Apple spent a major portion of its WWDC 2026 keynote this week talking about new AI features that are part of an enhanced version of Siri. While most of the features will be accessible across devices, Siri on visionOS 27 has some unique touches that take advantage of Vision Pro.
The News
An overhauled version of Siri—which Apple is now calling “Siri AI”—is headed to Apple’s version 27 operating systems. The company detailed a wide range of capabilities, both new and improved, which make Siri AI more useful and more capable than previous versions.
“Siri AI is an entirely new version of Siri deeply integrated into iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro,” the company announced this week. “It can draw on personal context understanding to search across messages, emails, photos, and more, and get things done across apps with even more systemwide app actions. Additionally, Siri AI can answer questions related to the content on a user’s screen or go out to the web to get up-to-date information using broad world knowledge and generate a helpful answer. A dedicated Siri app allows users to revisit a past conversation or kick off a new one—all in one place—and uses iCloud to privately sync conversational history across a user’s products.”
Beyond the new capabilities that will work across most of Apple’s modern devices, Siri AI is getting some unique attention on Vision Pro. In VisionOS 27, the Siri ‘orb’ becomes a placeable widget that can sit in the room with you. And when you want to talk to it, simply look at the orb and start talking. It’s a seamless way to activate Siri using Vision Pro’s eye-tracking, without needing to tap anything or say a wake word.
Courtesy Apple
Siri is also getting ‘see what you see’ capabilities on Vision Pro. If the user asks the system to look at something, Siri has visual context of the user’s view of both the digital and real world. So you can ask about something you see on a webpage floating in front of you just as easily as you can ask about a piece of artwork on your wall.
Courtesy Apple
This is a much more natural way to use visual intelligence capabilities that have been part of earlier versions of Apple Intelligence but were not exposed in particularly obvious ways.
The new Siri app, which functions more like a traditional AI chatbot, is getting a native visionOS version.
Courtesy Apple
Apple says Siri AI is compatible with both the original Vision Pro (M2) and latest Vision Pro (M5). It’s available as a developer preview within visionOS 27 which is available now. Apple plans to roll out Siri AI features as a “beta” to the public later this year.
My Take
The inclusion of high-accuracy eye-tracking on Vision Pro continues to pay dividends to Apple. Turning Siri on Vision Pro into a persistent widget that’s activated with eye-tracking is the kind of subtle but clever idea that could very well set the standard for interacting with voice assistants on immersive devices going forward. Using eye-tracking to add context about the user’s question is also a smart way to leverage the feature.
Siri’s newfound ability to see the user’s digital and real world brings it much closer in line with Gemini’s visual capabilities on Android XR, which I’ve previously pointed to as a standout advantage over the AI capabilities of visionOS and Meta’s Horizon OS.
It’s unclear at this time if Siri on Vision Pro will be fed a still image of the world around the user at the time of the query, or if it will get a live view of the world around the user (as we see with Gemini on Android XR). The difference between a static or live view could lead to a significant gap in the usefulness of Siri AI’s ‘vision’ on Vision Pro compared to Gemini. On Android XR, Gemini can continuously see what’s around the user, enabling ongoing conversations with Gemini that evolve as new things happen. We’ll have to wait to see if Siri on Vision Pro can do the same.
We also don’t know if Siri will be able to ‘see’ during every query or if only specific queries will cause the headset to consider the world around the user. For Apple’s part, the company says it continues to emphasize privacy in its AI features, and says that any data that leaves the headset is processed in an encrypted way that’s not accessible to Apple or third parties.
Meta announced that it is rolling out updated kiosks inside of Best Buy, the biggest electronics retailer in the US. The new 900 square-foot “store in a store” offers a place for customers to demo Meta’s AI glasses and VR headsets.
The News
Meta has a long-running relationship with Best Buy and is no stranger to placing in-store kiosks with trained staff in stores to give customers the opportunity to go hands-on with its hardware. However, the company’s most recent kiosks have focused primarily on its AI glasses, creating an apparent divide between older, separately placed kiosks focused on Quest headsets.
Now the company says it’s rolling out a more unified experience, called “Meta Lab @ Best Buy,” an expanded kiosk that includes AI glasses and VR headsets in the same space, both of which are available for a hands-on experience.
Courtesy Best Buy
The company says the Meta Lab spaces are “designed for hands-on discovery, where people can explore Meta’s expansive lineup of AI glasses and VR headsets through interactive demos, smart mirrors, personalized fittings and more—all with support from dedicated Meta Sales Specialists.”
Meta plans to roll out 50 such spaces in Best Buy locations across the US and Canada, and notes that the following locations will be the first to open this Summer:
San Carlos, CA
Roseville, MN
Woodland Park, NJ
Greenville, SC
Columbus, OH
The new Meta Lab @ Best Buy spaces appear to be a natural outgrowth of the company’s Meta Lab pop-up locations that rolled out in late 2025 to give the company a temporary boost to its retail presence in support of the Ray-Ban Display launch. These spaces also included Quest headsets and demos. Some of the Meta Lab pop-up locations have become permanent retail locations.
My Take
The move comes after Meta’s aggressive shift in focus away from its VR business and toward its AI glasses business, which has left many unsure of Meta’s long-term commitment to VR.
Meta launched Ray-Ban Display—its first AI glasses with a display—in late 2025. At the time the company launched new Best Buy kiosks which were exclusively focused on its AI glasses, and didn’t even include Meta’s VR headsets for sale. Meta was seemingly rushing these kiosks out the door because the company opted not to sell Ray-Ban Display to anyone without an in-person fitting. The need to deploy the kiosks in time for the launch of Ray-Ban Display is probably why we didn’t see the initial kiosks include Quest headsets at the outset. And, indeed, this is likely because of the rather abrupt shift in Meta’s focus toward its AI glasses.
With the new Meta Lab @ Best Buy spaces, the company’s retail strategy is catching up to its product strategy. While we probably can’t infer too much about what this means for Meta’s long-term commitment to VR, it at least tells us that the company wants to make sure all of its hardware can be seen together in one retail space.
In any case, seeing more spaces that offer hands-on demos of VR headsets is a good thing. The VR experience remains almost impossible to describe to someone who has never used a modern headset; actually trying on a VR headset is a reliably mind-blowing experience for first-time users. But it’s difficult to give people that opportunity at scale.
It’s been nearly a decade since Vertigo Games released Arizona Sunshine (2016) on PC VR headsets, serving up one of the industry’s first immersive zombie-shooting adventures. Now the Netherlands-based studio is bringing the franchise to PC and console as a “reimagined” flatscreen game.
While names can be deceiving, the flatscreen version of Arizona Sunshine isn’t a VR-to-flatscreen port of either the original 2016 version or the more recently released Arizona Sunshine Remake (2024) as such, but rather a fully reimagined third-person action game that takes the series’ zombie combat and combines it with the story introduced in Arizona Sunshine 2 (2023).
From the trailer, it also appears to be designed around larger zombie hordes and spectacle combat rather than the slower, more methodical pacing of VR. Weapons include shotguns, flamethrowers, grenade launchers, machetes, and more, with Sunny’s canine pal, Buddy, actively taking part in combat.
Slated top release on PS5, Xbox, Switch 2, and PC sometime this year, the flatscreen game promises both solo and co-op gameplay, the latter of which lets you play as Buddy.
Vertigo Games seems to be following some recent precedent set by Moss studio Polyarc Games, which announced in May it was working on a flatscreen adaptation of the VR puzzle-platformer series, which combines both Moss (2018) and sequel Moss: Book II (2022) into a single PC/console title, Moss: The Forgotten Relic.
Like Polyarc, Vertigo Games has experienced some recent turmoil, which puts the Arizona Sunshine flatscreen game announcement under an odd spotlight; last week, the studio announced was closing its Amsterdam-based satellite studio known for VR action-adventure Metro Awakening VR (2024).
Granted, this isn’t the first flatscreen game by Vertigo Games. Founded in 2008, the Rotterdam-based studio released a number of flatscreen adventure games before working exclusively on VR games.
Still, it’s a marked shift in priorities prompted by Meta’s recent Reality Labs XR pivot division, which not only saw the closure of a several internal game studios and a torrent of cancelled projects, but also the revelation it was pulling funding from a number of third-party VR projects as well.
The developer behind The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is no longer working on VR projects following a merger last year that has effectively retooled the studio to develop a traditional PC/console title.
According to Game File, the former Skydance team—which developed VR titles The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners (2020), The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution (2022), and Skydance’s Behemoth (2024)—is now working on an unannounced non-VR title for PC and consoles.
The change follows the 2025 merger between Skydance Media and Paramount, which recently consolidated the company’s gaming operations under the newly formed Paramount Games Studio.
Shawn Kittelsen, Paramount Games Studio’s Head of Creative and Production, confirmed the news with Game File, noting the former VR-focused team is currently developing an unannounced game for PC and consoles.
Kittelsen revealed the new Paramount gaming team is made up of two former internal Skydance Studios, one of which created The Walking Dead Saints & Sinners, and the other behind upcoming PC/console flatscreen game Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra.
The move seems to mark the end (or significant pause) of the studio’s tenure as a dedicated VR developer following its spin-up by Skydance in 2016, which saw its first title Archangel (2017) release across all major VR headsets.
While still unconfirmed, it was reported earlier this year that Skydance was working on an official Harry Potter VR title slated to release as a Quest exclusive, although it was cancelled as a result of Meta pulling funding to it and a number of AAA projects across the ecosystem, including a sequel to Batman: Arkham Shadow (2024) by Meta’s Sanzaru Games, which Meta closed alongside Armature Studio and Twisted Pixel.
Vertigo Games, the Netherlands-based VR veteran behind a host of popular titles, is closing its Amsterdam studio, citing continued challenges within the VR games market.
The news was announced by CEO Richard Stitselaar in an open letter, noting “the VR market remains a challenging space,” which is resulting the in closure of Vertigo Studios Amsterdam.
Originally called Force Field before being acquired by Rotterdam-based Vertigo Games in 2021, the studio produced a number of VR games and experiences over the years, including Anne Frank House VR (2018), Coaster Combat (2017) and Landfall (2017) as Force Field, and Metro Awakening VR (2024) as Vertigo Studios Amsterdam.
Notably, the Rotterdam-based sister studio was itself acquired by Embracer Group’s Plaion (ex-Koch Media) in 2020 for $60 million, known for Arizona Sunshine (2016), Arizona Sunshine 2 (2023), and After the Fall (2021).
The company didn’t provide details regarding the number of employees affected, a timeline for the closure, or whether any projects currently in development (or staff) will be transferred to other teams within the organization.
The shutdown reflects an all too familiar trend facing both the VR industry and games industry as a whole. Earlier this year Meta announced it was shutting down a number of internal VR studios amid a wider shift in its Reality Labs XR division to instead focus on AI and smart glasses.
Survios, one of VR’s most senior game studios and developer behind Alien: Rogue Incursion (2024), has also effectively shut down following a layoff of a majority of staff.
Snapchat parent Snap has acquired Illumix, an augmented reality software company behind Five Nights at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery(2019), an AR adaptation of the popular horror franchise. The acquisition goes far beyond developing games for Snap’s upcoming AR glasses though.
As first reported by Variety, Snap has acquired Bay Area-based Illumix for an unspecific amount, something that’s slated to boost the company’s AR glasses efforts—and not by stocking the next-gen pair of Snap Spectacles with AR games.
Founded in 2017, Illumix is building a perception layer for phones, AR glasses, and robots that essentially lets software understand and interact with the physical world.
As noted by Variety, Snap is primarily interested in Illumix’s work in scaling that mapping technology and building it out for real-world experiences. Notably, Snap is slated to adopt Illumix’s technology and platform, and retain most of Illumix’s staff.
Snap Spectacles (gen 5) | Courtesy Snap Inc
Illumix’s proprietary spatial mapping and AR platform is “designed to make AR experiences work reliably in […] real-world environments—persistent, context-aware, and anchored to the spaces around us,” Illumix CEO Kirin Sinha says.
“That work has powered AR experiences across real-world venues, spanning location-based entertainment, enterprise, and gaming. This acquisition is a major milestone for Illumix and a powerful next chapter for the technology, platform, customers, partners, and team we’ve built,” Sinha continues. “Snap’s bold vision for AR and AI strongly aligns with what we have always believed: that the future of computing will be more immersive, more intuitive, and ultimately more human.”
The acquisition follows recent layoffs at Snap, which notably didn’t affect Specs Inc., its recently formed AR glasses subsidiary. They did however affect 1,000 team members, including 16% of Snap’s full-time employees, and came alongside a closure of more than 300 open roles—something Snap CEO Evan Spiegel described as a part of the company’s “crucible moment.”
While Snap hasn’t shown off its next-gen AR glasses yet, we’re hoping to learn more at Augmented World Expo (AWE) later this month, which takes place in Long Beach, California on June 16th. There, Spiegel is set to deliver a keynote titled ‘Making Computing More Human‘.
We still don’t know exactly when Steam Frame, Valve’s standalone VR headset, is set to launch, although now the company has confirmed both it and Steam Machine are slated to arrive this summer.
Valve previously aimed to launch Steam Frame and Steam Machine, its console-style PC, in early 2026.
Due to the ongoing component crisis though, which has seen RAM and storage prices skyrocket, Valve said in February it had to rethink release and pricing around both devices.
Now, Valve has at least confirmed in a Steam news update that its wayward VR headset and Steam-flavored mini-PC are coming sometime this summer.
As a part of the announcement, Valve reiterated it’s added both Steam Frame and Steam Machine to its Verified program, which lets users know how well a game works across specific Steam hardware, including Steam Deck.
While Valve says Steam Frame primarily targets wireless PC play, specific games can also feature a Steam Frame Standalone Verified badge.
According to Valve’s guidelines, flatscreen games must run at a minimum 30 fps at 1,280 x 720 during normal play, whereas standalone VR titles must run at a minimum of 72 fps at 1,728 x 1,728 during normal play. Valve says VR games below 1,440 x 1,440 will appear with an ‘Unsupported’ badge, which notably won’t stop users from buying or attempting to play the game in question.
Although Valve seems to be getting its ducks in a row for the launch of both Steam Frame and Steam Machine on the software side of things, one very big missing piece of the puzzle is pricing.
Considering Valve announced last week that Steam Deck is getting a sizable price hike, bringing an increase of $240 to $300 to its handheld gaming PC, it could be a sign of sticker shock yet to come.
Still, if Valve is confident enough to announce a summer release window now, we should know sooner rather than later.
Supernatural won’t be in ‘maintenance mode’ for long, because Meta announced it’s effectively spun out the VR fitness app into an independent company, Supernatural Health.
The founders and coaches behind Supernatural are parting ways with Meta. Soon, users can look forward to more fresh content, which has notably been missing from the subscription-based VR fitness app since Meta announced in January that it would no longer be pushing content updates as a part of a wider pullback from VR gaming.
And it’s going to be clean break, as the new studio says in a community post that Supernatural is set to be independent from Meta, and will be a new, separate app in Quest’s Horizon Store.
While the current version of Supernatural will be winding down on December 3rd, which includes all associated subscriptions, the studio expects the new app to launch later this fall, noting it plans to build “major parts of the technology from the ground up as a much smaller company.”
That also means subscription prices will change from its current $10/month, or $100/year rate:
“A while back, the subscription price was lowered to make Supernatural more accessible, and we still believe in that goal. To keep building independently, and continue delivering the experience you expect, we need to return to the original $20/month and we haven’t made that decision lightly.”
The studio says it’s offering a ‘Founding Member’ rate, which will cost $180 for the first year. After that, the price jumps to $20/month, or $200/year. That said, the upcoming version of Supernatural will include all original coaches “back on day one,” as well as new workouts and future features.
“The early days won’t be perfect, but our small team is committed to building the Supernatural you know and love and taking it to the next level,” the studio says. “We are so grateful for everything you’re capable of, in the app and outside of it. Thank you for showing up for Supernatural, and for each other.”
This follows a lengthy battle to acquire Supernatural, which seems so distant now in retrospect. In late 2021, Meta announced it was acquiring Within, the studio behind Supernatural, for a whopping $400 million.
It wasn’t a smooth transition though, as the deal quickly drew the ire of the US Federal Trade Commission, which claimed Meta was unfairly monopolizing the VR fitness space. After more than a year of costly antitrust battles, the FTC eventually dropped the suit in early 2023, noting that it would seek no further appeal.
PiEEG, a Scotland-based brain-computer interface (BCI) startup, announced it’s launching a facial interface for Quest headsets that aims to turn your brain signals and facial micro-expressions into real-time avatar control.
PiEEG has specialized in BCI since it was founded by Dr. Ildar Rakhmatulin in 2022, specifically to provide low-cost solutions for researchers, developers and hobbyists. Now the company says it’s getting ready to launch a Kickstarter soon for its PiEEG XR, a neural facial interface for Quest.
The device, which includes built-in electroencephalography (EEG) sensors, is of course targeting developers and researchers hoping to integrate EEG data into XR applications, although it’s also slated to arrive with native VRChat integration, letting users “control [avatars] directly from your brain and facial expressions,” the company says.
Notably, EEG sensors measure electrical activity generated by the brain. However, consumer EEG systems generally don’t “decode” specific thoughts. Instead, they can detect broad signals associated with states such as attention, relaxation, or cognitive workload, which can then be mapped to software actions.
That said, the company maintains its sensor-studded facial interface for Quest will enable more expressive avatars and additional hands-free input methods, which can be translated into various effects, modifying environments, or altering avatar animations based on attention-related signals using its ‘Focus-to-Action’ API.
And like its other BCI hardware, the company says PiEEG XR is set to be fully open-source, providing access to software tools and raw data streams for developers, educators, and researchers.
“Whether you are a developer looking to build ‘thought-controlled’ horror games, or a researcher studying emotional responses in VR, the VR-Link provides the raw data and tools you need to innovate,” PiEEG says.
The EEG facial interface itself is powered by the company’s IronBCI platform, which includes 24-bit resolution, 250 samples per second acquisition rate, Bluetooth Low Energy 5 (BLE 5) connectivity, and low-noise signal acquisition.
We’re hoping to learn more soon about pricing tiers and more use cases when the campaign goes live, which is expected soon. In the meantime, you can check out the Kickstarter here and sign up for launch notifications. You can also see a short demo of PiEEG XR below, showing an avatar animated via EEG signals.
Lightstorm Vision, James Cameron’s 3D production studio, has acquired STEREOTEC, a 3D camera maker that’s powered a number of films and multi-camera immersive concerts.
Details of the deal are still under wraps, however Lightstorm Vision says the acquisition will help integrate Stereotec’s technology directly into its 3D production pipeline, enabling capture, processing, and delivery of 3D video.
“By capturing consistent ‘ground truth’ depth data at the source, the technology unlocks downstream automation, AI processing, and the scalable 3D workflows that Lightstorm Vision is bringing to cinematic, broadcast, and immersive platforms,” the companies say in a press statement.
Stereotec is most recently known for providing the camera tech behind 3D concert ‘Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour’, which Lightstorm says was one the “largest and most complex live 3D capture deployments ever executed,” having included more than 17 stereo camera systems (34 cameras) across fiber and RF into a unified pipeline under live tour conditions.
That sort of tight integration allowed editorial teams to begin cutting synchronized 3D multi-cam footage while the performance was still underway, the studio says, something aimed at reducing reliance on post-production reconstruction and lengthy editing times.
“Capturing accurate depth at the source produces results no downstream process can recover after the fact—and provides the foundation for the scalable, production-ready 3D workflows Lightstorm Vision is establishing as the new standard across cinematic, broadcast, and immersive platforms,” the studio says.
Established in 2024 as Lightstorm Entertainment’s dedicated 3D studio, Lightstorm Vision’s stereoscopic tech has supported over 27 feature films, 9 concert films, and 140 sports broadcasts worldwide, generating in excess of $8 billion in global box office. It also most recently struck a multi-year deal with Meta to produce spatial content across multiple genres, including live events and full-length entertainment.
Founded near Munich by stereographer and engineer Dr. Florian Maier in 1997, Stereotec produces precision-engineered 3D rigs, having supported feature films including Ang Lee’s Gemini Man (2019) and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016), Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two (2024), as well as immersive titles for Quest and Apple Vision Pro. To date, the company holds twelve Lumiere Awards from the Advanced Imaging Society for excellence in stereoscopic 3D production.
Spatial, the parent company to Animal Company studio Wooster Games, announced it’s closing down its own Spatial Creator platform, ending free and pro subscription tiers and discontinuing 3D world hosting next month—effectively ending the platform’s metaverse ambitions.
Spatial, which released its app at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2020, confirmed that Enterprise users won’t be affected, as the platform will remain operational and continue receiving support under existing agreements. Its Creator metaverse program however, which included both free and paid tiers targeted at individual users and small businesses, is getting the boot.
The company outlined the decision in a blog post, noting that it follows years of rising infrastructure costs associated with hosting and scaling its multiuser 3D worlds.
According to CEO Jinha Lee, Spatial explored alternatives including new pricing models, tiered hosting plans, and partnerships, but concluded that maintaining the platform would require “passing rising costs directly to you at levels that are not sustainable for independent developers and small studios.”
Courtesy Spatial
“We were not able to find a model that kept the Creator platform viable without compromising the experience you and your communities deserve,” Lee says.
Spatial says Creator-tier users will lose full access to the platform on July 27th, which will include the permanent deletion of and all creator-hosted files. Users will be allowed to export work before that date, as the company has already sent out download links for uploaded assets via email. The company is also refunding subscriptions for web users, while customers who subscribed through app stores must cancel manually.
The closure of its Creator program marks the end of Spatial’s nine-year effort to build an open platform for immersive social experiences, which notably supported a host of devices, including Quest and PC VR headsets, and mobile and flatscreen monitors.
This follows a number of other social XR platform closures, notably Rec Room, which closed on June 1st, and Meta’s own Horizon Worlds, which has pivoted to mostly focus on mobile users moving forward.
Spatial says the company is now putting more focus on its in-house game studio, Wooster Games, known for break-out free-to-play VR hit Animal Company, in addition to developing more original titles. At the time of this writing, Animal Company is the third best-selling game on Quest, featuring over 200,000 reviews at a [4.8/5] user rating.
According to an internal memo viewed by The Information, Meta is aiming to release up to four more smart glasses models this year. Meanwhile, the company is reportedly developing an AI pendant, with testing slated to start next year.
The memo, which thus far hasn’t been confirmed by Meta, was reportedly authored by Meta Wearable VP Alex Himel. In it, Himel details on some of the projects currently in the works at the company’s Reality Labs XR hardware division.
Amid expectations to sell 10 million wearables in the second half of 2026, Himel reportedly revealed the company is developing an AI-powered pendant set to go into testing next year, which is described similar to tech from Limitless, a startup Meta acquired in 2025 that built devices for recording, transcribing, and summarizing conversations.
Current lineup of Meta smart glasses | Image courtesy Meta
As per The Information’s report, the company also hopes to expand its AI glasses lineup beyond its current Ray-Ban Oakley models, which is said to include more brands, styles, and variants. Notably, Meta signed an agreement in 2024 with smart glasses partner EssilorLuxottica to extend their partnership to 2030.
Specifics are still under wraps, however the report maintains that Meta will debut at least four new pairs of smart glasses: ‘Modelo’ as soon as June, and ‘Luna’ and ‘RBM2 Refresh’ sometime this Fall, the latter of which suggesting a new Ray-Ban hardware refresh. In December, the company is also expected to release ‘Mojito VIP’. Meta is also reportedly testing models codenamed ‘Artemis’ and ‘SSG’ (“supersensing” glasses).
Like previous Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta glasses, the upcoming units are slated to include Meta’s AI models, however Himel’s memo also mentions bringing an AI agent called ‘Hatch’ to the company’s glasses.
Meanwhile, Meta is additionally aiming to launch a business-focused subscription called ‘Wearables for Work’, which could better position the company to generate recurring revenue instead of relying on one-off device purchases.
While Meta ostensibly hopes to sell 10 million wearables in the second half of 2026, it could exceed that figure if demand is strong. According to a Bloomberg report earlier this year, Meta and EssilorLuxottica have doubled the expected smart glasses production target, which would increase annual capacity to 20 million units by the end of 2026, with additional capacity capable of scaling to 30 million units.
Acer unveiled two new XR glasses, marking nearly a seven-year absence from the XR space.
The last we saw the ‘Acer’ brand emblazoned on an XR headset was its final Windows PC VR headset released in 2019, the OJO 500, which was mostly targeted at businesses. Since then, the company has been conspicuously absent from the XR space, seemingly investing more in its glasses-free 3D displays, laptops, and cameras, which it sells under the SpatialLabs brand.
Now the Taiwanese tech giant is stepping back in with two devices: tethered AR glasses, called the ‘AR Vision GR0’, and Meta-style smart glasses, called ‘GI0 AI Glasses’.
Acer AR Vision GR0
Image courtesy Acer
Acer AR Vision GR0 glasses tether via cable to iOS and Android smartphones and Windows PCs, serving up dual 1,920 × 1,080 microOLED displays with what appears to be bird bath-style optics similar to those used by competitors, including XREAL and VITURE glasses.
While Acer hasn’t released any actual field-of-view specs, the company says it delivers a “172-inch screen viewed from 6 meters away.” As you’d expect, Acer is targeting gaming and productivity, as well as privacy for work-related stuff in public spaces.
Acer AR Vision GR0 is coming soon to North America starting at $500 USD. It’s also set to arrive in EMEA in Q4 2026 for €600, and in Australia in Q3 2026 for $1,000 AUD.
Check out the specs below:
Name
Acer AR Vision GR0
Model
GR100F
OS Compatibility
Android, iOS, Windows
Display
dual microOLED, 200 nits, 1,920 x 1,080 per-eye resolution, 60 Hz refresh rate, DCI-P3 95% color gamut, 24-bit color, 50,000:1 contrast ratio
Audio
Stereo, one dynamic unit on each side
Power Charge
5.5 V 0.85 A
Connectivity
Wired
Controls
Swipe brightness, swipe volume
Dimensions and Weight
IPD: 64 mm, 69 g
Sensors
3DoF, accelerometers, proximity, magnetometers
Features
Detachable light shield, myopia magnetic lens option
Acer GI0 AI Glasses
Image courtesy Acer
It’s not clear whether Acer’s GI0 AI Glasses run Android XR, however the company does say they rely on Google Gemini for AI queries, which also means voice-activated interaction, real-time image analysis, and translation.
Much like Ray-Ban Meta, G10 AI Glasses include a built-in 12MP camera delivering 3,024 x 4,032 still images and 1,920 x 1,080 video at 30 FPS, which is admittedly a bit below Ray-Ban Meta’s (Gen 2) 3K, 30 FPS video capture. Notably, users will also need the Acer AspireSync companion app on a paired device—either Android or iOS—which connects via Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi 5.
Acer GI0 is coming to North America soon starting at $300 USD. It’s also coming to EMEA in Q4 2026 for €400, and to Australia in Q3 2026 for $600 AUD.
Check out the specs below:
Name
Acer GI0
Model
GI100
AI Model
Google Gemini
OS Compatibility
Android 12 and above, iOS 15 and above
Companion App
Acer AspireSync
Camera
12M – Image: 3,024 x 4,032; Video:1,920 x 1,080 at 30 FPS
Audio
Stereo, one dynamic unit on each side, three microphones
Storage
32 GB eMMC
Battery
217 mAh
Power Charge
5V 1A
Connectivity
Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.0 support
Controls
Capture button with short press and long press
Dimensions and Weight
46 g (frames only)
Features
Google Gemini AI voice assistant, status LED, side touchpad, AI translations, AI captions
Julian Reyes is an award-winning XR producer, with more than two decades of experience spanning immersive media, storytelling, music culture, and technology. He is the Founder and Director of the Virtual Worlds Museum, where he leads efforts to preserve, explore, and showcase the history, culture, and future of virtual worlds. This June, he’ll speak at the AWE USA 2026 panel discussion, “How We Can Preserve Online Worlds and Why It Matters”.
There is a particular kind of grief that comes when a virtual world sunsets.
It is easy for some to frame these closures as the disappearance of a product, a platform, or a failed business model. But those of us who have spent time inside virtual worlds know better. When a world goes dark, we do not simply lose connectivity. We lose places. We lose rituals, relationships, events, art, architecture, memory, and the transcendent sense of belonging that only emerges when a community spends enough time together to turn a platform into a home.
That is why the recent announcements from across the immersive landscape have struck so deeply:
Rec Room will shut down on June 1, 2026 at noon PT, sunsetting a platform that has connected more than 150 million players and creators.
Spatial will sunset its Spatial Creator Platform’s Free and Pro tiers on July 27, 2026, citing the growing cost of hosting open multiplayer 3D worlds.
Occupy White Walls and Nowhere, which also enjoyed some buzz a few years ago, have already sunsetted.
In Meta’s ecosystem, the uncertainty surrounding Horizon Worldshas become a symbol of a broader instability facing immersive communities. Even when the future of a platform is not fully settled, mixed signals and shifting priorities can leave world builders and residents unsure whether the spaces they have invested in will remain available to them. The problem is made worse by incessant tech news coverage which confuses Meta’s Horizon Worlds (one platform) with the metaverse, a concept that’s been instantiated across many platforms.
Taken together, these cases point to a deeper problem:
Virtual worlds can hold years of social, creative, and cultural life, yet too often they are still treated as temporary products rather than places worthy of stewardship. For the people who gather inside them, these are not disposable apps. They are lived environments.
This is not abstract to me. It is personal, and it is historical.
I have lasting memories of hosting events with Celeste Lear in BRCvr, now BurnerSphere, and AUREA Award after-parties in AltspaceVR. Thankfully, I recorded some of those events, but countless unrecorded hours of community life on the platform are now gone except for what its residents remember.
Three years ago, however, the communities and world builders of AltspaceVR were abruptly displaced when Microsoftshut the platform down on March 10, 2023. In its earlier years (around 2017), the platform saw roughly 35,000 monthly participants.
Yet the story did not end with the shutdown. A committed community carried its spirit forward into VRChat, which achieved a new all-time high of nearly 158,000 concurrent players earlier this month. Former Altspacers recreated familiar spaces in VRChat, continuing to gather, and recently hosting commemorative events marking three years since the loss of AltspaceVR while celebrating the builders, friendships, and cultural life that survived its closure.
That experience taught a lesson that our industry still needs to take seriously: platforms may close, but communities fight to endure. The question is whether the broader ecosystem will give them a meaningful path to do so.
It’s Not Just About Losing 3D Spaces: Itemizing What Disappears When Virtual Worlds Sunset
So what does the loss of a virtual world actually mean? It means the loss of digital culture in living form.
A virtual world is not merely code on a server. It is a social fabric woven from thousands or millions of moments: a first concert, a memorial gathering, a classroom experiment, a dance floor, a comedy club, a holiday celebration, a support group, a business, a community ritual, a world someone spent months or years building by hand. When that world disappears, all of those moments become harder to access, harder to document, and harder to pass on.
The losses happen on multiple levels at once:
We lose cultural expression: performances, architecture, customs, and shared practices.
We lose social continuity: communities, friendships, recurring events, and other forms of belonging.
We lose historical context: the record of how people lived, created, experimented, and connected inside these digital spaces.
A screenshot may survive. An exported asset may survive. But the social meaning that gave those artifacts life often does not survive intact.
Sometimes the world itself vanishes. Other times the deeper loss is less visible but just as profound. A community may migrate elsewhere, but the original atmosphere, affordances, etiquette, and cultural norms do not transfer perfectly. Migration preserves people, but it does not always preserve place.
For an apt real world analogy, imagine if the annual Burning Man festival unexpectedly closed down. It wouldn’t just be the end of the festival itself, but the end of hundreds of camps (worlds) and thousands of Burners coming together every year.
That is why sunsetting hurts so much. It reminds us that virtual worlds are not trivial entertainment, and they are not culturally neutral infrastructure. They are part of our shared digital record. As more education, performance, identity, collaboration, and community life move into immersive spaces, the loss of a virtual world is no longer a niche concern. It is part of the larger challenge of preserving digital civilization.
And yet, alongside the grief, we also see something else: resilience.
When Virtual Worlds Sunset, Their Communities Create Solutions
Again and again, communities try to emigrate to other worlds together; sometimes companies help assist with that exodus:
VRChat recently invited displaced users from Rec Room and Horizon Worlds to come over, offering not just a new platform, but a social refuge. After the virtual world There shut down (despite having one million registered users at its end in 2010) Second Life creator Linden Lab created a ‘Therian’ avatar name, giving former There users a recognizable identity marker so they could find one another again.
Former AltspaceVR users organized themselves, formed their own VRChat groups, and rebuilt worlds inspired by the spaces they had lost. They even held a week-long memorial in VRChat to commemorate the three-year anniversary of AltSpaceVR’s shutdown. These acts may not fully restore a vanished platform, but they show that continuity is possible when communities are given tools, welcome, and recognition.
In some cases, communities go even further. They attempt to reverse engineer the worlds they loved in order to preserve or revive them. We have seen this spirit in communities surrounding Club Penguin, There, and now, there’s groups of users working to do this with Rec Room.
These efforts arise from a profound truth: when people feel that a world mattered, they do not simply let it disappear. They rebuild it, emulate it, archive it, and carry it forward however they can.
That should be a signal to the industry. The demand for preservation is already here. The need for transition pathways is already here. The desire for continuity, interoperability, and cultural memory is already here. What has often been missing is not community will, but institutional support.
How Companies & Communities Can Create Better Solutions for Future Worlds
We need to do better at planning for the full lifecycle of virtual worlds. That means creating stronger migration paths for users and creators. It means building export options, archiving systems, and community handoff processes before a shutdown occurs. It means treating virtual worlds as places with social and historical value, not just as services that can be switched off without consequence.
Here are some specific practical suggestions for companies to consider—and for communities to consider demanding from the virtual world platforms they’re supporting:
Enable integration with Discord and other third party social platforms: Giving virtual world communities easy means to communicate with each other outside the immersive space is crucial for growing virtual world usage, enabling people to remain lightly engaged while away from their main device. It’s also a great way of helping ensure that these communities can persist even if a particular world is sunsetted. (As a promising example,VRChat recently enabled deep integration with Discord.)
Favor architectures that are open, portable, and independently hostable: Examples include self-hosted platforms like OpenSimulator and Overte, browser-based systems like Mozilla Hubs and Custom WebXR, and open engines like Godot. These approaches do not eliminate fragility, but they reduce dependence on a single corporate owner and improve the chances that worlds, objects, and communities can persist, migrate, or be reconstructed.
Explore Gaussian Splats and other export technology: While Unity-based virtual worlds enable some offline/backup capabilities, we need solutions which work across the many 3D engines on the market. We are seeing some promise with Gaussian Splat-based recreations of virtual world spaces. As an example, my team created this experimental Gaussian render of the Horizon Worlds central hub on Marble, the new platform from WorldLabs.
My own organization, the Virtual Worlds Museum, was founded to help encourage virtual worlds preservation through documentation, exhibits, and community storytelling. Our Sunset Exhibit preserves the memory of worlds that have disappeared, and our Teleportal helps visitors discover virtual worlds across the ecosystem. To better rally the virtual world community before Rec Room’s demise, we recently launched this crowdfunder to support these efforts.
But preservation alone is not enough. If the immersive industry wants to mature, it must begin treating virtual worlds not as disposable experiments, but as cultural spaces with legacies, responsibilities, and communities worth protecting. Because when a virtual world sunsets, what we lose is not only a platform. We lose a piece of human history written in digital space.
And if we choose to preserve that history, honor those communities, and build better paths forward, their light can still guide the future of virtual worlds.
