‘Into the Radius’ Brings Hardcore Post-Apocalyptic Survival to Quest 2 in September

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The Stalker-inspired survival game Into the Radius (2020) has seen its share of success on SteamVR headsets when it initially released in Early Access in late 2019. Now the studio says it’s bringing the open world game to Quest 2 starting next month.

Update (August 31st, 2022):  CM Games has announced that Into the Radius is arriving on Quest 2 on September 8th. You can wishlist it over on the Meta Store here.

Since we last checked in with the game, the studio has also released a recap of its beta access period on Quest 2, saying it accepted nearly 5,000 playtesters that completed around 14,000 hours of combined playtime. Of the lot, only 82 lucky few made it the the end of the game—a testament to the breadth and difficulty of the survival shooter.

The original article announcing the Quest 2 version follows below:

Original Article (April 12th, 2022): Into the Radius is a single-player survival shooter that, much like the Soviet film Stalker (1979)—loosely based on the 1972 novel Roadside Picnic—you walk an irradiated wasteland and experience some mind-bending landscapes and entities.

In the Pechorsk Radius zone you need to use stealth, climbing and realistic firearms to explore, scavenge for loot and recover strange artifacts in an unforgiving dystopian environment. Developers CM Games says Into the Radius offers “20+ hours of gameplay.”

Now CM Games says it’s bringing the post-apocalyptic survival shooter to Meta Quest 2 in September 2022. In the meantime, the studio says it will be running closed beta tests, which you can sign up for here.

On SteamVR headsets, the game has done remarkably well, garnering a ‘Very Positive’ overall user rating from of over 3,000 players since it left Early Access back in 2020.

Notably, all of the footage in the new announce trailer was captured on Quest 2, which is a good sign since the game’s complex, physics-based gameplay and realistic gun-handling are big attractions.

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Oculus Mobile App Renamed Meta Quest

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An update rolling out to iPhones changes the name of the Oculus mobile app to Meta Quest.

The update represents one of the last pieces of the former Oculus brand to take the new Meta name. The process started almost immediately after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the branding change last October, but it has taken almost a year to complete. Over that time we’ve seen the headset itself go from Oculus Quest 2 to Meta Quest 2, a new logo slapped on both the front of the device and at startup, and the account required to log into the device changing to Meta accounts.

The change comes ahead of the October release of a high-end VR headset we expect to be called Meta Quest Pro. We’re expecting details soon on Meta’s upcoming Connect event which is likely to detail next steps in software and hardware from the company, though technical consultant John Carmack already confirmed he’ll be hosting his unscripted talk inside VR this year.

As of this writing the original Oculus branding from Facebook Technologies is still listed on the Google Play store for Android devices.

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NVIDIA Explains Why it Believes a Pixar-invented Protocol is the “HTML of the metaverse”

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NVIDIA, one of the tech sector’s power players, is pushing the Universal Scene Description protocol as the foundation of interoperable content and experiences in the metaverse. In a recent post the company explains why it believes the protocol, originally invented by Pixar, fits the needs of the coming metaverse.

Though the word metaverse is presently being used as a catchall for pretty much any multi-user application these days, the truth is that the vast majority of such platforms are islands unto themselves that have no connectivity to virtual spaces, people, or objects on other platforms. The ‘real’ metaverse, most seem to agree, must have at least some elements of interoperability, allowing users to seamlessly move from one virtual space to the next, much like we do today on the web.

To that end, Nvidia is pushing Universal Scene Description (USD) as the “HTML of the metaverse,” the company described in a recent post.

Much like HTML forms a description of a webpage—which can be hosted anywhere on the internet—and is retrieved and rendered locally by a web browser, USD is a protocol for describing complex virtual scenes which can be retrieved and rendered to varying degrees depending upon local hardware capabilities. With a ‘USD browser’ of sorts, Nvidia is suggesting that USD could be the common method by which virtual spaces are defined in a way that’s easy for anyone to decipher and render.

“The most fundamental standard needed to create the metaverse is the description of a virtual world. At Nvidia, we believe the first version of that standard already exists. It is Universal Scene Description (USD)—an open and extensible ecosystem for describing, composing, simulating, and collaborating within 3D worlds, originally invented by Pixar Animation Studios,” writes Nvidia’s Rev Lebaredian and Michael Kass.

“[USD] includes features necessary for scaling to large data sets like lazy loading and efficient retrieval of time-sampled data. It is tremendously extensible, allowing users to customize data schemas, input and output formats, and methods for finding assets. In short, USD covers the very broad range of requirements that Pixar found necessary to make its feature films.”

Indeed, CGI pioneer Pixar created USD to make collaboration on complex 3D animation projects easier. The company open-sourced the protocol back in 2015.

USD is more than just a file format for 3D geometry. Not only can USD describe a complex scene with various objects, textures, and lighting, it can also include references to assets hosted elsewhere, property inheritance, and layering functionality which allows non-destructive editing of a single scene with efficient asset re-use.

While Nvidia thinks USD is the right starting point for an interoperable platform, the company also acknowledges that “USD will need to evolve to meet the needs of the metaverse.”

On that front the company laid out a fairly extensive roadmap of features that it’s working on for USD to successfully serve as the foundation of the metaverse:

In the short term, NVIDIA is developing:

• glTF interoperability: A glTF file format plugin will allow glTF assets to be referenced directly by USD scenes. This means that users who are already using glTF can take advantage of the composition and collaboration features of USD without having to alter their existing assets.
• Geospatial schema (WGS84): NVIDIA is developing a geospatial schema and runtime behavior in USD to support the WGS84 standard for geospatial coordinates. This will facilitate full-fidelity digital twin models that need to incorporate the curvature of the earth’s surface.
• International character (UTF-8) support: NVIDIA is working with Pixar to add support for UTF-8 identifiers to USD, allowing for full interchange of content from all over the world.
• USD compatibility testing and certification suite: To further accelerate USD development and adoption, NVIDIA is building an open source suite for USD compatibility testing and certification. Developers will be able to test their builds of USD and certify that their custom USD components produce an expected result.

In the longer term, NVIDIA is working with partners to fill some of the larger remaining gaps in USD:

• High-speed incremental updates: USD was not designed for high-speed dynamic scene updates, but digital twin simulations will require this. NVIDIA is developing additional libraries on top of USD that enable much higher update rates to support real-time simulation.
• Real-time proceduralism: USD as it currently exists is almost entirely declarative. Properties and values in the USD representation, for the most part, describe facts about the virtual world. NVIDIA has begun to augment this with a procedural graph-based execution engine called OmniGraph.
• Compatibility with browsers: Today, USD is C++/Python based, but web browsers are not. To be accessible by everyone, everywhere, virtual worlds will need to be capable of running inside web browsers. NVIDIA will be working to ensure that proper WebAssembly builds with JavaScript bindings are available to make USD an attractive development option when running inside of a browser is the best approach.
• Real-time streaming of IoT data: Industrial virtual worlds and live digital twins require real-time streaming of IoT data. NVIDIA is working on building USD connections to IoT data streaming protocols.

Nvidia isn’t alone in its belief that USD has an important role to play in the coming metaverse. The idea has also taken hold to some extent at the newly formed Metaverse Standards Forum—of which Nvidia and thousands of other companies are members—which has also pointed to USD as a promising foundation for interoperable virtual spaces and experiences.

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Report: ‘Fortnite’ Update Includes Mention of Oculus, Suggesting Future Quest Support

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Fortnite doesn’t natively support VR headsets, however an update coming to the popular battle royale shooter today reportedly holds mention of Oculus, possibly pointing to future VR support for the game.

Update 21.50, the game’s fifth and final update to Season 3, is rolling out today, and it seems data miner and itinerant Fortnite leaker HYPEX has gotten a look under the hood, maintaining that Epic has added “stuff related to Oculus.”

We haven’t been able to independently verify this, however HYPEX, who is known in the community as a reliable leaker, surmises this could point to VR support being added at some point in the future.

Epic added stuff related to Oculus (Quest, Quest 2 & Mobile) in today's update. Most likely proper VR support in the future..

— HYPEX (@HYPEX) August 30, 2022

If Fortnite can manage the go native on the Quest platform like HYPEX’s tweet suggests, it’s a pretty big deal. Fortnite on Quest 2 would not only stand a chance at eclipsing its largest VR-supported competitors Roblox and Minecraft, but also offer up competition to multiplayer VR experiences and games like Meta’s Horizon platform, Rec Room, VRChat, and Population: One (2020). In short, Fortnite getting on Quest could make it one of the most popular VR games there overnight.

Of course, there’s the matter of shoehorning the large-scale multiplayer shooter onto Quest 2’s modest Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 processor, which is a challenge in its own right. Still, Epic Games has been a big proponent of VR since the launch the original Oculus Rift in 2016, having pioneered VR support for its Unreal Engine whilst putting out one of the slickest VR arcade shooters to this day, Robo Recall (2016). It basically wrote the book on optimizing games for VR headsets, and is a founding member of the OpenXR initiative, an open standard for VR/AR app development.

In more recent years however the company has focused on building its own Epic Games Store distribution channel and pushing Fortnite way past its original conception point as a free battle royale shooter. It now includes multiple game modes, a creative sandbox mode, and regularly hosts live events such as concerts and special in-game events.

Earlier this year Epic secured a $2 billion investment to stoke its metaverse ambitions, something CEO and founder of Epic Tim Sweeney said at the time would “accelerate our work to build the metaverse and create spaces where players can have fun with friends, brands can build creative and immersive experiences and creators can build a community and thrive.”

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Transformers Beyond Reality Launching September 1 On PSVR

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After an indefinite delay, Transformers VR game Beyond Reality has a new release date. The game is set to launch September 1, exclusively on PSVR.

Earlier this year, Beyond Reality was set for a March release on PSVR and PC VR. However, that never came to be — developers Meta4 Interactive announced in late March that the release was ‘derailed by reasons beyond [thei] control’.

When the delay was announced, the team stated it would be “taking full advantage of the extra time to make the game even more awesome,” with further updates to come. 

Well, there’s a new release date on the horizon — this time, Beyond Reality is set for release on September 1 on PSVR. The announcement was accompanied by a new mixed reality trailer, embedded above, giving us an even better look at the on-rails, arcade shooter gameplay.

It won’t be launching on any other platforms besides PSVR, not even on PC VR as initially planned — at least not yet. In a response to a tweet asking about a Quest 2 release, Meta4 Interactive stated the game is “releasing on PSVR for now and will see what the future brings from there.”

In another reply tweet, Meta4 confirmed that the game will support Move controllers only on PSVR, but declined to comment on whether it has any enhancements when using a PS5 or PS4 Pro console. The account also confirmed that it is a single player game only and will only release digitally for the moment.

It’s slightly unexpected to see a game release exclusively on PSVR so late in the headset’s life cycle, given PSVR 2 is now confirmed for release in early 2023. Perhaps we’ll see a upgraded PSVR 2 version of Beyond Reality launch later down the line?

Transformers Beyond Reality is available to wishlist on the PlayStation Store now.

Are you looking forward to Beyond Reality on PSVR? Let us know in the comments below.

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Apple Trademarks Further Point to ‘Reality’ Branding for Long-rumored Mixed Reality Headset

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Multiple trademark filings spotted by Bloomberg over the weekend support the notion that Apple’s long-rumored mixed reality headset will be running under the ‘Reality’ naming scheme.

Trademark applications were filed earlier this month in the US, EU, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica and Uruguay for three names: Reality One, Reality Pro, and Reality Processor, Bloomberg reports.

The first two may differentiate classes of the rumored MR headset, much like iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro, while ‘Reality Processor’ could be the platform’s SoC. The report maintains Apple may be using a M2 SoC with 16 GB of memory.

Furthermore, Bloomberg reports Apple’s MR headset will focus on VR versions of apps like Maps and FaceTime, different social apps, and media apps for “sports and movies in VR and gaming.” The trademarks also include a “health-related functions” feature.

None of the applications are registered to Apple by name—many were filed by ‘Immersive Health Solutions’—however the company typically uses shell corporations and small law firms across the globe to obfuscate its connection to forthcoming products. At the time of this writing are still marked as “pending”.

A trademark filed earlier this year which was attributed to Apple seemingly staked its claim to the name ‘realityOS’, or what could be the company’s mixed reality operating system. The trademark was initially filed just two months before ‘realityOS’ began showing up in Apple source code.

As per usual, Apple hasn’t said anything official or released any mention of its forthcoming MR headset from its black box headquarters in Cupertino. What we do know is based on reports, so take the following information with a grain of salt.

Apple’s first headset, which like Meta’s Project Cambria (possibly named Quest Pro), is said to feature VR displays and color passthrough cameras which will allow it to do augmented reality tasks—i.e. making it a mixed reality headset. Here’s what we (think) we know about Apple’s MR headset, codenamed N301.

• N301 will be a precursor to a long-rumored, full-fledged AR device which may be named Apple Glass
• N301 may pack a dozen cameras for room-scale tracking, hand-tracking, eye-tracking, and passthrough AR
• N301 could cost around $3,000
• Supply chain rumors suggest it includes MicroOLED displays targeting pixel density of 3,000ppi
• “as early as 2022” launch dates for N301 have been reported in the past, however later reports suggest a delay to 2023

Follow-up devices are said to include a headset codenamed N602, and a proper pair of AR glasses codenamed N421. Bloomberg maintains these devices may arrive sometime later this decade.

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John Carmack Still Works On VR For Meta One Day Per Week

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One of Facebook’s leading technical guides in virtual reality, John Carmack, confirmed he’s still spending one day per week consulting for Meta.

Originally known for his early work on 3D games like the original Doom and Quake, Carmack helped build some of the earliest excitement for the Oculus system before he officially joined the startup and helped guide it as “CTO”. He’s been a huge proponent of mobile VR since the beginning and a driving force behind the work optimizing the Android operating system and smartphone-class processors or VR. In recent years, as Facebook and now Meta’s Quest pulled together great games around a compelling standalone feature set, his interest moved to developing true artificial general intelligence.

The update comes as Carmack took $20 million in investment for a company he calls Keen Technologies that’s focused around his AI effort. The update also comes ahead of details surrounding Meta’s next Connect event which typically includes a well-watched talk from Carmack chock full of insights into behind-the-scenes VR platform strategy. At last year’s event, for example, he pointed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s effort to “build the metaverse” as a route that could see them “spend years and thousands of people possibly and wind up with things that didn’t contribute all that much to the ways that people are actually using the devices and hardware today.”

While we wait to see if Carmack will be part of Meta’s latest Connect update, he wrote on Twitter recently “I am continuing as a consultant with Meta on VR matters, devoting about 20% of my time there” and clarified in a different thread about focusing and discipline that “I have been officially ‘one day a week’ at Meta for a couple years now, but I still wound up checking in on groups and email every day, which was often a distraction when I should be concentrating on AI. Now I put my Meta laptop in the garage at the end of my VR day.”

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‘Transformers: Beyond Reality’ Single-player Shooter Releasing on PSVR September 1st

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The Transformers were set to take their first big step into VR earlier this year on PlayStation VR and PC VR headsets, however developers Meta4 and publisher Hasbro put an indefinite hold on its first-person shooter Transformers: Beyond Reality. Now the studio says it’s launching the game on PSVR on September 1st.

Update (August 27th, 2022): Meta4 announced that Transformers: Beyond Reality is set to launch on PSVR on September 1st. The studio currently doesn’t have plans to bring the game to PC VR as previously mentioned, stating that, for now, the studio is “working with our friends at Sony as a PSVR exclusive.”

The studio notes in a tweet they’ll “see what the future brings from there,” which could mean we might see it on other VR platforms in the future. Meta4 also released a new trailer, which we linked below:

Original Article (April 10th, 2022): The on-rails arcade shooter was set to launch on PSVR and SteamVR headsets on March 31st, however a day before its intended release developers Meta4 announced the game would be delayed. Until when, we aren’t sure.

You know how Starscream could always find a way to derail Megatron’s best-laid plans? While it wasn’t him, the release of Transformers: Beyond Reality has been derailed by reasons beyond our control. pic.twitter.com/irm7TE0tRG

— TransformersVR (@TransformersVr) March 30, 2022

Announced in October 2021, Transformers: Beyond Reality lets you fight as a human alongside some Autobot pals, tasking you gun to down Insecticons, Decepticons, and travel to Cybertron as you “fight to save both planets from annihilation.”

It’s not certain when the game will launch. Meta4 says once they have an update, they’ll let everyone know.

Oddly enough, its launch date announcement came in late February, promising a March 31st release whilst still showing a “WORK IN PROGRESS” watermark on top of game footage.

Based in Montreal, Canada, Meta4 is known for its location-based entertainment projects such as the multiplayer arcade games Transformers VR Battle Arena and Chaos Jump. It’s also known for creating early VR experiences, such as Time Machine VR (2016) and escape room game The Other Room (20017).

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Zuckerberg’s Meta Avatars Graphics Tease Was Concept Tech Art

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The Meta Avatars graphics update Mark Zuckerberg teased was concept tech art.

Zuckerberg faced widespread ridicule on social media last week after posting a selfie from Horizon Worlds showing a crude, graphically simplistic avatar  – his current Meta Avatar. Current consumer headsets lack built-in face tracking sensors, so VR avatar system designers tend not to show too many untracked details, since it could either convey an expression the user isn’t making, or a neutral expression that appears lifeless. Further, VR avatar systems are typically designed to look good inside a headset driven in real time by head and hand tracking – not in a 2D screenshot.

The Meta CEO responded to this ridicule last Friday with an image teasing graphical updates “coming soon”:

But a LinkedIn post, spotted by social media industry analyst Matt Navarra, reveals this was more conceptual tech art than a screenshot of a new avatar system. It was made by Meta 3D Character Artist Dylan Dunbar. Dunbar described creating Zuckerberg’s new avatar “from scratch”.

“Sculpted, modeled, lit, textured, and rendered in real time in a little under 4 weeks […] We went through probably 40 iterations in that time before landing on something we were happy with”, the post explains.

To be clear – this isn’t just an aspirational baked render. That’s why we’re referring to it as “concept tech art” – the avatar shown is, according to Dunbar, being rendered in real time, but he doesn’t state on what hardware.

In a leaked company-wide memo from June, Chief Product Officer Chris Cox wrote “on Avatars, we need to finalize our new art style“. Meta plans to introduce eye tracking and face tracking in Quest Pro, launching in October. It’s unclear what the graphics update to Meta Avatars will really look like when driven by Quest Pro, nor how the extra detail will translate to avatars driven by Quest 2, which lacks those sensors.

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Steam Deck User Interface Coming To VR

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Valve is bringing the Steam Deck’s user interface to VR headsets.

A booklet put together by Valve to mark Steam Deck’s availability in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong indicates VR headsets using Steam will “soon” have Steam Deck’s user interface.

“Soon, the Steam Deck user interface will be available on PCs that are connected to a TV, and in VR,” the booklet mentions.

PC-powered VR headsets today generally use Valve’s SteamVR as a device-agnostic software platform for accessing games and settings. SteamVR’s interface has evolved slowly compared to something like the monthly release schedule for Meta’s Quest headset. The system’s last major interface revamp was in 2020 with the ability to pin windows to a controller added in 2021. This latest hint from Valve may indicate the company is moving closer to another big revamp of SteamVR for existing PC-based VR headsets, but it will likely form the foundation of the reported “Deckard” standalone as well. Code findings, patents, and even comments from Valve employees all point to the idea that Valve could use groundwork laid with Steam Deck as the foundation for a standalone VR headset.

The document released by Valve also serves as an outline of Valve’s technologies and history. Not only does the document chart Bellevue-based Valve’s evolution from a game development company to the proprietor of the dominant global games marketplace as well as a hardware maker, the booklet also highlights the technologies Valve worked on. Proton, for example, “allows Windows games to be played on Linux devices”, essentially freeing some gamers to dump their dependence on Microsoft’s Windows if they choose. Valve’s work on virtual reality also helped launch VR’s modern consumer resurgence, teaming with HTC for the original Vive in 2016 which brought room-scale hand-controlled VR to buyers before Facebook’s Oculus Rift. In 2019, the company launched Valve Index at the high end of the consumer PC VR market and the $1,000 PC-powered kit is still a perennial top seller on Steam alongside the more recent $399-and-up Steam Deck handheld PC.

“This is a multi-generational product line,” the document states about Steam Deck. “Valve will support Steam Deck and SteamOS well into the foreseeable future. We will learn from the Steam community about new uses for our hardware that we haven’t thought of yet, and we will build new versions to be even more open and capable than the first version of Steam Deck has been.”

While Valve is a large company in terms of revenue generated it is also privately-managed with an employee count in the hundreds. This sees Valve generally quiet in public while choosing its partners carefully until enormous public releases scheduled on “Valve Time“.

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‘NERF Ultimate Championship’ Team Shooter Releases Today on Quest 2

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NERF Ultimate Championship, a 4v4 VR arena shooter, releases today on Meta Quest 2, bringing with it wall-jumping parkour action to go along with the game’s 10 authentic NERF blasters.

Created by Blasters of the Universe (2017) developers Secret Location, the studio plans on releasing multiple post-launch seasons, with Season Passes granted to all players for free.

Before the first season begins though, NERF Ultimate Championship is kicking off a four week-long 10-level pre-season, something the studio says will give players “a chance to hone their skills ahead of the first and second seasons, which have already been confirmed as part of the post-launch content roadmap.”

The game is slated to feature multiple modes, including point capture, king of the hill, and 4v4 team-based battle. Check out the launch trailer below to see the game in action:

“From the start, we set out to translate the thrilling competition of NERF battles into VR, while keeping that authentic NERF feel that makes it fun for everyone,” said Michael Sandercock, Lead Game Designer at Secret Location. “We paid special attention to our blaster mechanics and movement system to match the high physicality that characterizes a NERF battle, and we added a few enhancements that make the game even more exciting, such as wall-running; and the most epic collection of NERF blasters you could ever imagine.”

Here’s a breakdown of NERF Ultimate Championship, courtesy Secret Location:

• FREE SEASON PASSES: Unlock original NERF skins and grow your blaster collection! A snarling shark running down the side of your blaster! How about Steampunk inspired gear?
• AUTHENTIC NERF BLASTERS: 10 unique NERF blasters at launch with plenty more on the way. Master their priming and reload mechanics, perfect your aim with unique dart physics, and storm the competition with slam-fire and dual-wield capabilities!
• LOCOMOTION: Parkour style-movement, wall-running, and double jumping!
• 4 MAPS & 3 GAME MODES: In Colosseum, teams must capture a central control point to score. On Mesa, teams battle over 3 different control points while rotating across the map to secure the win. And finally, players engage in a classic NERF battle in Blast City and the warehouse inspired Factory map.
• SOCIAL HUB: Form a party, customize your gear, and master your skills in the parkour course and blasting range.
• COMFORT SETTINGS: FOV reduction system, smooth or snap rotation.

NERF Ultimate Championship is priced at $15, available today exclusively on Meta Quest 2 via the Quest Store.

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Hands-On: Nerf Ultimate Championship Takes Us Back To Basics

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Nerf Ultimate Championship feels like a competent team-based VR shooter and though the parkour-style action proves entertaining, it’s rather light at launch. Read on for our full hands-on impressions! 

For a Hasbro brand of toy weapons, there’s a surprising number of Nerf video games, but Nerf Ultimate Championship might be the best yet. Launching today as a Meta Quest 2 exclusive, Secret Location’s 4v4 VR shooter has been slowly teased since its initial reveal back in June 2021, including a beta test and new gameplay trailer earlier this year. Joined by several influencers and members of the Secret Location team , I went hands-on for a two hour preview last week. Though I enjoyed my time with the game, I was also left wishing there was more to do. 

While we’ve recently seen similar VR multiplayer FPS games like hero shooter Larcenauts, Nerf Ultimate Championship takes a different approach. You can pick between four pre-set avatars but unlike Larcenauts, you won’t find any unique abilities or weapons between them. Everyone’s essentially playing the same character with a different appearance, customizable with cosmetics earned through a free battle pass system. However, as far as differences go, that’s pretty much your lot. 

Avatars can be changed in the social hub, a lobby that’s our home between matches, which also holds three different practice zones. From pistols to long-range blasters, there’s 10 different weapons at launch, and Blaster Zone provides a shooting range for practice. Looking to master wallrunning and climbing? Parkour Zone’s obstacle course could be the one, while the Combat Zone combines elements of both with a mini map.

Once everyone arrived, we tested all three of Nerf Ultimate Championship’s modes. Kicking off with King Of The Hill, this mode doesn’t deviate from other shooters – two teams battle to control a central capture zone. Multi Point Capture takes a similar approach, splitting this between three smaller control points instead. Finally, anyone after a more traditional deathmatch will find it in Team Battle – the first team to 35 points wins. All fun options (and their respective maps suited them well) but with two of its three gameplay modes being functionally similar, I wish there was more variety.

When it comes to the actual moment-to-moment gameplay, Nerf mostly nails the fundamentals. Starting the match in a safe zone, each team can grab several weapons after spawning – there’s no preset loadouts here. Nerf guns require priming after every shot, which can interrupt the flow of action, but thankfully automatic priming is also an option. Once things kick off, you can shoot, sprint, double jump, crouch, wall run and reach over your shoulder to grab ammo. You’re protected by a shield meter, but it’ll deplete after a few hits – if you don’t find cover after that, the next hit is a guaranteed kill. 

Handling weapons using the motion controls feels straightforward and killing opponents while wallrunning was honestly thrilling. My biggest problem is that beyond the basics, the gameplay doesn’t have tremendous depth. There’s no extra abilities beyond choosing a different gun. I don’t think shallow is the right word – you can see Secret Location took its time polishing the core elements – but I wanted more. It feels slightly bare and after an hour, I felt like I’d seen it all.

Still, that doesn’t stop this shooter feeling approachable and Secret Location’s confirmed we’re getting more modes, guns and maps post-launch. Nerf Ultimate Championship’s simplicity will lend itself well to casual gaming and newcomers. By giving everyone the same character, there’s no agonizing over weapon loadouts or gameplay metas like in other competitive shooters. Nerf is taking us back to basics and in its own way, that’s rather refreshing.

Nerf Ultimate Championship is available now for Meta Quest 2. 

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Meta Drops Forced Facebook Logins with Rollout of New Meta VR Accounts Today

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Starting today, Meta is finally pulling back from one of its most controversial moves affecting its VR users, which required all new Quest owners to sign up with a valid Facebook account in addition to forcing legacy Oculus account users to link to Facebook by 2023. Goodbye Facebook, hello Meta.

Update (August 23rd, 2022): Meta has begun the planned rollout of its Meta Account logins and Meta Horizon user profiles, which does away with both Oculus and Facebook logins for Quest and Rift users while establishing a separate profile used with the company’s social platforms.

One of the biggest changes (see the full list below) is the ability to create a Meta account with a simple email address, although users can choose to signup using their Facebook or Instagram login info.

The company says in a blogpost that the update will roll out globally on a gradual basis, although it should arrive to all users soon. Check out the quick start guide below for additional info on how to migrate from Facebook or Oculus accounts to the new Meta account. The original article announcing the change follows below.

Original Article (July 7th, 2022): The move away from Facebook logins, which was first announced late last year, is said to come into effect sometime in August. It will introduce a new Meta account structure that the company says gives people “more flexibility and control in VR,” as it removes the Facebook account requirement and allows users to unmerge from the social platform entirely if they so choose.

This includes a number of changes. Here’s a quick breakdown of the major features as revealed by Meta:

• Everyone needs a Meta account to login to their device
• Everyone needs a Meta Horizon social profile, used for social stuff
• You can unlink your Facebook account entirely 
• New Meta accounts let you add Facebook and/or Instagram to the same Accounts Center for “connected experiences”
• “Friends” will become “Followers” à la Instagram

Facebook, Begone!

Meta is stressing that the new monolithic Meta account login is “not a social profile,” but rather a way to login to let you view and manage your purchased apps. All of those social functions though will be fulfilled by an obligatory Meta Horizon profile, which Meta says can be used in VR and “other surfaces where you use your Meta Horizon profile, like the web.”

While linking Facebook and Instagram profiles is possible, neither are a requirement. If you do, Meta says you can play “connected experiences” like finding your Instagram followers to play games with in VR, or chatting with Facebook friends on Messenger.

Just like Facebook profiles, Horizon profiles can be set to certain levels of exposure to other users on the platform. Users will be able to set their social profile to ‘Open to Everyone’, ‘Friends and Family’, and ‘Solo’. You can also set it to private (default for teens aged 13-17), which requires you to approve follower requests. In private mode, only your followers can see who you follow and who follows you. Everyone else will still be able to see your profile picture, avatar, username, display name, follower count, and the number of people you follow.

Horizon Worlds | Image courtesy Meta

For the account, Meta needs your name, email address, phone number, payment information, and date of birth—all of which is non public. The company is also allowing for users to create multiple Meta accounts if they want. Kids under 13 are still not officially allowed on the platform.

All new users will be required to create a Meta account and Horizon profile, but also legacy users who previously merged Oculus accounts with Facebook. Even Oculus account holders who haven’t merged will need both the Meta account and Horizon profile before the previous January 1st, 2023 cut-off date, lest you risk turning your headset into a battery-powered paperweight.

All of it’s obligatory—as in you’ll need to create a Meta account to play your games when Meta pulls the trigger next month—however at least it’s no longer tied to Facebook, which allowed the company to suspend the ability for users to play their own VR games based on behavior outside of VR. It also seems the company is conceptually separating the Meta account login and Meta Horizon profile for now to make the pill go down easier that it’s not just replacing the Facebook login in name only.

Still, if you want to engage in VR activities on a Meta device, it’s pretty clear from hereon out that you’ll have to do so as a willing participant of what could be its own separate but interoperable social network.

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Quest 2 No Longer Requires A Facebook Account Starting Today

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Meta headsets no longer require a Facebook account starting today.

The update “will roll out globally on a gradual basis, so if you don’t have the option to create a Meta account and Meta Horizon profile right away, you’ll get the update soon”, an Oculus blog post explains.

The new Meta accounts can be used to set up new headsets or on existing headsets instead of Facebook. You’ll still be able to link your Facebook account to your Meta account to message and call Facebook friends from inside VR, but this is no longer required. If your Facebook is currently linked to your Quest, you can unlink it when you set up your Meta account.

Your Meta account itself is just for signing in, it isn’t a social media profile. But you still need to set up a ‘Meta Horizon’ VR social profile, formerly known as your Oculus profile. As with current Oculus profiles (or other platforms like Xbox Live and PlayStation Network) you have a username, profile name, profile photo, and avatar.

Your Meta Horizon profile is visible to others in VR apps and when searching for you in the Oculus app or Quest social menu, but you can customize who exactly can see your activity status, showing whether you’re online and the app you’re currently using.

These changes come less than two years after the company imposed the requirement of a Facebook account in good standing for its headsets, starting with the release of Quest 2 in October 2020. Tying the use of a hardware device to the standing of a social media profile was a widely unpopular decision, and even left some users with a paperweight.

At Connect 2021 in October, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced: “frankly as we’ve heard your feedback more broadly, we’re working on making it so you can login into Quest with an account other than your personal Facebook account”. Ten months later, Meta is delivering on that promise.

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PlayStation VR2 Releases ‘Early 2023’

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PlayStation VR 2 will release in early 2023.

Official Sony social accounts announced the launch window on Monday, confirming earlier indications and analyst reports suggesting Sony’s next generation PS5-powered VR headset wouldn’t see release in 2022.

While PSVR buyers have been able to use an adapter to get the original system running on PlayStation 5, PSVR 2 promises to take full advantage of new technologies as well as PS5’s increased horsepower. The next-gen system features much higher resolution displays with high dynamic range, wider field of view lenses, eye tracking, and new controllers with precise haptic feedback – dramatic upgrades over the original PSVR system which launched in 2016 for PlayStation 4.

While the original PSVR required the PlayStation Camera for tracking and a breakout box with an array of cables, PSVR 2 features onboard cameras for inside-out tracking and connects via a single USB-C cable.

For those just catching up, earlier this summer we posted everything we know about PSVR 2.

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Meta CEO Teases “Major graphics updates” After Viral Criticism of ‘Horizon Worlds’ Screenshot

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An innocuous screenshot of Meta’s social VR platform shared by CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week saw widespread criticism in the tech sector. Prompted by the reaction, Zuckerberg shared a glimpse of purported visual upgrades headed to the platform.

Last week Meta announced it had expanded its Horizon Worlds social VR platform to new territories (France & Spain). Along with the announcement, CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted an innocuous photo that made rounds in the tech sector as a purported example of the company’s failed attempt to create an appealing virtual world.

Image courtesy Mark Zuckerberg

We’re launching Horizon Worlds in France and Spain today! Looking forward to seeing people explore and build immersive worlds, and to bringing this to more countries soon.

With coverage from The Verge to Forbes, some mocked the photo as evidence that Meta’s vast investment into metaverse and XR technologies has been squandered; others focused on the aesthetic of Horizon Worlds, deriding it as visually unappealing.

The reaction was so widely negative that it prompted Zuckerberg to tease purported forthcoming visual updates to Horizon Worlds.

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Image courtesy Mark Zuckerberg

Image courtesy Mark Zuckerberg

Major updates to Horizon and avatar graphics coming soon. I’ll share more at Connect. Also, I know the photo I posted earlier this week was pretty basic—it was taken very quickly to celebrate a launch. The graphics in Horizon are capable of much more—even on headsets—and Horizon is improving very quickly.

Considering the performance constraint on the company’s Quest 2 headset, the teased screenshots would be quite impressive for the headset. It isn’t clear if this level of avatar fidelity and lighting would be feasible on a standalone headset, especially with many users in one space.

Zuckerberg promised to share more on graphics updates to Horizon Worlds at Meta Connect, the company’s annual XR conference which usually happens in late Q3 or early Q4.

– – — – –

Horizon Worlds is Meta’s social VR platform upon which it has foisted many of its metaverse ambitions. The company hopes users of the platform will build games & worlds and hang out together. The app has had a long and winding path to market and is only just beginning to open in more regions, while slowly testing selling tools to give creators a way to earn real money from the platform—feats which have been pioneered far earlier by competing social VR platforms.

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Starburst: Eyes-In With Meta’s 20K Nit HDR Display Tech

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Is high-dynamic range (HDR) the key to next generation VR displays? Hands-on time with Meta’s latest demo and an interview with the head of display systems research suggests it’ll be pretty key. Read on for details.

At the recent SIGGRAPH conference in Vancouver David Heaney and I went eyes-in with Starburst, Meta’s ultra-high dynamic range VR display concept. Meta first showed the technology to Tested earlier this year as the company’s researchers outlined their goal of passing what they call the “Visual Turing Test“. For those catching up, the test refers to the idea of one day making a VR headset so advanced that people wearing it can’t tell “whether what they’re looking at is real or virtual.” Passing the test means advancing VR headset technologies along several fronts including resolution, field of view, dynamic range, and variable focus, and with Starburst showing what an ultra-bright VR headset could feel like, Meta executives are getting data that can inform them about where to target the specifications of upcoming consumer or professional-grade VR headsets.

We know Sony’s upcoming PSVR 2 headset uses an HDR display and there’s been research at companies like Valve investigating displays that were so bright you’d feel the heat of a sunny day on your cheeks — so bright in fact that one researcher called their testing equipment a “fire hazard” back in 2015. There’s actually a lot of range in exactly what “high-dynamic range” might mean. For example, the brightness of light we encounter outside coming directly from our great fusion reactor in the sky measures in the billions or millions of “nits” depending whether you’re burning out your eyeballs staring at the sun or seeing its light reflected off of everything else. Meanwhile, VR’s market-leading headset Quest 2 supplies just about 100 nits of brightness. Further, while many modern TVs feature so-called HDR displays, they typically only push out luminance measured with nits in the low thousands.

Eyes-In With Starburst

Starburst, meanwhile, tops out at 20,000 nits. With that level of brightness, Meta researchers can match the luminance of almost any indoor lighting.

The research prototypes use off-the-shelf parts and are so heavy the headsets need to be suspended from above. You hold it to your face with hand-grips and its lenses catch the light in distracting ways. Still, looking through it provides a tantalizing tease of the future.

Meta showed two pieces of content on the headsets at SIGGRAPH. The first was the same content Meta showed Tested earlier this year — spheres floating in the open air of a studio with a bright simulated light off to the side casting across the scene. The second was a never-before-shown-in-public scene generated with a game engine on what could be an alien planet with lighting strikes, clouds, and the faint glimmer of stars in the sky.

The second scene indicates Meta is starting to explore what sort of content might be ideal for upcoming HDR displays and in our interview with Douglas Lanman, the head of display systems research at Meta, he told us that the next SIGGRAPH conference in Asia may reveal Meta’s first user studies of this technology. In our demo, the floating sphere was easily the more compelling of the two scenes shown.

You can get a rough approximation of what it’s like in the video provided by Meta above, but that video is missing the critical element of a human reaction to what you see through-the-lens. Looking at this in VR means I could place my head in just the right spot to eclipse the simulated lightbulb in the corner of the room. A halo formed framing the floating object, and then simply moving my head to either side ended the eclipse with a view straight into the light bulb. This caused my eyes to instinctively react in the same way they might when leaving a dark room and walking into one that’s very brightly lit. Essentially, I formed a sharp memory of that moment because Starburst caused me to squint from brightness for the first time in VR.

“It’s easy to predict the future when you’ve already seen it,” Lanman told us. “Can they feel that they really are present in a true physical scene? And I think if we can do that, then we’ve built the canvas we want and now we can tell any story.”

While Starburst is a wildly non-consumer friendly device, Lanman suggested that Meta openly sharing its design is meant to move forward a broader conversation in the VR community about the value of hyper-bright displays to our sense of presence inside a headset.

We’re still digesting the demos we saw at SIGGRAPH, including the first public look at hyper-realistic Codec avatars, so check back with UploadVR in the coming days as we get those articles out. Also be sure to tune into our show on UploadVR’s YouTube channel Tuesday at 10 am Pacific as we answer questions live and walk through our experiences from SIGGRAPH.

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‘Townscaper VR’ Releasing on Quest & Pico Headsets in October

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Earlier this year indie developer Oskar Stålberg showed interest in adapting Townscaper to VR headsets, showing off some prototype builds of the cozy, pint-sized town creator game working with motion controllers. Now Stålberg says we can expect to jump into the game on Meta Quest and Pico headsets soon.

Townscaper initially launched on Steam Early Access in 2020, bringing with it the opportunity to automagically plop down quaint island towns and hamlets.

Since then, Stålberg’s self-admitted “experimental passion project” has garnered critical acclaim for its intuitive and relaxing gameplay, making it feel a bit like playing with LEGO. Unlike other city-building games though, there’s no real objective outside of building up your town and chilling out with your creations.

Townscaper seems like a natural fit as a relaxing VR game, as the control scheme is essentially divided into a few simple tasks, like clicking to create and add to structures, and a paint palette to change the building’s color. From the trailer, we can see an ‘Add’ building button, a ‘Next Color’ toggle, and a ‘Pick Color’ button. That’s it.

Publisher Raw Fury says Townscaper is officially headed to VR headsets October 6th, landing on Meta Quest 2 and Pico headsets. Exactly which Pico headsets the studio is targeting isn’t clear, although a Pico 4 headset for consumers is apparently coming soon, which follows the company’s consumer release of Pico Neo 3 in Europe.

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Zuckerberg Teases Meta Avatars & Horizon Worlds Graphics Updates

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Mark Zuckerberg is teasing significant graphics updates for Meta Avatars and Horizon Worlds.

Meta Avatars are used in the company’s Horizon suite of social VR apps, and available to Quest developers via an SDK. Horizon Worlds works similarly to Rec Room, allowing users to create their own social experiences inside VR by using controllers to place & manipulate shapes and using a visual scripting system to add dynamic functionality. Because these platforms support user created worlds and run on mobile chips, the graphical fidelity achievable is limited. VRChat worlds are premade in Unity on desktop, with most lighting “baked in” by a powerful PC – and the most impressive worlds aren’t accessible to Quest users at all.

A Horizon Worlds screenshot shared by the Meta CEO on Tuesday announcing the platform launching in France & Spain didn’t go down well on Twitter and other social media platforms. The crude graphic fidelity of both the avatar and the world shown led to widespread ridicule.

Zuckerberg responded to this ridicule on Friday with a new image teasing graphical updates “coming soon”:

Major updates to Horizon and avatar graphics coming soon. I’ll share more at Connect. Also, I know the photo I posted earlier this week was pretty basic — it was taken very quickly to celebrate a launch. The graphics in Horizon are capable of much more — even on headsets — and Horizon is improving very quickly.

The “even on headsets” qualifier seems to refer to Meta’s intention to launch Horizon on the web and mobile platforms later this year. Barrett Meeker, who leads Horizon’s visual fidelity improvement project, tweeted to confirm the graphics shown depict what’s planned for Quest 2. What makes even a graphically simplistic avatar feel like another person in VR is how the system translates the person’s head and hand tracking data into real-time animation, and the still images Zuckerberg shared don’t convey that.

Meta Avatars before & after the upcoming graphics update

Graphical improvements to Horizon Worlds will come as a welcome update for its user base, but increasing the graphical realism of VR avatars can have significant tradeoffs. Visually detailed features without detailed tracked motion can make an avatar feel like a lifeless mannequin. Meta plans to introduce eye tracking and face tracking in Quest Pro this year, but Quest 2 lacks these sensors.

Zuckerberg said Meta will share more at Connect, the company’s annual AR/VR conference. The date hasn’t been announced yet, but it’s also where we’ll likely hear more about the launch of Quest Pro and Horizon’s web & mobile versions.

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Deisim Moving From App Lab To Quest Store On September 1

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God sandbox title Deisim is moving to a full store release on Quest after being available for more than a year on App Lab.

Deisim gives you the power of a god, ruling down on your subjects from above and granting them new materials and titles of land to progress their civilization. As their cities scale up, you’ll watch and help your subjects progress from the stone age up to the industrial revolution.

The game has been around for quite a while now, initially launching for PC VR in 2018. It then came to Quest first via sideloading and SideQuest in the pre-App Lab days. When Meta launched its App Lab service for Quest in early 2021, Deisim was one of the first 14 apps available on the platform, alongside other notable titles like Puzzling Places and Smash Drums.

More than a year on, Deisim is joining the ranks of its fellow early App Lab graduates and moving to a full Quest Store release on September 1. The game will be available to purchase on App Lab until August 22, after which it will become unavailable for a brief period until the full launch in September.

Existing owners on App Lab will automatically receive a copy of Deisim on the Quest store on release, as well as the PC VR version on the Oculus Store for PC VR as well. Likewise, cross-buy support means Oculus Store PC VR owners will receive a copy of the Quest version on release and vice versa.

Despite the move to the official Quest Store, Deisim’s price will remain the same as it has been on App Lab, available for $14.99. Developer Tommy Maloteaux says that several content updates for Deisim are also on the way, with an update featuring pirates set to release later this year in November.

Deisim is available now for Quest, PC VR and Pico platforms.

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New Logitech VR Accessory Aims to Bring One of Index’s Best Features to Quest 2

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Logitech this week announced a new VR accessory which aims to bring the great off-ear audio solution of Valve’s Index headset to Quest 2

Valve’s unique off-ear headphones were a elegant solution for powerful yet comfortable audio on the company’s Index headset which launched back in 2019. The off-ear headphones approach means the headphones don’t get in the way when putting the headset on, nor do they even contact your ears while wearing the headset. With large drivers positioned slightly away from the ear, this approach is also said to provide a more accurate sense of spatial audio thanks to the fact that the soundwaves are interacting with the geometry of your ears in a more substantial way.

While Quest technically has ‘off-ear’ audio, the headset uses a ‘sound-pipe’ design where the sound emanates from a small slit near your ears. The result is much less powerful sound with less accurate spatial audio because the slit doesn’t really align with your ears. We’ve been saying since the original Quest that better off-ear audio on the headset would do wonders for immersion, but the suggestion has fallen on deaf ears.

But now Logitech may be headed to the rescue. This week the company announced the Chorus accessory for Quest 2 which clearly aims to emulate Index’s off-ear headphones.

Image courtesy Logitech

For $100 the Chorus can attach to a Quest 2 using either the default soft strap or the official deluxe Quest 2 straps from Meta. The Chorus connects to the headset via the USB-C port on the side, and thoughtfully also provides a passthrough USB-C port so you can continue to charge the headset without unplugging the headphones. However, Logitech warns that you can’t use Oculus Link with the Chorus headphones due to the nature of the passthrough USB-C connection.

Logitech Chorus

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Image courtesy Logitech

Image courtesy Logitech

Image courtesy Logitech

Image courtesy Logitech

The company has also added its own smart feature to the off-ear headphones: if you flip them up into the folded position the audio is automatically muted. That makes it easy to quickly flip up the headphones to talk to someone in the room and then get back to your game.

The Chorus accessory itself weights 182g, which is a non-trivial amount of additional weight. Even without the accessory we’ve always recommended something better than the default Quest 2 soft strap, but with the added weight it’ll be even more important to have a better headstrap option. While the headphones work with all of Meta’s first-party straps, it isn’t clear which third-party straps they will be compatible with.

Image courtesy Logitech

The Chorus headphones for Quest 2 are currently available for pre-order from Amazon and Logitech for $100 with a release date planned for September 2nd.

– – — – –

This isn’t the first audio accessory that Logitech has made for Quest 2. The company also previously launched a pair of headphones and earbuds that were supposedly specifically made for the headset, but neither option seemed truly customized for the VR use-case. Logitech has also dabbled in the VR space in a handful of other ways over the years, including experiments with a VR stylus and keyboard tracking accessory.

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