Play for Dream Expects to Adopt Android XR for Standalone OS and Bring New Focus to US Market

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China-based Play for Dream, the company building a Vision Pro-like standalone MR headset, says it expects to adopt Android XR as its standalone operating system.

The Play for Dream MR headset has been called a “Vision Pro knock-off,” given its close aesthetic similarity to Apple’s headset. But people who have tried it say it’s more than just a cheap look-alike, including a former Quest engineer who gave the headset high praise on execution.

While the Play for Dream MR headset is currently running its own flavor of Android as its underlying operating system, the company tells Road to VR that it expects to adopt Google’s own Android XR platform eventually. The company says it is “in ongoing discussions, but a definitive timeline has not yet been provided,” regarding the move.

Whether that means the Play for Dream MR headset itself would potentially be updated in the future with Android XR after launch is unclear. Alternatively the company could wait until a future headset to make its transition.

Given that the $1,200 headset is planned to launch at the end of the month, it’s unlikely Android XR would crop up before then. Especially considering that Google says Samsung’s Project Moohan headset will be the first headset to release with Android XR, and its release date still hasn’t been announced.

Play for Dream is relatively well established in China, but is little known in the US. In speaking with the company recently, we learned more about its background.

Huang Feng | Image courtesy Play for Dream

Play for Dream was founded in 2020 by CEO Huang Feng, who is also the founder of Wanyoo Esports, “Asia’s largest esports café chain;” and Bixin, “a leading gaming platform application in China with over 60 million registered players,” the company says.

Other key executives include Chairman Zong Yuan and CTO Yue Fei, while the company says it has more than 200 employees, and has not raised any outside investment.

While the company has sold several headsets into the Asia market, it says the Play for Dream MR headset is focused primarily on the US XR market.

Responding to criticism of the similarity of the headset (and its marketing) to Apple’s Vision Pro, a spokesperson said, “Our goal wasn’t to directly rival the Apple Vision Pro. We drew inspiration from its innovative design, focusing instead on creating an Android-based device that reflects our unique vision and approach.”

Image courtesy Play For Dream

While there are significant similarities to Vision Pro in the look of the headset and its interface, one marked difference is that Play for Dream MR will support motion controllers.

The headset got its feet of the ground with a Kickstarter campaign that launched in September 2024, which raised roughly $300,000 from 215 backers, and ended in October.

While the campaign indicates that the first shipments of the Play for Dream MR headset are already shipping to backers, the wider release date for the headset is expected at the end of March, the company says.

The post Play for Dream Expects to Adopt Android XR for Standalone OS and Bring New Focus to US Market appeared first on Road to VR.

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‘Meta for Education’ Program Exits Beta, Bringing Quest to the Classroom

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Meta announced its ‘Meta for Education’ program is now out of beta, allowing schools and educational institutions from all over to fill their classrooms with Quest headsets and use a variety of education-focused XR apps and software.

Initially announced last April, Meta for Education is a comprehensive solution for educators looking to bring XR into the classroom, which includes Quest headsets, XR management solution subscriptions with education-tailored device capabilities suitable for the classroom, and a variety of tools and apps built for admins, educators, and students.

Over the course of its beta, Meta worked with colleges in the US and UK to help refine the platform, with educators reporting that virtual and mixed reality enhanced student engagement and improved comprehension of complex topics.

Image courtesy Meta

Nick Clegg, Meta’s President of Global Affairs and formed UK Deputy Prime Minister, highlights the transformative potential of immersive technologies in education, enabling students to experience otherwise inaccessible scenarios.

“Improving the life chances of children through education has been something I’ve been interested in throughout my career in politics and technology,” says Clegg.

“Of all the technological advances I’ve witnessed at Meta, immersive technologies like virtual and augmented reality really caught my imagination because of the potential they have to transform the way we learn. My hope is that, through Meta for Education, we can make it easier for students to learn, practice, and apply new skills; feel a sense of presence with teachers and classmates; and visit places or experience things that would otherwise be impossible. Most importantly, I hope it helps teachers do what they do best: teach.”

Meta says data obtained from 43 Inspired Education Group schools, which already user immersive technology with teens in the classroom, reported 87% of students feeling more engaged and interested in their lessons, while 85% of teachers found virtual and mixed reality to be a valuable tool to enhance their teaching. Students also experienced a 15% improvement in their academic performance on multiple-choice assessments.

The program’s exit from beta follows a number of partnerships with institutions, such as Arizona State University, Imperial College London, and the University of Miami to integrate VR into their curricula.

Additionally, Meta and VictoryXR have developed over 30 “metaversities” with the Engage XR platform to create digital twin campuses for remote student interaction. Digital twin campuses are now available to students at The University of Leeds in the UK, University of the Basque Country in Spain, and University of Hannover in Germany.

Educators interested in learning more about Meta for Education can check out the program’s website, which includes a contact for applicants in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the US.

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Meta Reveals Next Generation Aria Smart Glasses for Research and Experimentation

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Meta today revealed its next-gen smart glasses, Aria Gen 2, which the company intends to release to third-party researchers working on machine perception systems, AI and robotics.

The company revealed its first iteration of Project Aria back in 2020, showing off a sensor-rich pair of glasses which the company used internally to train its machine perception systems, ultimately tackling some of the most complex issues in creating practical, all-day augmented reality glasses of the future.

Since then, Meta’s first-gen Aria has found its way outside of company offices; early collaborations with BMW and a number of universities followed, including Carnegie Mellon, IIIT Hyderabad, University of Bristol, and University of Iowa, which used the smart glasses to tackle the a host of machine perception challenges.

Now, Meta has revealed Aria Gen 2. Like the first-gen device, Gen 2 doesn’t include displays of any type, though it now houses an upgraded sensor suite, including an RGB camera, position-tracking cameras, eye-tracking cameras, spatial microphones, IMUs, barometer, magnetometer, GNSS, and custom Meta silicon.

New to Aria Gen 2 are two new sensors embedded in the device’s nosepad: a photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor for measuring heart rate and a contact microphone to distinguish the wearer’s voice from that of bystanders.

What’s more, Meta touts the 75g device’s all-day usability—making for 6-8 hours of active use—and its a foldable design.

The increasingly AI-rich device also features a slate of on-device machine perception systems, such as hand and eye-tracking, speech recognition, and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) tracking for positional awareness.

Aria Gen 2 | Image courtesy Meta

Meta envisions the Aria’s SLAM tracking will allow users to internally map and navigate indoor areas that don’t have good or detailed GPS coverage—aka, a visual positioning system (VPS) that could equally help you get around a city street and a find specific item in a store.

The company isn’t ready to sell Aria Gen 2 just yet, although Meta says it will share more details over the coming months, which is slated to target both commercial and academic researchers.

One such early collaboration was with Envision, which announced in October it was working with Meta to provide Aria with a ‘Personal Accessibility Assistant’ to help blind and low-vision users navigate indoor spaces, locate items, and essentially act as a pair of ‘seeing eye’ glasses.

Envision and Meta showed off their latest work in a video (seen above), revealing how Aria Gen 2’s SLAM tracking and spatial audio can assist a blind user to navigate a supermarket by following a spatially correct homing ping that the user perceives as emanating from the correct area, which guides them to the desired item, such as a red onion, or Granny Smith apple.

This comes as Meta continues its push to release its first commercial AR device, which not only needs all of those systems highlighted in Aria, but also the ability to display stereo-correct information in a slim, all-day wearable package. It’s no small feat, considering displays have much higher compute and power requirements relative to Aria’s various machine perception systems.

One of Meta’s biggest ‘light house’ moments was the reveal of its AR prototype Orion in September, which does feature those compute and power-hungry display, yet still fitting into an impressively slim form-factor, owing to its separate wireless compute unit.

Orion | Image courtesy Meta

Orion, or rather an Orion-like AR device, isn’t going on sale anytime soon though. The internal prototype itself cost Meta nearly $10,000 per unit to build due to its difficult to scale silicon carbide lenses, which notably feature a class-leading 70 degree field-of-view (FOV).

Still, the race is heating up to get all of the right components and use cases up to snuff to release a commercial product, which is aiming to supplant smartphones as the dominant mobile computing platform. Meta hopes to launch such AR glasses before 2030, with other major companies hoping to do the same, including Apple, Samsung, and Google.

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Prop Hunt-style Game ‘Mannequin’ Goes Free-to-Play on Quest as Freemium Multiplayer Games Thrive

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Mannequin (2024), the VR game that brings a unique twist to prop hunt, is going free-to-play on Quest starting today—which could point to more developers opting to go the freemium route.

Launched last June on Quest and SteamVR headsets, Mannequin isn’t your typical shooter, nor is it your typical game of prop hunt, which usually involves a team of hunters shooting everything that moves, and their prey evading them by morphing into everyday objects.

Instead, two gun-toting Agents hunt three shape-shifting aliens, aka Mannequins, who can evade capture by blending into crowds of frozen NPCs. Agents can track down a Mannequin to a general area, but can only fire their gun once before a cool down period, giving aliens the perfect moment to leap out and strike down the hunter.

Now, developer Fast Travel Games is making Mannequin free-to-play on Quest, which includes the base game and a variety of maps. A $10 in-app purchase adds in progression-locked character skins, custom games, rotating game types, more maps, and mod support. The studio hasn’t mentioned any other microtransactions beyond that $10 paywall.

Much like Gorilla Tag, Mannequin will still be a paid app on Steam, albeit with a new price of $10 (originally $20). While the studio hasn’t said as much, Another Axiom says Gorilla Tag does this to keep away griefers, who can more easily hack the game on PC and clog servers with unwanted behavior.

The free-to-play launch also comes with a new update, which includes a new map, called ‘Towers’, which introduces portals to the game for the first time. You can find Mannequin over on the Horizon Store for Quest 2 and above for free, and over on Steam for PC VR headsets, priced at $10.

But why free-to-play, and why now? While generally well-received, Mannequin isn’t the most popular multiplayer game out there; we haven’t seen concurrent player numbers on Quest, its most popular platform, although on Steam it only counted an all-time peak of 26 PC players following launch, according to SteamDB data. Making the game free-to-play will undoubtedly boost those numbers across both platforms, although there seems to be something bigger at play.

While freemium games like Gorilla Tag, Population: One, Rec Room, and Animal Company have fared well on Quest in the past, the free-to-play trend appears to be growing on the standalone platform.

Meta’s VP of Metaverse Content, Samantha Ryan, recently confirmed that Quest has seen an influx of younger users with the launch of Quest 3S, which is contributing to the rise of free-to-play titles. Younger players tend to spend more time in social games—and while Ryan doesn’t explicitly state this—they also spend more money on in-app purchases.

So, while Mannequin certainly isn’t the first, we expect it won’t be the last ‘premium’ Quest game to jump on the free-to-play bandwagon following Meta’s announcement, as developers are undoubtedly looking to nab even a fraction of the virality Gorilla Tag saw, which led it to topping $100 million in gross revenue last summer.

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MIT Reality Hack Has Become a Focal Point for US East Coast XR Devs & Entrepreneurs

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While the XR industry’s major hubs are concentrated on the West Coast of the US, the MIT Reality Hack hackathon has become a focal point for XR developers and entrepreneurs on the East Coast of the US. Now in its eight year, the event has expanded with new opportunities for industry discussion and networking thanks to the concurrently held EXPERIENTIAL Conference. Executive Director Maria Rice offers an overview of this year’s hackathon and winners.

Image courtesy Maria Rice

Guest Article by Maria Rice

Maria is the Executive Director of MIT Reality Hack. For the last eight years, she has been instrumental in positioning the Hack as the world’s leading experiential technology community through the development of programs like the EXPERIENTIAL Innovation Conference, the Reality Scholars diversity fund, and the startup-focused Reality Hack Founders Lab.

From January 23–27, hundreds of top hackers-for-good—along with a roster of tech OGs and startup founders—descended on the MIT campus to attend the eighth annual MIT Reality Hack, the premiere hackathon for experiential technology.

The Hack was sponsored by a range of international players at the intersection of XR, AI, and deeptech. With AI development support from Lambda Labs, participants built functional prototypes using Meta Quest 3, Snap Spectacles, Qualcomm’s RB3g2 robotics kits, ShapesXR, Cognitive 3D, and STYLY.

Image courtesy Sean Chee

One of the most notable characteristics of this year’s MIT Reality Hack was the introduction of new hardware kits, including MEMS-based AR lenses from Maradin, a haptic exoskeleton from Haptikos, and an array of neurosensing gear from OpenBCI, including the Galea biosensing headset.

Image courtesy Sean Chee

With an unapologetic mission of hacking for good, MIT Reality Hack is most memorably distinguished by the dynamic energy generated by its participants and organizers. The five-day event stretched the hacking talents of some 600 participants to the limit, producing 78 innovative use cases and applications in XR and adjacent tech.

Image courtesy Sean Chee

Winning projects included YEIGO, an AR tool for ensuring that mobility aids (like walkers) are used with correct posture; CAREGIVR, an immersive platform for preparing families and caregivers for end-of-life care; and Tac-Man, a haptic input device for sculpting in VR.

Check out the full list of the 2025 winners in all hardware and software categories.

EXPERIENTIAL Conference Expands MIT Reality with New Opportunities for Industry Discussion and Networking

Image courtesy Sean Chee

Held alongside the MIT Reality Hack event, global attendees presented at the first-ever EXPERIENTIAL Innovation Conference at MIT; a one-day event envisioned as a ‘Davos of the spatial tech industry’. Cutting-edge research into the most challenging deeptech was demonstrated and debated within the context of learning innovation, vertical applications, and global development.

EXPERIENTIAL Conference was sponsored by IEEE Spectrum, Qualcomm, and Helsinki-based pioneer Distance Technologies.

In part to support the ‘hack-to-market’ initiative of the Founders Lab (one of Reality Hack’s community subprograms), EXPERIENTIAL featured two exciting company launches:

Limit Labs, founded by the leaders of VR/AR MIT, launched RoomSeed, a groundbreaking genAI tool informed by rigorous research.

Haptics company Haptikos launched with a new hand exoskeleton that brings a sense of touch to XR apps at a dramatically low price point with twice the precision of previous solutions.

Startup demos also included MIT spinout Three Space Lab and AI products from AUR+A, and Taiwan-based Meta Intelligence.

EXPERIENTIAL is shaped by the mandate set forth to extend Reality Hack’s inclusive technology focus beyond hacking and into the zeitgeist towards the promotion of creator economies. The program journeyed deep into the realms of both academic research and the business marketplace.

The conference kicked off with a fireside chat between two well known names in the industry: Tim Bajarin, founding analyst and Chairman of Creative Strategies and Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, who expounded over the course of an hour on the state of the XR industry, as moderated by AR pioneer Dan Cui.

Image courtesy Sean Chee

Bajarin also participated as a first-time judge at the Hack and wrote up his thoughts on Forbes, calling his experience “one of the highlights of my career”, after 40+ years in the tech industry.

The EXPERIENTIAL keynote was give by Qualcomm’s Senior VP & GM of XR, Ziad Asghar who explored the growing synergy of AI capabilities in XR devices, and the importance of events like MIT Reality hack in incubating the ideas and talent that drive rapidly evolving industries.

Image courtesy Sean Chee

Later in the conference a panel covering Global Initiatives Towards a Sustainable Future, saw MIT Senior Lecturer Ken Zolot moderate a conversation between keyholders representing the United Nations (UNICC), The World Bank Group, Inclusive AI Lab, and Qualcomm, and futurist & Global VP at HTC, Alvin Wang Graylin.

Panelists shared how they leverage experiential technology and hackathon initiatives to empower creator communities, drive economic growth, and enable new, more inclusive human experiences across industries and regions.

As noted by AWE co-founder and Reality Hack partner Ori Inbar: “XR is going mainstream, but to fully achieve this goal we need more seasoned XR builders and newcomers of all kinds to create diverse spatial experiences that matter to every single person on the planet. That’s how you conquer the mainstream!”

Companies interested in participating in the 2026 MIT Reality Hack and the EXPERIENTIAL Innovation Conference may reach out to the conference by contacting me here.

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HTC Launches Browser-based 3D & VR Platform ‘VIVERSE Worlds’, Aims to Be ‘YouTube of 3D Content’

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HTC today launched VIVERSE Worlds, a 3D content platform that can be embedded on “any website for any device,” positioning it as a lighter, more flexible way of hosting and browsing 3D content across the web.

Unlike HTC’s existing Viverse metaverse platform—or Meta’s Horizon Worlds, for that matter—the key differentiator is Viverse Worlds focuses on 3D content distribution. Instead of requiring any sort of app download, the platform offers up a web-based interface for quick and easy 3D content browsing, supporting XR headsets and flatscreen devices alike.

The company isn’t aiming low either, likening Viverse Worlds to what “YouTube did for video,” but for 3D content, further noting it’s an “open, accessible, and immersive online home for creators to build, share, and explore the next generation of 3D experiences.”

And Viverse Worlds hopes to differentiate by offering fairly high quality content too, thanks to the inclusion of HTC’s Polygon Streaming tech, which allows the streaming of “complex, high-poly models across various platforms and devices with unparalleled efficiency,” the company said back at the tech’s 2024 unveiling. While web-based content excels at quick deployment, rendering constraints typically make for simplistic, low-poly visuals.

Initially targeted exclusively at Viverse for Business, but now at the core of Viverse Worlds, Polygon Streaming only streams and renders the 3D elements currently visible to users at the currently needed density, HTC says, making it possible to deliver higher quality 3D content without the need of bespoke executables.

And like HTC as a whole, which has firmly embedded itself in the enterprise and prosumer XR space over the past few years, Viverse Worlds appears to be appealing to both companies who want things like immersive shopping experiences, 3D manuals, and virtual product showrooms—and consumers looking to browse and share the platform’s array of XR environments.

“Users can subscribe to creators for updates and see all their 3D content in one place. Embedding 3D is effortless—simply copy and paste it into any website as an IFrame, all for free,” HTC says.

To boot, Viverse Worlds also closely integrates with Sketchfab, the marketplace and hosting platform for millions of 3D models. That, and Viverse Worlds supports content created using Viverse Create’s no-code web builder and its browser-based PlayCanvas extension.

While HTC’s Polygon Streaming and easy embedding could give Viverse Worlds an edge, it’s not an easy space to compete in. Similar platforms, like FrameVR, Matterport, and Spatial.io, focus on niches instead of broadly shooting for “YouTube” levels of adoption, simply based on how difficult it is to monetize. Notably, one of the biggest analogues, Mozilla’s now-defunct WebXR-based Hubs platform, summarily shut down in 2024 following financial issues.

That said, HTC ultimately hasn’t tipped its hand on its overarching monetization strategy. The company will be hosting public demos of Viverse Worlds at Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona, Spain on March 3rd – 6th, so we’re hoping to learn more then.

What is clear though is HTC isn’t the company it once was. Last month, Google announced it had acquired a number of HTC’s XR engineers for $250 million, something Google said would “accelerate the development of the Android XR platform across the headsets and glasses ecosystem.” Where that leaves HTC is still a mystery.

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Valve’s Standalone XR Headset ‘Deckard’ Reportedly Launching This Year at $1,200, Leaker Claims

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Valve’s rumored standalone XR headset, codenamed ‘Deckard’, is practically the stuff of legend at this point, with speculation brewing since data miners first discovered mention of the alleged device in January 2021. Now, leaker and data miner ‘Gabe Follower’ maintains Deckard is coming by the end of 2025, priced at $1,200.

Gabe Follower, who also runs a YouTube channel, reports in an X post that “[s]everal people have confirmed that Valve is aiming to release new standalone, wireless VR headset (codename Deckard) by the end of 2025. The current price for the full bundle is set to be $1200,” they say in the X post.

Gabe Follower also maintains Valve is also set to ship games or demos “that are already done” specifically for Deckard.

Notably, that $1,200 price point “will be sold at a loss,” Gabe Follower maintains, who posits Deckard will use the same SteamOS as seen in Steam Deck, Valve’s handheld, albeit adapted for VR.

“One of the core features is the ability to play flat-screen game[s] that are already playable on Steam Deck, but in VR on a big screen without a PC,” Gabe Follower claims, further noting behind-closed-door presentations could start soon.

While all leaks should be taken with a grain of salt, Gabe Follower has accurately leaked a number of Valve-specific projects in the past, including leaks on Counter-Strike, Half-Life, and Valve’s upcoming PC shooter MOBA, Deadlock.

Even if the leak was more of a shot in the dark than insider info as such, it’s clear Valve is preparing something related to XR. In November 2024, leaked 3D models hidden in a SteamVR update appeared to show off a new VR motion controller, codenamed ‘Roy’.

Valve ‘Roy’ Model Leak | Image courtesy Brad Lynch

Departing from standard VR motion controller layouts, Roy appears to offer more of traditional gamepad-style button layout, which would make flatscreen gameplay (in a virtual environment) a 1:1 input experience with Steam Deck.

Successive rumors maintain Deckard may include PC VR wireless streaming capabilities, eye-tracking, as well as passthrough AR features, potentially putting it in competition with Meta Quest and/or Apple Vision Pro.

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