Friday, 2 October 2026

‘Titanfall 2’ VR Mod Brings the Legendary Movement Shooter to VR—for Those Who Can Handle it

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Legendary movement shooter Titanfall 2 is now available in VR thanks to mod maker CircuitLord who has created a full VR conversion mod that adds head tracking, weapon aiming, mech weapon controls, and even manual reloading to the game’s entire roster of weapons.

Among non-players, Titanfall 2 (2016) is probably best known for its mechs, which come hurtling down out of the sky, ready for players to use like a giant walking tank.

But those that have played the game know it’s about much more; even if mechs weren’t part of it, Titanfall 2 is an innovative first-person shooter in its own right. When you’re not inside a mech, you’ll find fast-paced combat with a roster of great weapons and an exhilarating sense of fluid movement thanks to abilities like wall running, double-jumping, sliding, and grappling.

The interplay and contrast between the combat of big bulky mechs and agile foot soldiers has cemented Titanfall 2 as a legendary game that’s still enjoyed by thousands of players daily, even a decade after its release.

And now, thanks to mod maker CircuitLord, players can enjoy all of this goodness with the immersion that only VR can provide. The free Titanfall 2 VR mod is available right here through CircuitLord’s mod installer. And the base game is conveniently on sale right now at an 85% discount.

Granted, as one of gaming’s fastest movement shooters, Titanfall 2 in VR is not going to be for everyone—or probably even most people. The amount of motion in the game goes above and beyond even a regular flatscreen shooter. A snap turning option is included in the mod, but there’s only so much that can be done to mitigate the potential motion sickness of running along walls and whipping through the air on a grapple.

For those that do have the stomach for it, the Titanfall 2 VR mod is getting high praise for its comprehensive reworking of game’s controls for VR. One of the best parts is surely interactive weapon reloading for every gun in the game, including a gesture-based reload for weapons like the Wingman (which we love to see after the Wingman VR interaction experiment from Road to VR’s Ben Lang several years ago).

Our friend Gamertag VR has a solid breakdown of how the mod works and feels to play, if you want a taste before considering hopping in:

For now the mod only supports the game’s single-player campaign, but we’ve reached out to the creator to ask if there’s any plans for multiplayer or other additions in the future.

The Titanfall 2 VR mod is free, but if you want to support the creation of more mods like this, consider contributing to the creator, CircuitLord, who is also developing his own VR game called No Shot, a spiritual successor to Echo Arena.

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‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’ VR Hands-on: Hand-Tracked Combat That Actually Works

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EVANGELION: Δ CROSS REFLECTIONS is the upcoming XR game based on the hit ’90s anime Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995). Find out why I’m excited to play when it arrives next year.

I went hands-on with an early build of both the game’s ‘Story Mode’ and ‘Battle Mode’, which proved to be an exciting look at what could be one of the bigger games to release in recent memory.

Notably, when asked how long Cross Reflections will be, I was assured it would be a “full” game, and not simply a short sampler of cool things. The first installment is coming early next year, although the entire game is slated to follow the original 26-episode series: memorable characters, massive city-destroying Angels, and locations ripped straight from the anime.

Narrative & Exploration

As a NERV officer cadet—let’s call you not-Shinji—you have to defend your NERV home base and battle the stunningly massive forces of evil.

It seems the game will follow a pretty tight narrative like many other visual novel VR experiences, which means there is a lot of directed cinematic scenes interspersed with moments of bespoke interactions, like Angels bounding over you and destroying the city as you gun it down in a sort of mini-game.

That’s not gameplay below, although it does seem to give clues on the sort of immersive interactions to expect.

That said, there are some serious ‘wow’ moments here. Granted, I was wearing a bHaptics Tactsuit haptic vest and bangles, which did some of the immersive heavy lifting, although Pixelity has absolutely nailed the scale of the Angels and Evangelions.

For the demo, exploration around NERV was fairly limited right now, although it did showcase a novel locomotion method using hand-tracking. Simply point in your desired direction, and you’d smooth move as if you were pushing forward on a thumbstick. To go backwards, simply raise your finger upwards. I can’t say it’s the most intuitive method, but it certainly gets the job done.

Road to VR

Pixelity tells me the hand gestures shown in the preview are not final, and that the team has been actively researching and testing different gestures to make the controls more responsive, intuitive, and natural for each interaction. Still, the current implementation for locomotion (and combat, more on that below) actually seems to be a pretty good fit so far.

Combat

I was worried combat would be the moral equivalent of quicktime event like I saw in the Mobile Suit Gundam game, but there is actually some meat on the bone here.

As with exploration, combat is all about hand gestures. Again, they may not be entirely intuitive (or final), but are actually quite clever and effective once you get to grips with them. At least in the combat tutorial I played, fights took place in a single line, like you might see Olympic fencers do. It’s a smart way to bottleneck the user and build around its locomotion and combat scheme, which requires you to punch your hands to dash forward and hold your left thumb up to dash backwards.

Melee is done by physically punching, and shooting is done by holding you right palm open and mimicking holding onto the foregrip of the air-rifle. Shooting requires pulling an air-trigger with your curled index finger, which both aimed and shot surprisingly well.

Road to VR

Probably the easiest to remember was raising a temporary shield by holding up both hands in a blocking gesture, allowing you to defend against incoming punches and projectiles. Again, not the final implementation, but surprisingly effective.

Meanwhile, executing all of my best moves unlocked a slot-style upgrade UI, which gave you random buffs, heals, and even special weapons, like an ethereal throwing spear that you can lob right into the heart of your Angelic foe. All in all, it was a fun little workout, and way more involved than I thought it would be. I want to learn more about the buff system, upgrades, all of the little things designed to flesh out combat beyond the punch-block-shoot trope that, at least so far, worked pretty well.

Excited? Yes.

It has been so long since I properly sat down to watch Neon Genesis Evangelion, but with Cross Reflections on the horizon, I honestly don’t think I even want to. I’d much rather be just a little surprised at how much I remember, meanwhile engaging in what thus far feels like interesting and seemingly novel VR stuff.

In any case, I’ll be looking out for EVANGELION: Δ CROSS REFLECTIONS when the first installment launches sometime next year. Pixelity hasn’t mentioned any official target platforms yet, although demos took place on Quest 3.

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Thursday, 1 October 2026

Samsung FCC Approval Signals Gentle Monster & Warby Parker Smart Glasses Nearing Release

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Samsung’s long-awaited smart glasses have cleared FCC testing, suggesting their release is right around the corner.

The News

Two distinct SM-O200P and SM-O200J have appeared in FCC filings, which is typically one of the last steps before commercialization.

Those two product codes indicate Warby Parker and Gentle Monster frames, respectively, as they’ve been seen on pre-production models viewed by Android Police and others.

Warby Parker Smart Glasses | Courtesy Android Police

It appears multiple frame styles from both the US-based Warby Parker and South Korea’s Gentle Monster will use those specific product codes, including three frame variations from Warby Parker, and two (so far) from Gentle Monster.

Built in collaboration with Samsung and Google, the forthcoming fleet of smart glasses are set to be the first to run Google’s Android XR operating system.

Much like Meta’s range of smart glasses, the Warby Parker and Gentle Monster frames will include onboard cameras, microphones and off-ear speakers for doing things like taking calls, listening to podcasts, and interacting with Google Gemini.

While an official spec sheet isn’t available yet, Samsung’s fleet of smart glasses are said to feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chipset, a single 12MP front-facing camera with indicator LED, and up to 9 hours of use per charge, with a portable charging case providing extra charge.

No pricing or launch date has been announce yet outside of the Fall 2026 release window.

My Take

Samsung is looking to take on Meta’s exponentially growing slate of smart glasses, which thus far not only includes Ray-Ban, Oakley, and Meta-branded camera-clad smart glasses, Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, but also now audio-only smart glasses that omit the camera entirely.

Meta’s multi-year lead over most of the competition will be difficult to shake, so it will be interesting to see whether Samsung’s smart glasses can go beyond simply being the ‘not-Meta’ choice and offer anything meaningfully different.

As a consequence, this will also soon open Samsung to the same public scrutiny that Meta has experienced over the past year, which thus far includes a number of US states and cities taking action to ban the devices from public government buildings. How Samsung (Warby Parker, Gentle Monster and co) handle that will be interesting to watch.

Notably, Meta shipped a mandatory update to Meta Glasses in July that introduces a hardware check when the capture LED has been physically removed or damaged, effectively closing a loophole that let users drill out the privacy light to keep recording while hiding the recording indicator.

Maybe it’s too little, too late for the whole camera-clad smart glasses category? Maybe the whole ‘creeper glasses’ phenomenon is a little overblown? Whatever the case, we’re sure to learn more as Samsung enters the market soon, as the company no doubt hopes to attract a whole new set of fashion-conscious, tech-forward users.

The post Samsung FCC Approval Signals Gentle Monster & Warby Parker Smart Glasses Nearing Release appeared first on Road to VR.



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Wednesday, 30 September 2026

‘Walkabout Mini Golf’ Studio Announces Another Round of Layoffs Following DLC Price Hike

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Mighty Coconut, indie studio behind hit VR game Walkabout Mini Golf (2020), announced another round of layoffs affecting ~35% of staff.

“This is an incredibly hard message to write, but I want to continue to be transparent with the Walkabout community,” writes Mighty Coconut CEO Lucas Martell in a company blog post. “Due to the current state of the games industry and especially VR, Mighty Coconut will need to downsize, and over the next several months we will be saying goodbye to 10 talented people who have helped make Walkabout what it is.”

This follows a round of layoffs in January that affected 25% of the studio, effectively reducing Mighty Coconut to just 27 at the time, also coming alongside a DLC price hike that raised all forthcoming DLC by $1, with new courses moving from $4 to $5.

“While we already downsized last January, I failed to anticipate just how rapidly and deeply this trajectory would continue,” Martell continues. “The amazing courses and worlds created by our talented team have allowed us to fare better than many studios who have had to close completely, but without a steady stream of new players coming into VR and Walkabout, the scale at which we’ve been operating is no longer sustainable.”

Martell maintains that “Walkabout isn’t going anywhere,” as the studio promises to continue its steady release of DLC courses, albeit “a little less often due to the reduced team size that returns us to the small and scrappy way we started.”

Martell says that in the meantime, the studio is diversifying revenue with continued work on Walkabout Dungeon Golfer, an upcoming hybrid VR/flatscreen roguelike dungeon crawler featuring golf mechanics, and GRASS, a flatscreen co-op lawn-care simulator.

“While incredibly painful, this is the only course of action that allows us to keep the game alive, the servers active, and hold on to as much of our team as possible,” Martell maintains.

Mighty Coconut is far from the only studio currently under pressure from a contracting VR games industry; this year alone has seen a number of VR studio closures, reductions, and cancelled projects.

Meta’s XR Reality Labs division saw a reported 10 percent staff layoff earlier this year, which included the closure of Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR port) and Twisted Pixel (Deadpool VR).

Industry wide budget cuts also reportedly saw the cancellation of a Harry Potter VR game for Quest from Skydance Games, Batman: Arkham Shadows sequel from Sanzaru, and a “major project” from Moss developer Polyarc, which announced last month it was shuttering the studio as a result.

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Tuesday, 29 September 2026

Meta Plans VR Glasses Strap Accessory for Active VR Gaming

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Meta VR Glasses can play all of the same games you might on Quest, whether it be through integrated hand-tracking or by pairing optional Touch Plus controllers. But if you’re planning on getting active, Meta says they’ll be selling an accessory for that.

We haven’t seen any images yet, however at Connect 2026 last week the company not only announced Meta VR Glasses, which are coming in Spring 2027 for $1,300, but also the answer to the question of how users will be able to play active VR games.

The solution: a cinching strap that connects the tips of both of the glasses’ temple arms together, more securely fastening it to the user’s head, i.e. not an entirely new strap system like is often the case with Quest.

Courtesy Meta

As it was described to me, it will physically connect to the temple arms, the tips of which actually can be detached for more modularity.

And with a glasses form factor, it needs it. During my hands-on with VR Glasses at Connect, it did feel fairly solid on its own, with no nose-slipping or ear-clipping as some glasses-type headsets are wont to do.

Anything that requires fast head or body movement, or looking down for extended amounts of time though, and you’d probably want a good way of keeping the glasses snug, not only so they don’t fly off your head, but also to keep their relatively narrow sweet spot in place.

Thus far, the only other extras mentioned to me include a light blocker accessory that magnetically attaches to the glasses for greater immersion and prescription lenses from Zenni Optical.

I expect we’ll see those and more accessories closer to its launch next year, and also hopefully learn whether the strap will be a paid add-on, or it will come in the box.

Looking for more VR Glasses News?

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Meta VR Glasses, Quest 3 & Steam Frame Compared – Specs & Features

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2026 is another big year in VR hardware, but which headset should you consider buying? The old reliable Quest 3? Valve’s Steam Frame? Or maybe you should wait for Meta VR Glasses? Read on to see the specs—and probably more importantly—their use cases compared.

Skip to the conclusion, please.

Here’s the quick and dirty conclusion you can learn more about in the breakdown below:

  • Steam Frame is for power-users and tinkerers. Despite having Steam at your fingertips, game support is still an ongoing factor.
  • Quest 3 is for budget-conscious users who value ease of use and a massive game catalogue.
  • VR Glasses are for productivity-minded users who want private monitors, personal theaters for flatscreen and stereoscopic content, as well as access to regular Quest games.

Steam Frame – Starting at $1,059

Steam Frame is Valve’s second-ever VR headset, one that’s a radically different product from the first, Valve Index.

It’s also one of the first VR headsets we can confidently say combines strong standalone capabilities with an easy-to-use PC streaming experience out of the box. And Valve is leaning pretty hard into its use as a PC streaming headset, which is probably for good reason.

Road to VR

In standalone mode, demanding or poorly optimized games can be basically unplayable, with Valve’s ‘Frame-certified’ program helping consumers to figure out which games actually work well on Frame, both VR and flatscreen games. Critically, Valve didn’t make any big budget games for Frame, although Half-Life: Alyx (2020) did get a standalone mode.

Still, the headset isn’t stopping you from trying anything, which is such a breath of fresh air in comparison to the competition, which largely feature locked-down bootloaders. It’s extremely capable and expandable, but less easy to use than its more console-like competitors, making Steam Frame a great choice for power-users and those willing to tinker with settings to find the optimal experience. As a mixed reality device though, it’s lacking a color passthrough camera, which is a bit of a bummer in 2026 – although you can tack on this upgrade from Arcturus.

As you’d imagine, there’s also a large overlap in base gaming functionality, which could make it hard to justify Frame’s $460 premium ($1,060 total) over Quest 3’s $600 price point. Read our deep dive review of Steam Frame to learn more.

Meta Quest 3 – $600

When Quest 3 was released in October 2023, it wasn’t exactly supposed to be the cheap and cheerful option among the milieu of standalone and PC VR headsets, but rather a cheaper piece of hardware that importantly capitalized on Quest Pro’s failures as a mixed reality platform.

Courtesy Meta

With it, came bigger and more graphically intensive games (and mixed reality modes galore) including Asgard’s Wrath 2 (2023), Arizona Sunshine 2 (2023), and graphical upgrades to favorites such as The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners (2020) and Red Matter 2 (2022). It also signaled a new push by Meta to turn its then flagship VR gaming console into more of a general computing device, largely driven by the entrance of Apple Vision Pro in February 2024.

Still, Quest 3 is a VR gaming headset through and through, which benefits from a massive back catalogue of new and previous Quest titles. It’s also less bulky than its predecessor, Quest 3S, which co-opts Quest 2’s old Fresnel lenses and displays for a cheaper (and visually worse) experience than Quest 3.

Notably, Meta hasn’t said when it will release a Quest 4, so there’s no telling how long Quest 3 will be the target platform for developers creating games to run on Horizon OS, although for a minority of Quest 3 owners, the next step could be VR Glasses…

Meta VR Glasses – $1,300

Meta officially unveiled VR Glasses at Connect 2026 in late September, making for its next big flagship VR device. This time though, the company isn’t really pushing gaming as its big use case when VR Glasses arrive sometime in Spring 2027, but rather productivity and casual content consumption.

Courtesy Meta

Still, it shares Quest’s operating system, Horizon OS, which means it can play the same games and content as Quest 3/3S, albeit at a less immersive 70-degree horizontal field of view (FOV) than Quest 3’s ~110-degree horizontal FOV. It also supports Quest Touch Plus controllers, although its major focus is on hand and eye-tracking, as it doesn’t come with any sort of controller in the box.

And while Meta is trumpeting a lot of the productivity-focused stuff originally released on Quest 3, as the headset features some very compelling passthrough mixed reality, the biggest upgrade is undoubtedly the new form factor. It’s only ~100g of on-head weight, as it offloads both battery and compute to a ~300g pocketable puck tethered to the headset via an optical cable, which terminates in a proprietary port.

So it’s not exactly the upgrade pathway for dyed in the wool Quest fans, as it sacrifices visual immersion for better ergonomics. Now, is that worth the $700 premium over Quest 3? Meta is hoping so. Check out our hands-on with VR Glasses to learn more.

VR Glasses vs. Quest 3 vs. Steam Frame Specs

SpecMeta VR GlassesQuest 3Steam Frame
Retail Price$1,299$599 (512 GB)$1,059 (256 GB)
$1,299 (1 TB)
Launch / availabilitySpring 2027Oct. 2023September 2026
Weight~100g glasses + ~300g compute puck515g435g
ChipsetSnapdragon XR2 Gen 3Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2Snapdragon Series 8 Gen 3
RAM12 GB8 GB Unified LPDDR5 RAM16 GB Unified LPDDR5 RAM
Operating SystemHorizon OSHorizon OSSteamOS
Wi-FiWi-Fi 7WiFi 6EWi-Fi 7, 2×2 – Dual 5Ghz/6Ghz
Storage128 GB512 GB256 GB / 1 TB
Expanded StoragemicroSD card slot up to 1 TBN/AmicroSD card slot up to 2 TB
OpticsPancakePancakePancake
DisplayMicro-OLEDLCDLCD
Per-eye Resolution2,412 × 2,2882,064 × 2,2082,160 × 2,160
Refresh rateUp to 120 HzUp to 120 Hz72–144 Hz
FOV70° H × 66° V110° H × 96° VUp to 110°
Pixels Per Degree (PPD) ~37~25~20-25
Eye trackingYesNoYes
Hand trackingYesYesNo
PassthroughColorColorMonochrome
Motion controllersTouch Plus supportedTouch Plus includedSteam Frame Controllers
PC VRWired & wirelessWired & wirelessWired & wireless
Battery~35 Wh, external puck19.44 Wh, internal21.6 Wh, rear-mounted
PortUSB-C charging and data, proprietary optical lead to puck USB-CUSB-C
AudioDual speaker drivers integrated into headstrapDual speaker drivers integrated into headstrapDual speaker drivers integrated into headstrap
Mic?1 microphoneDual microphone array

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Monday, 28 September 2026

Arcturus Vision Steam Frame Add-on Review – A Literal Night and Day Difference

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Arcturus Vision Camera is an add-on module for Steam Frame which greatly enhances its passthrough camera quality. The obvious visual improvement, tiny size, and reasonable price make it easy to recommend.

In the course of my decade plus of using VR headsets and various accessories, I can’t think of any that were as straightforwardly recommendable as the Arcturus Vision Camera.

Usually that’s because VR headset accessories (especially those which directly interface with the headset’s software) have at least one major downside. Either they’re too big, too expensive, too niche, or just don’t work as well as you hoped.

The Arcturus Vision Camera is the exception to that trend. It’s not just tiny (a mere 10 grams), reasonably priced ($150), easy to use (plug-and-play), and does what it promises; it also fits Frame so perfectly that you’d swear it was a first-party accessory directly from Valve.

Road to VR

At its core, the Arcturus Vision Camera offers significantly improved passthrough visuals compared to Steam Frame’s default passthrough view, which is otherwise monotone and low resolution.

The module snaps into Frame’s hidden expansion port (under the nose bridge) and—without so much as restarting the headset—instantly takes over for the headset’s passthrough cameras. Anywhere that you’d normally see Frame’s own passthrough view (ie: as the background in the SteamVR dashboard or in a mixed reality game), you’ll be looking through the Arcturus Vision module instead.

Road to VR

Beyond just adding color, the jump in resolution is instantly noticeable. It feels like you were sitting in the dark and then someone flipped on the lights.

A key benchmark for any passthrough system is whether or not you can read your phone screen. With Frame’s default passthrough view, there’s no hope.

Road to VR

But the Arcturus module easily crosses the gap to a readable phone.

Road to VR

While the Arcturus Vision Camera is an obvious improvement to Frame’s passthrough, I want to be clear that a large part of the benefit comes from Frame’s default passthrough being so bad to begin with. The Arcturus module brings it up to par, but doesn’t blow contemporary headsets out of the water by any means. Perceptually, it brings Frame’s passthrough view to be about on-par with Quest 3, while both Frame and Quest 3 are still well behind Vision Pro.

If that’s all the camera add-on did, it would be easy to recommend. But Arcturus has also gone the extra mile and made the Vision Camera capable of capturing high-quality spatial videos that can be viewed on Frame or other headsets.

This is enabled through the company’s own free app for Steam Frame.

According to Arcturus, the Vision Camera is capable of capturing up to 6MP (2,464 × 2,464), 60 FPS (or 120 FPS at 1.5MP), and 10-bit HDR. It also captures the widest field-of-view of any major headset that allows for spatial video capture. Here’s a sampling of footage captured by the camera:

Courtesy Arcturus

The Arcturus Vision Camera app plays back spatial videos with depth, and with synchronized head movement. That means instead of looking at a video which shakes around inside its frame, the frame itself actually moves in space (according to the motions in the original capture), and the viewer can follow the frame with their own gaze.

And the camera plays nicely with others. Arcturus has made a ‘Sync’ app (currently available for Windows and Mac, with plans for a later Linux release) which lets you transfer recordings from your headset to your computer, and convert them for viewing on other headsets.

Arcturus also advertises the ability to capture 3D gaussian splats using the Vision Camera add-on, but the process currently requires use of command-line tools and a Linux desktop with NVIDIA GPU, so it’s really only something advanced users are likely to play with. However, you can use the company’s free Arcturus Vision Gaussian XR app to see some examples of gaussian splats in the headset.


Even if you have no intention of using mixed reality apps or recording spatial videos, a high-quality passthrough view is a real convenience which makes a headset feel easier to use. While I wish Frame had a good passthrough view out of the box, I’m glad the Arcturus Vision Camera is available to fill the void. Its capabilities, size, and deep integration make it easy to recommend. If you’re already dropping $1,000+ on Steam Frame, do yourself a favor and add the passthrough upgrade.

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