XREAL Launches Cheap & Cheerful Sub-brand – Why You Probably Won’t See It Outside of China

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XREAL announced it’s launching a sub-brand in China with the release of the company’s cheapest XR glasses yet. With a name like XBX though, it’s unlikely we’ll see them outside of the mainland.

XBX released its first glasses today in China, the XBX A01, which boast a 50° field-of-view, HDR10 support, real-time SDR-to-HDR conversion, and bird bath-style optics delivering up to 1,600 nits of brightness from its Sony micro-OLED displays—all in a 62g package.

Like most of Xreal’s regular lineup though, Xbx A01 is basically meant for consuming traditional content while physically tethered to your standard swath of mobile devices: phones, tablets, portable game consoles, and laptops.

Image courtesy XBX

And while the glasses don’t feature any sort of camera sensors, electrochromic dimming, and have also dropped the usual ‘Sound by Bose’ audio seen in other Xreal devices, the device only costs CN¥1,799 (~$265), making them the company’s cheapest AR glasses to date.

But with a name like Xbx, which could easily be confused with Microsoft’s Xbox, it’s not very likely we’ll see the brand leave the safety of the mainland. At least, not in its current form.

Image courtesy XBX

That is, if the company doesn’t want to repeat past mistakes. Before the company was Xreal, the China/US-based company went by the name Nreal. In 2023, the company was forced to rebrand following a trademark dispute with Epic Games, which claimed the name sounded too similar to its Unreal Engine game engine.

Notably, there is an English version of the Xbx website—conveniently missing any store links—so it remains to be seen just what Xreal intends to do with Xbx, be it a mainland-only experiment or the start of a broader budget lineup.

What is clear: Xreal is becoming increasingly aggressive at the lower end of the casual XR glasses market, which comes right as the company is gearing up to take on the consumer AR market outside of China with Project Aura, the result of a deal with Google that positions Xreal as its sole AR hardware partner.

As it is, Project Aura is confirmed to launch sometime this year, making them not only the first pair of AR glasses running Google’s Android XR operating system, but the company’s next big flagship device.

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‘Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secrets of the Mimic’ Finally Comes to PC VR Headsets

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Steel Wool Studios has finally released SteamVR support for Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secrets of the Mimic (2025), letting you face the robotic evil within Murray’s Costume Manor from the comfort of your PC VR headset.

Although the studio initially planned to launch FNaF: Secrets of the Mimic with PSVR 2 support last June, the studio actually changed course earlier that year, sidelining the PSVR 2 mode until April 28th of this year.

But now it’s the PC version’s turn. Owners of the game on PC can jump in right now, although there are some minor caveats. Steel Wool Studios says the VR mode doesn’t support room-scale gameplay, which essentially means you’ll need to stay your player boundary and use in-game locomotion controls to navigate.

While it does include the full swath of VR settings, the studio warns you may need to adjust performance outside of the game for best results, such as adjusting refresh rate (hz) in SteamVR’s settings for PC VR players, or via the Meta Horizon Link desktop app’s Graphics Preferences for Quest Link/Air Link users.

For PC VR users who can’t reach 120/144 Hz, the studio also suggests turning SteamVR’s motion smoothing setting off, noting that sometimes deleting the entire configs folder (i.e., C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\FNAF_SOTM\Saved\Config) can help.

At the time of this writing, the studio notes there are a number of know behaviors to watch out for when it comes to playing the PC game in VR mode, however the game is fully playable in VR, including full motion controls.

For a more comprehensive look at what to expect, check out ‘PSVR2 Without Parole’s full review of the PSVR 2 mode below:

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Millennial Internet Cartoon ‘Homestar Runner’ is Coming to ‘Walkabout Mini Golf’ in June DLC

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Walkabout Mini Golf (2020) is getting a DLC drop next month that will bring early 2000s flash cartoon sensation Homestar Runner to the game on June 25th.

Developer Mighty Coconut says the ‘Homestar Runner Distraction Pack’ isn’t the usual DLC drop, which typically includes a new course.

Working with series creators The Brothers Chaps, the upcoming DLC is instead an avatar and mini-game add-on which brings the series’ cast of characters to the game: Strong Bad and Homestar Runner,  along with cosmetics and other character appearances.

Mighty Coconut calls it “a takeover of Walkabout by Strong Bad and friends featuring designs, in-game character appearances, voice-acting, and much more directly from The Brothers Chaps. Think of it as a turducken of unique cosmetics, never-before-seen mini-games, and locations/nods to the most iconic Homestar Runner bits of all time.”

Homestar Runner Distraction Pack is set to include six new activities, Strong Bad’s basement hangout, 18 collectable lost balls, custom putters, unique avatars, a custom ball trail, unlockable hole celebrations and more.

Mighty Coconut says the Homestar Runner DLC was “something we’ve been working on for nearly a year, and we’re considering it a ‘bonus’ release.” Additionally, the studio says three more courses are coming this year, with the next course expected to arrive in August.

Walkabout Mini Golf has gained a fair bit of momentum since it initially launched on Quest in 2020, eventually coming to SteamVR, PSVR 2, and Pico.

In addition to regular DLC drops, over the years the game has also partnered with a variety of creators, bringing courses from Jim Henson’s Labyrinth (1986), Cyan’s classic adventure-puzzle MYST (1993), and Aardman Animation’s Wallace & Gromit to name a few.

The studio has also released a few standalone avatar packs featuring characters from Fraggle Rock (1983), Exploding Kittens (2015), and The Dark Crystal (1982).

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Highlights from the Ruff Talk VR Gaming Showcase – New Games, Trailers & More

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The latest installment of the Ruff Talk VR Gaming Showcase is here, bringing with it another avalanche of VR game reveals, trailers, updates and more.

Ruff Talk VR is a VR-focused podcast hosted by father-and-son team Damien and Bryan Ruffy, who release podcasts each week in addition to their regular VR Gaming Showcase. This is now the duo’s fourth showcase, following the December 2025 show.

We rounded up what we think are some of the top highlights, although you can catch the entire showcase for the full drop, which includes a whopping two dozen trailers and announcements.

Knights of Fiona – New Gameplay Trailer

Ruinsmagus (2022) studio CharacterBank Inc today unveiled a new trailer for Knights of Fiona, the upcoming VR action-adventure game. The trailer highlights expanded combat encounters, a glimpse of brand new areas, and the look at co-op play with a fellow knight at your side.

Knights of Fiona is slated to launch sometime this year on Quest 3/3S, as well as SteamVR headsets. You can wishlist it here on Steam and the Horizon Store for Quest.

Survive The Night – Reveal

Image courtesy The Binary Mill

Survive the Night is The Binary Mill’s (Resist, Into the Black) newly announced free-to-play co-op action roguelite. Set within the galaxy’s most popular gameshow, the game supports between 1-4 players, forcing you to work together to survive a series of challenges featuring physics-based melee combat, dynamic mini-games, and roguelite progression systems.

There’s no release window yet, although you can wishlist Survive the Night over on the Horizon Store for Quest 3/3S.

Hyperlane Highway – New Gameplay Trailer

Solo developer Ryan Byrne of RyalityStudio debuted a new trailer for Hyperlane Highway, a VR roguelike shooter designed around a unique “head lean” locomotion system.

While targeting a Q4 2026 early access launch, RyalityStudio is opening a community  Discord (invite link) to begin private PC VR playtesting ahead of a public demo. The game is targeting SteamVR headsets, and also plans to support Quest.

Disembodied – Dev Update

Disembodied is an upcoming mixed reality platformer that turns your real hand movements into precise, physics-driven gameplay, using only hand tracking to interact with the game’s physics-based environment.

Developed by Middle Man Games, Disembodied is slated to head into early access on the Horizon Store for Quest 2 and above sometime this Fall. You can wishlist it here.

Loop One Done – PC VR Support Coming

Loop One Done has been in available in early access since May 2025 on Quest, however now VR indie Ojsan Studio AB announced the Factorio-inspired game is finally coming to PC VR headsets soon via Steam.

The video gives us a good look at all of the major updates to come to the game, which lets you record loops with drones and robots by hand so you can build up an efficient automated factory.

Adrian’s Quest – New Gameplay Trailer

Adrian’s Quest is an upcoming single-player VR action-adventure game filled with physics-based puzzles and bizarre gunfights, set on a dusty, run-down alien planet inhabited by strange creatures and a declining civilization.

Developed by Digital Waste Factory, Adrian’s Quest is slated to launch on PC VR headsets, although the studio says it’s also working on support for PSVR 2 and Quest. In the meantime you can find Adrian’s Quest over on Steam for PC VR headsets.

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For more, make sure to catch the full show here.

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Anduril Shows a Glimpse of EagleEye’s Wide Field-of-view Night Vision Imaging

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Palmer Luckey, founder of defense startup Anduril, revealed more capabilities of its EagleEye XR glasses, this time showing off its wide field-of-view (FOV) night vision.

Anduril revealed EagleEye late last year, showing off an impressive (if not outright terrifying) set of augmented reality capabilities the company hopes to eventually serve up to U.S. soldiers. Luckey, who also founded Oculus in 2013, has now showed off a little more of the system’s night vision.

“The difference is night and day,” Luckey says in an X post. “The digital night vision of the EagleEye Family of Systems delivers an 84 degree field of view, stereo thermal fusion to expose hidden threats, and a 4K display for enhanced warfighter perception.”

Image courtesy Palmer Luckey, Anduril

Luckey also showed off a visual comparison between EagleEye (left) and PVS-31 (right), the latter of which is a conventional binocular-style night vision system currently used in elite combat roles, such as SOCOM, Rangers, SEALs, and MARSOC.

That said, the two systems are very different—about as far from each other as a smartphone is from and a digital Casio watch.

According to Anduril, EagleEye offloads some of front-heaviness of its low light and thermal sensors by integrating them into a sensor suite connected directly to the helmet, which is then relayed to the user’s display, which is housed in a pair of AR glasses with included ballistic and laser protection.

Image courtesy Anduril Industriesduri

What’s more, the system also patches into a bevy of external data streams, including real-time info sourced from the company’s AI-driven Lattice network of surveillance and defense devices.

This comes amid Anduril’s compete for a U.S. Army contract against defense company rival Rivet. Called the Soldier Borne Mission Command (SBMC), the new contract is essentially is set to revamp the previous 10-year, $22 billion Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) project originally awarded to Microsoft in 2018, which the company hoped to fulfill by adapting its HoloLens 2 AR platform for combat roles.

In February 2025, it was revealed Anduril would be taking over the older IVAS contract, which was thought to give the company a head start on competing for SBMC.

Notably, Anduril partnered with Meta in May 2025 on combat-focused XR systems, which at the time the companies said would aim to deliver “the world’s best AR and VR systems for the U.S. military.”

Anduril says it’s also partnered with EssilorLuxottica’s Oakley Standard Issue, Qualcomm, and Gentex, which the company says “lowers cost, accelerates development, and ensures a path for continuous innovation.”

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‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ and ‘Super Mario Galaxy Movie’ Head to Vision Pro in 3D

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Vision Pro is steadily becoming the premier destination for 3D theatrical releases to reach home audiences. The latest 3D movies headed to Vision Pro include The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) and Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025).

The News

Apple has confirmed two new 3D movies headed to Vision Pro. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) is available to buy or rent in 3D as of this week, through the Apple TV app.

Image courtesy Nintendo

That will be followed by the top-grossing movie of 2025, Avatar: Fire and Ash, which will be available starting on June 24th, streaming in 3D on the Disney+ app.

That’s it… that’s the news.

My Take

Vision Pro is the best way to watch 3D versions of major movies today, thanks to a combination of high-quality OLED displays and ease-of-access to high-quality 3D content. 3D movies on Vision Pro are generally streamed in 4K with HDR and surround sound, and you can make the screen literally as large as it would be in an actual movie theater. From my personal experience, if a movie in Vision Pro is available in 3D, there’s no reason not to watch the 3D version; it’s a pure value-add to the experience.

This follows the collapse of the 3DTV market years ago, which led to a near-elimination of movies being released in 3D for at-home viewing. Vision Pro is offering a second life to the 3D releases at home. And while the number of 3D movies available on the headset is continuing to grow, the high cost of Vision Pro makes it anything but certain that releases will continue in the long term.

Avatar: Fire and Ash, in particular, is a major win for 3D movies on the headset; Vision Pro is now the only way to experience the movie with the 3D perspective that director James Cameron originally intended it to be seen.

Granted, the release calls into question the partnership between Cameron’s Lightstorm Vision studio and Meta, which was announced at the end of 2024, a year before the release of Avatar: Fire and Ash.

At the time the studio and Meta said they were partnering to “scale the creation of world-class 3D entertainment experiences spanning live sports and concerts, feature films, and TV series featuring big-name IP on Meta Quest—which will be Lightstorm Vision’s exclusive MR hardware platform.”

While it wasn’t ever confirmed that the partnership would include a 3D release of Avatar: Fire and Ash on Meta’s headsets, the release of an exclusive 3D clip on Quest—to promote the movie’s release—certainly teased as much. But at this point it’s unclear if the movie will be released in 3D on Quest like on Vision Pro. We reached out to Meta about this but the company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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Apple Acquires Key Talent & Patents Behind AI Avatar Company ‘Animato’

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According to an official EU filing spotted by Apple Insider, Apple has recently acquired key talent and IP behind Animato, a Bay Area startup creating AI avatars.

Animato was known for the now-defunct AI video calling app Call Annie, which paired 3D avatars with AI for face-to-face tutoring and language learning.

According to the filing (seen below), Apple isn’t outright acquiring Animato, but rather reserving the right to hire certain employees, get non-exclusive licenses to Animato’s intellectual property rights, and acquire Animato’s patent applications.

Here’s the January 19th filing via the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act:

Apple Inc. (“Apple”) will have the right to make employment offers to and hire certain employees of Animato, Inc. (“Animato”), receive a non-exclusive license to Animato’s intellectual property rights, and acquire Animato’s patent applications. Animato develops and distributes software that creates virtual avatars for video chats and tutoring. Apple (together with its group companies) designs, manufactures and markets smartphones, personal computers, tablets, wearables and accessories, and sells a variety of related services.

According to LinkedIn, Animato was founded by Francesco Rossi, who worked at Apple from 2015-2022 in the company’s computer vision R&D department, which included work on machine learning.

Having left Apple in 2022 to found Animato, the company released two now-defunct apps, Call Annie and BeSanta, the latter of which let users create impersonate Santa Claus and record videos for playback.

‘Call Annie’ | Images courtesy Animato Inc

This isn’t the first avatar-related acquisition (or in Animato’s case acqui-hire) Apple has undertaken following the 2024 launch of Vision Pro.

In early 2025, Apple quietly acquired 3D avatar company TrueMeeting, having obtained its 3D avatar tech stack and a number of its employees. At the time, the deal was thought to support the company’s photorealistic avatars for Vision Pro, aka ‘Personas’.

Notably, Personas are some of the most realistic 3D avatars in the XR space right now. Based on facial scans, Personas are animated with the help of Vision Pro’s various sensors; the downward-facing camera tracks mouth movement, internal sensors track your eyes and facial micro-expressions, and a particularly advanced machine learning stack blends all of this together into a realistic 3D avatar.

At least in terms of what we’ve seen in Call Annie, Animato’s tech seems to be more targeted at creating realistic AI avatars, which is something Apple may be after as the company further develops not only XR headsets like Vision Pro, but its forthcoming AR glasses, which are rumored to follow its first smart glasses—still in development behind closed doors.

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