All the news from
the immersive web.

At AWE, one of my most important experiences for me was going hands-on with the prototype Android XR smartglasses by Google, the ones you have probably seen during the keynote at Google I/O. Let me...

There's not many active Meta Quest users out there these days, but the Facebook firm isn't going quietly into the night it seems. The so-called "Metaverse" might've amounted to a gigantic dud, but...

TL;DR A Ray-Ban executive has responded with humor to a spoof ad in London that highlights potential privacy issues in Meta’s smart glasses. Activists have replaced multiple Meta smart glasses ads...

Volkswagen has put its name on an e-bike built around the kind of safety technology you would normally find in a car. The Volkswagen eBike, manufactured by n+ under licence, features a rear-mounted...

Xbox Game Pass is teaming up with another subscription service this week, albeit one that appeals to a niche section of gamers. Facebook parent group Meta and Xbox have announced that a starter...

In XR News What’s the story? Hololight has updated its Stream, Hub, and Space tools with new capabilities for stable XR streaming, headset-free access, collaboration, and design review. Why it ......

We at Road to VR have been asking ourselves: how do we offer the most value to our readers? That question led to an experiment over the last few months that changed the way we structured each...

Credit: WinFuture TL;DR A new leak says Samsung will give a further preview of its upcoming Android XR-based smart glasses at Samsung Unpacked tomorrow. These smart glasses are said to come with...

Pokémon Go is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. The game, which famously uses GPS and augmented reality to let you discover, catch, and battle virtual monsters in real-world...

TL;DR: Spain’s World Cup winners celebrated their victory wearing a one-of-one pair of custom Oakley Meta glasses created exclusively for the team. While fans can’t buy that exact edition, Oakley’s...

TL;DR The camera-free Halliday G2 features binocular micro-LED projectors (1,600 nits peak brightness, 600 × 300 per eye), a four-mic array, a sub-50g weight, and over 12 hours of battery life. Built...

Last year, Halliday launched one of the worst-reviewed pairs of smart glasses. Now it's back with a second-generation model to right its predecessor's sins.

South Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster is set to launch its first pair of smart glasses this fall, and it’s hoping to make waves with a rash of new physical retail locations across North America...

After a few years of declines – mostly due to the hangover from circa-2021 "metaverse mania," XR venture funding grew 117 percent last year. What's behind the rebound? We examine the latest data from...

Recently debuting a trailer at last month’s VR Games Showcase, we tried the stylistic Alpha Test of Daumier: Lila & Ghost. If the gameplay and narrative are any indication, this co-op puzzle...

Action-combat flight sim G-Rebels has launched in Early Access today on Steam with VR support. If you're a gamer of a certain age (meaning old, like me) you may remember G-Police, a PlayStation game...

A Township Tale's servers shut down for good on July 20 after eight years. It was one of four VR projects that hit the wall in the same week, and the common thread is platform funding, not bad games.

The Roboquest VR Quest port missed its May 21 date and lands July 23 instead. Why the delay was the right call, and why framerate is the only number that matters on standalone.

What’s the story? LOOOK.AI and shu uemura have unveiled the AI Mirror, a smart mirror built into real glass, at shu uemura’s shu:ARTstage flagship store in Omotesando Hills, Tokyo. Why ... continue...

Is Samsung about to completely change the foldable game? Samsung’s July 22 Unpacked Event is just around the corner, and massive upgrades are incoming. We’re expecting a brand-new, wider Galaxy Z...

Yesterday, the Football World Cup ended, and now I feel like I don’t know anymore how to spend my evenings. Compliments to Spain, by the way… I hope that in four years we will be able to play against...

Apple is moving on with its developer beta program, with new fourth builds of iOS 27, macOS 27, tvOS 27, watchOS 27, visionOS 27, and iPadOS 27 now undergoing testing.An earlier iOS 27 beta screenThe...

Apple today provided developers with the fourth beta of an upcoming visionOS 27 update for testing purposes, with the beta coming two weeks after Apple released the third beta. visionOS 27 can be...

It's called I'm Having a Bad Day.There aren't too many games launching for PSVR2 these days, but every now and then PlayStation will promote one on the PS Blog or its YouTube channel.A recent case is...

I like to imagine that, in thousands of years time, an alien species will land on the desert wasteland that was once Earth and begin combing through our digital records. What they'll likely discover...

Smart-glasses development is genuinely fragmented today, including platforms from Meta, Snap, and others. This raises barriers for developers, which in turn could diminish smart glasses demand and...

AR unicorn Magic Leap is again pivoting its core business, this time to serve as a waveguide supplier to other companies making AR glasses, something that we’ve learned comes amid a mass lay off...

At SIGGRAPH this week, a Tuesday morning session on the jump from 3D to 4D Gaussian splatting points at how VR content stops being modeled by hand and starts being captured from the real world. Here is why the technique, not the next headset, decides what VR looks like in three years.

At SIGGRAPH this week, Khronos is presenting OpenXR's evolution from a portability layer into a full spatial computing platform, with Google, Meta, Unity, ByteDance, and Varjo all on board. The Spatial Entity Framework is the part developers should be watching.

Meta sold more than seven million pairs of smart glasses last year, and the cultural mood around them has never been worse. When Lorde tells a Ray-Ban sponsored festival crowd not to buy the glasses, that is a problem no recording LED can fix.

Valve just shipped the biggest SteamVR interface overhaul in years: a rebuilt dashboard, Steam Deck style Quick Access controls, and in-headset battery and brightness settings. Read the feature list twice and it stops looking like a PC VR update at all.

Valve has dropped a sizeable update to SteamVR, paving the way for what appears to be imminent launch of its long-awaited standalone VR headset, Steam Frame. Valve’s latest update brings a good slate...

A major SteamVR update, warehouses full of hardware, and Valve on record that the memory crisis is still getting worse. Everything converged this week, and I keep landing on the same conclusion: the Steam Frame is exactly the headset this moment needs, and the one device that can pull VR hardware out of its 2026 funk.

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...

Following up on a previous report, Xerxes 'Jarvis' Sangco's involvement with Tactical Assault VR is ending after news of his 2020 arrest and subsequent criminal conviction came to light.Earlier this...

OpenAI's hardware plans look like a smart speaker, while EssilorLuxottica buys Lynx and Lenovo backpedals from XR. We have these and other items from AI and XR worlds, through the lens of Charlie...

A Florida XR firm just won a $5.1 million Marine Corps contract to build a VR gunnery trainer whose opposing force is driven by agentic AI. It is a small deal with a large lesson about where XR spending is actually being validated in 2026.

Incuvo Games announced today that it will be porting Creepy Jar's StarRupture, an open-world exploration game with base building and combat, to Meta Quest 3. Incuvo dropped the news in a post on...

The Battlefield-like 32-player VR FPS Forefront just got a major update. Here's everything you need to know.Forefront has just launched a major update which adds a new map, new weapon, and new...

Hellsplit: Arena, the 2019 VR hack and slash arena combat game, appears to be nearing the end of active development, but not before developer Deep Type Games delivers a sandbox mode for both Steam...

Every year, the geospatial world gathers at the Esri User Conference to talk about the same promise: better maps, visualization, and ways to see the built and natural world in 3D. What are the latest...

My hype for Final Fantasy Resonance continues to build as Square Enix has released a new gameplay trailer showcasing more of its HD-2D pixel art style in its cinematic cutscenes, environments, and...

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...

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...

Meta's CTO says to stay tuned for Connect on September 23 because there will be more to share about its next headsets. Here is what the roadmap actually allows him to show, and why the most interesting device is not the one Quest fans are waiting for.

Pimax expects to clear its entire Dream Air and Dream Air SE backlog next month, while Valve still cannot name a price for Steam Frame and Meta has pushed Quest 4 to 2027. The reason the tethered underdog is shipping through the memory crunch is more instructive than the headset itself.

Viking-themed VR rhythm game Ragnarock added two new licensed tracks for free in its latest update, the first new music added to the game since July 2025.Ragnarock's previous music update was the...

What’s the story? XREAL’s a01+ AR glasses are now available in the US for $299, combining Micro-OLED displays, 120Hz visuals, and support for everyday devices. Why it matters The glasses ... continue...

As part of Sony's larger Summer Games Sale, 200 titles for PlayStation VR and VR2 are discounted starting today. Starting today and continuing until August 12, PlayStation's Summer Game Sale is...

Though 2026 has continued the broader gaming industry's depressing trend of studio closures and layoffs, there's still plenty of promising VR games releasing in the months ahead. From blockbuster...

To counteract the effects of social media and smartphones, there's an opportunity for AR to raise our gaze for more meaningful human interactions. Aligned with Evan Spiegel's vision for AR social...

Although smart phones will soon require user-removable batteries in the EU, the European Commission is moving to exempt wearables, which includes smartwatches, fitness trackers, and smart glasses. As...

Brussels adopted a delegated act exempting smart glasses from user-removable battery requirements, clearing a path for Meta, Google, Samsung and Apple to sell in Europe unchanged. The privacy report landing this summer is the bigger threat.

Amelia's Escape is a narrative escape room where the puzzles unravel a time-travel scientist's story. It launches July 23 on Quest and Steam for $15.99.

What’s the story? BavAR[t] has partnered with SNCF Gares & Connexions and France’s Ministry of Armed Forces to launch augmented reality cultural experiences across five French train stations. Why it...

Continuing our AR marketing case studies, McDonald’s has not one but three campaigns to spotlight. In this installment, we look at its AR challenge that prompted users to choose their favorite menu...

Lenovo has reportedly shuttered its XR business unit, marking a significant retreat from enterprise spatial computing and a broader strategic shift toward AI-powered consumer wearables. According to...

Golf fans with a Quest headset will be able to compete for a pretty temping grand prize starting July 16th in GOLF+’s next big VR Open. Golf+ announced it’s partnered with The Royal & Ancient Golf...

GOLF+ is running an official VR Open with the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, timed to the real Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, with a grand prize trip to the 155th Open at St Andrews. One of VR's quiet success stories just got the ultimate stamp of legitimacy.

GOLF+ VR, in partnership with the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, is bringing an official VR Open to the GOLF+ Tour. The grand prize winner will receive a trip to St. Andrews in 2027. The...

After news surfaced of a 2020 arrest and subsequent conviction of one of its lead developers, Tactical Assault VR has been dropped by publisher 2080 Games and its association with Combat Waffle...

Palmer Luckey, the founder of military tech startup Anduril (also the founder of Oculus), quietly teased a pair of unannounced AR glasses that are presumably in development at Anduril. Despite their...

At AWE, the state of VR locomotion tech was on display. We went hands-on and have a roundup of our top three experiences. What stood out most, and what does it mean for the feature of movement and...

Valve has quietly launched a Great on Frame storefront section collecting games certified for its upcoming Steam Frame headset. The page is nearly empty, but its very existence is the strongest launch signal yet.

Lenovo has laid off its US XR business unit and is redirecting its ThinkReality enterprise work toward AI-enabled consumer wearables under Motorola. Read on its own, it is another layoff. Read in context, it is the clearest map yet of where the industry's money is actually going.

Apple has published a detailed technical specification for building third-party motion controllers for Vision Pro, down to the exact wavelength of the tracking LEDs. For a headset that launched insisting hands and eyes were enough, that is a meaningful reversal.

The man who wrote Doom, invented modern 3D game engines, and later ran Oculus is offering a million dollars of his own money to get official VR ports of the id classics onto the Quest store. The only thing standing in the way is Microsoft.

While the industry argues about expensive camera-equipped AI glasses and the privacy backlash they created, XREAL quietly put a 147-inch private screen on your face for $299. The affordable display-glasses category is the one part of AR that is genuinely selling, and this launch shows why.

The whole industry spent the week arguing about cameras on your face, Apple quietly killed the display for a cheaper Vision Pro, and underneath the noise VR gaming and open source had one of their best weeks of the year. Here is what mattered.

Samsung Display is formally terminating G-VR, the glass-substrate micro-OLED panel that would have powered a cheaper Apple headset, by September. Killing a product is reversible. Killing its display program is not.