Images of Meta’s ‘Project Phoenix’ mixed reality headset appear to have leaked ahead of its anticipated unveiling at Connect later this month.
The News
Serial leaker ‘Luna’ appears to have found video within Quest’s Horizon OS showing off the headset’s prescription lenses, which are apparently set to be released in partnership by Meta’s official prescription lens provider, Zenni Optical.
First official visuals of Meta's Project Phoenix, found in the HorizonOS Prescription Lens firmware package! pic.twitter.com/YmN0SCJNCD
It also gives us our first look at Phoenix following the leak of a setup video in July/ Although conveniently blurred, it’s unmistakably Meta’s forthcoming slim and light standalone mixed reality headset.
Interestingly, the new images appear to reveal that Phoenix will have both sideways and downward-facing sensors, present on the outer and underside of the headset’s temple. It’s uncertain what the downward-facing sensors could be used for, although some suggest it may be used in face tracking.
Courtesy Luna
As previously seen in the July leaks, Phoenix also features independent lens spacing, removable nose clips for individual user comfort, and built-in hand and eye-tracking, which all but confirms there will also be front-facing sensors and sensors embedded close to the user’s eyes as well.
Another tacit confirmation: although Phoenix still lacks an official name, price and release date, the images confirm we’re dealing with Meta’s next-gen follow-up to Quest 3/3S; the headset offers a hybrid design, presenting a near glasses-like profile by offloading compute to a cable-tethered unit—still to be revealed.
Notably, an image near the end of the recent video shows the tether trailing off the left temple (the QR code seen below appears to be a mock-up).
Courtesy Luna
If the cadence of leaks is any indication, we’re hoping to learn more at Meta Connect later this month, which is set to kick off on September 23–24, 2026.
There, Meta is also likely to show off a new pair of smart glasses in addition to “the latest in VR, wearables, metaverse, and AI.”
My Take
I don’t expect to see Phoenix get the big ‘Quest 4’ naming badge when it launches, primarily because everything I’ve seen up to this point indicates the company is pivoting away from the its metaverse ambitions and game-focused consumer segment, and looking towards prosumers and enterprise.
To boot, Meta has shuttered internal XR game studios, cancelled several AAA VR games in progress, and positioned its Reality Labs XR division to work primarily on AI wearables, including Meta Glasses.
Meta Glasses | Courtesy Meta
And while Phoenix may even come along with Touch controller support, giving it de facto access to Quest’s library of VR games and apps, I feel the company is finally attempting to make a general computing platform that will rival Apple Vision Pro—if not in specs, at least in its intended ethos.
As it is, Meta appears to be reducing the main friction points for XR users looking to replace their traditional monitors, which will undoubtedly come at a price well beyond the cheap and cheerful Quest 3S. Meta’s also likely to make overtures to developers looking to use Phoenix as a developer kit for the creation of augmented reality apps, as Phoenix is surely set to front run any such dedicated AR device from Meta.
We’re of course looking to confirm this (and a lot more) at Connect from September 22-23rd, as we’ll have boots on the ground at Meta’s Menlo Park HQ where the event will take place.
Award-winning rogue-lite bow-shooter In Death: Unchained (2020) isn’t dead, at least not with a new season coming later this month.
The last actual update for In Death: Unchainedwas three years ago when developers Superbright announced it was releasing enhancements for Quest 3. After that, it was assumed the game was essentially in developer purgatory.
Now, the studio announced that come September 29th, In Death: Unchained is getting its Fall 2026 Season. Like seasons past, the game is slated to reset every leaderboard, although achievement progress stays with you into the new season.
That said, the studio hasn’t actually announced any new content, although they promise they’ll have “more news to share later,” which hopefully means there’s more on the horizon than simply news that its Summer 2024 season is coming to a close.
Notably, the original version of In Death on Steam hasn’t received any updates since developer Sólfar Studios transferred the IP to Superbright, which took place sometime in 2019; this may cast doubt on the game ever being optimized to run on the soon-to-release Steam Frame.
As it is, In Death: Unchained is available on the Horizon Store for Quest 3/3S for $30, as well as freely available for Horizon+ subscribers. It’s also on the Pico Store for Pico 3 and 4 series headsets, as well as the upcoming Space Pro.
Hello Games has released its biggest update yet to VR-supported space sim No Man’s Sky (2016), completely overhauling space itself.
At the game’s 2016 launch, space was admittedly barebones, offering relatively sparse interactions outside mining asteroids for fuel and resources, and occasionally encountering pirates or other ships. And while there have been 40+ updates since then, space always felt a little more empty than it rightfully should.
The game, which supports PSVR 2 and PC VR headsets, just got its ‘Cosmos’ update in celebration of its 10th anniversary though, bringing a whole new take on space travel and what you might find in between planet runs.
Now, in Cosmos, you can claim and personalize a space station, join an alliance, construct a space base, strip hulking wrecks for loot, and take on a new set of missions.
You’ll also find new asteroid belts of rock and ice, which can be tapped for valuable crystal resources or be the platform for your very own star base.
“Build your own truck stop for star ships, orbital restaurant, or military outpost. There’s something incredibly special about floating in space, planets looming large below you, watching the universe go by,” the studio says in a PlayStation blog post.
Notably, Cosmos is No Man’s Sky 7.0 update, something Hello Games CEO Sean Murray calls “real endgame stuff.” That said, the studio hasn’t said when it will push the game’s final update; Hello Games announced in 2023 it was working on Light No Fire, an open-world fantasy survival game thus far only confirmed for release on flatscreen systems.
You can learn more about the latest update by checking out the changelog and by watching the deep dive interview with Murray below.
TikTok parent ByteDance is reportedly preparing an AI model that could let you create real-time spatial videos similar to Google Genie.
According to a Bloomberg report, ByteDance is readying an AI model dedicated to creating real-time spatial videos, which the company hopes will act as a “flywheel” to its various companies, including video streaming giant TikTok and its XR hardware subsidiary, Pico Interactive.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the report maintains founder Zhang Yiming is personally overseeing the development as it nears launch as soon as next month.
The AI model is thought to work similar to Google’s Genie, which not only generates interactive virtual environments in real-time, but also can simulate physical environments for AI agents.
Notably, Zhang reportedly sees the tech as a major component linking the company’s existing AI models and cloud computing resources with its content platforms and XR headset subsidiary, Pico Interactive.
The report maintains the model is being built on Seedance, the company’s AI model for generating cinematic videos.
It’s unclear whether ByteDance’s real-time spatial video model is the main reasoning behind the delay, or something else.
Speculatively speaking, Pico may also be facing issues as Valve upcoming Steam Frame standalone headset, which is primarily due to the ongoing global component shortage—seeing RAM, storage, and reportedly also now Qualcomm SoCs prices skyrocket.
The company says it will unveil Pico Space Pro sometime in Q4, so we’re hoping to learn more soon, as Q4 is due to officially start October 1st.
Pico’s upcoming Apple Vision Pro competitor, Space Pro, was initially meant to debut earlier this month, although the ByteDance subsidiary cancelled the event and postponed its reveal and release date. Now, the company’s next flagship standalone XR headset just cleared the FCC.
Previously known as ‘Project Swan’, Pico Space Pro has now surfaced in FCC filings, which is typically one of the last hurdles before a company can commercialize electronics in the US. The news was first reported by UploadVR.
At the event, which was supposed to take place on September 2nd in Beijing, we were hoping to see a more complete spec sheet, as well as learn the price and release date. That said, much is already known about the device, which is referred to in the filings as a ‘Mixed Reality Computer’.
Leaked ‘Project Swan’ render | Courtesy Luna
Space Pro is set to include microOLED displays boasting 4,000 pixels per inch (PPI), an average ~40 pixels per degree (PPD), and a dual-chip architecture: a custom XR silicon for perception and imaging (claimed ~12 ms perception latency) and separate flagship SoC with “more than 2× CPU and GPU performance vs XR2 Gen 2.”
Pico hasn’t specified exactly when it plans on rescheduling Space Pro’s reveal, although the company says we should expect launch sometime in Q4 2026.
Although the company maintains the delay was to “spend more time on a major upgrade to the software experience,” the timing suggests Space Pro may also be affected by the global component shortage, which has not only seen RAM and storage prices skyrocket, reportedly now Qualcomm SoCs too.
As it is, Pico seems to be taking a slower, more deliberate approach to launch though. When it cancelled the device’s reveal (just one week before the actual event), the company announced it was instead expanding its ‘Global Early Access Program’ closed beta to a number of hand-picked testers, which includes sending pre-production units and software to applicants.
Pico Space Pro isn’t only set to compete against Apple Vision Pro, but also Samsung’s Galaxy XR headset—the first to run Google’s Android XR processing system—in addition to Valve’s Steam Frame, which still doesn’t have a price or release.
In Inside XR Design we examine specific examples of great VR design. Today we’re looking at the clever design of Red Matter 2’s ‘grabber tools’ and the many ways that they contribute to immersion.
Editor’s Note: Red Matter 2 was released four years ago this month! Despite its age, it remains one of the best looking and most immersive games on Quest. In celebration of the game’s release anniversary, we’re bumping this episode back up to our front page to highlight the game’s use of ‘grabber tools’, a clever design choice that unexpectedly boosts Red Matter 2’s immersion and interactivity.
You can find the complete video below, or continue reading for an adapted text version.
Intro
Today we’re going to talk about Red Matter 2 (2022), an adventure puzzle game set in a retro-future sci-fi world. The game is full of great VR design, but those paying close attention will know that some of its innovations were actually pioneered all the way back in 2018 with the release of the original Red Matter. But hey, that’s why we’re making this video series—there’s incredible VR design out there that everyone can learn from.
We’re going to look at Red Matter 2’s ingenious grabber tools, and the surprising number of ways they contribute to immersion.
What You See is What You Get
At first glance, the grabber tools in Red Matter 2 might just look like sci-fi set-dressing, but they are so much more than that.
At a basic level, the grabber tools take on the shape of the user’s controller. If you’re playing on Quest, Index, or PSVR 2, you’ll see a custom grabber tool that matches the shape of your specific controller.
Red Matter 2 Index ControllerRed Matter 2 Rift / Quest controller
First and foremost, this means that players’ in-game hand pose matches their actual hand pose and the feeling of holding something in their hands. The shape you see in-game even matches the center of gravity as you feel it in your real hand.
Compare that to most VR games which show an open hand pose and nothing in your hand by default… that creates a disconnect between what you see in VR and what you actually feel in your hand.
And of course because you’re holding a tool that looks just like your controller, you can look down to see all the buttons and what they do.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been using VR for years now, and I still couldn’t reliably tell you off the top of my head which button is the Y button on a VR controller. Is it on the left or right controller? Top or bottom button? Take your own guess in the comments and then let us know if you got it right!
Being able to look down and reference the buttons—and which ones your finger is touching at any given moment—means players can always get an instant reminder of the controls without breaking immersion by opening a game menu or peeking out of their headset to see which button is where.
This is what’s called a diegetic interface—that’s an interface that’s contextualized within the game world, instead of some kind of floating text box that isn’t actually supposed to exist as part of the game’s narrative.
In fact, you’ll notice that there’s absolutely no on-screen interface in the footage you see from Red Matter 2. And that’s not because I had access to some special debug mode for filming. It’s by design.
When I spoke with Red Matter 2 Game Director Norman Schaar, he told me, “I personally detest UI—quite passionately, in fact! In my mind, the best UI is no UI at all.”
Schaar also told me that a goal of Red Matter 2’s design is to keep the player immersed at all times.
So it’s not surprising that we also see that the grabber tools used as a literal interface within the game, allowing you to physically connect to terminals to gather information. To the player this feels like a believable way that someone would interact with the game’s world—under the surface we’re actually just looking at a clever and immersive way of replacing the ‘press X to interact’ mechanics that are common in flat games.
The game’s grabber tools do even more for immersion than just replicating the feel of a controller in your hand or acting as a diegetic interface in the game. Crucially, they also replicate the limited interaction fidelity that players actually have in VR.
Coarse Hand Input
So let me break this down. In most VR games when you look at your hands you see… a human hand. That hand of course is supposed to represent your hand. But, there’s a big disconnect between what your real hands are capable of and what the virtual hands can do. Your real hands each have five fingers and can dexterously manipulate objects in ways that even today’s most advanced robots have trouble replicating.
So while your real hand has five fingers to grab and manipulate objects, your virtual hand essentially only has one point of input—a single point with which to grab objects.
If you think about it, the grabber tool in Red Matter 2 exactly represents this single point of input to the player. Diegetically, it’s obvious upon looking at the tool that you can’t manipulate the fingers, so your only option is to ‘grab’ at a one point.
That’s a long way of saying that the grabber tools in Red Matter 2 reflect the coarse hand input that’s actually available to us in VR, instead of showing us a virtual hand with lots of fingers that we can’t actually use.
So, In Red Matter 2, the grabber tools contextualize the inability to use our fingers. The result is that instead of feeling silly that we have to rotate and manipulate objects in somewhat strange ways, you actually feel like you’re learning how to deftly operate these futuristic tools.
Immersion Insulation Gap
And believe it or not, there’s still more to talk about why Red Matter 2’s grabber tools are so freaking smart.
Physics interactions are a huge part of the game, and the grabber tools again work to maintain immersion when handling objects. Like many VR games, Red Matter 2 uses an inertia-like system to imply the weight of an object in your hand. Small objects move quickly and easily, while large objects are sluggish and their inertia fights against your movement.
Rather than imagining the force our hands would feel when moving these virtual objects, the grabber tools create a sort of immersion insulation gap by providing a mechanical pivot point between the tool and the object.
This visually ‘explains’ why we can’t feel the forces of the object against our fingers, especially when the object is very heavy. The disconnect between the object and our hand—with the grabber tool as the insulator in the middle—alleviates some of the expectation of the forces that we’d normally feel in real life, thereby preserving immersion just a little bit more.
Unassuming Inventory
And if it wasn’t clear already, the grabber tools are actually… your inventory. Not only do they store all of your tools—like the flashlight, hacking tool, and your gun—you can even use them to temporarily stow objects. Handling inventory this way means that players can never accidentally drop or lose their tools, which is an issue we see in lots of other VR games, even those which use ‘holsters’ to hold things.
Inhuman Hands
And last but not least…the grabber tools can actually do some interesting things that our hands can’t. For example, the rotating grabber actually makes the motion of turning wheels like this one easier than doing it with two normal hands.
It’s no coincidence that the design of the grabber tools in Red Matter 2 is so smartly thought through… after all, the game is all about interacting with the virtual world around you… so it makes sense that the main way in which players interact with the world would be carefully considered.
To take full advantage of the grabbers, the developers built a wide variety of detailed objects for the game which are consistently interactive. You can pick up pretty much anything that looks like you should be able to.
And here’s a great little detail that I love to see: in cases where things aren’t interactive, all you have to do is not imply that they are! Here in Red Matter 2 the developers simply removed handles from this cabinet… a clear but non-intrusive way to tell players it can’t be opened.
Somewhat uniquely to VR, just seeing cool stuff up close like it’s right in front of you can be a rewarding experience all on its own. To that end, Red Matter 2 makes a conscious effort to sprinkle in handful of visually interesting objects, whether it’s this resin eyeball, papers with reactive physics, or this incredible scene where you watch your weapon form from hundreds of little balls right in your hand.
– – — – –
Red Matter 2’s grabber tool design is so beneficial to the game’s overall immersion that, frankly, I’m surprised we haven’t seen this sort of thing become more common in VR games.
If you want to check all of this out for yourself, you can find Red Matter 2 on Quest, PSVR 2, and PC VR.
Valve has pushed an update to the Steam Link PC VR streaming app on Quest that finally includes the ability to play games via wired connection.
As first spotted by data miner and serial leaker ‘Luna’ (via UploadVR), Valve’s Steam Link app for Quest rolled out its 2.17.8 public beta update, finally bringing support for wired USB streaming.
Here’s the full patch notes:
Adds initial support for USB streaming.
USB streaming can be used without WiFi by opting into the Steam Client Beta.
Fix loading spinner flickering when framerate in game is low.
Fix case where wrong framerates could show in SteamVR Settings.
Latency improvements.
To access the feature, you’ll need to: subscribe to the public beta on the Horizon Store for Quest, opt into the SteamVR beta branch, and opt into the Steam Client Beta.
To select the SteamVR beta branch, open your Steam library, right click SteamVR, select Properties in the context menu. Select the Game Versions & Betas tab on the left. Select Beta – SteamVR Beta Update and choose the beta option, as seen below.
Courtesy Valve
Opting into the Steam Client Beta is also simple, requiring you to click on Steam in the upper left of the main menu, choose the Settings menu. On the Interface tab under Client Beta Participation, select the dropdown menu. Select the Steam Beta Update from the drop down list and then restart Steam.
Valve hasn’t specified exactly what sort of USB-C cable you should use, however our best bet is to follow Meta’s lead: link cables should be USB 3.0 or greater, and users should look for cables no shorter than five meters (~16.5 ft) for comfort. You can find plenty that fit the bill over on Amazon for as cheap as $17.
This comes as Meta is looking to go toe-to-toe with Steam Frame, which is rapidly nearing its release date and (possibly more important) and price reveal. To boot, over the past weekend Meta released an update for Quest 3 that’s effectively boosted the headset’s refresh rate up to 240Hz, notably much higher than the 144Hz experimental refresh rate promised by Steam Frame.
Notably, the leading VR desktop app Virtual Desktop just got an update that takes advantage of Quest 3’s higher refresh, now supporting up to 144 FPS via PC VR wireless streaming.
PC Minimum Requirements for Steam Link
• A computer running Steam and SteamVR • Supported OS: Windows 10 or newer • Computer GPUs: NVIDIA (GTX970 or better) • Wireless Router: 5GHz Channel, Wi-Fi 5 • Headset: Meta Quest 2, 3, or Pro
Recommended
• Computer Processor: Intel Core i5-4590/AMD FX 8350 equivalent or better • Computer Memory: 16 GB RAM • Computer GPUs: NVIDIA (RTX2070 or better), AMD (RX6600 or better) • Network: Broadband Internet connection • Wireless Router: Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E • Computer using wired network connection
