Windlands studio Psytec Games today unveiled its first new project in seven years, a co-op adventurer platformer called Titan Isles.
The game looks to be somewhat of a spiritual successor to Windlands 2 (2018), the studio’s most recent game, letting co-op teams take on rope-swinging parkour challenges and fight off monsters of all shapes and sizes—bosses included.
Okay, maybe ‘spiritual successor’ isn’t the right term—it is a brand new game that leverages the same movement mechanics seen in Windlands, albeit with a heavy emphasis on co-op combat. Maybe Titan Islands is a high-tech prequel to the Windlands series? Probably not, but it does feel distinctly Windlands-esque.
What is known: Titan Isles is leaning into combat with its array of ranged weapons, such as bows, slingshots, and blasters, letting you deploy shields and swing around with your ever-trusty grappling hooks as you dodge a veritable bullet hell of oncoming attacks.
Titan Isles is targeting Quest and PC VR headsets, although there’s no release date on the books yet. The studio says we’ll learn more later this year, so we’ll be keeping an eye on the studio’s YouTube channel and X profile in the meantime.
The next show from friends at VR Games Showcase is here, with more than 30 minutes of trailers and info on upcoming VR games and updates for Quest, PSVR 2, and PC VR. Catch the action right here at 12PM ET.
Watch the full VR Games Showcase stream below, starting at 12PM ET (your timezone here):
VR Games Showcase is presented and produced by VR industry veterans Jamie Feltham and Zeena Al-Obaidi.
The Spring 2025 show promises the following:
Major Reveals And Updates: Get an exclusive glimpse of Hitman: World of Assassination on PS VR2, see the latest from Flat2VR Studios, and much more
Studios Big And Small: Learn what’s next from some of VR’s most beloved veteran studios, and meet newcomers working on innovative titles for everyone
Updates For Social Experiences: Catch up with existing multiplayer games and experiences with new updates and surprise drops
Meta’s Orion AR glasses prototype is expensive to make—like $10,000 per pair, expensive. Orion’s most pricey component is undoubtedly its custom silicon carbide waveguide lenses, although Meta says it sees a pathway to “significantly reduce the cost” of that key component in the future.
Silicon carbide has been around for a while, having mostly been used as a substrate for high-power chips, owing to its better power efficiently and lower heat output. Unlike silicon, silicon carbide is much more difficult to manufacture though, with challenges stemming from its material properties, crystal growth process, and fabrication complexity.
Electric vehicles are leading the way in decreasing costs, however it’s still far from reaching price-parity with the cheap and plentiful silicon-based equivalents. Another use case could involve quantum computing, although that comes with its own unique challenges separate from what Meta hopes to do with the next-gen material.
It’s not silicon carbide’s better power efficiency and lower heat output that Meta is after though. It’s the material’s high refractive index, making it ideal to provide clear, wide field-of-view (FOV) waveguides suitable for AR glasses, like the class-leading 70-degree FOV seen in Orion. And the difference between conventional multi-layered glass waveguides and Orion’s silicon carbide-base waveguides is—for the few that have tried it—night and day.
Image courtesy Meta
“Wearing the glasses with glass-based waveguides and multiple plates, it felt like you were in a disco,” says Optical Scientist Pasqual Rivera in a blog post. “There were rainbows everywhere, and it was so distracting—you weren’t even looking at the AR content. Then, you put on the glasses with silicon carbide waveguides, and it was like you were at the symphony listening to a quiet, classical piece. You could actually pay attention to the full experience of what we were building. It was a total game changer.”
Many of the world’s top electric vehicle manufactures have adopted chips based on silicon carbide in recent years, which has helped drive the price down. Giuseppe Calafiore, Reality Lab’s AR Waveguides Tech Lead, notes “there’s an overcapacity [thanks to EVs] that didn’t exist when we were building Orion. So now, because supply is high and demand is low, the cost of the substrate has started to come down.”
Notably, silicon carbide wafers used in EVs aren’t optical-grade, as they prioritize electrical performance over optical clarity, so coopting any EV chip surplus is out of the question. Still, Reality Labs’ Director of Research Science Barry Silverstein sees a path forward:
“Suppliers are very excited by the new opportunity of manufacturing optical-grade silicon carbide—after all, each waveguide lens represents a large amount of material relative to an electronic chip, and all of their existing capabilities apply to this new space. Filling your factory is essential, and scaling your factory is the dream. The size of the wafer matters, too: The bigger the wafer, the lower the cost—but the complexity of the process also goes up. That said, we’ve seen suppliers move from four-inch to eight-inch wafers, and some are working on precursors to 12-inch wafers, which would yield exponentially more pairs of AR glasses.”
Image courtesy Meta
“The world is awake now,” adds Silverstein. “We’ve successfully shown that silicon carbide can flex across electronics and photonics. It’s a material that could have future applications in quantum computing. And we’re seeing signs that it’s possible to significantly reduce the cost. There’s a lot of work left to be done, but the potential upside here is huge.”
This wouldn’t be the first time XR headsets have directly benefitted from larger, more consumer-oriented industries taking the lead. In the early 2010s, small, low-cost displays developed for smartphones were a key driver in kickstarting the consumer VR headset revolution. For example, if you’ve ever cracked open an Oculus Rift DK2, released in 2014, you’ll find a Galaxy Note 3 display panel at its core—Samsung branding and all.
That’s not to mention a host of other components that have been lifted from the smartphone parts bin over the years, including inertial measurement units (IMUs), camera sensors, and battery technology. The parallels are there, although it seems leveraging the silicon carbide wins spurred by the EV boom still won’t be nearly as straight forward in AR glasses.
While suppliers are eyeballing photonics-grade silicon carbide, it’s still a niche within a niche that will take years to scale up. It’s effectively one of the main reasons Meta can’t productize Orion today. That said, Meta is using Orion as an “internal developer kit” of sorts as its hopes to produce a pair of consumer AR glasses sometime before 2030, priced somewhere near “phone, laptop territory,” Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth revealed in September.
Still, with such massive potential for consumer appeal, these puzzle pieces will fit together somehow. Companies like Meta, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Qualcomm all hope to own their own slices of the next dominant mobile computing platform, which aims to replace smartphones entirely.
Apple is planning a “feature-packed release” for visionOS 3.0, reports Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who says that Vision Pro’s operating system—and not new XR hardware—is going to be a focus at this year’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC).
Despite its high price and premium appeal, Apple hasn’t slowed down software updates for Vision Pro, which launched in February 2024 for $3,500.
Now, Gurman reports Apple is gearing up to showcase visionOS 3.0 at WWDC, which typically takes place in June.
“All signs are pointing to the company’s Vision Products Group shifting its resources to other form factors,” Gurman maintains. “But Apple can’t just let the Vision Pro die out. It has invested too much and needs to keep churning out the device’s visionOS updates (the third edition will be a pretty feature-packed release, I’m told).”
There’s no indication yet what visionOS 3.0 could contain, although if it’s anything like visionOS 2.0, which was announced at WWDC 2024 last June, developers will likely be able to go hands-on as soon as it’s announced.
That said, information is still thin. One possible candidate for visionOS 3.0 could address the headset’s lack of motion controllers; Gurman reported last month Apple is currently working with Sony to adopt PSVR 2’s Sense Controllers as Vision Pro’s officially supported motion controller.
As for hardware reveals (or the lack thereof) at WWDC 2025, Gurman echoes previous claims made by Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo late last year, who reported that multiple Vision Pro follow-up are currently planned.
Gurman notes that Apple is planning a headset containing a new M-series chip (possibly M5), as well as cheaper versions of the headset. Contrary to Kuo’s report, which maintains an upgraded M5 version of Vision Pro is coming this year, Gurman claims we won’t see a follow-up headset from Apple in 2025.
Our series Inside XR Design examines specific examples of great XR design. Today we’re looking at the game Synapse and exploring the concept of embodiment and what makes it important to VR games.
Editor’s Note: It’s hard to believe a whole year has passed since this piece was first published, but it’s insights are as relevant as ever in 2025! We’re bumping it back up to our front page to continue the discussion around embodiment as a crucial design concept for compelling VR content.
You can find the complete video below, or continue reading for an adapted text version.
Defining Embodiment
Welcome back to another episode of Inside XR design. Today I’m going to talk about Synapse (2023), a PSVR 2 exclusive game from developer nDreams. But specifically we’re gonna to look at the game through the lens of a concept called embodiment.
So what the hell is embodiment and why am I boring you talking about it rather than just talking about all the cool shooting, and explosions, and smart design in the game? Well, it’s going to help us understand why certain design decisions in Synapse are so effective. So stick with me here for just a minute.
Embodiment is a term I use to describe the feeling of being physically present within a VR experience. Like you’re actually standing there in the world that’s around you.
And now your reasonable response is, “but don’t we already use the word immersion for that?”
Well colloquially people certainly do, but I want to make an important distinction between ‘immersion’ and ‘embodiment’.
‘Immersion’, for the purposes of our discussion, is when something has your complete attention. We all agree that a movie can be immersive, right? When the story or action is so engrossing it’s almost like nothing outside of the theater even exists at that moment. But has even the most immersive movie you’ve ever seen made you think you were physically inside the movie? Certainly not.
And that’s where ’embodiment’ comes in. For the sake of specificity, I’m defining immersion as being about attention. On the other hand, embodiment is about your sense of physical presence and how it relates to the world around you.
So I think it’s important to recognize that all VR games get immersion for free. By literally taking over your vision and hearing, for the most part they automatically have your full attention. You are immersed the second you put on a headset.
But some VR games manage to push us one step further. They don’t just have our attention, they make us feel like our whole body has been transported into the virtual world. Like you’d actually feel things in the game if you reached out and touched them.
Ok, so immersion is attention and embodiment is the feeling of actually being there.
And to be clear, embodiment isn’t a binary thing. It’s a spectrum. Some VR games are slightly embodying, while others are very embodying. But what makes the difference?
That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about with Synapse.
Cover You Can Feel
At first glance, Synapse might look like a pretty common VR shooter, but there are several really intentional design decisions that drive a strong sense of embodiment. The first thing I want to talk about is the cover system.
Every VR shooter has cover. You can walk behind a wall and it will block shots for you. But beyond that, the wall doesn’t really physically relate to your actual body because you never actively engage with it. It’s just a stationary object.
But Synapse makes walls and other cover interactive by letting you grab it with your hand and pull your body in and out of cover. This feels really natural and works great for the gameplay.
And because you’re physically moving yourself in relation to the wall—instead of just strafing back and forth with a thumbstick—the wall starts to feel more real. Specifically, it feels more real because when you grab the wall and use it as an anchor from which to move, it’s subconsciously becoming part of your proprioceptive model.
Understanding Proprioception
Let’s take a second here to explain proprioception because it’s a term that comes up a lot when we’re talking about tricking our bodies into thinking we’re somewhere else.
The clearest example I’ve ever seen of proprioception in action is this clip. And listen, I never thought I’d be showing you a cat clip in this series, but here we are. Watch closely as the cat approaches the table… without really thinking about it, it effortlessly moves its ear out of the way just at the right time.
This is proprioception at work. It’s your body’s model of where it is in relation to the things around you. In order for the cat to know exactly when and where to move its ear to avoid the table without even looking at it, it has to have some innate sense of the space its ear occupies and how that relates to the space the table occupies.
In the case of the cover system in Synapse, you intuitively understand that ‘when I grab this wall and move my hand to the right, my body will move to the left’.
So rather than just being a ‘thing that you see’ walls become something more than that. They become relevant to you in a more meaningful way, because you can directly engage with them to influence the position of your body. In doing so, your mind starts to pay more attention to where the walls are in relation to your body. They start to feel more real. And by extension, your own body starts to feel more present in the simulation… you feel more ‘embodied’.
Mags Out
And walls in Synapse can actually be used for more than cover. You can also use them to push magazines into your weapon.
Backing away from embodiment for just a second—this is such a cool design detail. In Inside XR Design #4 I spent a long time talking about the realistic weapon model in Half-Life: Alyx (2020). But Synapse is a run-and-gun game so the developers took a totally different approach and landed on a reloading system that’s fast paced but still engaging.
Instead of making players mess with inventory and chambering, the magazines in this game just pop out and float there. To reload, just slide them back into the weapon. It might seem silly, but it works in the game’s sci-fi context and reduces reloading complexity while maintaining much of the fun and game flow that comes with it.
And now we can see how this pairs so beautifully with the cover game’s cover system.
The game’s cover system takes one of your hands to use. So how can you reload? Pushing your magazine against the wall to reload your gun is the perfect solution to allow players to use both systems at the same time.
But guess what? This isn’t just a really clever design, it’s yet another way that you can engage with the wall—as if it’s actually there in front of you. You need to know if your arm is close enough to the wall if you’re going to use it to reload. So again, your brain starts to incorporate walls and their proximity into your proprioceptive model. You start to truly sense the space between your body and the wall.
So both of these things—being able to use walls to pull yourself in and out of cover, and being able to use walls to push a magazine into your gun—make walls feel more real because you interact with them up close and in a meaningful way.
And here’s the thing. When the world around you starts to feel more real, you start to feel more convinced that you’re actually standing inside of it. That’s embodiment. And let’s remember: virtual worlds are always ‘immersive’ because they necessarily have our full attention. But embodiment goes beyond what we see—it’s about what we feel.
And when it comes to reaching out and touching the world… Synapse takes things to a whole new level with its incredible telekinesis system.
Take IT Studio, the developer behind Electrician Simulator (2022), is bringing a VR version of the game to Quest, PSVR 2 and PC VR headsets this month.
Electrician Simulator VR is getting things up to code by letting you go hands-on as a Sparky, tasking you with everything from repairing outlets and switches, laying cables in walls, to connecting electrical appliances.
Take IT Studio says each mission in the VR version was “created from scratch,” which are based on missions introduced in the flatscreen version of the game. You’ll also encounter (sometimes fickle) customers, who can surprise you with extra requirements and also story or two.
In addition to regular missions, Electrician Simulator VR is also slated to include a challenge mode, tasking you with completing three additional tasks on each mission—maybe a little less conventional than you were expecting, and requiring a little more thought in execution.
Electrician Simulator VR is slated to release March 21st, which you can wishlist today across Quest 3/S, PSVR 2, and SteamVR headsets.
Mighty Coconut just released a new course for Walkabout Mini Golf (2020), letting you putt-putt your way around the home of the gods: Mount Olympus.
As the game’s latest paid DLC, the Mount Olympus map brings two 18-hole courses (one easy, one hard) intertwined around classical Greek temples. As per usual, there’s also an unlockable putter, a new collection of themed Lost Balls to hunt, and some themed cosmetics too.
It’s more than just togas—or rather, chitons—and fun Greco-Roman hairstyles though. Emma Mercado, Senior 3D Artist at Mighty Coconut, says the game “took a more traditional approach” when imagining the godly realms, giving each major god their own temple, including bits to highlight their legendary lore and mythos.
In an interview with Meta, Mercado says the team created props from the stories about each god, such as the affair between Ares and Aphrodite—and the reaction of her jealous husband Hephaestus, how Alectryon was turned into a rooster for failing as Ares’ bedroom guard, or how Arachne continues to hang around Athena’s loom after besting her at a weaving contest. You’ll also get a sense of Demeter’s grief over losing her daughter Persephone to Hades, shown through the changing seasons at her temple.
You’ll find the Mount Olympus DLC, which is notably Walkabout Mini Golf’s tallest, largest, and densest course to date, on all supported platforms.
Priced at $4, you can buy it now over on the Horizon Store for Quest, PlayStation Store for PSVR 2, Steam for PC VR headsets, Pico Store for Pico headsets, and App Store for the iOS-supported Pocket Edition (flatscreen gameplay).
Pimax has two PC VR headsets in development: the ultralight Dream Air and the wide field-of-view Crystal Super. The company recently offered an update on the development progress of both headsets, including an update on the shipping timeline of Crystal Super.
Pimax Dream Air Update
Image courtesy Pimax
Pimax Dream Air is the company’s first effort to build an ultralight PC VR headset. First announced in December with a price of $1,900, the headset is undergoing various tweaks as the company completes the prototyping phase and moves toward an expected May release date.
In its latest update on Dream Air, Pimax says it has added speaker pods to the sides of the headset for improved audio.
Image courtesy Pimax
The headset’s tether is also changing from a single cable that runs along the left side of the headset to a split cable that will run along both sides and then combine into one cable behind the user’s head. Pimax says this change will help with the balance of the headset.
Image courtesy Pimax
Pimax is also moving the Dream Air’s USB-C accessory slot to the bottom of the headset to make it more accessible for clip-on accessories like trackers. And the newest iteration of the headset’s design now includes vents for active cooling, as the compact headset and displays will have plenty of heat to dissipate.
The company also says it has an early prototype of the headset’s pancake lenses, and specifies that they have a concave front surface that helps expand the headset’s field-of-view. Between that and slightly canting the lenses and displays, Pimax says it expects the final field of view to be 105° horizontally rather than the originally announced 102°.
Image courtesy Pimax
Field-of-view isn’t the only thing that could increase, however. The company says it’s still choosing between two candidate displays. Both are micro-OLED with identical resolution. But one of the panels (from Sony) has “better optical qualities,” according to the company, but also a higher price tag. If the final version ends up using the Sony panel, Pimax says it could increase the cost of the headset “a tiny bit.”
While it’s nice to see the field-of-view go up, potentially changing already-announced specs and prices with little more than two months before the headset is supposed to ship seems to reinforce longstanding criticism that the company often gets ahead of itself in planning and execution.
Speaking of the headset’s purported May release date, Pimax indicates in this latest update that it expects to have a “proper working demo unit [of Dream Air]” in April, one month before the headset is expected to ship. And in May, the company says it’ll have a “public event” to showcase the headset.
The video concludes with the company saying, “we are fine-tuning the final parts and at the same time also minimizing the risk for delays. The Dream Air is on the way and we’ll be showing it publicly soon.”
Pimax Crystal Super Update
Pimax Crystal Super | Image courtesy Pimax
Crystal Super is the company’s latest large form-factor PC VR headset which aims for a wide field-of-view (130° horizontal) and high resolution (3,840 × 3,840).
Crystal Super was originally announced in April, 2024, with an expected release date of Q4 2024. In the recent update, the company shares its latest projections for the headset’s release date: the end of March for the 50 PPD version and mid-April for the 57 PPD version.
Pimax says that early versions of the Crystal Super are in the hands of ‘beta testers’ who have been providing feedback. Based on that feedback, the company is seemingly regressing the Super’s headstrap design to something closer to its prior headsets: a simple over-the-head strap (instead of a horizontal strap with ratcheting adjustment) and a larger facepad for better weight distribution.
Image courtesy Pimax
The company also addressed newly imposed tariffs that the US has placed on products from China. Pimax says it will eat the cost of the tariffs for any orders placed before they were announced (February 4th). However, the company suggests that the tariffs will increase the cost of its headsets in the future.
Animal Company, the free-to-play early access game on Quest, nabbed the top spot for Quest’s highest-earning game this week, overtaking long-time viral hit Gorilla Tag in the weekly charts. Now, developer Wooster Games tells Road to VR it’s not only already profitable, but Animal Company has surpassed one million monthly active users (MAU), cementing its status as VR’s next big F2P game.
Launched in early access on Quest last July, Animal Company takes inspiration from Gorilla Tag by including its arm-powered locomotion mechanic and low-poly animal avatars, but it switches things up by essentially replicating the game loop of Lethal Company—which is where the name comes from.
Like Lethal Company, it’s full of weird places to explore and loot to collect, which can be brought back to base for profit. Monsters and traps are everywhere though, with each creature presenting unique challenges, requiring teams to employ stealth, strategy, and cooperation to avoid or overcome them.
“We took inspiration from viral multiplayer hits like Gorilla Tag, Yeeps, and Among Us VR, and during a hackathon, we prototyped VR experiences influenced by the trends we saw in games like Lethal Company and Content Warning,” Wooster Games tells Road to VR.
And it appears to be resonating with Quest owners, as the game took the number one spot as Quest’s top-earning title this week, passing Another Axiom’s Gorilla Tag. As VR’s most successful game to day, Gorilla Tag has been powerhouse ever since it launched on the main Quest store in late 2022, posting over $100 million in gross revenue last summer.
Image captured by Road to VR
Granted, Meta only calculates the chart on a week-by-week basis, so while Animal Company clearly hasn’t generated more lifetime revenue than Gorilla Tag—that would be a tall order for any game—it’s a sign of things to come.
Like many F2P games, Animal Company’s revenue comes entirely from in-app purchases, which not only includes specific cosmetic items, but also the game’s in-world currency, Company Coins, which can be used to buy a host of seasonal cosmetics.
While the studio isn’t sharing specific revenue numbers right now, Wooster says Animal Company’s recent success has left the studio in “a strong and healthy position,” highlighting its recent updates—Tech Tree, Mining, and the Planetarium—which have all driven “significant growth in engagement and activity.”
“Since launching monetization in September, our revenue has grown consistently month-over-month, more than doubling since December,” the studio tells Road to VR. “The real standout stat, though, is our player base—Animal Company now has over 1 million MAU, a 4x increase since December.”
Wooster says the game’s rapid success came down to a few key factors, including the holiday season bringing more players online, new Quest 3 owners, and a Winter update, which brought new content, such as a new map, items, and exclusive holiday cosmetics. And even coming off the holiday boost, things still seem to be humming over at Animal Company. Wooster says that February, typically a quieter month, saw both a rise in usage and revenue.
Those technical factors would help any game succeed, surely, although one of the biggest boons undoubtedly comes down to how Animal Company co-opts Gorilla Tag’s movement mechanics—something players already implicitly understand, albeit with a fresh and interesting gameplay loop that centers around social, community-driven gameplay.
And like Gorilla Tag—you really can’t talk about Animal Company without mentioning Gorilla Tag—social media influence has been a big part of the game’s rise in popularity, with the studio citing TikTok and YouTube as “a huge driver of Animal Company’s reach.”
“On TikTok alone, the #AnimalCompany hashtags have racked up over 410 million views, with some videos hitting 24M+ views. The game was designed to create ‘viral moments’ that players naturally want to share, and its sandbox-style gameplay—packed with unique items, weapons, and cosmetics—gives creators endless ways to make engaging content.”
To boot, besides a series of small ad tests, which were under $1,000, Wooster says it’s spent substantially nothing on paid marketing, focusing instead on strong relationships with creators, from up-and-coming talent to established names like Jmancurly.
“We’ve found that a game offering content that translates into views is far more valuable to creators than direct sponsorships. Paid promotions often feel inauthentic and don’t drive the same sustained engagement as organic success.”
So far, it’s been less about paid adverts, and more about actively courting its community and the cadre of influencers creating Animal Company content. The studio recently released an invite-only program, called ‘The Drip Department’, which that gives members early access to updates, exclusive content, and more to help them grow their channels alongside the game.
“To validate our ideas, we launched our own TikTok and YouTube channels to test whether we could generate viral moments ourselves. The response was immediate—before launch, we gathered our first 100 community members through social media. A week after launch, that number hit 1,000. Six months later, we had over 100,000 members, and today, Animal Company has organically amassed nearly 500 million views.”
More importantly though, Animal Company is doing all of this at the best possible time, it seems. Last month, Meta confirmed a growing demographic shift amid last year’s release of Quest 3S, which has not only seen a rise in F2P content on the Quest platform, but also revenue generated from in-app purchases.
“With more players engaging in F2P experiences and in-game economies, Animal Company’s growth aligns with this shift,” the studio says. “The success of viral, player-driven games like ours shows that the Quest platform is entering a new era—where social engagement and creator-driven content are just as crucial as traditional game marketing. We expect this trend to continue shaping the future of VR.”
Whether Animal Company will ever surpass Gorilla Tag in long-term popularity remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that its explosive growth signals a new era for VR multiplayer games—one where social-driven, F2P experiences dominate the landscape. With over a million active players and a fast-growing community, Animal Company has already proven it’s more than a passing trend. The question now isn’t if it will last, but just how far it can go.
– – — – –
Some more data for context: Gorilla Tag launched on Quest’s main store in late 2022 after driving hype on SideQuest and the now-defunct App Lab for nearly a year. The game exploded in growth in late 2023 when the studio announced it had topped 2.3 million MAU, attracting over 700,000 users on Christmas Day that year.
Last June, the Gorilla Tag team updated that figure, saying the game had then topped 10 million lifetime users, one million daily active users (DAU), and three million MAU. At the time of this writing, Animal Company has garnered over 60,000 user reviews on the Horizon Store, while Gorilla Tag sits above 140,000.
Toast Interactive announced their VR games Max Mustard (2024) and Richie’s Plank Experience (2017) have been removed from the Horizon Store for Quest. For now, it’s unclear precisely why, however the veteran indie studio says the move has left them feeling “betrayed and powerless.”
“Unfortunately, Meta has unilaterally chosen to remove Toast and its two games, Max Mustard and Richies Plank Experience from their store,” the studio says in a post on X. “We feel betrayed and powerless on many levels.”
While temporary delisting can happen by mistake, this doesn’t appear to be the case. There is a reason, however Toast Interactive says it can’t talk about it yet, separately noting the studio “look[s] forward to sharing our story with you all in the near future.”
In a Reddit post, Toast Interactive says the reason will “blow everyone’s minds. But I’ve been firmly advised not to.”
On both the Max Mustard and Richie’s Plank Experience Horizon Store pages, the reason listed is the apps are “out of compliance with Meta’s Platform Abuse Policy,” although there’s no information on specifically how it fell out of compliance.
Image captured by Road to VR
The company’s platform abuse policy covers a wide range of offenses, such as pirated content, security exploits, or deception of any kind, however it also covers more nebulous areas that are likely left up to interpretation.
Not following developer documentation, or “any other provisions of the Meta Platforms Technologies Terms of Service or Code of Conduct for Virtual Experiences, or any other Meta Platforms Technologies terms, policies or guidelines” can also get an app removed with or without warning, Meta says in its Platform Abuse Policy.
Notably, both games are still available across their other supported platforms, with Max Mustard supporting PC VR, PSVR 2 and Pico headsets, and Richie’s Plank Experience supporting PC VR, the original PSVR and Pico headsets.
This follows a first layoff round in November 2024, which affected 10 employees. At the time, the studio maintained that while Max Mustard was “one of the highest-rated games on both PSVR 2 and Meta Quest, it sadly can’t sustain a large indie team.”
This story is breaking: we’ve reached out to Meta for more clarity on the situation and will report back when/if we receive a response, or as more information arises.
Virtuix announced it’s releasing an immersive tourism app for its Omni One VR treadmill system that lets you walk through some of the world’s most iconic destinations.
Coming to the company’s Omni One all-in-one system on March 6th, TREKS matches immersive video up with physical walking, bringing you to locations like the Grand Canyon, New York’s Central Park, or the ancient halls of Riyadh’s Fort Masmak.
Set to arrive from the company’s first-party studio, Virtuix Studios, Treks will be available exclusively on the Omni One Game Store, prices at $30.
When it arrives, the app’s initial release is slated to include four main locations:
Grand Canyon – Walk the trails and gaze over the majestic cliffs of this natural wonder.
Niagara Falls – Experience the power of the falls from both the American and Canadian sides.
New York City – Tour famous landmarks including the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, Central Park, and the Brooklyn Bridge.
Saudi Arabia – Step into the rich history of Fort Masmak and the stunning architecture of Al Rajhi Mosque.
Virtuix Studios says it plans to release additional locations in the coming months as DLC content, which is said to include new landmarks, historical sites, and natural wonders. Additionally, the company claims that one hour of walking in Treks burns about 500 calories.
“With TREKS, you’re not just watching these destinations—you’re moving through them,” said Jan Goetgeluk, CEO of Virtuix. “It’s a great way to stay active while exploring some of the world’s most iconic places. Fitness and adventure go hand in hand, and TREKS brings that to life in a whole new way.”
The Omni One system, which is priced at $3,495, includes the titular VR treadmill, as well as a customized Pico 4 Enterprise headset, which supports both native apps via its internal chipset, or tethered to a VR-ready PC both wired or wirelessly.
This follows an announcement last month that Omni One now supports over 55 titles, with notable additions including Arizona Sunshine Remake, Arizona Sunshine 2, and Into The Radius.
Omni One’s all-in-one system also compatible with SteamVR games, owing to its Omni Connect PC Driver, which lets you to create custom bindings and adjusting settings to tune games not specifically designed for immersive walking.
Astrea, the studio and publisher behind a host of VR narrative experiences, including Spheres, Astra, and Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom, has released an interactive VR experience on Quest and PC VR headsets that lets you embody passengers on a train, and help them face pivotal moments in their lives.
Called The Passengers, the four chapter, 40-minute interactive experience allows you to become one of four characters, experiencing their internal monologues and interacting with the environment with both your hands and voice.
Developed by Canada-based studio Couzin Films and France-based Les Produits Frais, The Passengers tells each story with a variety of styles, offering different visuals such as oil paint, watercolor, pencil, colored pencils, and immersive video.
“In this experience, you can be each one of the four passengers who all have their own personal quest. The course of each story is affected according to what they say, where they look, and what they do with their hands. You are one deciding all of that. The characters were created by volumetrically scanning the four actors. They were then rigged and animated through motion capture.”
While The Passengers is new to consumer headsets, it’s actually been on the international festival circuit since 2021 shortly after its completion.
The experience won the Best Immersive Experience – Fiction award at the Canadian Screen Awards (2022), and was selected as a finalist at the Prix Gémeaux (2022), Prix Numix (2021) and the VR Experience of the Year at the VR Awards (2021).
You can find The Passengers on the Horizon Store for Quest 2 and above, and Steam for PC VR headsets, priced at $5.
Meta revealed its Orion prototype last year to show the progress it has made toward compact AR glasses. Today the company talked more about the prototyping process, especially regarding the ‘compute puck’ that offloads much of the heavy processing into a device that goes in the user’s pocket.
One of the major reasons that today’s XR headsets are so big is because they need room for a lot of processing power, battery volume, and heat dissipation. But with Meta and the rest of the industry aiming to eventually make all-day wearable AR glasses, size becomes a serious challenge.
A ‘compute puck’ is a companion device for AR glasses that moves some of the processing and battery off of the user’s head and into a pocketable device.
Meta used the compute puck approach for its prototype Orion AR glasses. While companies like Magic Leap have used similar approaches in the past, Orion’s approach is somewhat novel because the compute puck is completely wireless. But it didn’t start out that way.
But this concept apparently didn’t last very long after the team decided it would cut the tether and make a pocketable puck that was completely wireless.
After becoming untethered, the Orion team realized that it opened new possibilities for what could be done with the device.
One clever idea involved using the puck as an anchor for content, such as projecting a video call above the puck. Not only would this serve as a tangible place for users to move their content from one place to another, it would also mean encouraging them to pull the puck out of their pocket, resulting in better performance thanks to improved cooling.
An illustration of using the Orion puck for video calling| Image courtesy Meta
“It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen—the device has the potential to create really fun and unique interactions,” said Emron Henry, Industrial Designer at Meta. “The user experience feels a bit like unleashing a genie from a bottle, where holograms seamlessly emerge from and dissolve back into the device.”
The team also considered using the puck as a controller, which could be tracked using inside-out tracking thanks to on-board cameras.
An illustration of using the Orion puck as a controller | Image courtesy Meta
In the end, the version of Orion that has been seen publicly leans away from using the controller as a significant part of the input modality. Instead the glasses use a combination of eye-tracking and neural inputs thanks to the company’s prototype EMG wristband.
But there’s no telling what the final version of Orion will look like. For the team, this was a valuable time for design exploration.
“We’re defining a category that doesn’t quite exist yet,” notes Henry. “As you’d expect with R&D, there were starts and stops along the way. How will users expect to interact with holograms? Would they prefer to use an AR remote or is hand tracking, eye gaze, and EMG sufficient for input? What feels intuitive, low friction, familiar, and useful?
Rockstar Games announced it’s acquiring Video Games Deluxe, the Sydney-based studio behind L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files (2017) and the shelved Quest port of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004).
The details of the acquisition haven’t been made public, however Rockstar says in a press statement that Video Games Deluxe has now been renamed to ‘Rockstar Australia’, and will “continue [its] efforts to make the best games possible.”
In addition to those VR ports, Video Games Deluxe is best known for its work on hit detective game L.A. Noire (2011), as well as the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy (2021) compilation, which brought GTA III (2001), GTA: Vice City (2002) and GTA: San Andreas to mobile and modern consoles.
Image courtesy Meta
Shortly before the compilation’s re-release in late 2021 though, Rockstar and Meta (then Facebook) announced they were working to port GTA: San Andreas (2004) to Quest 2, which was slated to be led by Video Games Deluxe.
Rockstar never publicly announced Video Games Deluxe was involved, likely owing to the fact the port was cancelled shortly thereafter, however in a 2020 job listing the studio tipped its hand by announcing it was creating a “AAA open world title in VR” for Rockstar.
As a long-time support studio for Rockstar, the acquisition likely won’t change much for any potential revival of GTA: San Andreas for Quest. After years of silence, Meta confirmed with IGN in August 2024 the project was put “on hold indefinitely.”
VR Games Showcase is returning next week, promising to feature 20+ VR games from over a dozen developers and publishers. The livestream, kicking off on March 11th at 12 PM ET, is slated to not only include updates to upcoming releases, but also new game announcements as well as exclusive peeks at gameplay.
Event organizers have already teased a few of the 15+ publishers taking part in the VR Games Showcase next week, which thus far is set to include Flat2VR Studios, Triangle Factory, Fireproof Games, tinyBuild, Trebuchet, IO Interactive, PolarityOne, Patient 8 Games, Blue Isle Studios and Perp Games.
Here’s a breakdown of what’s been confirmed so far:
Flat2VR Studios is announcing a list of upcoming flatscreen-to-VR ports in addition to info on the VR version of RyseUp Studios’ roguelike shooter Roboquest (2023).
Triangle Factory, the studio behind Rainbow Six-inspired VR shooter Breachers (2023), will debut its next major VR project.
Fireproof Games, the studio behind The Room VR: A Dark Matter (2020), is sharing more info on Ghost Town, its upcoming VR puzzle-adventure for Quest, PSVR 2 and PC VR headsets
Trebuchet is tossing out more info on Prison Boss: Prohibition, its sequel to the 2017 prison-based VR crafting and trading game.
IO Interactive is showing off PSVR 2 gameplay of Hitman: World of Assassination, which was previously slated to launch on PSVR 2 in December 2024, but is now releasing March 27th.
PolarityOne is showing off Exoshock gameplay, its upcoming co-op shooter for Quest slated to release in Q2 2025.
Patient 8 Games is releasing info on its previously delayed sci-fi survival-horror game Memoreum.
Blue Isle Studios and Perp Games are showing off gameplay of the VR port of Slender: The Arrival (2013), which was initially supposed to launch last year.
We’ll of course be following along, but you can catch this year’s VR Games Showcase livestream on March 11th at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET (local time here) across YouTube and TikTok Live.
