Initially teased earlier this year as ‘Project Swan’, Pico announced last week it was putting on a big product launch event for the newly-named Pico Space Pro, which was set to take place in Beijing on September 2nd.

There, we expected Pico to fill in the gaps of the headset’s spec sheet, global release plans, and pricing for what is surely one of the company’s most expensive XR headset’s to date.

Now Pico says it’s adjusting the product release date to sometime in Q4 2026, citing the need for more time to push a “major upgrade” to the software experience.

It has been widely reported by multiple reputable sources that Meta is working on a premium, ultralight, open-periphery headset with a tethered compute puck, intended to occupy a similar high-end position to Meta Quest Pro, but in a much sleeker form factor. Here is everything we know so far about Meta's next VR/MR device.

It looks as though Valve is actually gearing up to release Steam Frame, as user setup videos have leaked showing off unboxing and first-time user experience with Valve’s first standalone VR headset.

As first reported by Steam Hardware Updates on X, the ARM Steam Client got an update this week that contained a number of videos, including an unboxing, sign-in, and setup video of Steam Frame.

Although Valve immediately pulled the videos in a subsequent update, all three video has been reuploaded multiple times by now; here’s one such compilation from YouTube channel VRelity that includes all three.

James Tocchio and I played the first heist job with Erik and Kris from Fast Travel. James played on Meta Quest and I played on Steam. We were allowed to capture footage, so the clips below will show both of our perspectives side by side.

As Erik, the Game Director for Aces High, would explain to us later, Fast Travel leaned more in the arcade direction with the mechanics, letting players play fast and get caught up in the action as opposed to struggling with finicky precision. Grabbing loot is a good example of this. Big piles of loot, be it money, jewelry, or other objects of value, are grabbed and automatically transformed into duffel bags when pulled towards you. These bags slow your movement speed, leaving you reliant on your teammates to cover your escape. Smaller loot, like a single stack of money, is grabbed with the grab button and collected by holding the trigger button, ending with a satisfying 'ka-chink' sound effect as it explodes into falling coins. Gun reloading is manual, with new ammo over your shoulder, and thankfully jank-free

PICO-XR's official Weibo account recently officially announced that the highly anticipated new head-mounted display, PICO Space Pro, will be officially launched on September 2nd at 14:30. The official has set the theme of this product launch as "Start a New Spatial Experience." The upcoming Space Pro headset is expected to be the mysterious device codenamed "Project Swan" that was accidentally exposed in the public SDK. In terms of design, the headset cleverly integrates the design essence of several industry benchmark products: its body uses a single woven headband design similar to Apple's Vision Pro, and the back of the headband has a particularly obvious style; while the front light-blocking pad and forehead cushion part show an造型 style similar to Samsung Galaxy XR.

What does it mean to play in VR?

It seems a straightforward question. Meta, Valve, Sony, Google, and even Apple all sell games that substitute your reality for a simulated one with rules to learn governing your interactions. These storefronts, however, do little to sell the unique benefits VR offers in embodiment and transportation.

“We’re all given this kind of carnival license in this sort of anonymous space to play,” said Ferryman Collective co-founder Deirdre V. Lyons. “We often as adults forget how important it is. How it re-energizes our lives and how it informs our lives and how it allows us to create bonds and special moments that we often don’t allow ourselves time to do.”

A surprise trailer during today's VR Games Showcase revealed that Flat2VR Studios and Squanch Games are bringing High On Life VR to headsets in 2027.

The trailer offers an in-depth look at what to expect from High On Life VR, including some behind-the-scenes moments with the game's developers, who explain the major overhauls that bringing some of the game's systems to VR has demanded. These include overhauls to the shop interactions, character beats around the city, as well as physical reload mechanics for the game's highly unique weaponry.

One of the startups I absolutely wanted to visit at AWE was Oxford Optical Labs (OOL) because it is developing special lenses that can change their focus on demand. This company got me intrigued since the first time I spoke with them during my AWE preview interview, because its technology could enable varifocal headsets in the future. Let me tell you everything that I learned when I visited their meeting room at AWE in Long Beach!

Oxford Optical Labs has been working on its adjustable fluid lenses for over 20 years. These lenses are not made of glass, but are made of a membrane that contains a fluid. By changing the parameters of the fluid, it is possible to change the parameters of the lens. For instance, the same lens can be used first with someone with myopia, and then with someone with presbyopia.

In my previous article, I stated that the lens changes its property thanks to electricity that flows through it, but that is incorrect. The lens changes its property because of pressure in some specific points. So changing these “pressure points” on the lens changes its property, and the same lens can be adapted to any person needing it. As you can see below, it can be altered to change all the possible optical properties, and solve myopia, presbyopia, and even astigmatism!

Crementif released the ‘BetterVR’ mod for Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) last December, bringing full 6DOF support and motion controls to the game on PC VR headsets. Now, nearing the mod’s 1.0 launch, not only has BetterVR gotten even better, but Crementif teased a Mario Kat 8 (2014) VR mod is also now in the works.

BetterVR is a flatscreen-to-VR conversion mod for BotW, which is available for free on the project’s GitHub, including 20 updates since the first trailer was released in December 2025.

Valve quietly changed the requirements for games aiming to run natively on Steam Frame, the company’s long-awaited standalone headset.

Valve first announced at Game Developers Conference (GDC) earlier this year that developers would need to hit two specific stats if they hoped to get the coveted ‘Steam Frame Verified’ badge, meaning their game natively runs well on Frame.

Apps needed to hit a minimum of 90 fps, which is higher than Frame’s minimum variable 72Hz refresh rate and a minimum of 30 fps at a resolution of 1,280 x 720 for flatscreen titles. Notably, the ‘Verified’ badge isn’t a minimum spec, but rather a label noting the game largely works without issues.

Now developers hoping for the ‘Steam Frame Verified’ badge can go as low as 72 fps, although their app needs to hit at least 1,728 × 1,728 per eye resolution “during normal play,” Valve says in the official documentation.

Virtual Desktop has been a popular choice for PC VR gamers on standalone headsets for years, but the connection between headset and PC has always been wireless. Neither it nor Valve's Steam Link app supports a wired USB connection, leaving wired users relegated to using Meta's often-unreliable Link application or the some-tinkering-required ALVR.

Virtual Desktop's new Quest Beta version 1.34.19, out now, changes that. USB support requires the headset to be on Quest OS v2.4 or higher. Users on other platforms like Pico and Play For Dream MR have to add USB Ncm support to use the feature.

My name is Shane, and I'm the CEO of SideQuest. We recently acquired the rights to the Altspace name and we have the motivation, experience and backing to bring it back in all it's glory. This will be a brand new Altspace, but it will truly be a spiritual successor to the Altspace we know and love and capture what made it great. Let's dive in to how I will pull this off.

Later this year we will re-launch Altspace with a lot of the features and functionality that it had around 2016-2017. I have assembled an elite team of previous Altspace staffers as well as some of the most prolific OG players and we are already hard at work figuring out all the important stuff like how it will work, what we will prioritize and understanding what needs to happen to make it great.

Somnium Space’s v3.1.6 update is slated to rollout today, bringing to the social VR platform a number of quality of life features that could put it more on par with its main competitor, VRChat.

Arguably the most important feature to the update is how it handles World Instances, which now supports a wider degree of privacy, including friends instances, friends+ private instances, paid instances, and PIN-protected instances. Previously, Somnium Space was largely built around a persistent shared world. That essentially means instead of every event existing in one open space, communities can now have private concerts, classrooms, meetings, paid events, and moderated gatherings.

A user setup video has reportedly surfaced of Meta’s long-rumored thin and light VR headset, suggesting we may see its official unveiling at Connect in September.

According to email seen by Bloomberg sent to customer on Friday, Qualcomm is slated to raise chip prices by a percentage in the double digits, set to take effect September 1st, 2026.

Qualcomm explained in the letter that, despite its best efforts to secure alternative components from new sources, the company can no longer absorb higher costs from suppliers.

This adds to the already beleaguered RAM and storage crisis largely caused by the uptick in AI data center construction, which has seen consumer electronics skyrocket in price.

The Great On Frame page, similar to the Steam Deck's Great On Deck label, is a quick way for Steam Frame owners to quickly browse Frame-compatible games and a visibility boost for developers who choose to support the new hardware.

This list is ever-growing and subject to change. We are aware of multiple other developers planning Steam Frame builds for their games and will either update this article or do separate coverage as those games get the official Great On Frame label.

Justin Spice is on a mission to make something like MechWarrior in VR.

In the 1990s he set up a cardboard box around his PC’s monitor to simulate a cockpit for MechWarrior 2 running on Windows 95. Roughly 30 years later, Iron Rebellions’s very positive rating on Steam (and 4.6 on Quest) is a testament to his effort at Black Beach Studio to create a fully fledged VR mech game inspired by his experience back then.

VR gaming is much more resource intensive than monitor gaming. In short, that’s because the render resolution is much higher than the 1080p or 4K displays used by most PC users today. Not to mention, VR games must also be rendered in 3D and anywhere from 72 to 144 FPS depending on the headset. Here we’ve got the recommended VR system requirements for the most popular headsets.

Before we dive in, you’ll want to know a few things about your computer. First and foremost, PC VR headsets are not supported by MacOS. Next up, you’ll need to know your PC’s specs. Expand the section below if you don’t already know where to find that info.

Video card CPU RAM Video Output

Discovery: Rogue Planet, a new sci-fi narrative FPS comes to PC VR & Quest 3 headsets on August 6. The game listing dropped on the Meta Horizon store a couple of weeks ago with an August 2026 release window, but at the time of this article, we cannot find a Steam listing. This despite developer Immersmind's press release listing SteamVR as a supported platform. We have reached out to the developers to clarify this discrepancy and will update if we get a response.

Rogue Planet takes place on Rogax, a frontier planet filled with aggressive aliens and dangerous environments. Players will take up risky missions in abandoned settlements, forgotten mines, swamps, and heavily guarded cities while unraveling the world's secrets. The release also states it is not an arena or wave-focused VR shooter. However a recent video on Immersmind's YouTube channel shows a separate Arena mode with that exact gameplay, presumably meant to be a separate mode from the main campaign.

Lynx, the France-based XR hardware startup, has been acquired by global eyewear conglomerate EssilorLuxottica.

In a public email to backers, Lynx founder and CEO Stan Larroque confirmed the acquisition, which was rumored to have taken place two weeks ago.

This includes “[a]ll the IP, assets and most of the team is now transitioning from a startup to this big company,” Larroque says in the email, adding that “it might take a few months for the operations to be smooth again, pending all legal approvals.”

Larroque isn’t making the move to EssilorLuxottica alongside other staff however, concluding his eight years building the startup, as he reveals he’s moving to Paris-based drone company Parrot to take on “a key leadership role” alongside Parrot founder and CEO Henri Seydoux.

Today I have the huge pleasure of publishing the interview I had with Jeff Basladynski, who you may probably know as “Bazitron” from Reddit. Baz has become a sort of legend in our community because he is doing god’s work by organizing large-scale VR installations inside events like comic-cons, making lots of people try VR for their first time. He’s basically reinvented LAN parties for VR and makes lots of people participate in them. And he’s doing all of this basically out of passion, because his main job is actually making chopsticks. He’s very unique, and that’s why I wanted to speak with him and ask him about his backstory, his chopsticks, and what he has learnt by introducing literally thousands of people to VR for their first time.

Combat Waffle announced it’s taking popular extraction shooter Ghosts of Tabor back to its 2024 roots with a separate version of the game, called Ghosts of Tabor: LEGACY.

Ghosts of Tabor: Legacy is essentially set to be the 2024 version of the game, before the studio pushed a number of major content updates, some of which drew community ire.

Combat Waffle says it’s reintroducing the game “preserved for the players who were there for it. The maps you mastered. The feel you remember. This is your raid, the way it used to feel.”

This includes a host of legacy stuff, such as maps in their original form: Old Island, Hex Bunker, Silo, and Matka Miest, as well as UX in its original state, such as backpacks with item collision, the older damage system, and more.

John Carmack, former Oculus CTO and co-founder of id Software, announced he’s still willing to put up $1 million of his personal money to help make VR versions of Id’s most famous retro titles—especially now that Microsoft has laid off a bulk of the studio’s employees.

Having left id Software in 2013 to join Oculus as CTO and help kickstart the VR consumer revolution, Carmack is still one of the industry’s most vocal advocates. Even after stepping down as CTO in 2019 and leaving Meta in 2022, he’s continued to push for open platforms and wider adoption of XR.

Now that Microsoft has essentially pared down Id Software though, resulting in what laid-off VFX artist Derek Best calls the size of “support studio”, Carmack is again reiterating the offer, hoping to make officially-sanctioned Id Software VR games a possibility.

“BTW, if the XBOX division is scrounging for loose change under the sofa cushions, I’m still willing to put up a $1M guarantee to allow TeamBeefVR to commercialize the legacy open source games on VR,” Carmack says.

By “legacy open source games,” Carmack is referring to classic Id Software titles whose game engines were released under open source licenses, such as the original DOOM (1993), Quake (1996), and Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001). While the underlying code is freely available, the games’ assets, including levels, textures, audio, and other copyrighted content, are still owned wholly by Microsoft.

During his latest AMA on Instagram, in response to a question asking if Meta was abandoning VR, Boz reiterated what we already know: that the company is still working on various headsets and that they are focusing on economic sustainability more than before. Then he added that they’ll share more about all of this at Connect.

I’m pretty excited to know more about this headset. I remember a little bird telling me some months ago that it is going to be a very interesting device. And the leaked renders confirm it: it looks very lightweight, and resembles more a pair of ski goggles than a shoebox on the face like Quest. I’m really curious to see what Meta has cooked up when designing this device.

While the announcement or tease of Phoenix is going to be good news, I don’t think it will make us exit the Winter we are in. The last big Winter we had was in 2017-18, and we could go out of it only with a full change of paradigm, a big blast that increased the sales numbers of VR by a lot: that blast was the Oculus Quest (and later, Oculus Quest 2).

The truth is: I don’t see this big blast happening now. Meta Phoenix is basically a variation of the Vision Pro. It is not a new paradigm; it is basically just Meta taking an existing paradigm and making it cheaper, lighter, and more open.