According to video discovered in Pico’s public SDK, it appears the company’s next flagship headset has just been leaked.
Trusted data miner and serial leaker Luna was sent what appears to be a number of tutorial videos for Project Swan, which were buried in Pico’s public SDK.
Luna, who also leaked multiple devices in the past including Meta Ray-Ban Display, additionally confirmed the videos seen below are indeed authentic.
PICO Project Swan
I was sent these by a source claiming it is in the public SDK, and I was able to independently verify that is indeed the case (you can too) pic.twitter.com/wAVa56OY1T
What it reveals: a headset very much inspired by Apple Vision Pro and Samsung Galaxy XR, as it appears to include a separate battery unit and woven headstrap à la Vision Pro, and a body similar to Galaxy XR.
Vision Pro Solo Knit Band | Courtesy Apple
Earlier this week Qualcomm seemingly teased its next-gen Snapdragon XR chipset targeted at standalone headsets, something the company says we’ll learn more about “soon.”
Notably, Pico said back in March that Project Swan will contain a co-processor that combines custom XR silicon and a separate flagship SoC with “more than 2× CPU and GPU performance vs XR2 Gen 2,” something the company say will launch globally in late 2026. While possibly a coincidence, the timing does raise an eyebrow at whether Pico will be the first to include Qualcomm’s next-gen Snapdragon XR chip.
That said, we’re still waiting to hear a lot more about Project Swan, including its pricing, official naming scheme and (not to mention) full spec sheet.
So far, Pico has revealed it will weight in at 270g (presumably just the headset and not battery) and include microOLED panels with 4,000 pixels per inch (PPI). The headset’s optics are also said to provide an average ~40 pixels per degree (PPD) and a center sweet spot exceeding 45 PPD.
Qualcomm seems to be teasing its next-gen Snapdragon XR chipset targeted at standalone headsets, something the company says we’ll learn more about “soon.”
It’s uncertain whether Qualcomm is getting ready to announce its next-gen Snapdragon XR3 platform, or Gen 3 of its previously released XR2 chipset. What is certain though is XR’s biggest chip manufacturer has something new in store, teasing a “new reality” in a short clip posted on X.
Imagine #XR that's smarter and more immersive than anything you've experienced before. Something new is coming pic.twitter.com/2Of6E0BS2R
And while Qualcomm says we’re due to learn about it “soon,” there’s really no telling when that could be, as the company really hasn’t stuck to a set release schedule for its various XR chip announcements.
Notably, Qualcomm announced Snapdragon XR1 at AWE 2018 in May, Snapdragon XR2 at Snapdragon Tech Summit in December 2019, Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 right before the launch of the Quest 3 in 2023, and Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 just before CES 2024.
There are however a few venues the company could announce its next iteration of Snapdragon XR. Qualcomm’s June 24th Investor Relations Day may deliver our first bit of insight into its first slate of hardware partners. There’s also the company’s big Snapdragon Summit in late September, which is notably during the exact same timeframe as Meta Connect.
Thus far, Meta has only teased what appears to be a new slate of smart glasses though, which in the past have integrated Qualcomm’s Snapdragon AR1 chipset. Meta is also seemingly preparing a puck-tethered thin and light standalone, codenamed ‘Phoenix’, although that’s reportedly been delayed to 2027.
Possibly a more likely (and timely) candidate is Pico’s upcoming Project Swan, which the Byte Dance-owned company teased in March to contain a separate flagship SoC with “more than 2× CPU and GPU performance vs XR2 Gen 2.” That’s supposed to launch globally sometime in late 2026, so we may learn a lot more fairly soon.
If you’re a regular reader of Road to VR you’ll notice the site just got a huge facelift. I’m excited to introduce this new version of Road to VR, the first major revision to our humble publication in a decade.
I have to hand it to our old site. Although it evolved over the years, the foundation was technically the same server and layout that launched all the way back in 2015. It wasn’t perfect, but it did the job for far longer than it should have reasonably been asked to. But the future, as they say, is now. I’m happy to finally introduce Road to VR 5.0, and to tell you a little bit about the goals that guided its design.
At a high level, Road to VR 5.0 aims to achieve the following:
Fully responsive – In the past, the mobile experience on our site felt like a second-class citizen to the desktop experience. With 5.0, there is no longer a ‘desktop’ and ‘mobile’ version of the site, instead everyone can access the same unified content stream no matter what device they’re using.
Cleaner – made to take advantage of the larger screen real estate and higher resolutions than what was common in 2015 (when the prior layout was conceived).
Better organized – a clearer system of content organization made to serve readers rather than search engines. Check out the site’s Menu to explore content based on the topics that are most relevant to you.
Faster and more capable – the new version loads faster and has a much more modern foundation, allowing us to make tweaks and improvements far more easily than before.
Ready for the future – our new server infrastructure gives Road to VR massive headroom for growing our readership and enables a number of planned features that are still to come.
For the Power Users
While I’m very pleased with the look and feel of the new site, I know not everyone will prefer the more spacious layout. Sometimes you just want to power through the latest content with minimal distractions. If that sounds like you, I encourage you to check out the Power Feed. This is a chronological feed of the latest content, with a greater density of articles in the same space.
Road to VR 5.0 launched with some rough edges. Thanks to community feedback, many of those have already been sanded down. But the work isn’t done; carrying over more than 10,000 articles and nearly 50GB of media that we’ve published over more than a decade was never going to be easy, and I’m sure some things have been missed or aren’t behaving as intended.
I welcome feedback from anyone who spots bugs, rough edges, or has suggestions for improvements. Feel free to reach out to feedback [at] roadtovr.com. If you are reporting a specific issue, it would be a huge help if you’d also include a screenshot, the device you’re using, and the browser version.
A Look Back
2026 marks 15 years since Road to VR was first launched. So much has changed in that time, but a little visual history goes a long way:
Road to VR 1.0Road to VR 2.0Road to VR 3.0Road to VR 4.0
A Look Ahead
What’s ahead for both Road to VR and the XR industry at large, I believe, is certainly much more exciting than what’s behind. The industry is in a cooling period right now, but it’s not the first we’ve seen, and it won’t be the last. What’s actually driving the cooling period is a transition that’s happening quietly at first, but will be loud before we know. The combination of the world’s biggest tech companies (Meta, Google, and Apple) vying for the next phase of XR, and a shift toward lighter and more comfortable form-factors for head-worn devices, is going to take the industry to the next level. With Road to VR 5.0, we’re poised to bring you the very latest on that future, as it happens.
Business Updates & Recognition
As it was when we started back in 2011, Road to VR continues to be a completely independent publication with no outside investors.
Back in 2017 we partnered with media company Gamer Network to run our ad operations (with a contractual obligation that it would not get involved in the editorial side of our business). Gamer Network was sold to IGN back in 2024, and at the time we amicably ended our partnership. Since then we returned to managing our ad operations internally, while maintaining the same firewall between ads and editorial that has guided us from the very beginning. So this is technically old news, but worth putting on the record for the sake of transparency. And hey, maybe someone can finally update the Gamer Network Wikipedia entry so Road to VR is no longer listed under the ‘Partnered’ section of their page. After 15 years, we still don’t have our own Wikipedia page….
Road to VR wouldn’t be here after all these years without the passion and dedication of our small team. I want to give a special thanks to Scott Hayden, our longstanding Editor. Scott is a powerhouse of a reporter who I knew I could trust to hold down the fort while I focused on getting this new version of Road to VR out the door. It simply wouldn’t have been possible without his talent and dedication. And I want to thank my co-founder Paul James who is the mastermind and maintainer behind the technical infrastructure that kept Road to VR running smoothly for the last decade.
Apple spent a major portion of its WWDC 2026 keynote this week talking about new AI features that are part of an enhanced version of Siri. While most of the features will be accessible across devices, Siri on visionOS 27 has some unique touches that take advantage of Vision Pro.
The News
An overhauled version of Siri—which Apple is now calling “Siri AI”—is headed to Apple’s version 27 operating systems. The company detailed a wide range of capabilities, both new and improved, which make Siri AI more useful and more capable than previous versions.
“Siri AI is an entirely new version of Siri deeply integrated into iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro,” the company announced this week. “It can draw on personal context understanding to search across messages, emails, photos, and more, and get things done across apps with even more systemwide app actions. Additionally, Siri AI can answer questions related to the content on a user’s screen or go out to the web to get up-to-date information using broad world knowledge and generate a helpful answer. A dedicated Siri app allows users to revisit a past conversation or kick off a new one—all in one place—and uses iCloud to privately sync conversational history across a user’s products.”
Beyond the new capabilities that will work across most of Apple’s modern devices, Siri AI is getting some unique attention on Vision Pro. In VisionOS 27, the Siri ‘orb’ becomes a placeable widget that can sit in the room with you. And when you want to talk to it, simply look at the orb and start talking. It’s a seamless way to activate Siri using Vision Pro’s eye-tracking, without needing to tap anything or say a wake word.
Courtesy Apple
Siri is also getting ‘see what you see’ capabilities on Vision Pro. If the user asks the system to look at something, Siri has visual context of the user’s view of both the digital and real world. So you can ask about something you see on a webpage floating in front of you just as easily as you can ask about a piece of artwork on your wall.
Courtesy Apple
This is a much more natural way to use visual intelligence capabilities that have been part of earlier versions of Apple Intelligence but were not exposed in particularly obvious ways.
The new Siri app, which functions more like a traditional AI chatbot, is getting a native visionOS version.
Courtesy Apple
Apple says Siri AI is compatible with both the original Vision Pro (M2) and latest Vision Pro (M5). It’s available as a developer preview within visionOS 27 which is available now. Apple plans to roll out Siri AI features as a “beta” to the public later this year.
My Take
The inclusion of high-accuracy eye-tracking on Vision Pro continues to pay dividends to Apple. Turning Siri on Vision Pro into a persistent widget that’s activated with eye-tracking is the kind of subtle but clever idea that could very well set the standard for interacting with voice assistants on immersive devices going forward. Using eye-tracking to add context about the user’s question is also a smart way to leverage the feature.
Siri’s newfound ability to see the user’s digital and real world brings it much closer in line with Gemini’s visual capabilities on Android XR, which I’ve previously pointed to as a standout advantage over the AI capabilities of visionOS and Meta’s Horizon OS.
It’s unclear at this time if Siri on Vision Pro will be fed a still image of the world around the user at the time of the query, or if it will get a live view of the world around the user (as we see with Gemini on Android XR). The difference between a static or live view could lead to a significant gap in the usefulness of Siri AI’s ‘vision’ on Vision Pro compared to Gemini. On Android XR, Gemini can continuously see what’s around the user, enabling ongoing conversations with Gemini that evolve as new things happen. We’ll have to wait to see if Siri on Vision Pro can do the same.
We also don’t know if Siri will be able to ‘see’ during every query or if only specific queries will cause the headset to consider the world around the user. For Apple’s part, the company says it continues to emphasize privacy in its AI features, and says that any data that leaves the headset is processed in an encrypted way that’s not accessible to Apple or third parties.
Meta announced that it is rolling out updated kiosks inside of Best Buy, the biggest electronics retailer in the US. The new 900 square-foot “store in a store” offers a place for customers to demo Meta’s AI glasses and VR headsets.
The News
Meta has a long-running relationship with Best Buy and is no stranger to placing in-store kiosks with trained staff in stores to give customers the opportunity to go hands-on with its hardware. However, the company’s most recent kiosks have focused primarily on its AI glasses, creating an apparent divide between older, separately placed kiosks focused on Quest headsets.
Now the company says it’s rolling out a more unified experience, called “Meta Lab @ Best Buy,” an expanded kiosk that includes AI glasses and VR headsets in the same space, both of which are available for a hands-on experience.
Courtesy Best Buy
The company says the Meta Lab spaces are “designed for hands-on discovery, where people can explore Meta’s expansive lineup of AI glasses and VR headsets through interactive demos, smart mirrors, personalized fittings and more—all with support from dedicated Meta Sales Specialists.”
Meta plans to roll out 50 such spaces in Best Buy locations across the US and Canada, and notes that the following locations will be the first to open this Summer:
San Carlos, CA
Roseville, MN
Woodland Park, NJ
Greenville, SC
Columbus, OH
The new Meta Lab @ Best Buy spaces appear to be a natural outgrowth of the company’s Meta Lab pop-up locations that rolled out in late 2025 to give the company a temporary boost to its retail presence in support of the Ray-Ban Display launch. These spaces also included Quest headsets and demos. Some of the Meta Lab pop-up locations have become permanent retail locations.
My Take
The move comes after Meta’s aggressive shift in focus away from its VR business and toward its AI glasses business, which has left many unsure of Meta’s long-term commitment to VR.
Meta launched Ray-Ban Display—its first AI glasses with a display—in late 2025. At the time the company launched new Best Buy kiosks which were exclusively focused on its AI glasses, and didn’t even include Meta’s VR headsets for sale. Meta was seemingly rushing these kiosks out the door because the company opted not to sell Ray-Ban Display to anyone without an in-person fitting. The need to deploy the kiosks in time for the launch of Ray-Ban Display is probably why we didn’t see the initial kiosks include Quest headsets at the outset. And, indeed, this is likely because of the rather abrupt shift in Meta’s focus toward its AI glasses.
With the new Meta Lab @ Best Buy spaces, the company’s retail strategy is catching up to its product strategy. While we probably can’t infer too much about what this means for Meta’s long-term commitment to VR, it at least tells us that the company wants to make sure all of its hardware can be seen together in one retail space.
In any case, seeing more spaces that offer hands-on demos of VR headsets is a good thing. The VR experience remains almost impossible to describe to someone who has never used a modern headset; actually trying on a VR headset is a reliably mind-blowing experience for first-time users. But it’s difficult to give people that opportunity at scale.
It’s been nearly a decade since Vertigo Games released Arizona Sunshine (2016) on PC VR headsets, serving up one of the industry’s first immersive zombie-shooting adventures. Now the Netherlands-based studio is bringing the franchise to PC and console as a “reimagined” flatscreen game.
While names can be deceiving, the flatscreen version of Arizona Sunshine isn’t a VR-to-flatscreen port of either the original 2016 version or the more recently released Arizona Sunshine Remake (2024) as such, but rather a fully reimagined third-person action game that takes the series’ zombie combat and combines it with the story introduced in Arizona Sunshine 2 (2023).
From the trailer, it also appears to be designed around larger zombie hordes and spectacle combat rather than the slower, more methodical pacing of VR. Weapons include shotguns, flamethrowers, grenade launchers, machetes, and more, with Sunny’s canine pal, Buddy, actively taking part in combat.
Slated top release on PS5, Xbox, Switch 2, and PC sometime this year, the flatscreen game promises both solo and co-op gameplay, the latter of which lets you play as Buddy.
Vertigo Games seems to be following some recent precedent set by Moss studio Polyarc Games, which announced in May it was working on a flatscreen adaptation of the VR puzzle-platformer series, which combines both Moss (2018) and sequel Moss: Book II (2022) into a single PC/console title, Moss: The Forgotten Relic.
Like Polyarc, Vertigo Games has experienced some recent turmoil, which puts the Arizona Sunshine flatscreen game announcement under an odd spotlight; last week, the studio announced was closing its Amsterdam-based satellite studio known for VR action-adventure Metro Awakening VR (2024).
Granted, this isn’t the first flatscreen game by Vertigo Games. Founded in 2008, the Rotterdam-based studio released a number of flatscreen adventure games before working exclusively on VR games.
Still, it’s a marked shift in priorities prompted by Meta’s recent Reality Labs XR pivot division, which not only saw the closure of a several internal game studios and a torrent of cancelled projects, but also the revelation it was pulling funding from a number of third-party VR projects as well.
The developer behind The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is no longer working on VR projects following a merger last year that has effectively retooled the studio to develop a traditional PC/console title.
According to Game File, the former Skydance team—which developed VR titles The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners (2020), The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution (2022), and Skydance’s Behemoth (2024)—is now working on an unannounced non-VR title for PC and consoles.
The change follows the 2025 merger between Skydance Media and Paramount, which recently consolidated the company’s gaming operations under the newly formed Paramount Games Studio.
Shawn Kittelsen, Paramount Games Studio’s Head of Creative and Production, confirmed the news with Game File, noting the former VR-focused team is currently developing an unannounced game for PC and consoles.
Kittelsen revealed the new Paramount gaming team is made up of two former internal Skydance Studios, one of which created The Walking Dead Saints & Sinners, and the other behind upcoming PC/console flatscreen game Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra.
The move seems to mark the end (or significant pause) of the studio’s tenure as a dedicated VR developer following its spin-up by Skydance in 2016, which saw its first title Archangel (2017) release across all major VR headsets.
While still unconfirmed, it was reported earlier this year that Skydance was working on an official Harry Potter VR title slated to release as a Quest exclusive, although it was cancelled as a result of Meta pulling funding to it and a number of AAA projects across the ecosystem, including a sequel to Batman: Arkham Shadow (2024) by Meta’s Sanzaru Games, which Meta closed alongside Armature Studio and Twisted Pixel.
