Play for Dream Expects to Adopt Android XR for Standalone OS and Bring New Focus to US Market

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China-based Play for Dream, the company building a Vision Pro-like standalone MR headset, says it expects to adopt Android XR as its standalone operating system.

The Play for Dream MR headset has been called a “Vision Pro knock-off,” given its close aesthetic similarity to Apple’s headset. But people who have tried it say it’s more than just a cheap look-alike, including a former Quest engineer who gave the headset high praise on execution.

While the Play for Dream MR headset is currently running its own flavor of Android as its underlying operating system, the company tells Road to VR that it expects to adopt Google’s own Android XR platform eventually. The company says it is “in ongoing discussions, but a definitive timeline has not yet been provided,” regarding the move.

Whether that means the Play for Dream MR headset itself would potentially be updated in the future with Android XR after launch is unclear. Alternatively the company could wait until a future headset to make its transition.

Given that the $1,200 headset is planned to launch at the end of the month, it’s unlikely Android XR would crop up before then. Especially considering that Google says Samsung’s Project Moohan headset will be the first headset to release with Android XR, and its release date still hasn’t been announced.

Play for Dream is relatively well established in China, but is little known in the US. In speaking with the company recently, we learned more about its background.

Huang Feng | Image courtesy Play for Dream

Play for Dream was founded in 2020 by CEO Huang Feng, who is also the founder of Wanyoo Esports, “Asia’s largest esports café chain;” and Bixin, “a leading gaming platform application in China with over 60 million registered players,” the company says.

Other key executives include Chairman Zong Yuan and CTO Yue Fei, while the company says it has more than 200 employees, and has not raised any outside investment.

While the company has sold several headsets into the Asia market, it says the Play for Dream MR headset is focused primarily on the US XR market.

Responding to criticism of the similarity of the headset (and its marketing) to Apple’s Vision Pro, a spokesperson said, “Our goal wasn’t to directly rival the Apple Vision Pro. We drew inspiration from its innovative design, focusing instead on creating an Android-based device that reflects our unique vision and approach.”

Image courtesy Play For Dream

While there are significant similarities to Vision Pro in the look of the headset and its interface, one marked difference is that Play for Dream MR will support motion controllers.

The headset got its feet of the ground with a Kickstarter campaign that launched in September 2024, which raised roughly $300,000 from 215 backers, and ended in October.

While the campaign indicates that the first shipments of the Play for Dream MR headset are already shipping to backers, the wider release date for the headset is expected at the end of March, the company says.

The post Play for Dream Expects to Adopt Android XR for Standalone OS and Bring New Focus to US Market appeared first on Road to VR.

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‘Meta for Education’ Program Exits Beta, Bringing Quest to the Classroom

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Meta announced its ‘Meta for Education’ program is now out of beta, allowing schools and educational institutions from all over to fill their classrooms with Quest headsets and use a variety of education-focused XR apps and software.

Initially announced last April, Meta for Education is a comprehensive solution for educators looking to bring XR into the classroom, which includes Quest headsets, XR management solution subscriptions with education-tailored device capabilities suitable for the classroom, and a variety of tools and apps built for admins, educators, and students.

Over the course of its beta, Meta worked with colleges in the US and UK to help refine the platform, with educators reporting that virtual and mixed reality enhanced student engagement and improved comprehension of complex topics.

Image courtesy Meta

Nick Clegg, Meta’s President of Global Affairs and formed UK Deputy Prime Minister, highlights the transformative potential of immersive technologies in education, enabling students to experience otherwise inaccessible scenarios.

“Improving the life chances of children through education has been something I’ve been interested in throughout my career in politics and technology,” says Clegg.

“Of all the technological advances I’ve witnessed at Meta, immersive technologies like virtual and augmented reality really caught my imagination because of the potential they have to transform the way we learn. My hope is that, through Meta for Education, we can make it easier for students to learn, practice, and apply new skills; feel a sense of presence with teachers and classmates; and visit places or experience things that would otherwise be impossible. Most importantly, I hope it helps teachers do what they do best: teach.”

Meta says data obtained from 43 Inspired Education Group schools, which already user immersive technology with teens in the classroom, reported 87% of students feeling more engaged and interested in their lessons, while 85% of teachers found virtual and mixed reality to be a valuable tool to enhance their teaching. Students also experienced a 15% improvement in their academic performance on multiple-choice assessments.

The program’s exit from beta follows a number of partnerships with institutions, such as Arizona State University, Imperial College London, and the University of Miami to integrate VR into their curricula.

Additionally, Meta and VictoryXR have developed over 30 “metaversities” with the Engage XR platform to create digital twin campuses for remote student interaction. Digital twin campuses are now available to students at The University of Leeds in the UK, University of the Basque Country in Spain, and University of Hannover in Germany.

Educators interested in learning more about Meta for Education can check out the program’s website, which includes a contact for applicants in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the US.

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Meta Reveals Next Generation Aria Smart Glasses for Research and Experimentation

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Meta today revealed its next-gen smart glasses, Aria Gen 2, which the company intends to release to third-party researchers working on machine perception systems, AI and robotics.

The company revealed its first iteration of Project Aria back in 2020, showing off a sensor-rich pair of glasses which the company used internally to train its machine perception systems, ultimately tackling some of the most complex issues in creating practical, all-day augmented reality glasses of the future.

Since then, Meta’s first-gen Aria has found its way outside of company offices; early collaborations with BMW and a number of universities followed, including Carnegie Mellon, IIIT Hyderabad, University of Bristol, and University of Iowa, which used the smart glasses to tackle the a host of machine perception challenges.

Now, Meta has revealed Aria Gen 2. Like the first-gen device, Gen 2 doesn’t include displays of any type, though it now houses an upgraded sensor suite, including an RGB camera, position-tracking cameras, eye-tracking cameras, spatial microphones, IMUs, barometer, magnetometer, GNSS, and custom Meta silicon.

New to Aria Gen 2 are two new sensors embedded in the device’s nosepad: a photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor for measuring heart rate and a contact microphone to distinguish the wearer’s voice from that of bystanders.

What’s more, Meta touts the 75g device’s all-day usability—making for 6-8 hours of active use—and its a foldable design.

The increasingly AI-rich device also features a slate of on-device machine perception systems, such as hand and eye-tracking, speech recognition, and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) tracking for positional awareness.

Aria Gen 2 | Image courtesy Meta

Meta envisions the Aria’s SLAM tracking will allow users to internally map and navigate indoor areas that don’t have good or detailed GPS coverage—aka, a visual positioning system (VPS) that could equally help you get around a city street and a find specific item in a store.

The company isn’t ready to sell Aria Gen 2 just yet, although Meta says it will share more details over the coming months, which is slated to target both commercial and academic researchers.

One such early collaboration was with Envision, which announced in October it was working with Meta to provide Aria with a ‘Personal Accessibility Assistant’ to help blind and low-vision users navigate indoor spaces, locate items, and essentially act as a pair of ‘seeing eye’ glasses.

Envision and Meta showed off their latest work in a video (seen above), revealing how Aria Gen 2’s SLAM tracking and spatial audio can assist a blind user to navigate a supermarket by following a spatially correct homing ping that the user perceives as emanating from the correct area, which guides them to the desired item, such as a red onion, or Granny Smith apple.

This comes as Meta continues its push to release its first commercial AR device, which not only needs all of those systems highlighted in Aria, but also the ability to display stereo-correct information in a slim, all-day wearable package. It’s no small feat, considering displays have much higher compute and power requirements relative to Aria’s various machine perception systems.

One of Meta’s biggest ‘light house’ moments was the reveal of its AR prototype Orion in September, which does feature those compute and power-hungry display, yet still fitting into an impressively slim form-factor, owing to its separate wireless compute unit.

Orion | Image courtesy Meta

Orion, or rather an Orion-like AR device, isn’t going on sale anytime soon though. The internal prototype itself cost Meta nearly $10,000 per unit to build due to its difficult to scale silicon carbide lenses, which notably feature a class-leading 70 degree field-of-view (FOV).

Still, the race is heating up to get all of the right components and use cases up to snuff to release a commercial product, which is aiming to supplant smartphones as the dominant mobile computing platform. Meta hopes to launch such AR glasses before 2030, with other major companies hoping to do the same, including Apple, Samsung, and Google.

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Prop Hunt-style Game ‘Mannequin’ Goes Free-to-Play on Quest as Freemium Multiplayer Games Thrive

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Mannequin (2024), the VR game that brings a unique twist to prop hunt, is going free-to-play on Quest starting today—which could point to more developers opting to go the freemium route.

Launched last June on Quest and SteamVR headsets, Mannequin isn’t your typical shooter, nor is it your typical game of prop hunt, which usually involves a team of hunters shooting everything that moves, and their prey evading them by morphing into everyday objects.

Instead, two gun-toting Agents hunt three shape-shifting aliens, aka Mannequins, who can evade capture by blending into crowds of frozen NPCs. Agents can track down a Mannequin to a general area, but can only fire their gun once before a cool down period, giving aliens the perfect moment to leap out and strike down the hunter.

Now, developer Fast Travel Games is making Mannequin free-to-play on Quest, which includes the base game and a variety of maps. A $10 in-app purchase adds in progression-locked character skins, custom games, rotating game types, more maps, and mod support. The studio hasn’t mentioned any other microtransactions beyond that $10 paywall.

Much like Gorilla Tag, Mannequin will still be a paid app on Steam, albeit with a new price of $10 (originally $20). While the studio hasn’t said as much, Another Axiom says Gorilla Tag does this to keep away griefers, who can more easily hack the game on PC and clog servers with unwanted behavior.

The free-to-play launch also comes with a new update, which includes a new map, called ‘Towers’, which introduces portals to the game for the first time. You can find Mannequin over on the Horizon Store for Quest 2 and above for free, and over on Steam for PC VR headsets, priced at $10.

But why free-to-play, and why now? While generally well-received, Mannequin isn’t the most popular multiplayer game out there; we haven’t seen concurrent player numbers on Quest, its most popular platform, although on Steam it only counted an all-time peak of 26 PC players following launch, according to SteamDB data. Making the game free-to-play will undoubtedly boost those numbers across both platforms, although there seems to be something bigger at play.

While freemium games like Gorilla Tag, Population: One, Rec Room, and Animal Company have fared well on Quest in the past, the free-to-play trend appears to be growing on the standalone platform.

Meta’s VP of Metaverse Content, Samantha Ryan, recently confirmed that Quest has seen an influx of younger users with the launch of Quest 3S, which is contributing to the rise of free-to-play titles. Younger players tend to spend more time in social games—and while Ryan doesn’t explicitly state this—they also spend more money on in-app purchases.

So, while Mannequin certainly isn’t the first, we expect it won’t be the last ‘premium’ Quest game to jump on the free-to-play bandwagon following Meta’s announcement, as developers are undoubtedly looking to nab even a fraction of the virality Gorilla Tag saw, which led it to topping $100 million in gross revenue last summer.

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MIT Reality Hack Has Become a Focal Point for US East Coast XR Devs & Entrepreneurs

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While the XR industry’s major hubs are concentrated on the West Coast of the US, the MIT Reality Hack hackathon has become a focal point for XR developers and entrepreneurs on the East Coast of the US. Now in its eight year, the event has expanded with new opportunities for industry discussion and networking thanks to the concurrently held EXPERIENTIAL Conference. Executive Director Maria Rice offers an overview of this year’s hackathon and winners.

Image courtesy Maria Rice

Guest Article by Maria Rice

Maria is the Executive Director of MIT Reality Hack. For the last eight years, she has been instrumental in positioning the Hack as the world’s leading experiential technology community through the development of programs like the EXPERIENTIAL Innovation Conference, the Reality Scholars diversity fund, and the startup-focused Reality Hack Founders Lab.

From January 23–27, hundreds of top hackers-for-good—along with a roster of tech OGs and startup founders—descended on the MIT campus to attend the eighth annual MIT Reality Hack, the premiere hackathon for experiential technology.

The Hack was sponsored by a range of international players at the intersection of XR, AI, and deeptech. With AI development support from Lambda Labs, participants built functional prototypes using Meta Quest 3, Snap Spectacles, Qualcomm’s RB3g2 robotics kits, ShapesXR, Cognitive 3D, and STYLY.

Image courtesy Sean Chee

One of the most notable characteristics of this year’s MIT Reality Hack was the introduction of new hardware kits, including MEMS-based AR lenses from Maradin, a haptic exoskeleton from Haptikos, and an array of neurosensing gear from OpenBCI, including the Galea biosensing headset.

Image courtesy Sean Chee

With an unapologetic mission of hacking for good, MIT Reality Hack is most memorably distinguished by the dynamic energy generated by its participants and organizers. The five-day event stretched the hacking talents of some 600 participants to the limit, producing 78 innovative use cases and applications in XR and adjacent tech.

Image courtesy Sean Chee

Winning projects included YEIGO, an AR tool for ensuring that mobility aids (like walkers) are used with correct posture; CAREGIVR, an immersive platform for preparing families and caregivers for end-of-life care; and Tac-Man, a haptic input device for sculpting in VR.

Check out the full list of the 2025 winners in all hardware and software categories.

EXPERIENTIAL Conference Expands MIT Reality with New Opportunities for Industry Discussion and Networking

Image courtesy Sean Chee

Held alongside the MIT Reality Hack event, global attendees presented at the first-ever EXPERIENTIAL Innovation Conference at MIT; a one-day event envisioned as a ‘Davos of the spatial tech industry’. Cutting-edge research into the most challenging deeptech was demonstrated and debated within the context of learning innovation, vertical applications, and global development.

EXPERIENTIAL Conference was sponsored by IEEE Spectrum, Qualcomm, and Helsinki-based pioneer Distance Technologies.

In part to support the ‘hack-to-market’ initiative of the Founders Lab (one of Reality Hack’s community subprograms), EXPERIENTIAL featured two exciting company launches:

Limit Labs, founded by the leaders of VR/AR MIT, launched RoomSeed, a groundbreaking genAI tool informed by rigorous research.

Haptics company Haptikos launched with a new hand exoskeleton that brings a sense of touch to XR apps at a dramatically low price point with twice the precision of previous solutions.

Startup demos also included MIT spinout Three Space Lab and AI products from AUR+A, and Taiwan-based Meta Intelligence.

EXPERIENTIAL is shaped by the mandate set forth to extend Reality Hack’s inclusive technology focus beyond hacking and into the zeitgeist towards the promotion of creator economies. The program journeyed deep into the realms of both academic research and the business marketplace.

The conference kicked off with a fireside chat between two well known names in the industry: Tim Bajarin, founding analyst and Chairman of Creative Strategies and Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, who expounded over the course of an hour on the state of the XR industry, as moderated by AR pioneer Dan Cui.

Image courtesy Sean Chee

Bajarin also participated as a first-time judge at the Hack and wrote up his thoughts on Forbes, calling his experience “one of the highlights of my career”, after 40+ years in the tech industry.

The EXPERIENTIAL keynote was give by Qualcomm’s Senior VP & GM of XR, Ziad Asghar who explored the growing synergy of AI capabilities in XR devices, and the importance of events like MIT Reality hack in incubating the ideas and talent that drive rapidly evolving industries.

Image courtesy Sean Chee

Later in the conference a panel covering Global Initiatives Towards a Sustainable Future, saw MIT Senior Lecturer Ken Zolot moderate a conversation between keyholders representing the United Nations (UNICC), The World Bank Group, Inclusive AI Lab, and Qualcomm, and futurist & Global VP at HTC, Alvin Wang Graylin.

Panelists shared how they leverage experiential technology and hackathon initiatives to empower creator communities, drive economic growth, and enable new, more inclusive human experiences across industries and regions.

As noted by AWE co-founder and Reality Hack partner Ori Inbar: “XR is going mainstream, but to fully achieve this goal we need more seasoned XR builders and newcomers of all kinds to create diverse spatial experiences that matter to every single person on the planet. That’s how you conquer the mainstream!”

Companies interested in participating in the 2026 MIT Reality Hack and the EXPERIENTIAL Innovation Conference may reach out to the conference by contacting me here.

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HTC Launches Browser-based 3D & VR Platform ‘VIVERSE Worlds’, Aims to Be ‘YouTube of 3D Content’

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HTC today launched VIVERSE Worlds, a 3D content platform that can be embedded on “any website for any device,” positioning it as a lighter, more flexible way of hosting and browsing 3D content across the web.

Unlike HTC’s existing Viverse metaverse platform—or Meta’s Horizon Worlds, for that matter—the key differentiator is Viverse Worlds focuses on 3D content distribution. Instead of requiring any sort of app download, the platform offers up a web-based interface for quick and easy 3D content browsing, supporting XR headsets and flatscreen devices alike.

The company isn’t aiming low either, likening Viverse Worlds to what “YouTube did for video,” but for 3D content, further noting it’s an “open, accessible, and immersive online home for creators to build, share, and explore the next generation of 3D experiences.”

And Viverse Worlds hopes to differentiate by offering fairly high quality content too, thanks to the inclusion of HTC’s Polygon Streaming tech, which allows the streaming of “complex, high-poly models across various platforms and devices with unparalleled efficiency,” the company said back at the tech’s 2024 unveiling. While web-based content excels at quick deployment, rendering constraints typically make for simplistic, low-poly visuals.

Initially targeted exclusively at Viverse for Business, but now at the core of Viverse Worlds, Polygon Streaming only streams and renders the 3D elements currently visible to users at the currently needed density, HTC says, making it possible to deliver higher quality 3D content without the need of bespoke executables.

And like HTC as a whole, which has firmly embedded itself in the enterprise and prosumer XR space over the past few years, Viverse Worlds appears to be appealing to both companies who want things like immersive shopping experiences, 3D manuals, and virtual product showrooms—and consumers looking to browse and share the platform’s array of XR environments.

“Users can subscribe to creators for updates and see all their 3D content in one place. Embedding 3D is effortless—simply copy and paste it into any website as an IFrame, all for free,” HTC says.

To boot, Viverse Worlds also closely integrates with Sketchfab, the marketplace and hosting platform for millions of 3D models. That, and Viverse Worlds supports content created using Viverse Create’s no-code web builder and its browser-based PlayCanvas extension.

While HTC’s Polygon Streaming and easy embedding could give Viverse Worlds an edge, it’s not an easy space to compete in. Similar platforms, like FrameVR, Matterport, and Spatial.io, focus on niches instead of broadly shooting for “YouTube” levels of adoption, simply based on how difficult it is to monetize. Notably, one of the biggest analogues, Mozilla’s now-defunct WebXR-based Hubs platform, summarily shut down in 2024 following financial issues.

That said, HTC ultimately hasn’t tipped its hand on its overarching monetization strategy. The company will be hosting public demos of Viverse Worlds at Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona, Spain on March 3rd – 6th, so we’re hoping to learn more then.

What is clear though is HTC isn’t the company it once was. Last month, Google announced it had acquired a number of HTC’s XR engineers for $250 million, something Google said would “accelerate the development of the Android XR platform across the headsets and glasses ecosystem.” Where that leaves HTC is still a mystery.

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Valve’s Standalone XR Headset ‘Deckard’ Reportedly Launching This Year at $1,200, Leaker Claims

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Valve’s rumored standalone XR headset, codenamed ‘Deckard’, is practically the stuff of legend at this point, with speculation brewing since data miners first discovered mention of the alleged device in January 2021. Now, leaker and data miner ‘Gabe Follower’ maintains Deckard is coming by the end of 2025, priced at $1,200.

Gabe Follower, who also runs a YouTube channel, reports in an X post that “[s]everal people have confirmed that Valve is aiming to release new standalone, wireless VR headset (codename Deckard) by the end of 2025. The current price for the full bundle is set to be $1200,” they say in the X post.

Gabe Follower also maintains Valve is also set to ship games or demos “that are already done” specifically for Deckard.

Notably, that $1,200 price point “will be sold at a loss,” Gabe Follower maintains, who posits Deckard will use the same SteamOS as seen in Steam Deck, Valve’s handheld, albeit adapted for VR.

“One of the core features is the ability to play flat-screen game[s] that are already playable on Steam Deck, but in VR on a big screen without a PC,” Gabe Follower claims, further noting behind-closed-door presentations could start soon.

While all leaks should be taken with a grain of salt, Gabe Follower has accurately leaked a number of Valve-specific projects in the past, including leaks on Counter-Strike, Half-Life, and Valve’s upcoming PC shooter MOBA, Deadlock.

Even if the leak was more of a shot in the dark than insider info as such, it’s clear Valve is preparing something related to XR. In November 2024, leaked 3D models hidden in a SteamVR update appeared to show off a new VR motion controller, codenamed ‘Roy’.

Valve ‘Roy’ Model Leak | Image courtesy Brad Lynch

Departing from standard VR motion controller layouts, Roy appears to offer more of traditional gamepad-style button layout, which would make flatscreen gameplay (in a virtual environment) a 1:1 input experience with Steam Deck.

Successive rumors maintain Deckard may include PC VR wireless streaming capabilities, eye-tracking, as well as passthrough AR features, potentially putting it in competition with Meta Quest and/or Apple Vision Pro.

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Meta Abandons In-Headset Building Tool for ‘Horizon Worlds’, Marking a Shift in Expected Growth

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Meta released a new Desktop Editor for Horizon Worlds in preview, giving world creators a Unity-style game development platform for the first time. The PC-based editor is designed to be more robust, and make world creation easier and higher quality than its previous Quest-native VR editor, which Meta says it’s now deprecating.

Meta needs broader reach to make Horizon Worlds a success, which it ostensibly hasn’t found on Quest thus far. While the company made its metaverse platform accessible to mobile and desktop in 2023, bringing non-VR users to the platform for the first time since its initial beta launch in 2021, the maker-centric platform is still largely a VR-first experience. But that appears to be changing.

The newly released Desktop Editor allows developers familiar with traditional game engines, such as Unity, to create and publish worlds. Meta says in its developer resources “the VR creation tools … are legacy tools. We strongly recommended moving your development process to the Desktop editor and other PC creation tools.”

Image courtesy Meta

Granted, Horizon World creators can still preview scenes in VR while tethered to the desktop-based editor, although it’s not a prerequisite. In short, Horizon Worlds users don’t need a VR headset, and now, neither do world creators.

This follows a report earlier this month of a leaked memo from Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, who said the mobile version of the app “absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance.”

More recently, Meta announced last week it’s launching a $50 million fund to boost content creation in Horizon Worlds, aiming to drive engagement as self-contained VR studios struggle.

Moreover, Meta’s strategy signals it’s not only doubling down on Horizon Worlds by tossing out more money to developers and giving them tools they’re mostly already familiar with, but it’s also looking to seize a rapidly growing cohort of younger Quest users. Younger players tend to favor free-to-play content and socially-driven experiences—something Meta likely hopes to capture with Horizon Worlds.

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Apple’s Latest AI Tools Coming to Vision Pro in April, Developer Preview Now Available

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Apple Intelligence, the company’s set of AI tools currently available on iOS and Mac, is coming to Vision Pro in April with the public release of visionOS 2.4. But if you’ve activated developer mode, you can already go hands-on.

As you’d expect, Apple Intelligence is slated to bring all of the latest AI features to Vision Pro, including writing tools, AI-generated images, smart reply messages, natural language search in Photos, AI summaries, and custom emojis—everything we saw released on iOS and Mac since its initial launch October, but potentiated by the fact that Vision Pro heavily relies voice and hand-based text input.

Image courtesy Apple

More specifically, the next Vision Pro update will also include enhancements to Guest User mode, letting users share their Vision Pro with others using a nearby iPhone or iPad, making it easier to guide guests through the experience—helping to relieve the familiar “ok, return to Home, tap that icon—no, the other icon” dance XR users tend to do when showing off their headset.

The 2.4 release also introduces Spatial Gallery, a curated collection of spatial photos, spatial videos, and panoramas from artists, filmmakers, and photographers. When it arrives, Spatial Gallery will roll out to users Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, the U.A.E., the UK, and the U.S.

 

Additionally, Vision Pro is getting tighter integration with iOS; when visionOS 2.4 officially drops in April, Vision Pro users will be able to queue app and game downloads, browse spatial content and experiences, and access device info from iPhone with a new Apple Vision Pro iOS app, slated to arrive with the launch of iOS 18.4.

For now, the 2.4 release with Apple Intelligence will only be available in U.S. English, with more features and support for additional languages rolling out throughout the year, Apple says.

While there’s no firm release date yet beyond the April launch window, the company has already released a developer beta of visionOS 2.4. To enroll in developer beta release, simply navigate to Settings > Privacy & Security. Find and enable “Developer Mode”, and restart Vision Pro.

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‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’ is Getting an Official XR Game with First Installment Coming in 2026

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Korea-based studio Pixelity announced it’s currently developing an XR game based on the hit ’90s anime Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995).

Pixelity says in a blogpost it’s signed an official licensing agreement with Studio Khara in Japan to make the XR game. Planned to release in three parts, and based on the story of all 26 episodes of the anime, Pixelity says the first installment is already in production and targeting release in 2026.

If you’re an unwashed Evangelion fan (like us), you already know the score. In short, the anime sparked a massive resurgence of anime in Japan during the 1990s, going on to become a cultural phenomenon that influenced numerous successor anime.

Set in 2015—twenty years ahead of its actual 1995 air date—the story follows Shinji Ikari, who is chosen as a pilot for the humanoid combat weapon Evangelion, humanity’s last line of defense against the Angels mysterious beings attacking the futuristic city of Tokyo-3.

The studio hasn’t mentioned specific platforms yet, although the game is said to allow players to “explore various locations with an immersive XR experience, following the same timeline and events as Neon Genesis Evangelion, while completing missions and enjoying dynamic battles.”

“The game will feature collaboration play elements where players interact with various characters from Evangelion, which is expected to be an attractive point for existing fans. Pixelity aims to provide a dynamic experience typical of action-adventure genres,” the studio says.

Founded in 2017, Pixelity has created a number of VR games, including Puttzzle (2023), Crazyworld VR (2022), and Rise of the Fallen (2018). The studio is also currently working on two other VR games, The Patcher and Teahouse of Souls.

While this isn’t the first time Evangelion has been adapted to VR headsets, it will be the first official at-home game for the series. In 2017, Bandai Namco-backed VR studio ‘Project i Can‘ released the four-player Evangelion VR: The Throne of Souls at VR ZONE in Shinjuku, Japan, which was available there for a limited time.

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‘Ghosts of Tabor’ Studio’s Next Shooter ‘Silent North’ Launches into Early Access in March

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Ghosts of Tabor studio Combat Waffle is nearing launch of Silent North, the studio’s next VR shooter that promises plenty of multiplayer zombie survival action, with Quest and Steam early access launches planned for March.

Published by Beyond Frames Entertainment, Silent North brings you high up in the Swiss Alps, forcing players to hunker down and survive a world not only overrun by zombies, but also your fellow man, who has a damnable penchant for killing and looting (just like you).

That said, players can team up or go it solo while scavenging for gear and defending against a “never-ending supply of hungry corpses,” the studio says.

“Littered with PVPVE action, players will not be able to escape an encounter with players, or the infected,” the game’s description reads. “Whether you’re in the mountains or in the plains. Experience intense adrenaline pumping firefights to stay alive, or prey on your enemies to survive in the wilds. But tread carefully, there may be other players hiding and waiting to strike on you.”

Silent North has now launched pre-orders on Horizon Store, priced at $17—a 15% discount from its $20 launch price. Starting today, it’s also available to wishlist on Steam, which will eventually allow pre-orders at the 15% discount closer to launch.

While the exact early access release date is still a mystery, Combat Waffle has confirmed however it is indeed coming to Quest and SteamVR in March. It’s also unclear if we’ll be seeing a similarly timed launch on other target VR platforms, which also includes PSVR 2 and Pico headsets.

The post ‘Ghosts of Tabor’ Studio’s Next Shooter ‘Silent North’ Launches into Early Access in March appeared first on Road to VR.

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‘Among Us VR’ to Become ‘Among Us 3D’, Adding Support for Flatscreen PC Play

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Schell Games and Innersloth announced that flatscreen support is coming to Among Us VR (2022), which means crossplay for VR and PC players.

Additionally, the studios announced the VR game is rebranding to Among Us 3D, bringing a first-person perspective to PC users for the first time.

Schell Games confirmed Among Us 3D will allow PC users to join cross-platform lobbies with VR players across all supported platforms, including Quest, SteamVR, PSVR 2 and Pico headsets.

Notably, Among Us 3D is not compatible with the original Among Us (2018) 2D game, which has remained separate since the initial launch of Among Us VR in November 2022.

“With Among Us 3D, we’re excited to bring the first-person perspective to an even wider audience,” said Ryan Hall, Project Director at Schell Games. “By uniting VR and PC players, we’re opening up even more ways to brutally betray your friends—your whole crew can get in on the fun!”

The rebrand is slated to take effect over the next few months, the studios say, which will include updates rolling out across store pages, websites, and in-game branding.

Among Us 3D is also set to include a new in-game currency, called ‘Stardust’, which will ostensibly allow players to purchase cosmetic items, which the studios say will “support the expansion of the game.”

There’s no launch date yet, although it could be fairly soon, as Among Us 3D will be featured in Steam Next Fest, giving players an exclusive early demo before launch.

The post ‘Among Us VR’ to Become ‘Among Us 3D’, Adding Support for Flatscreen PC Play appeared first on Road to VR.

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Meta Announces $50M ‘Horizon Worlds’ Content Fund as Some VR Studios Struggle to Make Ends Meet

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Meta today announced a $50 million fund to incentivize the creation of new and improved content in Horizon Worlds, the company’s first-party social gaming platform. The move comes as many seasoned studios that build self-contained VR apps for the Quest platform are struggling to sustain themselves due to what Meta says is a shifting demographic of headset users.

Since the launch of Oculus Rift CV1 in 2016, self-contained VR apps have been the lifeblood of Meta’s VR platforms, and the primary driver of a growing audience of users over the years. And while these self-contained games and apps still largely define Meta’s XR platform, the company has come to believe that an all-encompassing ‘metaverse’ of connected experiences is the key to its success.

Horizon Worlds is Meta’s attempt at building the ‘metaverse’, where the platform serves as both a destination for playing and for building. Creators can build content inside of Horizon Worlds itself, then publish that content to the rest of the Horizon Worlds community. It’s all social by default, a critical element for one of the world’s largest social media companies.

But with Horizon Worlds available in VR for several years but not achieving a critical mass of users that could satisfy Meta’s desire for scale, the company eventually opened up Horizon Worlds to flatscreen devices like phones and computers with the goal of bringing more people onto the platform. While this invites a larger audience, it also makes the job of creators harder, given the challenge of satisfying the unique affordances of VR vs. those of flatscreen platforms.

Image courtesy Meta

And of course, one of the big hurdles to getting people using and returning to Horizon Worlds is straightforward: content. If there isn’t fun things to do with strong replayability, why would anyone keep coming back, let alone check out Horizon Worlds in the first place?

Meta has made some strides on content by attracting more and more creators to build for the platform and creating some of its own first-party games inside of Horizon Worlds.

Now the company is making another big bet to incentivize creators to build on Horizon Worlds; today it announced a $50 million ‘Creator Fund’ that will pay out to creators of worlds that drive high visits and retention.

“Each month, we’ll pay out bonuses from the Creator Fund to the makers of fun and engaging mobile and MR worlds. Bonuses will be tied to worlds’ contributions to the overall ecosystem across time spent, retention, and in-world purchases, so there are a variety of different ways for creators to maximize their earnings,” the company said in its announcement.

The fund comes alongside a new development tool, the Horizon Worlds desktop editor, which allows creators to build more extensive projects with the speed and power of their computer, rather than being inside a headset. It’s closer to the workflow of existing self-contained VR app developers, who generally build their apps using a game engine like Unity.

Image courtesy Meta

The move is in line with Meta’s growing conviction that Horizon Worlds is essential to its success in this space. Whether VR or not, Meta wants to build its own version of Fortnite—a social gaming platform with massive reach and retention.

Meta’s CTO recently told the teams working on XR and Horizon that the mobile version of Horizon Worlds “absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance.”

While the new $50 million creator fund is certainly a boon for creators who believe in Meta’s vision for Horizon Worlds, it comes at a tough time for developers of the self-contained VR and MR apps that have kept Meta’s headsets relevant.

The fund is the exclamation mark on the last two years which saw Meta pivot its VR platform to focus much more on Horizon Worlds. The company drastically reorganized its headset interface and mobile companion app—and even renamed them to reflect their new focus—to put Horizon Worlds content in front of more users. In some cases this meant pushing high-quality self-contained apps further from view, sometimes in favor of amatuer content of little value, or ‘cloned’ content that aims to recreate the gameplay of a successful self-contained VR app inside of Horizon Worlds.

A widespread feeling among those third-party developers at the moment is that these changes have significantly harmed their businesses, which rely on sales of their apps to continue supporting existing content and to create new content. The feeling is that Meta is funneling customers away from their apps and onto its own sub-platform (where Meta takes an even more aggressive cut of creator revenue).

A growing list of longstanding studios that have built well received self-contained VR apps have been made significant cuts to staff and footprint, citing the dual challenges of sluggish performance on Meta’s Quest platform and broader distress in the overall gaming industry. Meta even closed one of its own studios that was focused on high-production self-contained VR games.

That’s not to say that Meta hasn’t invested in developers of self-contained VR games & apps over the years.

The company has disbursed hundreds of millions of dollars for the purpose of building alluring VR content, and has aimed to accelerate small indie developers with programs like Oculus Start.

Last year the company created a “multi-million dollar” fund to incentivize new studios to try their hand at creating MR content for Quest, and a similar fund aimed at developers building ‘lifestyle’ apps for Quest headsets.

However, many developers are left with a feeling that even if they have found a sustainable audience for now, Meta’s shifting focus—whether from VR to MR, or MR to Horizon Worlds—makes the Quest platform a volatile and risky place to do business.

For its part, Meta counters that the fading fortunes of some self-contained VR app developers is due not to frequent pivots, but to a demographic shift of Quest users which has seen growing demand for free-to-play apps over paid apps

And indeed, there’s probably some truth to that. Despite being ‘free to play’, Gorilla Tag has become one of VR’s most successful titles ever, reeling in more than $100 million in revenue through in-app purchases. The studio credits its free-to-play model as a major factor in that success, with the low barrier to entry helping to achieve a critical mass of player population.

Other VR apps building on the free-to-play model are also seeing positive signs of momentum, like Digigods, which recently raised $2.6 million in funding to expand thanks for strong growth from players responding to social, free-to-play, and user-generated content.

Meta maintains that paid VR apps will continue to be important to its Horizon platform. The company says it’s continuing existing its usual funding activities for self-contained VR content (though recent reports contest that notion).

The post Meta Announces $50M ‘Horizon Worlds’ Content Fund as Some VR Studios Struggle to Make Ends Meet appeared first on Road to VR.

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‘Pokémon Go’ Maker Niantic Reportedly Selling Gaming Division, Shifting Focus to AR & Mapping Tech

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Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go (2016), is reportedly in talks with Saudi Arabia-owned Scopely to sell its gaming division.

According to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the talks, the report maintains the companies are currently discussing a $3.5 billion acquisition price, which could conclude in the coming weeks.

This would include the transfer of Pokémon Go in addition to Niantic’s other mobile games, such as Monster Hunter Now and Pikmin Bloom.

Niantic is also known for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, which attempted to replicate the success of Pokémon Go, but critically failed, forcing the company to shut down development in 2022.

Provided the sale goes through, this would leave the San Francisco-based Niantic to focus on its growing list of AR development platforms and geo-spatial mapping tools.

In May 2022, Niantic launched its Lightship Visual Positioning System, which forms an underlying 3D map of the world so AR devices can share the same frame of reference, even on massive scales.

Then, later that year, the company announced it was working with Qualcomm on a reference AR headset based on the Snapdragon AR2 platform, which at the time the company called an “outdoor AR headset.”

While Niantic hasn’t released any hardware as such, last September the company announced it was entering in a partnership with Snap to bring its AR pet simulator game Peridot to Snap’s fifth generation of Spectacles.

Then, a few months later, the company released its VPS-integrated WebXR app Into The Scaniverse, which was built using Niantic Studio to let users capture real-world locations in 3D and view on Meta Quest.

Without its gaming properties, we’d expect Niantic to essentially be all-in on AR, as the company would ostensibly look to leverage VPS, Niantic Studio and Niantic Spatial Platform SDK.

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