Runaways is a spatial endless runner designed specifically for Apple Vision Pro.
Recently shown at South By Southwest, Runaways by Beyond Games describes itself as a skill-based endless runner with fast-paced gameplay. As Hank, your goal involves escaping from a tentacle-infested planet after ditching the mines of ExHume 8 by finding the exit portal. Featuring dynamic track generation, you must jump across a 3D course in your living space while avoiding traps.
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We briefly went hands-on with Runaways at GDC 2024. You control Hank with a pinch motion to jump across bottomless pits, though this requires careful timing since jumps use energy that slowly recharges. Traps can be avoided by jumping or hitting a floating disarm button. Though we didn't get far, it's an enjoyably straightforward premise with a colorful presentation that feels easy to learn.
A new 5-minute video for Apple Vision Pro buyers shows highlights from the 2023 MLS Cup in Apple Immersive Video format.
Apple Immersive Video comes from the acquisition of NextVR's technology several years ago, though Apple declines to acknowledge that publicly. Providing 180-degree 3D video captured on high-end equipment at 8K and occasionally merged with computer-generated effects, the tech shows major ambitions from Apple for presenting content specifically tailored for VR headsets.
Apple has shown Alicia Keys rehearsing, a look at dinosaurs, wildlife and high wire adventures, and now this MLS cup video. Featuring an assortment of clips captured from a range of angles, highlights include being so close to a goal you have to turn your head to follow its path from kick into the back of the net, and feeling like you are standing in the middle of a celebrating team.
The video also highlights some of the distracting problems that can happen with captured stereoscopic video. Fireworks exploding in the sky seemed to light up the clouds with some stereo disparity, and lights pointing downward from the top of the stadium cast distracting starburst patterns. Still, for fans of Major League Soccer, getting as close to the game and the players as Apple's cameras will take you is likely worth those minor distractions.
NextVR was known for its best-in-class streaming and capture technologies when it was acquired. For Apple, the high-resolution high frame rate captures seen in the MLS cup video offer the company a real-world testing ground for seeing exactly what captured content works best in this new medium.
You can find our remaining coverage here but for everything else, here's our top five VR news stories we originally missed:
Smalland: Survive The Wilds Reclaims The Overland In A New VR Adventure
Smalland: Survive the Wilds VR is a new single-player VR adventure arriving on Quest this spring. Playing as a Smallfolk in a giant world, this story sees the Smallfolk try to reclaim the Overland after the Giants disappear. "Explore, scavenge, craft and build as you fight to gain a foothold in this hostile new world," says Merge Games on the Quest Store page.
Vampire The Masquerade: Justice Is Now Available On Pico 4
Initially launched on Quest & PSVR 2 last year before February's SteamVR release, Vampire: The Masquerade - Justice received a surprise launch on Pico 4 this week. Available with a 30% launch discount, you can find out more about the VR stealth game in our review below:
MADiSON VR Receives Last Minute Delay To Add 90Hz Support
MADiSON VR has received another delay. Previously scheduled for a March 29 launch, publisher Perp Games pushed this back at the last minute to support 90Hz instead of 60/120Hz with reprojection. Detailing the technical reasons behind this decision in a blog post, it's now aiming to launch in "a few weeks."
Arizona Sunshine 2 Revives Trailer Park Horde Map From Original Game
Arizona Sunshine 2 added the Trailer Park Horde Map as the second part of its post-launch "Season of Chaos" roadmap, which you may recall previously appeared as a free update in 2020 for the original game. Two further Horde maps - Undead Valley and Old Mines, are promised for the next major updates in April and May.
PlayStation Spring Sale Includes Numerous PSVR 2 Discounts
Looking for more VR news stories? Here's everything else we've seen recently.
Block Buster received a major multiplayer update on Quest, adding two new modes alongside achievements, enhanced leaderboards and a balancing adjustment for Kaiju special attacks.
If you've got an update for a VR game we should know about for this article or future updates, you can use our contact page or email tips@uploadvr.com with details.
OVRDARK: A Do Not Open Story launches today on PSVR 2.
Originally announced last year, OVRDARK: A Do Not Open Story is a survival horror VR sequel to 2022's Do Not Open. Playing as George Foster, you must explore Mike Goreng's family mansion and uncover the truth behind your closest friend's suicide. Originally targeting March 27, developer NoxNoctis states it was pushed back until March 29 due to "bureaucratic issues beyond our control."
OVRDARK requires careful navigation to evade detection from Mike Goreng through stealth gameplay, so you'll often need to stop moving or avoid making sudden gestures. NoxNoctis Studio confirms the game also supports spatial audio, haptic feedback to help navigate puzzles and features minimal loading screens.
Our video producer Don Hopper recently spoke with NoxNoctis 3D Artist and CEO, Adrian Cuesta Esteban, to find out more. Discussing OVRDARK's premise, story connections with Do Not Open and gameplay at GDC 2024, you can watch our full interview below:
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OVRDARK: A Do Not Open Story is out now on PSVR 2. It's also coming to PC VR, Pico and the Meta Quest platform at a later date.
Apple this week released a brief highlight reel of the Major League Soccer 2023 playoffs as an Apple Immersive Video viewable by anyone with a Vision Pro. The impressive footage is a great demo for what sports could be like with immersive video, but there’s a long way to go for it to become a real draw.
Update (March 29th, 2024): Apple has released a roughly five minute immersive video highlight reel of the conclusion of the 2023 MLS season. Apple Immersive Video is the company’s immersive video format which captures stereoscopic 8K footage at 180 degrees. Compared to 3D, video which is like a small window into a scene, immersive video like this wraps around you making it feel like you’re actually standing in the scene itself.
The newly released MLS short is an impressive demo, featuring excellent video and audio quality, with shots that really make you feel like you’re standing right next to the subjects. Some shots show perspectives that people would normally never get to see in first-person themselves, like being right on the sidelines, behind the goal, or even in the locker room celebrating alongside the winning team.
Anyone with a Vision Pro can view the short (no Apple TV+ or MLS Season Pass required).
It’s all quite impressive, but to really draw a viewership into the headset, people are going to need more than highlight reels. Not only will they want to see full matches this way, but seeing them live is also crucial for sports. There’s something alluring about seeing the action unfold in real-time, and many fans won’t go back to watch matches that have already finished.
This has always been a chicken-and-egg challenge for immersive sports video. Capturing an entire game like this—and broadcasting it live—is difficult from both from a cost and logistical standpoint.
But Apple Immersive Video has one key advantage that very few do: social viewing.
The company’s SharePlay feature makes it incredibly easy to watch synchronized content with friends through FaceTime. I’ve long said that social viewing is especially important for watching sports in VR, since cheering with others is a huge part of the sport event experience. The vast majority of immersive video startups focusing on sports have released content in VR without any way to experience it with friends. For many, that’s a non-starter, no matter how great the visual or audio experience may be.
For now Apple Immersive Video social viewing in FaceTime supports multiple viewers, but drops to audio-only while the footage is playing. Hopefully this will eventually support Apple’s ‘Persona’ avatars.
The original article, which covers the announcement of the Apple Immersive Video MLS release, continues below.
Original Article (February 26th, 2024): Apple TV is the exclusive provider of online Major League Soccer broadcasts via the MLS Season Pass subscription. The company recently announced the kickoff of the 2024 MLS Season. It will include new Apple Immersive Video footage with content from the league’s 2023 playoff series.
“Coming soon,” the company says, “all Apple Vision Pro users can experience the best of the 2023 MLS Cup Playoffs with the first-ever sports film captured in Apple Immersive Video. Viewers will feel every heart-pounding moment in 8K 3D with a 180-degree field of view and Spatial Audio that transports them to each match.”
This will add to the company’s small handful of Apple Immersive Video content that first became available at the headset’s launch. Some of that content is available for free, but most requires an Apple TV+ subscription.
It’s unclear exactly what the new Apple Immersive MLS content will cover. It could be full games, game summaries, or just highlights of key moments throughout the playoffs. It’s implied, but not quite clear, if the MLS Season Pass is required to view the new content, or if it will become available to “all Apple Vision Pro users” as the statement reads. We’ve reached out to Apple for clarification.
The 2024 MLS Season Pass is priced at $15 per month or $100 for the season, or for Apple TV+ subscribers, $13 per month or $80 for the season.
New Quest Store and App Lab apps won't be allowed to support the original Oculus Quest from April 30.
Oculus Quest launched in May 2019, almost five years ago, featuring the Snapdragon 835 chipset from 2017. Meta stopped selling it upon launching Quest 2 in October 2020.
Meta first announced the slow deprecation of Quest 1 in January 2023, and the last system software release it got was v50 in February 2023, though it will continue to receive security updates and bugfixes until August this year. Quest 2, Pro, and 3 are now on v63.
From April 30 newly created Quest Store and App Lab apps won't show up in the store interface in Quest 1, developers won't be able to upload builds for new apps that only support Quest 1, and builds for new apps that support multiple headsets including Quest 1 will have Quest 1 support blocked.
This only applies to newly created apps, to be clear. Existing apps will technically still be able to release updates that support Quest 1 if they want.
However, the Oculus SDK dropped support for Quest 1 in v51, which released in April 2023. That means developers using SDK versions newer than v50, required for features like Dynamic Resolution, Super Resolution, Virtual Keyboard, Multimodal, and Quest 3 features like the mixed reality Scene Mesh, Depth API, and Inside-Out Body Tracking already couldn't continue to support Quest 1. That's one of the reasons many Quest Store and App Lab apps have already dropped support for Quest 1.
Quest 2 arrived just 18 months after the original with a $100 cheaper price, higher resolution and refresh rate, and double the CPU & GPU performance. Multiple developers who already dropped support for Quest 1 have told UploadVR that it made up only a tiny fraction of their userbase, while its anaemic seven year old chipset was burdensome to continue to support.
This isn't yet the complete end of Quest 1 though. Quest 1 owners can continue to use their headset and continue install and use existing apps that choose to continue to support it. They can be sure any new app from April 30 will no longer support it, though few new releases support it already. Arguably the bigger problem is that security updates will end in August, though this has been known since early last year.
Vision Pro is built entirely around hand-tracking while Quest 3 uses controllers first and foremost, but also supports hand-tracking as an alternate option for some content. But which has better hand-tracking? You might be surprised at the answer.
Vision Pro Hand-tracking Latency
With no support for motion controllers, Vision Pro’s only motion-based input is hand-tracking. The core input system combines hands with eyes to control the entire interface.
Here’s how we measured it. Using a screen capture from the headset which views both the passthrough hand and the virtual hand, we can see how many frames it takes between when the passthrough hand moves and when the virtual hand moves. We used Apple’s Persona system for hand rendering to eliminate any additional latency which could be introduced by Unity.
After sampling a handful of tests (pun intended), we found this to be about 3.5 frames. At the capture rate of 30 FPS, that’s 116.7ms. Then we add to that Vision Pro’s known passthrough latency of about 11ms, for the final result of 127.7ms of photon to hand-tracking latency.
We also tested how long between a passthrough tap and a virtual input (to see if full skeletal hand-tracking is slower than simple tap detection), but we didn’t find any significant difference in latency. We also tested in different lighting conditions and found no significant difference.
Quest 3 Hand-tracking Latency
How does that compare to Quest 3, a headset which isn’t solely controlled by the hands? Using a similar test, we found Quest 3’s hand-tracking latency to be around 70ms on Quest OS v63. That’s a substantial improvement over Vision Pro, but actual usage of the headset would make one think Quest 3 has even lower hand-tracking latency. But it turns out some of the perceived latency is masked.
Here’s how we found out. Using a 240Hz through-the-lens capture, we did the same kind of motion test as we did with Vision Pro to find out how long between the motion of the passthrough hand and the virtual hand. That came out to 31.3ms. Combined with Quest 3’s known passthrough latency of about 39ms that makes Quest 3’s photon to hand-tracking latency about 70.3ms.
When using Quest 3, hand-tracking feels even snappier than that result suggests, so what gives?
Because Quest 3’s passthrough latency is about three-and-a-half times that of Vision Pro (11ms vs. 39ms), the time between seeing your hand move and your virtual hand move appears to be just 31.3ms (compared to 116.7ms on Vision Pro).
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An important point here: latency and accuracy of hand-tracking are two different things. In many cases, they may even have an inverse relationship. If you optimize your hand-tracking algorithm for speed, you may give up some accuracy. And if you optimize it for accuracy, you may give up some speed. As of now we don’t have a good measure of hand-tracking accuracy for either headset, outside of a gut feeling.
An inventive early concept for adapting the classic game of billiards to VR is now on Quest's App Lab today after just a few days of development.
We don't normally cover games this early in development, but Hayden Jackson's spatial adaptation of pool caught our eye. The app, called 3D Pool right now, exchanges the familiar cue used in games like ForeVR Pool for a slingshot mechanic with hand tracking, replacing gravity with zero-g and bounding it all inside of a rectangular box instead of a table.
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Jackson told us over direct message he "came up with the idea by first reflecting on the many forms of play that VR is reimagining. Then further to the success of the Wii in the late aughts, and finally to considering what simple verbs can be performed with hand tracking and how they may be featured in clear gameplay."
The design seems like it would likely port well to other headsets that rely on hand tracking as its default input system, including the Apple Vision Pro, and we asked Jackson about whether he was thinking about that when he made it.
"The legacy of Apple's design philosophy in general has impacted the computing industry so pervasively that I was anticipating the Vision Pro's input as likely to similarly be both simple and clear before the headset was even announced, and so have spent some significant focus on developing an understanding of how to design for the input method since hand tracking first became available for the Meta Quest line," Jackson wrote. "Still, I see both the precision and tactility of controller input as an equally important method for supporting the wide range of experiences possible in both VR and spatial computing at large."
We'll check in with Jackson and keep an eye on how this project develops. His latest build added controller tracking, passthrough support, and hotseat multiplayer.
Jackson said he's planning to price it around $1.99.
Medieval Dynasty New Settlement is a new VR survival game reaching Quest today.
Developed by Spectral Games, Medieval Dynasty New Settlement is a VR spinoff of 2021's flatscreen Medieval Dynasty by Render Cube. Mixing sandbox, role-playing, simulation, crafting and exploration mechanics, you're tasked with founding and building a thriving settlement to establish your new dynasty. Here's the Quest 2 gameplay trailer.
Ensuring your settlement's long-term survival in Medieval Dynasty requires constructing buildings, cooking, hunting, cultivating crops, and wider exploration. Narrative quests, challenges, and hidden treasures encourage that, and Spectral Games states you'll encounter characters with "unique personalities and stories."
For more details, here's an official description from the store page:
As the protagonist your primary focus will be on the challenges of survival, resource gathering, and the ambitious task of creating a lasting dynasty. Utilizing the immersive capabilities of VR technology, you will physically engage in the construction of buildings, cooking, hunting, and cultivating fertile fields. Doing all of this and much more will ensure experiencing the gratification of watching your settlement rise from humble beginnings to a majestic medieval hub.
Medieval Dynasty New Settlement reaches the Meta Quest platform today for $29.99.
Meta's Horizon Workrooms is getting a major update on May 30.
Workrooms is Meta's collaborative productivity app for Quest headsets. It lets you view your PC monitor inside VR and share your screen with teammates as Meta Avatars in a virtual meeting room. People who don't own a Quest can join via webcam through a web interface or paid Zoom plans.
The app also has a solo Personal Office which gives you free extra virtual monitors, effectively turning your laptop into a triple monitor setup.
The coming update will remove the virtual whiteboard in meeting rooms, the web-based text chat and file sharing system, and tracked keyboard support.
The whiteboard was a flagship feature of Workrooms. Meta's Touch Pro controllers, which come with Quest Pro or can be bought separately for Quest 2 and 3, even come with pressure-sensitive stylus tips specifically designed for drawing on Workrooms' whiteboard.
Tracked keyboards support removal means you'll no longer be able to see a virtual version of certain keyboards inside VR, but given Workrooms lets you toggle on a passthrough cutout of your desk this shouldn't be a major loss.
The whiteboard was a flagship feature of Workrooms.
In return, the update will address the biggest complaint about Workrooms: the friction in setting up meetings and the inability to do it within the headset.
Currently you have to create a meeting room on the web interface and add others by their Meta account email address. With the new update you'll be able to easily create a meeting inside the headset, then invite people on your friends list or share a joinable link.
Meta is also promising a "more comfortable viewing experience" for screen sharing, improved graphics for the lakeside virtual environment, and the ability to resize and adjust the distance of your virtual monitors in the solo Personal Office. These adjustments will be saved for next time you use the app, Meta says.
The app's interface, which is currently styled similarly to the Quest system interface before its late 2022 refresh, also seems to be getting updated to match the current Quest system design language, based on screenshots shared by a Meta Product Manager on Threads.
Screenshots shared by a Meta PM seemingly showing the new interface style.
The Horizon Workrooms overhaul will ship on May 30, according to Meta. Existing users will have until then to download their web chat and files if they want to keep an archive of them, as they'll be deleted when the update goes live.
Workrooms' friction was a major complaint in mainstream reviews of Quest Pro, and Meta seems to be gearing up to significantly improve its productivity and collaboration software well in time for the next headset aimed at professionals. Workrooms also seems primed to eventually be the first app to get support for Codec Avatars, whenever they finally ship.
RAGER is a new melee combat VR rhythm game with a free demo on Quest App Lab.
Developed by Insane Prey, RAGER seeks to "test your skills and reflexes" as you fend off cyborgs from all directions. Offering multiple weapons like a sword, mace, claws, hammer, axe and more, this requires timing your attacks, blocks and dodging in line with the music's rhythm. You can watch gameplay in the trailer below:
We briefly went hands-on with the demo, which only features swords and maces with four difficulty settings. What follows feels like combat-driven rhythm game reminiscent of Beat Saber. Arming you with two futuristic weapons to land your strikes gives you a brief window to slice foes before they attack. However, unlike Meta's rhythm game, you don't need to use a specific colored sword to attack; either will do.
There's a good sense of rhythm as you defend, attack and dodge. Failing to avoid enemies damages you, though your health is quickly healed through a successful action. I enjoyed the gameplay loop but some presentation aspects could feel a little plain, like the flame design. Still, I like the idea and I'll be interested to see how it evolves at full release.
RAGER reaches Quest and Steam Early Access in the next few months, and you can download the Quest demo now.
Metal: Hellsinger VR brings the flatscreen rhythm shooter to Quest, Steam & PSVR 2 later this year.
Developed by The Outsiders, Metal: Hellsinger previously appeared on flatscreen platforms in 2022 and has now been "reimagined from the ground up for VR" in collaboration with Lab42 Games. Playing as a half-demon called the Unknown, this tale of revenge sees you moving, dashing, slashing, and shooting demons to the rhythmic beat as you journey through the eight hells.
While the VR adaptation features changes like swapping "most" menus for an immersive hub area, you can expect to find the original game's full campaign, difficulty settings, and challenges. The soundtrack, with guest vocals from Serj Tankian (System of a Down), Randy Blythe (Lamb of God), and Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy), is also unchanged.
However, don't expect Metal: Hellsinger VR to be a free update if you already own it on Steam or PS5. Separate store page listings suggest the VR version will require an additional purchase, though pricing details are currently unknown.
Quest mixed reality apps can disable the annoying safety boundary, but only a handful of whitelisted developers can ship this on the Quest Store and App Lab.
Boundary, formerly called Guardian, is certainly useful in virtual reality so you don't leave your playspace and bump into furniture and walls. But in most mixed reality apps it's superfluous, since you can already see the environment around you, and downright annoying because it means you can't utilize your full room as a playspace.
In the v57 system software changelog Meta said "some apps with mixed reality" will no longer have Boundary. But the company didn't say which apps this included, nor the mechanism for this happening.
UploadVR has now learned that any Quest app can disable Boundary when using passthrough by including the CONTEXTUAL_BOUNDARYLESS_APP flag in the manifest. However, the upload system for the Quest Store and App Lab will automatically reject any app version using this flag unless they're on a special Meta whitelist.
Currently whitelisted apps include:
Cubism, which has seemingly been using this flag since Quest 3 launch.
Meta's own First Encounters demo, the introductory experience for Quest 3, which implemented this flag last month.
Laser Dance, the upcoming room-scale mixed reality game from the same developer as Cubism.
But Why?
So why not let all developers use this flag and get rid of the annoying boundary in mixed reality? We asked Meta's VP of VR Mark Rabkin a similar question on X around a year ago.
Yeah, we're figuring out how to do that in practice. MR experiences vary and people are starting to flow fluidly between MR/VR, which is tricky. I totally agree that if you're in a mode where you can see all around you, Guardian should be a lot more chill.
Rabkin pointed out that some apps flow quickly between VR and MR, blurring the boundary between the two content types. And he does have a point. If an app uses passthrough as the background but is covering most of your view with virtual objects such that you can't see your walls and furniture, shouldn't the Boundary kick in?
However, Rabkin did agree that "if you're in a mode where you can see all around you", Guardian should be "a lot more chill".
Meta's solution for now is reviewing apps on a case-by-case basis to determine whether it's safe to disable Boundary. This seems deeply unscalable, however, and the company will have to find a better solution if it's serious about making Quest a mainstream mixed reality platform, and especially if it hopes people will one day wear its headset passively throughout the day.
That solution will likely include replacing Boundary with something better altogether - as was seen in clips found in the firmware in the months before Quest 3 launched.
In contrast, Apple Vision Pro's approach to this problem is to fade all virtual elements to transparent if your head moves further than 1.5 meters from where you started or gets near real-world objects. This avoids a visible boundary, but limits you to a 3-meter diameter circle.
Apple finally revealed when its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is happening this summer, and the company says it’s also slated to highlight some “advancements” on Vision Pro’s operating system, visionOS.
Coming June 10th – 14th, WWDC is set to feature updates to visionOS in addition to the regular deluge of stuff for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS.
It’s not certain what the company will have in store, however there are a few rumors out there worth considering the closer we head to the second week of June.
Marking one year since its initial unveiling, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed this week that Vision Pro is set to launch internationally in 2024, which also includes mainland China—a region where its competitor Meta can’t sell headsets. The timing on international rollout still isn’t clear however, making a WWDC announcement possible.
According to a recent report from MacRumors, Apple has been internally testing a new Apple Pencil that supports Vision Pro, which would allow it to work with XR drawing apps, such as Freeform and Pixelmator. To boot, the company recently published a patent for such a device, which could make it technically the headset’s first supported controller.
The most likely of prognostications: it’s also rumored we’ll be getting visionOS 2.0 at WWDC, which could come with a host of updates. We could see announcements surrounding its Personas avatars, improved Mac integration, Bluetooth mouse support, and updates to its hand and eye-tracking.
Like in years past, the company is holding WWDC online for free, however Apple will also be inviting a select few to join in person for an all-day event at Apple Park on Monday, June 10th. We’ll be following along then, so make sure to set your calendars.
Free-to-play VR/MR multiplayer sandbox Anarchitects has enjoyably chaotic potential. Read on for our full impressions.
Squido Studio made little secret of its inspirations when it announced Anarchitects last month. Reminiscent of Roblox's approach to user-generated content (UGC) with the creative freedom of Garry's Mod, it's not what I expected from the team following its 2023 VR platformer, No More Rainbows. That's certainly not a bad thing, though. After a half-hour demo, the comparisons are justified.
I tried a pre-release build on Quest 3 during GDC 2024, where I was joined by two members of Squido Studio. Anarchitects uses mixed reality for building levels, showcasing this world as a resizable floating area in your living space. Using MR means I could focus more clearly on the map when adding new items. Pressing X to swap between MR and the fully immersive VR mode makes this straightforward, and creators are represented as giant avatars looking down on the world.
Objects take a pleasing physics-based approach to weight that further enhances immersion and UGC's potential creates a recipe for chaos. You can drop any item from the menu into this fully immersive world, and I mean anything. You can drop cars onto the highway of a pre-made small town to go racing or scatter endless explosive barrels and murderous drones to liven up the scene.
Usable objects are freezable in set positions without removing their functionality. One completely spur-of-the-moment decision saw Squido freeze guns mid-air, and I gradually used them to climb toward a hot air balloon. I quickly realized that pressing the Touch Controllers' triggers still fires them. Did I mention that nothing prevents weapons from hurting you just because you're wielding them? I discovered this the hard way.
I'm already seeing how I could create new game types within Anarchitects. When Squido informed me that lightsabers can deflect rocket launchers and bullets, I immediately theorized a potential baseball-like game mode where you bat these away, though I didn't get a closer look at how you establish rules for your own games during my demo time.
Given the many interactive elements, sandbox games are naturally prone to jank and Anarchitects is no exception. Some shaky camera motions left me slightly nauseated near the end, though I played with minimal comfort settings. I'm told the team is looking to implement more comfort options, though at launch you can expect artificial stick-based locomotion, dominant hand selection, seated and standing modes, plus smooth and snap-turning cameras.
Might Anarchitects appeal to a younger audience with its undeniably creative sandbox? With seasonal post-launch content updates planned, we'll be watching to see how it lands with buyers and will follow up if it gains momentum.
Apple Vision Pro launched on February 2 with visionOS 1.0. Earlier this month Apple released visionOS 1.1 with improvements to the realism of Personas, reliability of Mac Virtual Display, positioning of Volumes, and more.
Apple is expected to preview visionOS 2 at WWDC24, which could bring much more significant improvements and new features.
Meta still plans to bring the upcoming cheaper version of Quest 3 to China via partnership with Tencent, The Information reports.
Cheaper Version Of Quest 3?
A Meta hardware roadmap meeting leaked to The Verge in March last year revealed the company planned to release a new headset after Quest 3 in 2024 "at the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market".
Reports from The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and a Chinese analyst who has been reliable in the past suggest this headset will feature the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset from Quest 3 but use the old fresnel lenses from Quest 2 to hit a low enough price to replace it.
XR2 Gen 2 has a more than twice as powerful GPU, which some developers are already using to deliver much better graphics.
This upcoming headset is rumored to be called 'Quest 3 Lite' or 'Quest 3S', though there's no strong evidence for any final name yet. Evidence found in the Quest firmware suggests it will also support color mixed reality.
Coming To China Via Tencent?
To sell many kinds of products in China, foreign companies must partner with a Chinese company or set up a local subsidiary. Meta and Tencent's aim to sell Quest headsets in China was first reported by Chinese news outlet 36Kr early last year, though that report claimed the product was planned to be Quest 2.
In November The Wall Street Journal reported that the partnership, which it described as "provisional", would now instead bring the upcoming cheaper version of Quest 3 to China instead. But in January a report from Sina Finance, citing another Chinese news outlet VRTUOLUO, claimed the partnership was suspended due to unresolved details on how to handle the specifics.
Now today, The Information's Wayne Ma reports that Meta and Tencent still plan to release the cheaper version of Quest 3 in the Chinese market, in the fourth quarter of this year. Ma has a good track record of accurately reporting the future moves of Meta and Apple.
The reported structure of the partnership was that Tencent would sell and support the Quest headset in China, while both companies would work together on localization and translation of Quest Store content. Meta would get most of the device revenue, while Tencent would get most of the content revenue. This wouldn’t be a novel arrangement for Tencent. It has already been selling and supporting the Nintendo Switch in the Chinese market since 2019.
If the partnership truly happens, it could be significant competition for ByteDance's Pico, which plans to release an updated Pico 4S this year. It would also offer a significantly cheaper (though less capable) alternative to Apple Vision Pro, which is also coming to China later this year and will also feature Tencent-provided apps and services.
Our series Inside XR Design examines specific examples of great XR design. Today we’re looking at the clever design of Stormland’s weapons, locomotion, and open-world.
Editor’s Note: Now that we’ve rebooted our Inside XR Design series, we’re re-publishing them for those that missed our older entries.
You can find the complete video below, or continue reading for an adapted text version.
By the time the studio began development on Stormland, it had already built three VR games prior. That experience shows through clearly in many of Stormland’s cleverly designed systems and interactions.
In this article we’re going to explore the game’s unique take on weapon reloading and inventory management, its use of multi-modal locomotion, and its novel open-world design. Let’s start with weapons.
Weapons
Like many VR games, one of the primary modes of interaction in Stormland is between the player and their weapons. For the most part, this works like you’d expect: you pull your gun out of a holster, you can hold it with one hand or two, and you pull the trigger to fire. But when your gun runs out of ammo, you do something different than we see in most VR games… you rip them in half.
Ripping guns apart gives you both ammo for that weapon type and crafting materials which are used to upgrade your weapons and abilities in the game. In that sense, this gun-ripping pulls double-duty as a way to replenish ammo and collect useful resources after a battle.
Most gun games in VR use magazines to replenish a weapon’s ammo, and while this can certainly work well and feel realistic, it’s also fairly complex and prone to error, especially when the player is under pressure.
Dropping a magazine to the ground in the middle of a firefight and needing to bend over to pick it up might feel reasonable in a slower-paced simulation game, but Stormland aims for a run-and-gun pace, and therefore opted for a reloading interaction that’s visceral, fun, and easy to perform, no matter which weapon the player is using.
This ‘ripping’ interaction, combined with some great visual and sound effects, is honestly fun no matter how many times you do it.
Interestingly, Stormland’s Lead Designer, Mike Daly, told me he wasn’t convinced when one of the game’s designers first pitched the idea for ripping guns apart. The designer worked with a programmer to prototype the idea and eventually sold Mike and the rest of the team on implementing it into the game. They liked it so much that they even decided to use the same interaction for non-gun items like health and energy canisters.
A streamlined approach to weapon reloading isn’t the only thing that Stormland does to make things easier for the player in order to maintain a run-and-gun pace; there’s also a very deliberate convenience added for weapon handling.
If dropping a magazine in the middle of a fight can hurt the pace of gameplay, dropping the gun itself can stop it outright. In Stormland, the designers chose not to punish players for accidentally dropping their gun, by instead having the weapon simply float in place for a few seconds to give the player a chance to grab it again without bending down to pick it up from the floor.
And if they simply leave it there the gun will kindly return to its holster. This is a great way to maintain realistic interactivity with the weapons while avoiding the problem of players losing weapons in the heat of combat or by accidentally not holstering them.
Allowing the weapons to float also has the added benefit of making inventory management easier. If your weapon holsters are already full but you need to shuffle your guns, the floating mechanic works almost like a helpful third-hand to hold onto items for you while you make adjustments.
Multi-modal Locomotion
Locomotion design in VR is complex because of the need to keep players comfortable while still achieving gameplay goals. Being an open-world game, Stormland needed an approach to locomotion that would allow players to move large distances, both horizontally and vertically.
Instead of sticking with just one approach, the game mixes distinct modes of locomotion and encourages players to switch between them on the fly. Stormland uses thumbstick movement when you’re on firm ground, climbing when you need to scale tall structures, and gliding for large scale movement across the map.
Thumbstick movement works pretty much how you’d expect, but climbing and gliding have some smart design details worth talking about.
Climbing in Stormland works very similarly to what you may have seen in other VR games, with the exception that your hand doesn’t need to be directly touching a surface in order to climb. You can actually ‘grab’ the wall from several feet away. This makes it easier to climb quickly by requiring less precision between hand placement and grip timing. It also keeps the player’s face from being right up against the wall, which is more comfortable, and means they don’t need to strain their neck quite as much when looking up for their next hand-hold.
And then there’s Stormland’s gliding locomotion which lets players quickly travel from one end of the map to another. This fast movement seems like it would be a recipe for dizziness, but that doesn’t seem to be the case—and I’ll talk more about why in a moment.
With these three modes of locomotion—thumbstick movement, climbing, and gliding—Stormland does an excellent job of making players feel like they’re free to fluidly move wherever they want and whenever they want, especially because of the way they work in tandem.
visionOS 2.0 for Apple Vision Pro will release this year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.
Apple Vision Pro launched on February 2 with visionOS 1.0. Earlier this month Apple released visionOS 1.1 with improvements to the realism of Personas, reliability of Mac Virtual Display, positioning of Volumes, and more.
Gurman writes that a more substantial visionOS 2.0 update will release this year and is codenamed "Constellation". visionOS 1.0 was codenamed Borealis, suggesting an astronomy theme for the codenames.
Apple usually shares details of entirely new versions of its operating systems at its annual WWDC conference, which takes place in June.
Spatial Personas?
While it's currently unknown what new features and improvements visionOS 2.0 might bring, there is one very significant visionOS feature previewed at last year's WWDC when Vision Pro was unveiled that has yet to ship: Spatial Personas.
Personas are Apple's realistic virtual avatars in visionOS, driven in real time by the headset's eye, face, and hand tracking sensors. Your Persona will appear in any iPad or iPhone app that requests the selfie camera, as well as visionOS apps that integrate Personas. Right now that visionOS integration is limited to showing the Persona inside a 2D rectangular window, as if a webcam view. But at WWDC 2023 the company teased Spatial Personas, 3D avatars that can be positioned in your space in AR or VR.
At the time Apple said Spatial Personas would arrive as a "developer preview" in late 2023 to allow developers using the visionOS simulator to build apps using them, but this has yet to happen even as of March 2024. That suggests Spatial Personas have been pushed out to visionOS 2.
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Apple's teaser of Spatial Personas from WWDC 2023.
Spatial Personas will enable you to have a shared environment with other Vision Pro users in both AR and fully immersive apps, seeing each other in a shared coordinate space with shared context instead of as detached webcam-like views.
Apple said it will offer three Spatial Persona positioning templates for developers: Side-By-Side, Surround, and Conversational.
Side-By-Side is ideal for windowed apps, including co-watching content like movies and TV shows.
Surround places the content in the center with users facing it in a circular arrangement. It's a better choice for viewing or interacting with volumetric content, such as playing a tabletop game or viewing a CAD model.
Conversational places the users in a semi-circle and the content off-center. Apple says this is for when social interaction is the primary point of the experience with the content acting as a background, such as playing music.
Apple has already architected visionOS to make synchronizing app states between users as easy as possible for developers. Spatial Personas, when they arrive, should be a step-change upgrade for using Vision Pro with other owners, opening up new multi-user use cases and significantly improving the sense of social presence in existing co-watching experiences.
Henry Stockdale
