—is reportedly being shuttered. This comes after the studio was acquired back in 2020 and has only released one game since.

Ready at Dawn is the studio behind one of PC VR’s most immersive games: Lone Echo (2017), and its popular multiplayer spinoff, Echo VR. Following the release of those two titles, the studio was eventually acquired by Meta in 2020, and then finally launched Lone Echo II on PC in late 2021.

Ready at Dawn was well into the development of Lone Echo II when the studio was acquired by Meta. The impetus for the acquisition remains unclear to this day, but two major possibilities are: Ready at Dawn was struggling to find enough money to make it over the finish line on Lone Echo II and Meta stepped in to make sure it would happen, or things were going just swell for the studio but Meta made a seriously attractive offer the studio couldn’t refuse.

Whatever the case, Lone Echo II was the only major title released by Ready at Dawn following the Meta acquisition. Nearly three years after its late 2021 release, the studio hasn’t released any new game, let alone announced one.

In fact, the only major thing that’s happened outwardly with the studio is that it shut down Echo VR, a beloved multiplayer spin-off of the Lone Echo games, in 2022.

With little to show, many were left wondering what the studio was up to.

A port of Lone Echo and Lone Echo II for Quest was considered a possibility, but Meta quashed that hope in 2022 when it said there were no plans for Lone Echo on Quest, and instead said the studio was “in the early stages of working on new, exciting projects and can’t wait to share more information about them in the future.” Perhaps a brand new Quest game was in the works?

Whatever the studio was working on, it was unfortunately all for naught. Android Central reported today that Ready at Dawn is being closed down, effective immediately.

This is not only an unexpected shock for those outside of the studio, but seemingly for those within as well; Android Central says that Meta employees were “encouraged to apply elsewhere within Oculus Studios and that the company wants to retain as many talented developers as possible”—suggesting that little effort was made to absorb the studio’s talent into the company at large ahead of time.

The closure of the studio comes amid Meta’s efforts to curb spending in Reality Labs, its metaverse and XR division. The division has spent an average of $15.5 billion annually since its inception, with average annual revenue of only $2.1 billion.

The shuttering of Ready at Dawn closes a nearly 21 year chapter for the studio which got its start building titles for PSP, PS3, and PS4. Before its acquisition by Meta, the studio had pivoted to VR development and created Lone Echo, which became an iconic PC VR title thanks to its production quality, innovative zero-G locomotion, and the Echo VR multiplayer spin-off which took on a life of its own.

Virtuix’s latest VR treadmill, Omni One, is finally set to launch next month. The company has updated its launch roster of VR games that will natively support the treadmill, now including Sniper Elite VR.

Virtuix is pitching Omni One as an all-in-one system for immersing yourself in VR with full body locomotion. Rather than being merely an accessory to a headset, the treadmill is actually packaged with a headset of its own (Pico 4), customized to make the experience of using the VR treadmill seamless.

That includes fostering a store of VR games that natively support the treadmill. Virtuix says there’s now than 51 titles for the treadmill’s launch that’s planned for next month: see the full lineup here.

Most recently the company added the following:

• Alvo VR
• Amid Evil
• Drop Dead: The Cabin
• Flock of the Low God
• Genotype
• Ilysia
• Neolithic Dawn
• Propagation: Paradise Hotel
• Sail
• Sugar Mess – Let’s Play Jolly Battle
• Survival Nation
• The Atlas Mystery
• Tunnels VR
• Undead Citadel
• and perhaps the treadmill’s biggest catch to date, Sniper Elite VR

“We’re thrilled to bring Sniper Elite to the Omni One platform,” said Jason Kingsley CBE, CEO of Rebellion, developer of Sniper Elite VR. “With Virtuix’s innovative technology, players can now physically step into the intense missions of Sniper Elite, experiencing the thrill of precision shooting in a whole new dimension.”

Virtuix says it “collaborates closely with each game studio to optimize gameplay for the Omni One platform, ensuring seamless movement and full-body immersion.”

Though the company has purportedly shipped hundreds of Omni One units to early “beta customers” which backed the Omni One’s crowd-investment program, a general launch is expected next month, priced at $2,600 for the headset and treadmill.

Last year, Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and NVIDIA announced the Alliance for OpenUSD, an organization to advance and proliferate the USD file format as the future standard for creating and distributing 3D content. The standard, which is a framework for constructing and packaging complex 3D scenes, was called the “HTML of the metaverse” by NVIDIA, and expected to “help accelerate the next generation of AR experiences,” by Apple.

Now two more heavyweights, Microsoft and Sony, have joined the Alliance for OpenUSD in support of Universal Scene Description (USD) as the future of authoring and packaging complex 3D content. The idea is to have a single file format that contains geometry, lighting, animations and more—which can be portably used between 3D authoring tools like Maya, 3ds Max, Houdini, Substance Painter, and collaborative workflows.

In addition to Apple, Microsoft and Sony join other members of the group with significant ties to the XR industry, like Meta and Epic Games.

For Apple’s part, the company sees USD as an important building stone for the XR space.

“OpenUSD will help accelerate the next generation of AR experiences, from artistic creation to content delivery, and produce an ever-widening array of spatial computing applications,” said Apple’s VP of the Vision Products Group at the time the Alliance for OpenUSD was announced. “Apple has been an active contributor to the development of USD, and it is an essential technology for the groundbreaking visionOS platform, as well as the new Reality Composer Pro developer tool. We look forward to fostering its growth into a broadly adopted standard.”

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

XR News Bits

An incredible amount of exciting XR news comes our way every day. Very often we see news come across our desk that’s worth highlighting, but we don’t always have the bandwidth for a full article on every one of them. XR News Bits is our occasional roundup of stories we think are worth a shout-out, even if we can’t take you in-depth.

Walkabout Mini Golf Gets New ‘Wallace & Gromit’ Course

Walkabout Mini Golf has maintained an impressive cadence with the release of interesting courses to give players something new to come back to. The latest course is based the perennial stop-motion franchise Wallace & Gromit, which first premiered in 1989.

The new course is said to be packed full of locations and references that long standing fans of the show will appreciate. The new course is paid DLC which can be bought inside of the game for $4. Thoughtfully, Walkabout Mini Golf includes a ‘Guest Pass’ feature which means only one person in the room needs to own the course for the whole party to play.

Battle Royale Contractors Showdown Gets Big ‘Season 1’ Update

Hot of its release in April, VR battle royale Contractors Showdown is already dropping its first big update, borrowing the ‘season-based’ format that’s become the norm for live-service games.

The ‘Season 1’ update includes new vehicles, weapons, map locations, and dynamic weather. There’s also a new game mode called ‘Reborn’: a 30-player brawl where players get an immediate second chance after their first elimination. The original mode also now adapts the ‘Gulag’ feature from Call of Duty: Warzone where eliminated players duke it out in a quick 1v1 battle, with the winner earning the right to respawn into the battle royale match and the loser being fully eliminated.

Thrasher Launches on Quest and Apple Vision Pro

Thrasher, a unique action-arcade game from one of the creators of the cult action-arcade hit Thumper, has launched on Quest and Vision Pro.

The game sees players guiding a “magnificent space eel” through and around obstacles which grow in difficulty as time goes on. The creators call it a “mind-melting arcade action odyssey and visceral audiovisual experience.”

Thrasher is available now for $20 on Quest and Vision Pro, and the game will on launch on PC VR via Steam in December.

Metal Gear Solid Creator Hideo Kojima Checks out Vision Pro

Legendary videogame director Hideo Kojima posted several photos of himself unboxing and trying out Apple Vision Pro.

Kojima is best known as a creative force behind the Metal Gear Solid series and his newer venture, Death Stranding.

Kojima has demonstrated a clear interest in VR tech over the years, having been spotted checking out the latest developments here and there. So far he hasn’t released or announced any VR projects, but perhaps Vision Pro will inspire new interest in the tech.

Cooperative VR Bomber Game The Mighty Eighth VR Shows Signs of Life

Cooperative WWII VR bomber game The Mighty Eighth was announced way back in 2020, but we hadn’t heard much from the project in the intervening years.

Earlier this year the game’s Steam page sprung to life with some updates on its development. The latest update includes early footage showing some of the game’s core systems.

Planned for eventual launch on PC VR, The Mighty Eighth VR has no release date for now, but the developer is promising more progress updates to come.

Thanks to Daniel Fearon for the tip on this one.

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

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

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

The Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle, which includes the headset and the best games made for it so far, is also on sale for $400, a 33% discount.

The sale is described as a “Limited Time Deal,” so there’s really no telling how it will last.

The headset’s biggest sale yet comes less than two weeks before Sony launches a PC VR adapter which will let PSVR 2 play games directly from the huge library of SteamVR content—provided you’ve got a beefy gaming PC.

The adapter launches on August 7th, priced at $60 / €60 / £50 and will be available through select retailers and direct.playstation.com.

For years Sony resisted requests for a PC VR adapter for its original PSVR headset, and so it was quite the surprise when the company announced plans earlier this year for a PC VR adapter for PSVR 2. At the sale price of $350, PSVR 2 looks like an attractive PC VR headset considering its build quality, resolution, inside-out tracking, and quality controllers.

Granted, there’s a number of caveats which limit the headset when used with PC compared to its native home on PS5. Sony says when playing on PC, the adapter won’t serve up HDR, headset haptics, eye-tracking, adaptive triggers, or haptic feedback other than basic rumble. It will however display its native 2,000 × 2,040 per-eye resolution, 110-degree field of view, finger touch detection, and passthrough view.

Thanks to @alexplaysvg for the tip!