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The Path to a Positive AI Future We are fortunate to live at an incredible moment in history. In the next few years, people will be able to use superintelligence beyond human capacity to create and...

SAVE $259.99: As of Aug. 10, the unlocked Samsung Galaxy S26+ (256GB, Cobalt Violet) is $840 at Amazon. That's down from $1,099.99. Opens in a new window Credit: Samsung Samsung Galaxy S26+ $840 at...

In XR News What’s the story? Roblox experience Music Festival Tycoon, which lets players build and grow their own music festivals, has added CORTIS as its first featured artist ahead ... continue...

In Augmented Reality News What’s the story? Zappar has announced a major update to its Spaces indoor navigation platform, adding accessibility features, richer landmark content, rebuilt route...

In Mixed Reality and Robotics News What’s the story? The U.S. Air Force has added $2.9 million to Palladyne AI’s STRATFI contract, lifting the total value to over $10.6 million. ... continue reading...

When it comes to mobile games, few remain culturally relevant for a decade, and none have shadows that loom quite as large as Pokémon Go. Now in its tenth year, the app remains a phenomenon.It’s...

TL;DR: Get the iPhone 17 for free from T-Mobile when you trade in your eligible phone on an Experience More or Experience Beyond plan. Alternatively, the Apple iPhone 17 Pro is free when you switch...

Modder Crementif has released a new version of the BetterVR mod, greatly improving the experience of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in VR mode and also teasing a Mario Kart 8 VR port. The...

BetterVR adds stereo rendering, physics-based roomscale, and motion controls to Breath of the Wild through the Cemu emulator. Crementif opened the repo in 2021 and has shipped 21 releases since December, and the changelogs are the clearest public record of what moving a flat game into VR actually costs.

The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange carved a reputation as a firebrand and intense critic of the modern tech companies after rising to fame following the WikiLeaks disclosures. Although he's been...

There are worse ways to kill time than Mario Kart 64 in VR -just don't eat beforehand.

We chatted with Supernatural's Head of Fitness about the company's plans for its VR exercise app.

TL;DR: Get the iPhone 17 for free from T-Mobile when you trade in your eligible phone on an Experience More or Experience Beyond plan. Power users can get the Apple iPhone 17 Pro for free when they...

A free GitHub mod puts you in the driver's seat of Mario Kart 64 with full head tracking and four view modes. It had been public since June with fifteen stars. One thirty-second clip changed that, and the pattern says more about VR's discovery problem than it does about Mario.

Since the Not-E3 blitz of summer gaming showcases, things have been relatively quiet since then. Amidst that break, THQ Nordic dropped a new showcase full of trailers to show what the publisher has...

Our series Inside XR Design examines specific examples of great XR design. Today we’re looking at the game Electronauts and what it can teach us about smart VR interface design. Editor’s Note:...

NOW 46% OFF Blink Mini 2K+ Indoor Camera (2-pack) View Deal (function () { document.querySelector("#sticky-promo-block a").addEventListener("click", function(e) { const debug =...

China-based projector manufacturer XGIMI launched a crowdfunding campaign in June for its first smart glasses, MemoMind One, which is banking on consumer interest in display-clad smart glasses that...

Valve quietly changed the requirements for games aiming to run natively on Steam Frame, the company’s long-awaited standalone headset. The News Valve first announced at Game Developers Conference...

Snap's earnings beat provides a jolt while Meta weathers a societal backlash against AI glasses and cinematic AI continues to gear up. We have these and other items from AI and XR worlds through the...

In XR News What’s the story? A USAF contract under which Enduvo delivers interactive courseware for aircraft maintenance, pilot training, egress and fuels has been extended through to 2028. Why ......

I've heard that if you close your eyes and keep them shut, it's impossible to stay awake for more than seven minutes. I'm not sure if that's true, but I know it took less time than that for Dream...

XR Replay, the latest app from the developer of the popular Quest Games Optimizer, auto-records the last few minutes of gameplay so you can save it at any time.Imagine you are playing a Quest game...

Virtual Desktop's latest beta release for Quest adds USB support for wired PC streaming, a long-requested feature.Virtual Desktop has been a popular choice for PC VR gamers on standalone headsets for...

Valve added a Steam Frame compatibility record to The Lab on July 9, then cut it from category 3 to Unsupported on July 29 and moved it onto an ARM64 Proton runtime on August 5. Its own VR demo is failing a bar a free Half-Life 2 mod just cleared.

Valve quietly cut the Steam Frame Verified bar to 72 fps and a free Half-Life 2 mod cleared it, Viture dropped display glasses to $299, Snap set September 16, and a peer-reviewed study clocked Vision Pro surgeons 19 percent faster.

Researchers at UC San Diego published the first controlled comparison of Apple Vision Pro against a standard endoscopy monitor, across 32 tear duct surgeries in the journal AJO International. The headset group averaged 34.4 minutes against 42.7, with identical outcomes, and all five surgeons preferred the headset.

The developers of the Half-Life 2: VR Mod have announced that the mod is now Steam Frame Verified. Source VR Mod Team, the developers behind the Half-Life 2: VR Mod, have confirmed that the latest...

VR Games Showcase is turning two years old soon, and this time around VR’s biggest gaming showcase is promising another slate of VR game reveals and updates from this year’s most anticipated titles....

VITURE today launched its latest AR glasses, VITURE Pro 2, which the company calls its thinnest, lightest and most comfortable yet. Alongside it, Viture also unveiled a new, more pocketable USB-C...

Not ready to plonk down your first $100 on Quest games? Thankfully there’s an impressive number of free games, experiences, apps, and social VR platforms to keep you playing before you’re paying....

Apple has a knack for aligning devices and killer apps. It made the Apple Watch a health tracker, among other things. Could it carry this same torch with Apple smart glasses, with a focus on fitness?...

Even Apple CEO Tim Cook has acknowledged that Vision Pro is a niche product. I’ve argued in the past that it’s an essential step along the way to a more affordable and consumer-friendly Apple Glasses...

At AWE, I was able to get in touch with the team building the Raven Prism, which are upcoming smart glasses with a strong focus on privacy and openness. Let me tell you more about this very...

Source VR Mod Team announced on August 4 that Half-Life 2: VR Mod is Steam Frame Verified, and eye-tracked foveated rendering is what finally got it over the bar. Valve still is not making a Steam Frame game. It is starting to look like it might not have to.

Viture's new display glasses land at $299 with Sony micro-OLED panels at 120Hz, 1,600 nits, and a 63-gram frame. That is $160 under the Pro they replace, and it drops the floor of the glasses market far below the $699 and $2,195 products sharing the same word.

G-Rebels from Reakktor Studios has arrived on Steam in Early Access, bringing a futuristic flight sim heavily inspired by the classic 1997 title G-Police into VR. Launching a technically ambitious...

Siri AI is a major upgrade and highlight of iOS 27, macOS Golden Gate, and more. But only newer Apple devices will support the overhauled Siri. Here’s the full list of Siri AI-compatible hardware...

A new study covering wearing an Apple Vision Pro during certain surgeries has concluded that it is superior to existing medical equipment, and is very much worth the relatively small cost.The Apple...

Unseen Reality’s crowdfunding campaign for URXR One surpassed $500,000 within 24 hours of launch yesterday, showing clear demand for the company’s first slim and light mixed reality glasses. URXR One...

What do Meta's Q2 earnings tell us about headset unit sales? And what does that in turn signal for aggregate demand and XR sector health? We do some financial reverse engineering. This post appeared...

Beyond Frames Entertainment is the main publisher behind many of Combat Waffle Studios’ VR titles, including Ghosts of Tabor (2024), Silent North (2025), and GRIM (2025). Now the VR games publisher...

Pine Studio opened a public VR preview for Escape Simulator 2 through Steam's open_beta branch, with every official room playable and a free full VR update planned before the end of 2026.

Valve's partner documentation now sets the standalone VR bar at 72 fps at 1728x1728 per eye, down from the 90 FPS announced at GDC 2026. There was no changelog and no announcement, and a reader, Simplex, caught it before we did.

Cybercore Protocol is a mixed reality action game that blends elements of tower defense, wave shooters, and melee combat games into something not wholly unique, yet undeniably fun.I've spent the past...

Combat Waffle Studios' Ghosts of Tabor, Grim, and Silent North will soon have a new publisher as original publisher Beyond Frames is selling the publishing rights to a new company for $1 million.We...

System Critical 3 does not shy away from its old-school arcade inspirations, but it ends up being what is assuredly one of the worst VR games in recent years.Video games are inherently art. So what...

While Apple’s first-gen smart glasses aren’t expected to include fitness tracking, although a recent report suggests the company ultimately hopes to put fitness at the center of its next big product...

38 percent of U.S. adults have tried mobile AR, and 83 percent of those do so at least monthly. These results flow from ARtillery Intelligence's latest original survey research with Thrive Analytics....

In XR News What’s the story? NVIDIA XR AI is now available in public beta, giving developers a library for building spatially aware multimodal AI agents for AR glasses and ... continue reading Source

Gloop Lair arrives August 13 as the 41st Walkabout Mini Golf course since 2020, in a year where I have written seven VR shutdown stories. The tell is not the release cadence, it is the day Mighty Coconut raised its base price and handed six paid courses to existing owners for free.

Mighty Coconut returns to Walkabout Mini Golf's ongoing Evil Lairs series with Gloop Lair, its next DLC course, due out August 13.Gloop Lair is the fourth of six planned add-on courses for Walkabout...

It’s hot here in Italy… It’s so hot that I miss my time in November in Finland when I was freezing! This week in XR has been kinda lukewarm, with no huge news happening, but this newsletter is still...

The August update for Meta's Horizon+ subscription for Quest headsets brings 2 great monthly games and five new catalog titles.The August titles arrive shortly after the service expanded to include...

You can now get an early look at Escape Simulator 2's VR mode in a recently unveiled VR open beta. In a Steam blog update, Pine Studio has revealed an open public VR preview for their best-selling...

Valve’s ‘Great on Frame’ page highlights games specifically optimized for Steam Frame, and it’s now grown to over 50 titles. ‘Great on Frame’ initially kicked off last month with a half-dozen titles...

Specs' launch date is finally known: September 16th. While the June unveiling previewed the device, we couldn't try it on and see/feel the UX. And with this type of product, UX is everything. So this...

Samsung Galaxy XR enterprise adoption has moved beyond the launch-day question of whether Android could compete with Apple Vision Pro. Ten months after Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm introduced the...

Snap will hold a full launch event for Specs on September 16 in Los Angeles, with Evan Spiegel giving the first in-depth look at the $2,195 AR glasses and attendees going hands-on. It is the first firm date on a fall calendar where every other AR product has only committed to a season.

Lepton and FEX went public on Steam on August 2, which puts the Steam Frame's entire compatibility stack in the open before the headset has a release date. Valve's answer to an empty store is emulation rather than port funding, and the 10 to 20 percent tax it charges collides directly with a 90 FPS certification bar.

Unseen Reality's spatial display glasses weigh 93 grams and run a full 6DoF SLAM stack off four onboard cameras. The weight works because there is no processor and no battery in the frames. Early bird pricing starts at $699, and shipping is promised for mid-October.

The DuckDuckGo Paso Robles is a $35 pair of sunglasses with the smart-glasses spec list printed on the temple and struck through. It fixes nothing, but it points at a real gap: every tool built so far tells you what someone else is wearing, and none lets you signal that your own glasses are just glasses.

Zero Racers and D-Hopper were both completed in 1996 and cancelled when the Virtual Boy collapsed. They arrive on Nintendo Classics on August 4. Nintendo is shipping VR games that never came out, while the VR platforms that did come out keep disappearing, and the reason comes down to architecture.

Earnings season is upon us, meaning big tech winners and losers, while Meta's smart glasses backlash amps up. We have these and other items from AI & XR realms through the lens of Charlie Fink. This...

PlayStation VR2 is currently on sale for $300 direct from Sony in the United States, down from its regular $400 price.The sale is scheduled to run through August 10, a week and a half from now.PS VR2...

Meta posted a $4.62 billion Reality Labs loss, Qualcomm told headset makers chip prices rise September 1, Magic Leap exited hardware, and Valve cleared the FCC. A week where the layer under the apps changed hands.

Meta's Q2 2026 report shows a $4.62 billion Reality Labs operating loss on $431 million in revenue, wider than last quarter even after the January cuts and the pivot to glasses. Cumulative losses since 2020 now sit near $88 billion.

The FCC granted Valve equipment authorization for FCC ID 2AES4-1015 on July 29, a device the paperwork calls simply "VR Headset." That is legal permission to sell, not another leak. VR.org has called this launch imminent twice already, so here is what separates the third time from the first two.

SideQuest has acquired the rights to the Altspace name and is rebuilding the platform for a fall 2026 launch, robot avatars included. In the same year Rec Room went dark and Meta walked Horizon Worlds out of its own headset, that should sound insane. I think it might be the smartest move anyone in social VR has made in two years.

Setup graphics for Meta's unreleased ultralight headset surfaced in Quest firmware this week, and the number that matters is one we already had: under 110 grams. Measured against every device VR.org has logged this year, that target asks for a Bigscreen Beyond with a camera array added and no custom-molded fit to help carry it.