‘Star Wars’ Director Jon Favreau Used Vision Pro in Filming ‘Mandalorian & Grogu’

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Veteran director and writer Jon Favreau revealed he fully integrated Apple Vision Pro into the production pipeline for his upcoming Star Wars film coming out this May, The Mandalorian and Grogu.

Speaking to The Town’s Matt Belloni on stage at CinemaCon in Las Vegas this week, Favreau revealed he regularly used Vision Pro while filming The Mandalorian and Grogu, the upcoming Star Wars film which will be the first to hit cinemas in seven years.

“So I’m making an IMAX movie and I’m looking at a TV screen. No matter how big your TV screen is, it’s not an IMAX screen,” Favreau says, describing directing from traditional on-set monitors.

But Favreau saw the potential to leverage Vision Pro to drive a pre-production mocap and the pre-vis pipeline, he says, which included building a piece of software from scratch to view on-set action in a larger format.

“We built software so that I could pop on my Apple Vision Pro and be sitting in an IMAX movie theater and see the full aspect ratio when we’re lining a shot up and I could watch that take and see what people will see,” Favreau explains.

“There’s so much great consumer-facing tech that could be utilized for film making in just the planning process. Forget about whether you show it in the show it in the movie theaters on the big screen. That’s going to help collapse costs and it’s going to also help you get more precise creatively. And this is what the animation industry has understood from the beginning. Get it right before you ever paint a cell.”

Notably, Favreau’s television production company Golem Creations was behind a host of Star Wars shows filmed for Disney+, including The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.

Besides having the requisite Star Wars chops, Favreau is also no stranger to VR. In his 2016, he produced two 360 promotional videos for The Jungle Book (2016) using Nokia’s OZO 360 camera rig.

That same year, Favreau’s Golem Creations partnered with WEVR to create Gnomes & Goblins (2020), an admittedly not-great fantasy adventure for PC VR that did manage to push the visual envelope at the time.

Concurrent to production on Gnomes & Goblins, Favreau also began using VR directly in the film production pipeline with The Lion King (2019), which used HTC Vive headsets to pre-visualize the scene, characters, and animations—something to make it easier to line up shots, rethink lighting, and make other changes as if the virtual set was entirely real.

You can catch the full interview below, timestamped during his chat on Vision Pro:

The post ‘Star Wars’ Director Jon Favreau Used Vision Pro in Filming ‘Mandalorian & Grogu’ appeared first on Road to VR.

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Apple’s New CEO Has a Background in VR Headsets, But is Reportedly Bearish on Vision Pro

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Apple announced that CEO Tim Cook is stepping down, and John Ternus, a long-time Apple veteran, is set to take his place. As head of hardware engineering, Ternus oversaw the launch of Vision Pro in addition to a slew of core Apple products over the years, although the new CEO may have some reservations about the company’s premium XR headset moving forward.

Fresh out of the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in mechanical engineering, the soon-to-be Apple CEO actually did a four-year stint at Virtual Research Systems, a now-defunct hardware company making some of the first commercially available VR headsets.

Virtual Research’s PC VR headsets were decidedly of a different era, although they helped spark the latest generation. Just three years prior to the release of Oculus Rift DK1, in 2010 Oculus founder Palmer Luckey even called an owner of a Virtual Research V8 a “lucky bastard”, noting the device’s 60-degree field-of-view was “pretty fantastic” more than a decade after the headset’s release.

Virtual Reality Systems V8 | Image courtesy ResearchGate

Notably, as Ternus was a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems from 1997-2001, he likely worked on the V8, which came out at the tail end of the VR craze of the ’90s.

Leaving Virtual Research Systems in 2001 for Apple, Ternus worked his way up through a number of the company’s hardware teams, contributing to the development of multiple generations of core products, including iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

His biggest role came in 2021, when Ternus became Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, taking over from Dan Riccio. As a result, Ternus also inherited the company’s long-term gamble in XR, which spanned more than a decade in the making, as he oversaw Vision Pro’s launch in 2023.

John Ternus | Image courtesy Apple

Still, despite his XR lineage, Ternus seems to be skeptical of Vision Pro’s place in Apple’s lineup.

As mentioned by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman last month, Ternus has shown some trepidation around Apple’s previous moves in the past, including the now-cancelled Apple Car project as well as Vision Pro, which has underperformed relative to other hardware launched under Ternus, including the Apple Watch and AirPods.

“When the company has taken swings at big new product categories in recent years, Ternus has often been in the conservative camp,” Gurman says. “He was circumspect about Apple building a car, fearing it would distract the company, drain profits and pull engineers from core products. He was similarly wary of the mixed-reality headset that became the Vision Pro, drawing on his experience of trying to create a virtual-reality head-worn device at a startup in the 1990s. In both of those cases his skepticism was prescient. Apple eventually killed the car, and the Vision Pro has been a bust.”

Slated to take over as CEO once Cook officially steps down this summer, he’s also inheriting the company’s years-long efforts in developing AR glasses, which Cook reportedly hopes they can release before Meta.

“Tim cares about nothing else,” Bloomberg reported last year. “It’s the only thing he’s really spending his time on from a product development standpoint.”

Apple Vision Pro (M5) | Image courtesy Apple

It remains to be seen just how enthusiastic Apple’s new CEO will be on pushing those segment-defining XR devices though. Heading into the second half of the decade, the Cupertino tech giant is ostensibly now balancing ambitions across more segments than ever, including the new consumer-friendly Mac Neo ($600) which is making headway in stripping market share from a host of mid-tier Windows laptops.

Meanwhile, the company’s XR hardware roadmap may be taking a slightly unexpected turn. Last month a separate report from Gurman detailed a move by Apple to more heavily invest in a competitor to Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses—a stark departure from Apple’s initial XR strategy, which supposedly include three distinct categories: an iPhone-tethered AR headset with wireless controller, a high-end mixed reality headset, and standalone AR glasses.

Whatever the case, Ternus’s entry as CEO marks a decisive next chapter as the company. And we’ll be watching to see how he ultimately views Vision Pro, be it a dead end or a launchpad to sleeker, more consumer-friendly XR devices in the future. As it is, we’re still waiting to hear more about the reported follow-ups to Vision Pro, which supply chain leaks suggest could include two new headsets.

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‘Microsoft Flight Simulator’ PSVR 2 Support Could Arrive as Early as This Week

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In a Microsoft Flight Simulator’s monthly Developer Stream, Asobo Studio revealed that it could finally release support for PSVR 2 as early as this week.

The studio announced last month its ‘Sim 5’ update was coming in April, which is set to bring PSVR 2 support to the PS5 version of the game alongside a number of other improvements, although it wasn’t clear exactly when the update was planned to release.

Now, in the studio’s April 2026 Developer Stream, Asobo confirmed the game has now passed Sony certification, and is “down to three must-fix bugs or something” Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann says.

The studio isn’t ready to say just when it plans to launch the update, although Neumann says they’re “super close.”

“It has a little bit to do with trying to get the final career specialization going, and
it’s like one or two more bugs, and that’s it. So, we’re we’re hoping that it’s next week,” Neumann said in last week’s broadcast.

Microsoft and Asobo previously confirmed that the PSVR 2 version of the game will support its 125 different aircraft, which includes Sense controller-supported cockpits for increased immersion.

The studios also spoke a bit about their 2026 roadmap, which includes a number of planned updates throughout 2026, which will focus on avionics, new aircraft, as well as a variety of World and City updates.

MS Flight Simulator 2026 Roadmap

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Bigscreen Reveals New Halo Strap Design for ‘Beyond 2’ PC VR Headset, Shipping Starts in June

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Bigscreen has revealed a major redesign to Bigscreen Beyond 2’s long-promised halo headstrap mount, which the company says will begin shipping out starting in June.

After months of waiting, Bigscreen has finally shown off the long-awaited Halo Mount for Beyond 2 and 2e, its thin and light PC VR headset which shipped in March 2025.

According to a company blog post, improvements over the old Halo Mount design include a new clip-on mechanism which requires no adhesives, as well as support for third-party accessories thanks to an M3 brass-threaded screw hole for mods.

It also features an improved flip-up mechanism, extra USB extension for better cable travel, and easier vertical adjustment for better forehead positioning, the company says.

Bigscreen’s newly redesigned Halo Mount | Image courtesy Bigscreen

“After a year of iterating on prototypes, we built the first production versions of the Halo Mount last year,” Bigscreen explains. “The early units (commonly known as “DVTs”) met most but not all of our goals. We shipped these DVTs to customers for testing and received both positive and negative feedback.”

Then, in December, the company says it made the call at “a very significant financial cost” to delay the Halo Mount’s mass production due to negative feedback from testers, which prompted the company to go back to the drawing board. See the previous Halo Mount design below:

Bigscreen’s previous Halo Mount design | Image courtesy Bigscreen

Now, Bigscreen says it’s aiming to ship a “small volume” first batch in June, with a greater run of 10,000 units starting in July. The Halo Mount is currently available for pre-order, priced at $180/€169.

“Due to the large volume of demand for the Halo Mount, it will take a couple of months to complete all Halo Mount preorders,” Bigscreen says. “We expect to achieve this goal by the end of the summer, and will have sufficient inventory for fast shipping thereafter.”

Notably, Bigscreen’s Halo Mount can be used with any Beyond strap, including the supplied Soft Strap, optional Audio Strap, as well as third-party modded straps, such as Apple Vision Pro’s Knit Band.

Bigscreen’s newly redesigned Halo Mount | Image courtesy Bigscreen

Additionally, it can be used with all facial interfaces offered by Bigscreen, including the Custom-Fit Cushion and the Universal-Fit Cushion, as well as without a cushion for greater peripheral vision.

As a part of the update, the company also announced that Beyond 2 and Beyond 2e orders are generally shipping within 1–3 business days, with most Universal-Fit configurations sometimes shipping the same day, following major improvements in production and logistics.

Due to recent supply chain disruptions linked to Middle East conflicts and rising air freight costs, which the company says has caused temporary shortages of the Crystal Clear Beyond 2e and Universal-Fit Cushions, shipping times for those units have been delayed by 2–4 weeks.

Bigscreen says these issues are being resolved and expects normal shipping speeds to resume by late April.

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Monkeys Navigate Virtual Worlds Using Thought Alone in New BCI Study

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University researchers at KU Leuven in Belgium have shown that monkeys can navigate complex virtual environments using a brain-computer interface (BCI) setup, which remarkably involves relatively little user training.

As reported in New Scientist, three rhesus macaques were implanted with Utah array BCI devices containing 96 electrodes in each of three brain regions: the primary motor cortex and the dorsal and ventral premotor cortices.

While the primary motor cortex is involved in voluntary movement, a region of the brain Elon Musk’s Neuralink taps into through its various animal research models and recent human clinical trials, the premotor cortices are thought to be dedicated to planning, organizing, and initiating those movements.

Image courtesy Peter Janssen et al

The key innovation isn’t the hardware itself though, as Utah arrays are widely used in research when reading neuronal activity, but rather the method the study goes about decoding that information, and making it actionable in 3D environments.

In the study, which was lead by KU Leuven’s Peter Janssen, the rhesus macaques were initially trained once from a short passive observation phase, and then were given a variety of virtual tasks while wearing 3D shutter glasses and monitor with stereoscopic images. Tasks included moving various objects in a virtual space, including a sphere, a monkey avatar, and even themselves via a first-person perspective.

Image courtesy Peter Janssen et al

As noted by New Scientist, many previous human trials involve asking people to actively think of a physical movement, like raising or lowering a finger to move a cursor on a screen, which is then translated to on-screen movement. Janssen believes however the study’s specific placement of the BCI has accessed what could be a more intuitive connection to movement, potentially requiring less training.

“We cannot ask these monkeys, of course, but we just think that it’s a more intuitive way of controlling an a computer, basically,” Janssen tells New Scientist, who notes that current methods can feel as foreign to implant recipients as “trying to move your ears.”

While the study hopes to pave the way for similar results in humans, which could unlock things like controlling electric wheelchairs, Janssen also believes it could allow people with paralysis to intuitively navigate virtual worlds.

“There’s a bit of work necessary to know exactly where to implant a human because a lot of these areas are not very well known in humans, where they are exactly,” Janssen says. “But once we figure that out, it should be possible. It should actually be easier because you can explain to the human what they are supposed to do.”

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Meta is Raising Quest 3 and Quest 3S Prices Amid Memory Cost Surge

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Meta announced it’s hiking prices for both Quest 3 and Quest 3S headsets, which includes both new and refurbished units, as the company cites the global surge in the price of memory as a main factor.

Starting on April 19th, US-based consumers will see both Quest 3S variants (128 GB and 256 GB) bumped up by $50 respectively, while the 512GB variant of Meta’s Quest 3 flagship headset will go up by $100. Here’s the new pricing below:

• Quest 3S (128 GB): $350
• Quest 3S (256 GB): $450
• Quest 3 (512 GB): $600

For clarity, Quest 3 is currently priced at $500 for the 512GB variant, while Quest 3S is priced at $300 for 128GB and $400 for the 256GB versions. You’ll find the new international pricing tiers at the bottom of this article.

“We’re making this change because the cost of building high-performance VR hardware has risen significantly,” Meta says in a blog post. “The global surge in the price of critical components—specifically memory chips—is impacting almost every category of consumer electronics, including VR. To keep delivering the quality of hardware, software, and support you expect from the Quest platform, we need to adjust our pricing.”

Image courtesy Redditor Vast_Front259

Meta says it’s also updating pricing for refurbished Quest units, although the company hasn’t said by how much just yet. Meta further said Quest accessories will stay at their current prices, ostensibly because they don’t include either RAM or SSD, which have recently seen massive memory price increases relative to years prior.

This isn’t the first time Meta has hiked prices for Quest. In 2022, the company raised the price of Quest 2 by $100 just months after launch, citing similar pressures around rising production and component costs—before later reversing the increase as market conditions stabilized.

Notably, Valve may have found itself in a similar bind resultant from the memory crisis, as the company announced in February it had to revise both price and release date of its upcoming Steam Frame VR headset—still slated to release in the first half of 2026.

Valve Steam Frame | Photo by Road to VR

While regrettable on its own, the Quest pricing increase also follows a wider shift at the company’s Reality Labs XR division, which recently saw layoffs affecting 10 percent of staff in addition to the closure of three first-party XR studios which resulted in multiple game cancellations.

Additionally, Meta announced last month it’s decoupling new Horizon Worlds builds from working on its VR headsets, making the social VR platform essentially a mobile-focused platform moving forward.

Virtual woes notwithstanding, Meta says in the blog post it “remains committed to investing in VR and leading the category because we believe this is the future of computing. We have a long-term roadmap full of new hardware and experiences, and this adjustment helps us stay on track to deliver that future.”

The company previously said that, despite the shift, it’s still funding third-party titles in addition to its current plans to release two new VR headsets—a possible successor to Quest 3 as well as a thin and light headset that tethers to a compute puck.

The new international pricing scheme for Quest 3 and Quest 3S follows below:

Image courtesy Meta

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Enter for Your Chance to Win a Free Pass to the Biggest XR Event of the Year

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AWE USA 2026 is returning to Long Beach, CA on June 15–18. As the event’s Premiere Media Partner, we’re excited to give our readers the opportunity to win one of several free passes.

AWE USA is our ‘must-go’ annual XR event. This year’s rendition is expected to draw more than 5,000 attendees, 3,250 exhibitors, 400 speakers, and will feature a 150,000 sqft expo floor.

We’re giving away several General Admission passes which offer access to all four days of the event, including talks, panels, and the expo floor.

To enter for a chance to win a free General admission pass to AWE USA 2026, join our Daily Roundup Newsletter below (even if you’re already a subscriber!).

By submitting the form above, you agree to allow us to send you the Daily Roundup Newsletter and communications about AWE events. You may alternatively enter to win a pass by emailing AWEUSA2026@roadtovr.com with the subject line “Entry”. Only one submission per entrant will be considered. Winners will be selected randomly and notified via the email they signed up with. Passes are non-transferrable and non-refundable.

If you represent a company, you can get an exclusive 10% discount on exhibition or sponsorship packages at AWE USA 2026 for being a Road to VR reader.

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