‘Star Citizen’ Claims Testing of VR Support Will Begin Soon, More Than 10 Years After Promising It

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Star Citizen promised to include VR support as a core feature more than a decade ago—long before it scope-creeped its way into becoming the MMO of today. Now, Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) says they’re actually going to put VR support to the test, but you still probably shouldn’t hold your breath.

As first reported by UploadVR, CIG is going to internally test whether it can bring VR support to Star Citizen. For those counting, that will be 13 years since the studio promised it in the game’s 2012 Kickstarter campaign.

“We have backed Oculus Rift and will support it in Star Citizen / Squadron 42,” CIG said in the game’s Kickstarter. “Who doesn’t want to sit in their cockpit, hands on your joystick and throttle, swiveling your head, to track that enemy fighter that just blew by?”

In a recent interview though, CIG Senior Director Sean Tracy says the studio still has plans to bring VR support to the game, and briefly touches on some of the challenges.

“Obviously we’ve talked about [VR] a million times,” says Tracy in the interview, seen below. “It’s something we want, we just don’t prioritize it ahead of everything else. We’ll still be coming back to that […] I think there are some tests even going on in the next month or two.”

And while Tracy says Star Citizen’s Star Engine—a derivative of CryEngine 3—can actually support VR, there are two main issues: the game’s renderer no longer supports VR, and the studio will need to engineer a solution to dual render for left and right eyes at an acceptable frame rate, which is a tall order.

Granted, a small portion of the game did include support for the Oculus Rift DK1 for a brief time in 2013, which allowed users to walk around a ship hangar and visualize a purchased ship. There have been other internal tests since then too, and even feature releases that suggested that VR support was still on the studio’s radar, like its UI update in 2017 which was supposedly made with VR in mind.

Meanwhile, Star Citizen has essentially become synonymous with ‘scope creep’—when a developer promises more and more features beyond anything initially envisioned for the game—making it doubtful we’ll ever see VR support at this rate.

Beginning as a relatively modest space sim crowdfunded in 2012 with a goal of $500,000, Star Citizen promised a deep space combat and trading game in the spirit of Wing Commander and Freelancer.

It has since ballooned into a persistent MMO-style universe and a cinematic single-player campaign (Squadron 42), also integrating first-person shooter gameplay, planet landing and procedural generation, complex economic simulation, NPC AI ecosystems, realistic physics and damage modeling—the list goes on.

And with over $800 million raised—by far the most crowdfunded entertainment project in history—the game remains in alpha over a decade later.

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Meta Avatars Get a Major Makeover With New Body Types, Poses & AI-driven Clothing Styles

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Meta is giving its Avatars another big upgrade, offering users finer control over things like face shape, body part sizes, hair, makeup and more.

Avatars are integrated across the gamut of Meta’s platforms, including Horizon Worlds, Home and Workrooms on Quest and mobile, and across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.

Now, users in the US and Canada can choose from dozens of new body types and customizable features, including things like shoulders, hips, and biceps. A new body preview mode is also there, letting users adjust their frame before customizing with outfits.

Notably, the Avatar face editor is also getting a boost, with new parametric controls for customizing things like jawlines, cheek fullness, and facial depth. Additionally, Meta says it’s added 18 standing poses, over 50 new emotes, and dozens of new clothing options tailored to fit all body types.

And to style your avatar, a new AI-powered style tool is launching too, which lets Horizon mobile app users generate new outfit ideas via text prompt or randomization, allowing users to then manually fine tune those creations.

Meta says it’s initially releasing the new avatar system to 13+ users in the US and Canada, noting that it’s rolling out the update gradually, which also means there should be more styles and features added over time.

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‘Spotify’ Finally Comes to Quest, Letting You Listen to Music in the Background

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Spotify finally has its own Quest web app, letting you listen to music in the background as you go about your virtual ways.

The new Spotify app for Quest isn’t an app in the traditional sense, but rather a progressive web app (PWA) that essentially opens up its own browser window.

While that means you can’t use Spotify offline, like you might on Android or iOS, it does mean you can bypass the old song and dance of having to open the browser and go to Spotify web manually.

Image courtesy Spotify

It also means you can enjoy all of the same music and podcasts however you like, be it minimized for background play, or maximized so you can watch video podcasts, check out track lyrics, browse artists, and manage your playlists.

And as you’d imagine, the Spotify web app for Quest is free, supporting both free and paid subscriptions. You can find Spotify for Quest over on the Horizon Store, supporting Quest 2 and above.

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Meta & Stanford Reveal Ultra-Thin Holographic XR Display the Size of Glasses

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Researchers at Meta Reality Labs and Stanford University have unveiled a new holographic display that could deliver virtual and mixed reality experiences in a form factor the size of standard glasses.

In a paper published in Nature Photonics, Stanford electrical engineering professor Gordon Wetzstein and colleagues from Meta and Stanford outline a prototype device that combines ultra-thin custom waveguide holography with AI-driven algorithms to render highly realistic 3D visuals.

Although based on waveguides, the device’s optics aren’t transparent like you might find on HoloLens 2 or Magic Leap One though—the reason why it’s referred to as a mixed reality display and not augmented reality.

At just 3 millimeters thick, its optical stack integrates a custom-designed waveguide and a Spatial Light Modulator (SLM), which modulates light on a pixel-by-pixel basis to create “full-resolution holographic light field rendering” projected to the eye.

Image courtesy Nature Photonics

Unlike traditional XR headsets that simulate depth using flat stereoscopic images, this system produces true holograms by reconstructing the full light field, resulting in more realistic and naturally viewable 3D visuals.

“Holography offers capabilities we can’t get with any other type of display in a package that is much smaller than anything on the market today,” Wetzstein tells Stanford Report.”

The idea is also to deliver realistic, immersive 3D visuals not only across a wide field-of-view (FOV), but also a wide eyebox—allowing you to move your eye relative to the glasses without losing focus or image quality, or one of the “keys to the realism and immersion of the system,” Wetzstein says.

The reason we haven’t seen digital holographic displays in headsets up until now is due to the “limited space–bandwidth product, or étendue, offered by current spatial light modulators (SLMs),” the team says.

In practice, a small étendue fundamentally limits how large of a field of view and range of possible pupil positions, that is, eyebox, can be achieved simultaneously.

While the field of view is crucial for providing a visually effective and immersive experience, the eyebox size is important to make this technology accessible to a diversity of users, covering a wide range of facial anatomies as well as making the visual experience robust to eye movement and device slippage on the user’s head.

The project is considered the second in an ongoing trilogy. Last year, Wetzstein’s lab introduced the enabling waveguide. This year, they’ve built a functioning prototype. The final stage—a commercial product—may still be years away, but Wetzstein is optimistic.

The team describes it as a “significant step” toward passing what many in the field refer to as a “Visual Turing Test”—essentially the ability to no longer “distinguish between a physical, real thing as seen through the glasses and a digitally created image being projected on the display surface,” Suyeon Choi said, the paper’s lead author.

This follows a recent reveal from researchers at Meta’s Reality Labs featuring ultra-wide field-of-view VR & MR headsets that use novel optics to maintain a compact, goggles-style form factor. In comparison, these include “high-curvature reflective polarizers,” and not waveguides as such.

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Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses Revenue Triples, Fueling Meta’s $3.5 Billion Bet on EssilorLuxottica

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EssilorLuxottica released its second quarter earnings report, revealing that Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have tripled in revenue year-over-year.

Released in 2023, Ray-Ban Meta is the companies’ second-gen smart glasses, serving up music, photo/video capture, and Internet searches via Meta AI.

Starting at $300, the smart glasses have done remarkably well for themselves, prompting Meta to not only expand its smart glasses partnership with EssilorLuxottica into 2030, but also reportedly invest $3.5 billion in the French-Italian eyewear conglomerate.

Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, Image courtesy Meta, EssilorLuxottica

Now, EssilorLuxottica says in its recent Q2/H1 2025 earnings that “AI glasses gained further traction in the first half of the year, with Ray-Ban Meta more than tripling in revenue year-over-year.”

Notably, those sales figures don’t appear to include Oakley Meta HTSN, the company’s next generation of smart glasses which launched pre-orders on July 11th, priced at $500 for the debut ‘Limited Edition’ version of the device.

The report doesn’t specify how many units the companies have sold, however in February the company announced it had sold 2 million Ray-Ban smart glasses since release in 2023.

“With a strong first half, including top-line growth and momentum across all regions and businesses, we are keeping pace with our growth targets despite a volatile environment,” said EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri and Deputy CEO Paul du Saillant.

The company reports overall revenue grew by 5.5% to €14 billion (~$16.15 billion) in H1 of 2025, which comes in despite a worsening macroeconomic environment.

EssilorLuxottica cites a few obstacles, including “increased volatility in US customs duties following April 2, 2025 announcement of new reciprocal import tariffs,” and recent devaluation of the US dollar relative to other major world currencies.

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Meta Admits There’s a “Goldilocks Zone” for VR Session Length Due to Form Factor Concerns

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It’s been the same basic story for more than a decade now: wearing a VR headset is easy, but not as easy as simply looking at a monitor. While a lot has changed since the early days, Meta admits Quest developers should be making their VR games more bite-sized to work around the inherent friction of putting on a headset.

The release of Quest 3S in late 2024 brought with it a change in the platform’s core demographic. Quest users are typically younger now, and tend to spend more money on in-app purchases, which has led to the rise in free-to-play titles like Gorilla Tag, Animal Company, and Yeeps—all of them regulars on Quest’s weekly top-earners chart.

Now, Meta is getting a little more specific on how developers can find success since the big demographic shift, offering up some rare insight into Quest user behavior in a recent developer blogpost. And it’s all about keeping games snackable.

Meta Quest 3S | Image courtesy Meta

Meta says Quest games should be “not too short to deliver value, not too long to make it infeasible, and just right for most people’s typical day-to-day use,” meaning developers should be building VR games that are optimized for 20-40 minutes of gameplay, which Meta calls the “Goldilocks Zone.”

Keeping VR sessions short(er) but not too short lets users more easily pop out of games without feeling like they’re quitting in the middle of something, Meta says, and also keep them from feeling ill effects of extended VR sessions.

While Quest 3’s internal battery can easily serve up to 2 hours of gameplay, Meta says it also comes down to the headset’s form factor and friction that comes along with it. Putting on the headset, making sure it’s dialed in for comfort, having your controllers charged—all barriers to entry that could make you think twice before playing.

Image courtesy Meta

“For example, mobile-style short loop gameplay is too short to justify the effort of donning the headset, but hour-long objectives are likely to be too exhausting for all but the most enthusiastic players,” Meta says.

On the 20-minute low end of the spectrum, Meta says the “perception of value drives satisfaction with the session,” i.e. if it’s a really good 20 minutes, you’ll be more likely to forgive Quest for being, well, a one pound computer on your face.

In our research, we have found that sessions lasting less than 15-20 minutes are viewed as less enjoyable than 20+ minute sessions, with an extreme drop-off in enjoyment occurring below 15-20 minutes.

In surveys with users who have ended sessions early, we observe common themes of high friction to starting a session (e.g. physical setup, donning effort, anticipation of post-session work).

Headset friction means sessions “must be long enough to deliver on a satisfying amount of progress, engagement or entertainment to validate the decision to engage with VR,” Meta says.

Additionally, Meta revealed it discovered the 40-minute threshold from both “observations of behavior with the majority of VR users, as well as research into when and why users end sessions.”

In fact, most users’ sessions are typically under 40 minutes and longer sessions don’t tend to add to enjoyment after ~40 minutes.

While longer sessions are possible, they are best thought of as special occasions for users. Most people simply don’t have the time or the energy for 40+ minute sessions on a day-to-day basis.

That said, Meta isn’t usually this forthright with Quest’s inherent issues; the company admits to developers that “[l]ong sessions can be physically uncomfortable,” and that “VR is known to cause eye strain and motion sickness, especially in users who are new to the medium.”

What’s more, Meta says that many current VR experiences “require social isolation, physically separating users from others in their physical space.”

Image courtesy Meta

Granted, Meta is talking directly to developers here, although it still feels oddly candid. That said, as someone who’s followed Meta’s VR ambitions from its 2014 Oculus acquisition to today, I can say this: like all major corporations, Meta rarely ever points to its own defects unless it has a solution to sell.

And that might just be a wholly new XR headset, which could be coming as early as next year, reportedly including a new thin and light glasses-like form factor and tethered compute puck.

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‘Blade & Sorcery’ Studio Confirms Next “modder-friendly’ VR Game Isn’t a Sequel

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Warpfrog, the studio behind Blade & Sorcery (2024), announced they’re working on their next VR title. While the studio say it won’t be a sequel, it will be “super modder-friendly” and share “a lot of DNA” with the hit physics-based combat game.

“It is way too early to do any kind of reveal, so we are going to keep this under our hats for now and keep cooking,” the studio says in a recent Steam update. “Then in the future we can do a big reveal announcement or trailer, so that will be exciting. Oh and only because many will probably assume, I will nip it in the bud and tell you it is not Blade & Sorcery 2!”

The studio says however its next title will “share a lot of DNA with Blade & Sorcery,” and is slated to feel “like a Warpfrog game” too.

“Similar to B&S, our next game will be VR, physics-based simulation, as anti-gamey as possible, and super modder-friendly,” the studio confirmed, echoing an earlier statement from December 2024 when work on the game was first revealed.

Warpfrog says they’re using their “new and massively improved” Thunder Road 2 game framework for developing the title, which the team says will help avoid the sort of mistakes that resulted with the “spaghetti code” of Thunder Road 1. As a result, this will also allow for more expansions in the future, Warpfrog says.

This follows news that the studio isn’t done with Blade & Sorcery just yet, despite releasing its ‘final’ update in its ‘Crystal Hunt’ 1.0 launch last June.

Warpfrog says the game is slated to receive a series of four free updates, called the ‘Byeth Updates’, which will bring official weapons and armor from the game’s other nations—Rakta, Sentara, Khar-Tib, and Madlu.

The first update is set to release later this year, while the following three will arrive throughout 2026, which will include both the PC VR version of the game and the ‘Nomad’ version for Quest.

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VRMMO ‘Eldramoor: Haven in the Mist’ Kickstarter Concludes with $170,000

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The Kickstarter campaign for Eldramoor: Haven in the Mist has come to an end, nabbing developer Resolute Games over $170,000 to bring its ambitious VR MMORPG to life.

The one-month campaign celebrated early success when it launched on June 24th, quickly garnering the project its minimum funding goal of $25,000 in just 1.5 hours of going live.

Within only a week, the Kickstarter crossed the $100,000 mark, going on to unlock a number of stretch goals along its way to $171,536: a bonfire healing system, more air and earth abilities, two new playable species, guest access to player housing, and pet abilities.

That said, Eldramoor is as ambitious as they come, promising a massive world with different biomes, multiple classes, crafting, dungeoning, player housing—the lot.

Here’s how Resolute Games describes Eldramoor:

Eldramoor is vast and full of unique environments to experience. The game world features five distinct zones—each with a wildly different biome—full of inhabitants to meet, treasures to loot, and challenges to conquer. Exploration is rewarded, and staying on the beaten path will miss half the fun, so be sure to leave no stone unturned as you run, climb and glide your way across the island.

At its core, Eldramoor is a social game designed around multiplayer interactions. With guilds, dungeons, PvP, and special events, there’s always something to do with your friends. Add in all the little experiences like multiplayer profession “trains”, player-to-player trade, and stacking powerups with the open-world bonfire system, you’ll quickly see why Eldramoor thrives on real interactions between real players.

While such ambition doesn’t always demand massive funding out of the gate, it’s a good bet Resolute Games is actively seeking additional outside funding beyond Kickstarter—not just to sustain its team leading up to launch next year, but to make good on the long-term vision of putting the “massive” in VRMMO.

The studio says Eldramoor is slated to deliver to backers in December 2026, which will include support for both Quest 3 and SteamVR headsets. You can learn more about Eldramoor over on the game’s Steam page, and follow backer updates on the its now-concluded Kickstarter campaign.

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Brilliant Labs to Launch Next-gen Smart Glasses on July 31st

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Brilliant Labs announced it’s getting ready to launch its next generation of smart glasses at the end of the month, making it the company’s third device since it was founded in 2019.

In 2023, Brilliant Labs released Monocle, a developer kit which included a single heads-up display that was meant to be clipped onto existing eyewear.

A year later, the company released Frame, which evolved Monocle’s monoscopic display and housed it in a glasses-like form factor, including a single camera sensor—making for an impressively slim and light package weighing in at less than 40g.

Image courtesy Brilliant Labs

Frame was “designed to be your AI driven personal assistant,” the company says, emphasizing its access to AI models like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Whisper, so you gets answers to questions about what you’re currently looking at, experience live translation from either speech or text, and search the Internet in real-time.

Now, Brilliant Labs says its next device is coming on July 31st. Information is thin on the ground, however company co-founder and CEO Bobak Tavangar is taking part in a launch day Q&A via the augmented reality subreddit.

Image courtesy Brilliant Labs

There, we also got a side glimpse of the device in question, which appears to have ditched the round, old school spectacle vibe for a more modern frame shape. Whatever the case, we’re sure to learn more come July 31st. We’ll be keeping an eye on the augmented reality subreddit and the company’s website then.

Meanwhile, the smart glasses segment is heating up. Meta and EssilorLuxottica announced its next-gen Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses last month; shortly afterwards Chinese tech giant Xiaomi announced its was releasing its own AI Glasses. On the horizon is Google’s Android XR-based smart glasses, built in collaboration with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster.

Although Brilliant Labs is currently one of the few actually offering a pair of smart glasses with a built-in display, it won’t be that way for long. Google says it’s going to offer a model of its Android XR smart glasses with some sort of display. Leaks also maintain Meta’s next pair of smart glasses may also include a display and a wrist-worn controller for input.

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Hand-tracking Rhythm Game ‘BEATABLE’ Leaves Early Access on Quest with Massive Update

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XR Games today announced its hand-tracked rhythm game BEATABLE has left early access on Quest, bringing with it a rash of new features and content to keep you smacking your desk to the beat.

Using a table as a VR haptic device is pretty genius—no controllers required, only a Quest 2 and above to get you hitting and holding notes, and clapping at symbols in mid-air.

Along with leaving early access today, Beatable has also gotten its first big update following an initial five-song music drop back in April, which followed shortly after its initial early access release on Quest.

Image courtesy XR Games

Now, the game includes a few new features, including a custom song and map editor, letting you create, share, and compete on your own tracks.

You’ll also see a total of 24 songs now, 12 of which were available during early access. You can check out the full setlist over on the game’s Spotify Playlist, which includes an anime-inspired anthem by Kudo Haruka and heavy-hitting track from Mikee Goodman, formerly of SikTh.

When we went hands-on with the early access version in April, we noted that precision was the number one limiting factor to the game. Still, at the time Beatable was pretty much all the way there for a casual game.

Now, the launch-day update is also arriving with a refined gesture detection system, which XR Games says will “ensure you stay on the beat, every beat,” as well as improved visuals and gameplay feedback.

You can find Beatable over on the Horizon Store for Quest 2 and above, priced at $10.

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‘Animal Company’ Becomes 5th Highest-grossing Quest Game, Peaking at 500K Daily Active Users

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Wooster Games, the studio behind Animal Company, announced earlier this year that its free-to-play Quest title had surpassed one million monthly active users (MAU), putting it on the fast track to becoming the next big social VR phenomenon. Now, the studio reveals it’s vaulted to the fifth highest-grossing Quest games of all time in just a year.

Launched on Quest in early access last July, Animal Company takes Gorilla Tag’s arm-powered locomotion mechanic and mashes it up with the game loop of Lethal Company—hence the name. And it appears to be a winning recipe, offering equal parts horror, mystery, and madcap social interaction.

We’ve been charting its success over the past few months, and watching as Animal Company successively trades back and forth for the top spot on Quest’s highest-earning game chart, competing against Yeeps 2.0, Beat Saber, and Gorilla Tag.

In a recent Meta developer interview, Wooster explains that while monetization came three months following launch, it was only done after strong engagement metrics emerged.

This includes 100 minutes of average daily playtime, 45% 28-day retention, and 1 billion TikTok views, the studio says—creating a critical mass of users to carry the viral sensation yet higher.

Now, the studio says Animal Company has managed to garner “9x paying user growth in 6 months,” putting it as the fifth highest lifetime grossing title on Quest.

At its peak between Christmas and March 2025, the game managed to triple its 145K daily active user (DAU) metric on Quest to 500,000 DAU on Quest, Wooster says.

If you’re looking for the full recap of the game’s history, from game jam to present day, make sure to check out the interview linked above in addition to the five-minute video below.

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Sharp Unveils Prototype VR Controller, Combining Haptic Gloves & Standard Buttons

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Sharp announced it’s releasing a prototype VR haptic controller in Japan, which aims to reproduce the sense of touch in VR while serving a familiar button layout.

Japan-based Sharp says its VR haptic controllers can let users sense texture thanks to “multi-segmented tactile elements” placed on the device’s fingertips. Various vibration patterns on the surface are meant to convey different textures, such as smooth, rough, etc., the company says.

“Although the haptics are not at a level that reproduces the real thing, by changing the parameters we have been able to achieve a variety of tactile sensations,” Sharp says on the project’s Japan-facing website. “Rather than leaving it in-house until the developers are satisfied with it, we plan to work with our users to improve the quality of the content.”

Image courtesy Sharp

Sharp says the device, which will arrive in a left and right pair, “does not allow for delicate finger tracking like glove types.” It also lacks force feedback, or any sort of temperature feedback.

The prototype is supposed to also function like a standard controller, including sticks and buttons, the company says. One thing that isn’t clear though is how the gloves will be tracked, which Sharp says could include mounts for “high market share” tracking standards.

Sharp says the device is currently undergoing demonstration experiments, so it’s not clear whether it will eventually be commercialized; we haven’t seen anything beyond renders at this time. The company is aiming to put early iterations of the device in the hands of the paying public though, at least in Japan.

The company recently closed pre-registrations through its Japan-facing website, pricing units at ¥100,000 (~$680). “Please note that development or release may be canceled,” the company warns.

Granted, Sharp has more experience in XR than you might think. As the leading OEM supplier of high-end VR displays, at one time Sharp was the top display supplier for Meta Quest 2. In late 2024, Sharp and Japan’s largest telecom NTT Docomo also launched a pair of AR glasses, called MiRZA.

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Meta Quest 3S Drops to $250 Alongside Accessory Discounts During Summer Flash Sale

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Quest 3S is on sale starting at $250 during a four day Summer sale from Meta. Accessories compatible with both Quest 3 and Quest 3S are also on sale with a 20% discount.

• Quest 3S (128GB) is on sale for $250, a $50 (17%) discount
• Quest 3S (256GB) is also on sale for $330, a $70 (18%) discount

Both deals are available directly from Meta from today through 9:00AM PT on July 24th (your timezone here).

Both headsets include a copy of Batman: Arkham Shadow (2024) [normally $50] and a three-month subscription to Meta Horizon+, which unlocks a library of solid VR games, with two new games added every month.

Quest 3S is Meta’s most affordable current-gen headset. It sits alongside the more expensive Quest 3. Wondering which one to buy? Check out our no-nonsense recommendation right here.

Beyond the headsets, Meta is also offering a 20% discount on accessories that are compatible with both Quest 3 and Quest 3S:

• Quest 3 Elite Strap With Battery: $104 (normally $130)
• Quest 3 Elite Strap: $56 (normally $70)
• Hard Strap Carrying Case: $56 (normally $70)
• Quest Link Cable: $64 (normally $80)
• Compact Carrying Case: $40 (normally $50)

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Meta Researchers Reveal Compact Ultra-wide Field-of-View VR & MR Headsets

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Ahead of an upcoming technical conference, researchers from Meat’s Reality Labs Research group published details on their work toward creating ultra-wide field-of-view VR & MR headsets that use novel optics to maintain a compact goggles-style form-factor.

Published in advance of the ACM SIGGRAPH 2025 Emerging Technologies conference, the research article details two headsets, each achieving a horizontal field-of-view of 180 degrees (which is a huge jump over Meta’s existing headsets, like Quest 3, which is around 100 degrees).

The first headset is a pure VR headset which the researchers say uses “high-curvature reflective polarizers” to achieve the wide field of view in a compact form-factor.

Image courtesy Reality Labs Research

The other is an MR headset, which uses the same underlying optics and head-mount but also incorporates four passthrough cameras to provide an ultra-wide passthrough field-of-view to match the headset’s field-of-view. The cameras total 80MP of resolution at 60 FPS.

Image courtesy Reality Labs Research

The researchers compared the field-of-view of their experimental headsets to that of the current Quest 3. In the case of the MR headset, you can clearly see the advantages of the wider field-of-view: the user can easily see someone who is in a chair right next to them, and also has peripheral awareness of a snack in their lap.

Image courtesy Reality Labs Research

Image courtesy Reality Labs Research

Both experimental headsets appear to use something similar to the outside-in ‘Constellation’ tracking system that Meta used on its first consumer headset, the Oculus Rift CV1. We’ve seen Constellation pop up on a number of Reality Labs Research headsets over the years, likely because it’s easier to use for rapid iteration compared to inside-out tracking systems.

The researchers point out that similarly wide field-of-view headsets already exist the consumer market (for instance, those from Pimax), but the field-of-view often comes at the cost of significant bulk.

A Pimax headset, known for its wide field-of-view. | Photo by Road to VR

 

The Reality Labs researchers claim that these experimental headsets have a “form-factor comparable to current consumer devices.”

“Together, our prototype headsets establish a new state-of-the-art in immersive virtual and mixed reality experiences, pointing to the user benefits of wider FOVs for entertainment and telepresence applications,” the researchers claim.

For those hoping these experimental headsets point to a future Quest headset with an ultra-wide field-of-view… it’s worth noting that Meta does lots of R&D and has shown off many research prototypes over the years featuring technologies that have yet to make it to market.

For instance, back in 2018, Meta (at the time still called Facebook) showed a research prototype headset with varifocal displays. Nearly 7 years later, the company still hasn’t shipped a headset with varifocal technology.

As the company itself will tell you, it all comes down to tradeoffs; Meta CTO Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth explained as recently as late 2024 why he thinks pursuing a wider field-of-view in consumer VR headsets brings too many downsides in terms of price, weight, battery life, etc. But there’s always the chance that this latest research causes him to change his mind.

The post Meta Researchers Reveal Compact Ultra-wide Field-of-View VR & MR Headsets appeared first on Road to VR.

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Pico Reportedly Developing Slim & Light Mixed Reality ‘Goggles’ to Rival Next-Gen Meta Headset

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Pico, the XR headset maker owned by TikTok parent ByteDance, is reportedly developing a mixed reality device aimed at rivaling Meta’s next-generation XR headset.

According to a report from The Information, Pico is currently working on a pair of mixed reality “goggles” codenamed ‘Swan’, which are said to be thin and lightweight—reportedly weighing around just 100 grams.

Citing three people with direct knowledge of the project, The Information reports that the device features a hybrid design that offloads processing to a tethered compute puck. This approach allows the glasses portion of the device to be significantly thinner and lighter than current-generation XR headsets like the Quest 3 or Pico 4 Ultra.

Pico 4 Ultra | Image courtesy Pico

Swan is also said to rely primarily on eye and hand tracking for input, moving away from physical controllers. Furthermore, the report notes that Pico is developing “specialized chips for the device that will process data from its sensors to minimize the lag or latency between what a user sees in AR [sic] and their physical movements.”

Swan is said to be conceptually similar to Meta’s reportedly upcoming mixed reality device codenamed ‘Phoenix’, which also includes a compute puck and a glasses-like form factor. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Meta’s headset could launch in either 2026 (WSJ’s estimate) or 2027 (as cited by The Information) and may cost under $1,000.

The codename itself is still a matter of speculation: The Information refers to Meta’s headset as ‘Phoenix’, while the WSJ uses ‘Loma’, and online sources have also mentioned ‘Puffin’.

That said, there is currently no information on what Swan will cost or where it will ship. In the past, Pico’s consumer headsets have typically been priced slightly above Meta’s equivalents and have been available primarily in East and Southeast Asia and Europe—but not in North America.

The post Pico Reportedly Developing Slim & Light Mixed Reality ‘Goggles’ to Rival Next-Gen Meta Headset appeared first on Road to VR.

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Varjo is Pulling Support for All of Its Older XR Headsets Next Year

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Varjo announced that starting next year, it’s no longer supporting its fleet of third generation XR headsets, which includes XR-3, VR-3, and Varjo Aero.

As first spotted by XT Today, Varjo says it’s now “focusing our manufacturing efforts on the XR-4 Series headsets,” which released in late 2023.

The Finland-based company notes in a support FAQ that its companion software, Varjo Base, will receive software updates and bug fixes until the January 1st, 2026 cutoff date.

Image courtesy Varjo

After its final update, the company says that owners of XR-3, VR-3, and Aero can still use older versions of the software, but this also includes the end of customer support, technical and developer assistance for those devices.

Released in 2021, Varjo’s third-gen headsets marked the company’s departure from solely focusing on enterprise headsets. While both its XR-3 and VR-3 were squarely targeted at businesses with cash to spare—priced at $5,495 and $3,195 respectively—which included an obligatory annual subscription fee, Aero was the company’s first to actively appeal to prosumers.

Varjo Aero | image courtesy Varjo

Released in late 2021, Aero was priced at $2,000, which included subscription-free compatibility with SteamVR via Varjo Base (i.e. you can’t just plug it in like Valve Index, Bigscreen Beyond 2, etc).

Although Aero was by far one of the most expensive prosumer PC VR headsets on offer at the time, it wasn’t for naught. In our deep dive review of Aero, Road to VR’s Ben Lang praised the headset’s “stunning clarity,” noting it was poised to be “a dream headset for VR simmers who aren’t afraid to trade cash for immersion.”

Notably, Varjo has been sold out of all third-gen headsets for at least over a year now, with the company additionally confirming production has been discontinued for these devices.

This leaves the Varjo’s main focus on its XR-4 Series headsets, which were released in late 2023, marking a return to its enterprise-only roots. Its fourth-gen series includes the standard XR‑4 ($5,990), XR‑4 Focal Edition ($9,990), and its military-compliant XR‑4 Secure Edition, which comes in three variants (~$18,00 – $32,000).

While previously launched without subscription-based access to Varjo Base, the company announced in March that some previously free software features would be paywalled behind a ‘Varjo Base Pro’ license, which includes more advanced mixed reality capabilities, expanded tracking support, programmatic controls, and multi-app functionality.

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