Snap’s Top AR Exec Quits Ahead of Specs Consumer Debut

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Scott Myers, Snap’s top executive in charge of Specs, has left the company ahead of the planned release of its consumer AR glasses.

The News

Myers reportedly left his six-year tenure at the company due to a dispute with Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, tech outlet Sources claims, characterizing the dispute as a “blow-up” centered around the company’s strategy.

A Snap spokesperson confirmed Myers’ departure on Reddit, nothing that Specs are still on track for release this year:

“Scott Myers has decided to step down from his role at Snap. We thank him for his contributions and wish him the best in his next chapter. We can’t wait to bring Specs to the world later this year. We remain focused on disciplined execution and long term value creation for our developer partners, community and shareholders.”

Myers came to Snap in 2020 to oversee all aspects of Specs, including hardware, software, product and operations. He previously held senior positions at SpaceX, Apple, and Nokia, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Snap Spectacles (gen 5) | Image courtesy Snap Inc

This comes at a critical moment for Snap. In September 2025, Spiegel noted in an open letter that the company is heading into a make-or-break “crucible moment” in 2026, positioning Specs are an integral part of the company’s future.

“This moment isn’t just about survival. It’s about proving that a different way of building technology, one that deepens friendships and inspires creativity, can succeed in a world that often rewards the opposite,” Spiegel said.

The consumer version of Specs is set to be the company’s sixth generation glasses following the release of its fifth-gen hardware in 2024. As ‘true’ AR glasses (re: not smart glasses like Meta Ray-Ban Display), the device is ostensibly set to frontrun some of Snap’s largest competitors.

My Take

It’s uncertain why Myers left Snap; the company even disputed the “blow-up” narrative with TechCrunch, providing no other reasoning, which makes Myers’ departure an even greater mystery—especially on the eve of the company’s big consumer AR glasses launch.

Speculatively speaking, there is at least one recent sign that could point to trouble brewing in the background. Myer’s departure follows a recent move by the company to form a wholly-owned subsidiary dedicated to Specs.

Snap says the so-called ‘Specs Inc’ subsidiary will primarily allow for “new partnerships and capital flexibility,” including the potential for minority investment. More concretely, Specs Inc also insolates Snap from any potential failure.

Whether that betrays a lack of confidence is unclear, although the top executive who oversaw the release of the fourth and fifth-gen versions—notably the only two with displays and AR capabilities—doesn’t smack of confidence.

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Pico to Showcase VisionOS and Android XR Competitor at GDC Next Month

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Pico announced that it’s showcasing the core OS and platform capabilities of its upcoming XR headset ‘Project Swan’ at next month’s Game Developers Conference (GDC).

The News

Project Swan is going to be Pico’s next flagship XR headset, the company says in its GDC session description, which is also slated to run PICO OS 6, the next version of the company’s Android-based operating system.

While the company hasn’t expressly said it will also reveal Project Swan’s hardware at GDC in March, Pico says it will provide “an overview of Project Swan’s graphics performance, multimodal interaction system, and developer toolchain, as well as practical guidance on bringing existing apps or games into spatial computing workflows,” which is set to include “concrete examples and live demos.”

Pico 4 Ultra | Image courtesy Pico Interactive

“This session introduces the core OS and platform capabilities that enable developers—from XR specialists to non-XR app, web, and game creators—to build or adapt content for this emerging medium,” Pico says. “It presents a new paradigm for spatial experiences in which games and apps coexist, allowing a primary experience to run alongside companion applications in a shared environment.”

The Information initially reported last summer that Project Swan is set to be a slim and light headset weighing in at around 100 grams, which allegedly features a hybrid design that offloads processing to a tethered compute puck. Other reported features include hand and eye-tracking for input.

Then, in November 2025, Zhenyuan Yang, Vice President of Technology at Pico parent company ByteDance, revealed the headset will house a self-developed chip with a custom microOLED display, the latter of which is said to approach 4,000 PPI—slightly higher than that of Apple Vision Pro’s 3,386 PPI.

Furthermore, Yang said Pico’s microOLED displays reach an average 40 PPD (over 45 at center), and addresses brightness limitations by incorporating microlens (MLA) technology and optical compensation for uniform color and luminance.

We expect to learn more at GDC next month, which takes place March 9th – 13th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California.

My Take

Project Swan is slated to mark a significant next step for the company. Pico’s parent company ByteDance ostensibly isn’t throwing money at its XR division like it was before though, so it’s a new game.

Battle lines have shifted since Pico first launched its Pico 4 series headsets in 2022 though. Back then, Pico was nipping at Meta at its peripheral territories in East Asia and Europe, relying on its unique access to the Chinese market, and leaning heavily into enterprise. It also released Pico 4 Ultra in 2024, a direct competitor to Quest 3.

That same year, Apple released Vision Pro, priced at $3,500. A year later, it followed up with an M5-based hardware refresh at the same price point, while Google formally launched Android XR alongside Samsung’s Galaxy XR headset, priced at $1,800—moves that effectively reframed the competitive landscape.

Rather than racing to the bottom, companies are increasingly targeting the high end, as early expectations around mass-market consumer adoption seemed to have faltered, with Meta’s recent pullback from funding first-party Quest content possibly signaling a broader shift in how the industry approaches the consumer XR segment.

That said, I’d expect Project Swan to straddle the prosumer-enterprise segment, as the company’s next flagship probably won’t be cheap enough to make any grand overtures to consumers while simultaneously offering the very same consumer-oriented platform Pico built up over the years, which hosts a wide array of XR games and apps.

To me, this increasingly puts Pico more in competition with visionOS and Android XR, rather than as a direct competitor to Horizon OS. That said, Meta’s upcoming headset could possibly arrive next year, which is reportedly also a slim and light headset tethered to a compute puck, which may put all four—Apple, Google, Meta and Pico—in the same boat.

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Apple Reportedly Accelerates Smart Glasses Development Amid Wider Push for AI Hardware

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Apple is reportedly accelerating the development of smart glasses, as the company is ostensibly making a shift toward AI-centric hardware.

According to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is ramping up development of its forthcoming smart glasses, which are slated to head into production as early as December 2026, with public release expected sometime in 2027.

Apple’s smart glasses are being positioned to compete with Meta and EssilorLuxottica’s most recent smart glasses, the report maintains.

While this mostly echoes previous reports from last October, Apple appears to be accelerating development, having recently distributed a broader set of glasses prototypes within its hardware engineering division.

According to an all-hands meeting with employees earlier this month, CEO Tim Cook supposedly also hinted that Apple would be pushing hard into AI devices, noting that the company was working on new “categories of products” centered around AI.

“We’re extremely excited about that,” Cook said in the internal meeting, saying “[t]he world is changing fast.”

Citing people familiar with Apple’s plans, the smart glasses (allegedly codenamed ‘N50’) are said to include two cameras: a high-resolution camera for photos and video, and another dedicated to computer vision tasks. The high quality onboard cameras and overall build quality are expected to set it apart from competing products, the report maintains.

Array of Meta smart glasses | Image courtesy Brad Lynch

Similar to Meta’s audio-only smart glasses though, Apple’s N50 hardware isn’t expected to include a display of any kind, instead relying on cameras, speakers and microphones for things such as phone calls, AI queries, listening to music, and capturing images.

Apple allegedly floated the idea of partnering with eyewear brands—similar to Meta’s partnership with EssilorLuxottica or Google’s partnership with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster—the company seems to have more recently decided on developing in-house designs, which are said to arrive in a variety of sizes and colors.

“Early prototypes of the glasses connect via a cable to a standalone battery pack and an iPhone, but newer versions have the components embedded in the frame,” Bloomberg reports. “The design uses high-end materials, including acrylic elements intended to give the glasses a premium feel. Apple is already discussing launching the device in additional styles over time.”

This comes as Apple is investing more heavily in AI in effort to better compete with Google and OpenAI, which comes part and parcel with a critical redesign of Siri. The report also maintains Apple is working on an AI-powered pendant and AirPods with expanded AI capabilities—all three of which will rely on visual input.

Notably, the report maintains that all three will rely on connection to iPhone. Apple did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

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VisionOS Update Gives Devs Improved Tools for VR Cloud Streaming

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Apple Vision Pro just got a new update that brings Foveated Streaming to the headset, essentially the same bandwidth-saving feature Valve is bringing to its upcoming Steam Frame headset.

The News

As noted by VR supply chain analyst Brad Lynch, foveated streaming has arrived on Vision Pro via the latest visionOS 26.4 beta update, which landed on February 16th.

Much like Valve’s foveated streaming solution for Steam Frame, Apple’s implementation uses Vision Pro’s eye-tracking to optimize the streamed image to serve up the highest quality at the very center of your view, according to recent Apple developer documentation.

If you have an existing virtual reality game, experience, or application built for desktop computers or a cloud server, you can stream it to Apple Vision Pro with the Foveated Streaming framework.

Foveated Streaming allows your endpoint to stream high quality content only where necessary based on information about the approximate region where the person is looking, ensuring performance.

Additionally, Apple notes that on Vision Pro, foveated streaming allows for a sort of hybrid approach to computing: you can display visionOS spatial content alongside streaming content, such as a flight simulator rendering a cockpit using RealityKit while processor-intensive landscapes are streamed from a remote computer to the device.

The key difference is the focus and implementation. Valve seems to be applying Foveated Rendering globally, meaning all Steam apps will benefit out of the box. Valve’s focus is also on local PC streaming, which is done via a direct Wi-Fi 6E connection.

Instead, Vision Pro apps and games need to be specifically integrated with Apple’s version of the technology, with Apple additionally supporting NVIDIA’s CloudXR SDK, which allows developers of existing VR apps created for desktop computers as well as cloud servers to stream to Vision Pro.

My Take

On the face of it, it looks like Apple is matching Valve punch-for-punch with foveated streaming, although I wouldn’t take this as Apple meaningfully looking to compete with the upcoming Steam Frame on the consumer end of things.

The $3,500 Vision Pro M5 refresh likely won’t come down in price anytime soon, and I don’t suspect Apple is trying to get a bunch of PC VR developers onboard to create consumer-facing versions of their apps that will need to be specifically integrated with Vision Pro foveated streaming.

If I were an enterprise user though, I would may be pretty interested in the new update, as this opens up one of the key features Steam Frame is bringing to the table.

Being able to push more compute-intensive apps to a headset they likely already own could stop some companies from justifying a Steam Frame(s) purchase, which Apple is all too happy to oblige—especially as the recent memory and storage crisis has seen components shoot up in price so dramatically, causing Valve to take reassess pricing and release date of Steam Frame.

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SlimeVR Launches Crowdfunding Campaign for Thinner & Lighter Full-Body Trackers

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SlimeVR has launched its next crowdfunding campaign, this time looking to get backers excited about its next-gen ‘Butterfly’ body trackers, which promise to be thinner, lighter, and offer a longer-lasting battery.

SlimeVR’s crowdfunding campaign for the new Butterfly Trackers quickly crossed its $180,000 funding goal when it went live on February 9th, now sitting at over $347,000 from nearly 760 backers.

Much like the original SlimeVR Full-Body Tracker, which attracted more than $9 million in 2021, the IMU-based body tracking solution lets VR users better articulate their avatars without the need of base stations or external sensors of any type. It’s also handy for things like motion capture and VTubing.

Image courtesy SlimeVR

That said, Butterfly Trackers are built using the same tracking technology and the ICM-45686 IMU chip by TDK as the original, something SlimeVR notes also includes the same long drift reset times and tracking quality.

The key innovation however is the inclusion of a custom 2.4 GHz dongle instead of Wi-Fi, which essentially allows the trackers to be smaller, lighter, and have a longer battery life. SlimeVR estimates each tracker can last up to 48 hours on a single charge, which is more than double its original Full-Body Trackers.

And because they’re so thin and light, this also includes a few new methods of attachment, including directly via straps, clips, and even iron-on patches.

Image courtesy SlimeVR

Notably, all SlimeVR trackers are compatible with standalone headsets, including Meta Quest, Pico, or Steam Frame, as well as any headset that uses SteamVR.

The campaign’s lowest backer tier is the ‘Core Set Bundle’, which includes six Butterfly Trackers for $279, which are estimated to ship by Aug 31st, 2026. SlimeVR says the six-unit bundle is enough to track the position and rotation of your hip, knees, and chest, as well as the position (re: not rotation) of your feet.

You can check out the full specs list and additional funding tiers over on the SlimeVR Butterfly Tracker Crowd Supply campaign, which ends March 19th.

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‘VRChat’ Breaks All-Time Concurrent User Record with Japanese Anime Concert

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VRChat announced it just topped its all-time user peak, bringing in over 150,000 concurrent users to attend a Japanese language concert.

VRChat Community Head ‘Tupper’ confirmed on X that the social VR platform hit a new all-time high of 156,716 concurrent users over the weekend.

The platform played host to Sanrio Virtual Festival, a music and anime culture festival taking place from February 8th to March 8th, although it was the main act that drew in glut of the fans though—a musical performance by Kaguya, the main character from Netflix anime series Cosmic Princess Kaguya! 

You can check out a clip of the concert below, courtesy YouTuber ‘Koge’s Game Streaming Channel’ (こげのゲーム配信ちゃんねる):

If you want to catch the act ‘live’ in VRChat, you’ll have three more occasions. Bookmark this link when it’s time:

• Sunday, March 1st 18:00 [JST]
• March 7th (Sat) 12:00 [JST]
• Sunday, March 8th 12:00 [JST]

Notably, the month-long festival will include performances from a host of VTubers and musical groups, and also includes a virtual theme park featuring Sanrio characters such as Hello Kitty.

This follows VRChat’s most recent record-breaking event, which took place during the recent New Year’s Eve celebration. Then, the platform welcomed in a peak of 148,886 concurrent users during the Central Time Zone ball drop.

While we don’t know the specific numbers for how the Japan time zone fared during the NYE ball drop, at the time Tupper said Japan-based users had “a strong showing,” noting the number “did surprise me.”

VRChat has long been a popular platform in Japan, however lately it seems to have broken through to mainstream Japanese culture. In June 2025, McDonald’s Japan opened an official VRChat world, which came as part of a larger marketing campaign involving popular VTubers.

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Vision Pro Finally Gets Native ‘YouTube’ App with Full Immersive Video Library

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Vision Pro users have been waiting over two years for a native YouTube app. Now, it’s finally here—thankfully also including support for immersive videos.

The News

Google first announced that a YouTube app was “on the road map” shortly after Vision Pro’s February 2024 launch, although it never gave a specific release window, leaving users searching for alternatives beyond simply opening YouTube in Safari, which notably didn’t include native support for spatial video.

The official YouTube app, which is now available on the App Store, now gives Vision Pro users access to every YouTube video and Short, which includes access to all of the regular YouTube features, such as subscriptions, playlists, and watch history.

Image courtesy Apple, Google

What’s more, the official YouTube app also comes with support for viewing spatial videos, which including all 3D, VR180, and 360 videos on the platform. Vision Pro users can find them by navigating to the app’s dedicated ‘Spatial’ tab.

Additionally, Google maintains YouTube for Vision Pro also includes video playback up to 8K for the M5 version, which was released last October.

My Take

There’s no official explanation out there (yet), although there are probably a few reasons why YouTube didn’t come to Vision Pro up until now.

The most obvious to me: Apple’s $3,500 XR headset likely presented a limited return on investment for Google, which may or may not have been influenced by the companies’ historical platform rivalry. Notably, there is still no Gmail, Chrome, Docs, Drive, Photos, Maps—no Google-owned app on Vision Pro except YouTube right now.

That said, YouTube did make a spatial version of its app for Android XR, which was released with Samsung Galaxy XR last October. The relative timing makes me think the release on Vision Pro was more of a knock-on effect of having already built than leadership at YouTube specifically determining that now would finally be profitable, as I don’t suspect the M5 hardware refresh has significantly driven additional consumer interest.

Whatever the case, YouTube has now found itself on the hook for maintaining the app across three distinct XR platforms: Android XR, visionOS and Horizon OS.

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