Virtual Reality

In his latest video, YouTuber ‘Gamertag VR’ maintains Skydance Games, the makers of Skydance’s Behemoth (2024), was working on an official Harry Potter title set to be exclusive to Quest. At least, that was before Meta ostensibly pulled funding to a number of third-party studios earlier this week.

On New Year’s Eve, nearly 150,000 people spent the holiday in VRChat worlds, a majority of them in headset while setting a concurrent user record as the calendar changed from 2025 to 2026 across the United States. Then, last Saturday January 10, 2026 at 10 a.m. Pacific, Another Axiom’s planet of apes received an off-world visitor and broke their own record too.

The following studios being shut down: Sanzaru (Asgard’s Wrath series), Twisted Pixel (Deadpool VR), Armature (RE4 Quest VR port)

AI infrastructure will provides Meta with a “strategic advantage,” Zuckerberg said. He once said almost the exact same thing about the metaverse.

Jacob Smith has been in prison for two decades but he and other inmates are still taking regular trips to far-flung, exotic locales. No passport required, just a virtual reality headset.

A Chinese company which mass produces many of the best known headsets in the industry has shared a new compact MR headset reference design which sets expectations for 2026.

The key takeaway here is that I expect to install more stuff to the Steam Frame headset using Linux directly on day one than I did in four days with Android XR. And I expect to be able to install a lot more to the headset overall than I have been able to in years of ownership of Vision Pro or Quest. Am I going to install my own operating system? Probably not. But am I going to personally screw up my installation of Linux so bad the system is going to need to restore me to factory settings? After this many years messing with computers, that’s probably my goal and I’m going to enjoy doing it.

Shiftall, the Japan-based VR hardware startup, is no longer working with Panasonic on its MeganeX series of thin and light PC VR headsets.

I saw a reddit post on the r/virtualreality subreddit and wanted to share it: Link (redlib)

The tech industry has spent roughly a gazillion dollars trying to convince people to strap face computers on their heads. It hasn’t worked.

There’s been a lull in the VR space. Since the release of the Meta Quest 3, along with the more affordable Quest 3S, there hasn’t been much in the way of headsets to expand the scope of virtual reality. Well, Valve changed this with the announcement of the Steam Frame.

Cloudhead Games, the veteran VR studio behind hit rhythm shooter Pistol Whip (2019), announced that it’s laying off 70% of staff, making for at least 37 affected employees.

Bigscreen founder Darshan Shankar believes Beyond headsets could be among the top five systems in use on Steam in the next few years.

VRChat broke its concurrently connected user record as the year flipped from 2025 to 2026 in various time zones, according to figures posted on social media by the head of community. As the New Year rolled across the United States from December 31 at 11:59 pm to January 1 at 12:00 am, from Eastern Time to Pacific Time, VRChat’s servers supported nearly 150,000 staying online in various spaces together concurrently. VRChat’s long-time head of community Tupper posted on Bluesky that Japan saw a surprisingly high peak figure over the holiday, with no specific number provided, as well as specific peak numbers across the four time zones dividing up the United States for concurrently connected users:

Metaverse dating is opening a new way for people to connect through immersive virtual environments. Instead of just texting or swiping photos, users can actually spend time together in digital spaces that feel interactive and real.

LibreOffice might be a great way to view and edit documents on any platform, but it has never crossed into the realm of virtual reality. That’s now changing, as LibreOffice is officially available on Meta Quest VR headsets.

Poor sales have reportedly forced Apple to cut production of the Vision Pro headset that it had hoped would herald a new era in “spatial computing”.

A group of researchers from the University of Bologna, the University of Messina and the CNR-ISTC (Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies) has used virtual reality to allow a sample of young men to embody a female avatar subjected to verbal harassment.

Created by ‘Crementif’, the BetterVR mod for BotW promises to bring fully stereo-rendered, 6DOF VR support to the Cemu emulated version of the game, including full hand and arm support for things like wielding weapons, torches and Bokoblin arms.

Nearly a decade after consumer VR took its first real steps—driven by headsets like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR—the medium has outgrown its novelty phase.

Best Meta Quest 3S (128GB) Holiday Sale: Best Buy – $50 discount + $159 in bundled value Deal Includes:

Valve’s recently announced Steam Frame is promising a unique twist on VR headsets. On top of being a Quest 3-style standalone headset that can both stream games from a powerful PC and run less demanding games on its own internals, the latter won’t be limited to VR titles – by using SteamOS as its operating system, the Frame can locally run any Steam game in your library, provided it can perform on the hardware.

A little over a year and a half ago, Meta made an “industry-altering announcement,” as I called the move in my reporting: the company was rebranding the Quest operating system to ‘Horizon OS’ and announced it was working with select partners to launch third-party VR headsets powered by the operating system.

Los Angeles-based nonprofit Creative Acts is using virtual reality headsets to help prepare for life outside prison walls. Incarcerated men use VR headsets for exercises ranging from experiencing foreign countries to practicing real-world scenarios they’ll face when released, leading to a reported reduction in prison violence.

After reports from outlets like Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Insider suggested that Meta is “considering” a cut “as high as 30%” for its “metaverse” teams, Meta issued an official statement confirming “shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables”.

Asymmetric VR games are a rare but wonderful treat, especially those which let you play with non-VR friends. The newly released VR Giants not only lets you play with a non-VR friend, but thanks to the ‘Friend Pass’ feature, your friend plays for free with only one copy of the game between the two of you.

For years, the metaverse has been discussed through the lenses of virtual reality, gaming, crypto-economics, and digital identity. Yet beneath all these layers lies a critical component that rarely makes headlines: the linguistic infrastructure required to make immersive worlds truly global. A metaverse that cannot be understood, accessed, or used by millions of non-English speakers cannot scale — technologically or economically.

Inside a makeshift tent in the heart of the besieged Gaza Strip, Israel’s genocidal war, which has destroyed neighbourhoods, schools and hospitals, decimated families and shattered lives for more than two years, no longer exists.

Skyjet VR is a solution for location-based entertainment. The machine is made by a standing station with a cushion for your back and a safety belt that keeps your torso attached to the cushion even when the station is moving. On your two sides, there are two metal handles that you should hold during the whole experience. This has two advantages: one is, of course, safety, and the other is related to realism, because if you had a real jetpack, most probably your hands would be holding something similar, too.

Google is starting to roll out new photorealistic avatars which they call “Likeness”. Similar to Apple’s Personas, Likeness avatars are generated by scanning a user’s face, then animated it with input from the sensors on a headset. The avatars can be used to represent the user in video call apps, but Google doesn’t yet have a way to have spatial meetings with other Likeness avatars.

When it comes to Valve, we asked them about ideas like “spatial computing” and “mixed reality” being pursued elsewhere. Neither concept is really present in Valve’s initial Steam Frame with black and white passthrough, though there’s a lot of potential for sensing add-ons through the nose port.

Meta is planning to raise prices for its virtual reality devices, executives said in an internal memo seen by Business Insider.

Today at United XR Europe, I’ve just tried the GVS solution from Neural Balance Innovations, and I can say this is the craziest technology I’ve tried in 2025 and one of the best experiences I’ve had in my career in XR.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City is coming to Quest, Pico and SteamVR headsets sometime next year, making it the first Turtles game in VR. Ahead of launch, Cortopia Studios gave us a 15-minute demo on Quest to show off just what sort of radical action this co-op beat’em up has in store.

Developed with the creators and featuring cast members from the hit series, The Boys: Trigger Warning introduces an original character who accidentally uncovers a grotesque Vought secret that turns a family outing into carnage. The game presents a more horror-driven experience, which feels somewhat appropriate given the many storylines present within The Boys.

Features Group and Event Sharing

Whether you just got your first VR headset and are ready for whatever the VR universe has to throw at you, or you’re an old hand looking to expand their collection of games, we’ve got a great bundle of post-apocalyptic adventures and hellish horrors inspired by UploadVR’s Winter Showcase! Descend deep into literal hell and fight off its most twisted demons in Hellsweeper VR. Survive the battlegrounds of Ghosts of Tabor. Puzzle your way out of the action-packed escape rooms of I Expect You to Die 3: Cog in the Machine. There’s so much more to enjoy in this VR bundle, so grab it while you can and support the digital privacy defenders at Electronic Frontier Foundation with your purchase!

The two internal memos were sent earlier this week. They were first reported by Business Insider a few hours ago, and UploadVR can independently confirm their authenticity.

Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow does a respectable job of bringing the storied series to VR for the first time, all the while offering up one of the best stealth games currently in the medium. Some stumbling blocks keep it from being the end-all VR stealth game of my dreams, and it’s painful to know how surprisingly close it actually got.

Meta may slash its budget for metaverse projects by up to 30 percent next year, according to a report from Bloomberg. Sources tell the outlet the potential cuts haven’t been finalized, but they would impact the unit that works on Meta’s Quest virtual reality headsets, along with its social platform Horizon Worlds.

In a couple of days, I’m starting my trip to the Benelux region to enjoy United XR Europe, which will take place on December 8-10 in Brussels, Belgium. The organizers were so kind to organize for me a preview of five super cool companies that will be there among the 150+ exhibitors, so I could give you a sneak peek of what you can expect from this event. And there are incredible things like a device that literally cancels motion sickness while you are in VR, smart contact lenses, and AR navigation.

For many people, virtual reality still means video games and sci‑fi movies. In reality, it is starting to slip into normal life at home, at work, and even at the doctor’s office. VR is simply a headset that covers the eyes and ears and shows a full 3D world, while tracking head and hand movement so the brain feels “inside” that space.

Slush is probably the most important event for startups in Europe. This year alone, it was able to attract something like 13,000 people from all over the world, even though it is held in Helsinki, Finland, which is not exactly the most welcoming city in November (it is friggin’ cold). In fact, the name “Slush” comes from the fact that in this period of the year, in Helsinki, usually the streets are covered in a mix of water and snow, which the Finns call “Slush”.

When Jett Yaggie first came to college, she didn’t quite know what to think about virtual reality simulations.

Considering jumping into VR this Black Friday, or gifting a headset to a friend or relative so they can join you? Here are the best deals available

According to STAR Market Daily, Zhenyuan said that the headset will feature “custom” micro-OLED panels with 4000 pixels per inch (PPI). That would match the pixel density of the 4K micro-OLED panels in Samsung Galaxy XR, Play For Dream MR, and Shiftall MeganeX. Zhenyuan also reportedly said that the new Pico headset will have a self-developed dedicated chip for passthrough, handling real-time processing of the color cameras and delivering frames in less than 12 milliseconds. The only headsets we’ve seen yet with a dedicated chip for passthrough are Apple’s Vision Pro series, which feature the company’s R1 chip for this.

VR is no stranger to flatscreen conversions, and Flat2VR Studios quickly made a name for itself doing exactly that. Roboquest VR is the latest example, taking RyseUp Studios’ 2023 roguelite FPS and thoroughly overhauling it. 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 this post-apocalyptic Earth.

Marvel’s Deadpool VR serves up a boat load of quippy banter and on-brand humor from everyone’s favorite ‘merc with a mouth’, truly bringing the soul and wit of the character to virtual reality. While combat can feel repetitive at times, and the narrative a little on the thin side, excellent gameplay variety combined with the game’s fourth wall-breaking protagonist makes for a refreshingly fun overall experience.

Today, almost every affordable headset uses LCD panels, while premium options use micro-OLED, technically known as OLED-on-silicon (OLEDoS).

Last week Valve revealed Steam Frame, the company’s new VR headset. Somewhat lost in the deluge of information is the existence of an ‘ergonomic kit’ which will improve comfort with the addition of a top strap and knuckles-style controller straps. Additionally, the headset’s modular design means the entire headstrap, facepad, and battery can be replaced with DIY mods or third-party accessories.

The Apple Vision Pro is an expensive flop. I haven’t heard anyone mention the Meta Quest in months, despite it getting a new model just last year. I can’t even remember the name of Samsung’s incoming Android-based headset. While virtual reality gamers remain passionate, the excitement around the format seems to be slowly dying… again.

In case you missed it, Valve announced a load of new hardware this week, including a second stab at the Steam Machine, a Steam controller, and a long-rumored new VR headset called the Steam Frame. But in with the new often means out with the old, and perhaps inevitably, the company has confirmed that its previous headset, the Valve Index, is no more.

It’s very nearly time for the next iteration of the VR Games Showcase. VRGS is VR’s leading Direct-style digital showcase dedicated to revealing high-quality VR games and showing updates on some of your most anticipated projects.

Headset Tech Specs*

In case you missed the news, I’ll briefly summarize: Valve has announced its new headset, the Steam Frame. The Steam Frame is a standalone device, but it is also amazing to stream content from your PC using a dedicated dongle. Valve has also announced a mini PC called the Steam Machine, where you can run all your Steam Games and stream them either to your Steam Deck or your Steam Frame. Steam Frame launches in early 2026, for a price that has been described as “less than an Index full kit”. For now, Valve is only shipping devkits to developers asking for them.

Valve has finally unveiled its long-awaited standalone VR headset, Steam Frame (aka ‘Deckard’). While pricing and release date are still pending, the company says we’re due to learn more “in early 2026” following the release of developer kits.

Recently launched in early access, I’ve spent the past week storming the beaches of Forefront, and it successfully replicates many of the elements that make games like Battlefield so compelling. With just a few small changes, I can see Forefront becoming one of the more popular and successful VR games of its type.

Homeworld: Vast Reaches brings the real-time strategy game to SteamVR with upgraded visuals.

Is the universe a simulation? At first glance, the idea seems preposterous. Then again, within just a few decades, we’ve created entire digital worlds, AI has started to blur the line of what is real, and scientists have continued to probe the fabric of reality down to the quantum level. Factor in centuries or even millennia of similar technological progress—multiplied by the two trillion or so galaxies in the universe—and the idea that maybe our lived experience is simply a hyper-realistic simulation by some ultra-advanced alien species can feel a bit less like pure speculation and more head-scratchingly plausible.

It’s been a long-held assumption that the human eye is capable of detecting a maximum of 60 pixels per degree (PPD), which is commonly called ‘retinal’ resolution. Any more than that, and you’d be wasting pixels. Now, a recent University of Cambridge and Meta Reality Labs study published in Nature maintains the upper threshold is actually much higher than previously thought.

harp first showed off a PC VR headset prototype at CES 2023, which was supposedly meant to ship sometime in 2024. It’s been nearly three years since we last heard about the headset, however during a recent Metaverse Expo in Japan, Sharp unveiled a newer version of the device, as demoed by Gizmodo Japan.