It seems like the teased Horizon OS headsets from Asus ROG and Lenovo won't be shipping after all.

In a statement to Road to VR, Meta says it has "paused the program to focus on building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market".

“We’re committed to this for the long term and will revisit opportunities for 3rd-party device partnerships as the category evolves”, the statement continues.

Meta Horizon OS Will Run On Headsets From Asus & Lenovo

Meta is rebranding its Quest software platform to Meta Horizon OS and opening it up to third-party headset makers, including Asus and Lenovo.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

The news comes just under 20 months after Meta officially announced that third-party headsets running Quest's operating system, which it branded Horizon OS, were in the works.

At the time, Meta said Asus was working on a "performance gaming headset" under its ROG brand, while Lenovo was working on "a line of headsets" for "productivity, learning, and entertainment".

We heard nothing official about the Asus ROG headset after this point, though a rumor back in January suggested that it would have face and eye tracking and use either QD-LCD panels with local dimming or micro-OLED displays.

Meanwhile, around a year ago at Lenovo Tech World 2024, the company confirmed that it was still working on its Horizon OS headset.

Meta Confirms “Shifting Some” Funding “From Metaverse Toward AI Glasses”

Meta has officially confirmed “shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables”, following reports of an up to 30% budget cut for parts of Reality Labs.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

The decision to "pause" the program for third-party Horizon OS headsets may have come alongside the wider cuts to the VR and Horizon Worlds teams at Meta, widely reported by outlets like Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Insider earlier this month.

Shortly after those reports, Meta issued an official statement confirming "shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables".

Today's news doesn't mean the end of Horizon OS headsets, though, just that they won't be coming from third parties – at least not any time soon.

Meta's statement mentions building "world-class first-party hardware" for VR, and leaked memos from earlier this month reveal that the company is actively working on at least two Horizon OS products.

Meta Delays Ultralight Headset, Starts Work On Gaming-Focused Quest 4

Meta is delaying its ultralight headset with a tethered puck to the first half of 2027, and, separately, starting work on a gaming-focused Quest 4, leaked memos reveal.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

According to those internal memos, Meta plans to launch its rumored ultralight "mixed reality glasses" headset with a tethered compute puck in the first half of 2027, and recently started work on a gaming-focused Quest 4 set to be a "large upgrade" over Quest 3, though at a higher price.

Given this timeline, Quest 3 owners hoping for a direct upgrade within the Horizon OS ecosystem could be waiting another two or three years, meaning Quest 3 would end up being Meta's all-in-one flagship for four or five years without a direct successor. And when that successor does arrive, it's set to have a notably higher price.

Google's Android XR Takes The Stage

The news of the "pause" of the third-party Meta Horizon OS hardware program comes just over a month after Lynx revealed that Google terminated its Android XR deal.

Lynx was one of the three additional companies, after Samsung, that Google said were working on an Android XR device when the operating system was announced late last year, the other two being Xreal and Sony.

First Clip Of Xreal’s Project Aura Android XR Device In Use Revealed

The first real clip of Xreal’s Project Aura has been revealed. With a 70° FoV and tethered puck, it’s set to be the second Android XR device when it arrives next year.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

When asked about the Lynx termination, Google told UploadVR that it's still working with Xreal and Sony, and last week it and Xreal confirmed that Project Aura is still on track to launch in 2026 as the second Android XR headset.

With Meta's Horizon OS now unavailable for third-party hardware, it seems we can expect any future entrants to the standalone headset market to use Google's Android XR instead – for the foreseeable future at least.

Quest's Hand Tracking 2.4 update significantly improves the Fast Motion Mode, better handling rapid movements like punching and swinging.

Since launching controller-free hand tracking as a software update for the original Oculus Quest experimentally in late 2019 and publicly in early 2020, Meta has continued to improve the feature, gradually bridging much of the tracking quality difference compared to controllers.

• Hand Tracking 2.0 in 2022 brought improvements to handling fast movements, occlusion, and touching your hands together.
• Hand Tracking 2.1 in early 2023 reduced tracking loss and the time to re-acquire hands after loss, as well as improving the accuracy of prediction for fast motion.
• Hand Tracking 2.2 in mid 2023 reduced the latency of hand tracking, with Meta claiming up to 40% reduction in typical usage and up to 75% during fast movement.
• Hand Tracking 2.3 last year brought enhanced stability, improved accuracy, and even lower latency.

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Normally, Quest's hand tracking samples the tracking cameras at 30Hz. Optionally, the developers of apps can enable Fast Motion Mode, which makes the cameras sample at 50Hz or 60Hz, depending on your country's mains electricity frequency, to sync up with artificial lighting.

The higher sampling rate of Fast Motion Mode improves the tracking of fast motions, with the tradeoff of introducing some jitter that can make hand tracking feel slightly less accurate. Fast Motion Mode also requires brighter room lighting on headsets older than Quest 3S, because the camera exposure is lower, bringing less light, so without IR illuminators this will cause the tracking to degrade more.

Fast Motion Mode also cannot be used alongside simultaneous hands and controllers mode, and can only be combined with inside-out body tracking in VR, not passthrough mixed reality. Further, on Quest Pro, Fast Motion Mode can't be used alongside eye tracking or face tracking.

Still, these tradeoffs aside, Fast Motion Mode is ideal for fast-paced immersive games, and that's what Hand Tracking 2.4 is focused on improving.

Quest 3S Has Better Low-Light Hand Tracking Than Quest 3

We confirmed: while Quest 3S has inferior lenses and display, it actually has better low-light head & hand tracking than Quest 3.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Meta says that Hand Tracking 2.4 arrived in Horizon OS v83, which started rolling out last month.

According to Meta, Hands 2.4 brings the following improvements to Fast Motion Mode:

• Faster Hand Acquisition: "Hands are detected faster when re-entering view. This reduces the 'hand loss' feeling during fast movements."
• Advanced Motion Upsampling: "Smooths out rapid gestures so motion appears continuous instead of choppy while minimizing motion artifacts."
• Optimized Fast Motion Filters: "Helps eliminate perceived latency between hand tracking and controller input during high-energy interactions."

Again though, keep in mind that Fast Motion Mode is a feature developers need to enable for their apps, so you'll only see this in games that chose to use it.

You should be able to test it out in Meta's free demo app from 2023 called Move Fast, which is designed to showcase how hand tracking can be used for immersive fitness games.

Maestro adds two notable songs from Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean films, joined by other epic sailing songs in the latest DLC.

At the heart of the All Aboard! update are two iconic tracks from Pirates of the Caribbean, including Hans Zimmer and Klaus Badelt's instantly recognizable theme, “He's a Pirate,” and Zimmer's “Jack Sparrow.” These rousing pieces are joined by a selection of sea-inspired music, including the shanty “Wellerman,” Rimsky-Korsakov's “The Shipwreck,” and Ralph Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony (Overture).

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As with earlier Maestro add-ons, such as the Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and Fantasia themed updates previously covered here, the new DLC brings more than just music. All Aboard! adds a new environment to perform in (which includes a kraken and ghost ship) plus new buccaneer-themed costumes for the orchestra. Players can get into the swashbuckling spirit, too, with new accessories and cosmetic items, including a Kraken's Foot baton and The Cap'n gloves.

Our 2024 review of Maestro praised the game's bold use of hand tracking on Quest, and called the experience a “breath of fresh air” compared to other VR rhythm games. That's since arrived across almost every major VR platform, and it's one of the few games that currently supports PlayStation VR2 hand-tracking.

Maestro and the new All Aboard! add-on are available now in the Meta Horizon Store and Steam, while the Pico and PS VR2 release will follow “in the coming days.”

Maestro Review: Hitting A High Note With Hand Tracking On Quest

Maestro ambitiously redefines VR rhythm gaming, focused on real-world orchestra management techniques using Quest’s hand tracking.

UploadVRDon Hopper

Dawn of Jets gets multiplayer support for the VR aerial combat game, and it's now left early access on Quest.

We initially covered eV Interactive's Dawn of Jets following its early access launch. Featuring ten different aircraft with the promise of more to come, this gives you a fully interactive cockpit with the stick, throttle, weapons systems, and more as you go dogfighting across the skies. Now, it's received online multiplayer alongside its full release.

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Detailed further in a recent update post, Dawn of Jets' new multiplayer mode supports up to seven other friends in free-flight, deathmatch, and team-based matches. eV Interactive states more modes and missions are coming “in the future,” though a specific release window wasn't mentioned for these.

Multiplayer joins three previously available gameplay modes in Dawn of Jets. These include a Career mode with dozens of missions, alongside different Challenges where you compete for the top of the leaderboards across combat, race, and aviation scenarios. Finally, Flight mode lets you explore this world at a more leisurely pace.

Dawn of Jets is available now on the Meta Quest platform.

visionOS 26.2 brings official support for using Apple Vision Pro in cars and buses via improved tracking in Travel Mode.

Apple Vision Pro was the first headset to deliver a Travel Mode, meaning a toggle that makes its positional tracking system work while in a moving vehicle, when it launched in early 2024.

Since then, over the years, Meta, Pico, Snap, and Google have followed with their own implementations of Travel Mode for their headsets.

At launch, Apple's Travel Mode was specifically designed for airplanes. With visionOS 2 last year, it was updated to officially support trains. And now with visionOS 26.2, released last week, Apple Vision Pro officially supports cars and buses too.

"Travel Mode lets passengers use Apple Vision Pro on cars and busses in addition to airplanes and train", Apple's release notes read.

visionOS 26 Out Now: PS VR2 Controllers, Photorealistic Personas, Spatial Scenes & More

visionOS 26 is out now, bringing PS VR2 controllers support, far more realistic Personas, spatial Widgets, volumetric Spatial Scenes, local SharePlay, and much more.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

I say "officially" because the feature did already work in these scenarios. When picking up Apple Vision Pro in New York at launch, I used its Travel Mode in the back of an Uber. It worked, with some minor jitter.

I'll be sure to try Apple Vision Pro's Travel Mode again next time I'm in a long distance Uber, Waymo, or bus, as I'm curious to see how much improvement the official support brings.

The update arrived on the same week that Google announced and started rolling out a Travel Mode for Android XR on Galaxy XR, which officially only supports planes.

Samsung Galaxy XR Gets Realistic Face-Tracked ‘Likeness’ Avatars

Samsung Galaxy XR’s Android XR now has a Persona-like realistic avatar system for video calls, called Likeness, as well as a Travel Mode and a built-in remote desktop app.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Designed in collaboration with the Susanto brothers, the ambidextrous Susanto-X features Pulsar's XS-1 sensor, optical main button switches, and wireless polling rates of up to 8000 Hz, all within a solid shell for a total weight of 50 g. Configuration is possible either through software or a web driver.

GORN 2 received a new “dungeon brawler” mode in its winter-themed update on Quest, PC VR, and PlayStation VR2.

Now live on all platforms, GORN 2 is the comically over-the-top arena brawler where you battle the five sons of the God of the Afterlife after reaching your untimely demise. While the main campaign puts you into a series of arena fights as you defeat muscular gladiators, publisher Devolver Digital announced it's now received a dungeon crawler mode.

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Appropriately known as the 'Dungeon Brawler' update, this also comes with various winter-themed additions like icy floors, new dungeon hazards, and the ability to freeze enemies. New weapons include hockey sticks, icicle swords, ice arrows, pitchforks and more, while developer Cortopia also introduced a jump button to leap over enemies.

New story content is also promised and this dungeon crawler mode features 25 unique rooms, with the studio confirming player and weapon modifiers can be found as you progress. Additional missions are also available for unlocking the dungeon crawler weapons.

This joins a growing list of seasonally themed updates that GORN 2 has received. October's 'Fight of the Living Dead' update celebrated Halloween by letting you fight the undead, also adding a crossbow, scythe, and a Resurrection Spire. That was followed last month by 'Shanksgiving' with its timed-exclusive 'Turkey Hunt' game mode.

GORN 2 is available now on Quest, Steam, and PlayStation VR2.

GORN 2 Review: Familiar Action With Welcome Evolutions

GORN 2 offers a familiar but welcome sequel to the brutal VR arena fighter, and it’s out today on Quest and PC VR.

UploadVRHenry Stockdale

DrakkenRidge gets a free expansion on Quest 3 and 3S, adding a new island, new enemies, and more.

Launched in September, DrakkenRidge is a retro-themed VR fantasy adventure that we favorably compared to old-school RuneScape in our impressions. As a Novice of the Mage Order, you're tasked with policing magic use across this land while exploring dungeons and solving puzzles. Now, it's received the Maruk's Hammer expansion as a free update.

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While the main game sees you exploring five unique islands across the DrakkenRidge archipelago, Maruk's Hammer introduces a distant Dwarven Island that's home to a mythical Forge. With the island under siege from mysterious invaders and an ancient threat, you must fend off this threat to help the Dwarves defend their home and save the Forge.

This occurs over a multistep main quest, with four new side quests also available. You can find two new weapons, such as the talking 'Void Whisper' sword that's possessed by an ancient evil. New elemental arrows can also be crafted, while new enemies in this expansion include a new Dragon, a Frost Howl, Battlemages, and Corrupted Paladins.

It's the biggest update DrakkenRidge has received since its September launch, and Garage Collective previously released four separate updates. Patch 1.3 added a new distance grab ability and the option to summon weapons by grabbing from over your shoulder, while last month's Inventory Update delivered a new inventory layout and auto-sorting ability.

DrakkenRidge and the Maruk's Hammer update are out now on Quest 3/3S.

Pocket Lands delivers a promising new sandbox for building digital worlds, and it's out now in Early Access on Quest. Read on for our full impressions.

Creative minds always find a way to express their individuality, no matter the means at their disposal. Pen, paintbrush, digital tools. Video games such as Minecraft exploded in popularity through the freedom of shaping its voxel art world, to the point where people created futuristic spaceships, sprawling cities, and medieval towns by hand. If you build it, they will come, so the old quote goes. Pocket Lands aims to deliver a world-building sandbox to allow those with inspiration a new avenue to convey their imagination. It shows signs of a promising future, even if what's here in early access leaves me wanting.

A full-scale playground to design complex architectural ideas is not a new concept, as previously seen in cyubeVR and RealmCraft among others, yet Pocket Lands stands out for several small but defining features. The first is its flexible way to engage with your blank canvas, as the diorama is viewable from three different perspectives: a resizable island in mixed reality, as that same snippet of the world but with your surroundings covered, or a sprawling fully immersive mode where everything is rendered in the voxel world, even the day-night cycle. Snappy hand tracking or a controller quickly lets you see how expansive your imaginative kingdom is becoming.

Second is the fact that you can drop into your own world at any moment, going from a God-mode perspective to walking around next to your creations. This feeling, especially once laser-focused on more elaborate constructions, is a brilliant addition that inspires awe. That's helped by the ability to jump and, most importantly, fly around the map to look at the environment from another area. This entices you to perhaps add a new tower to your castle, mast to your airship, or neighboring skyscraper to your skyline.

Finally, no creative sandbox is complete without accessible building tools. From a quick 17-slide tutorial where Pocket Lands succinctly explains how it all works, the onboarding to pick up and play is as easy as it gets. Making the motion of grabbing a rectangle from two opposite sides lets you spawn a figure as long, wide, or short as you wish. A handy menu with over 25 full and half block types awaits to accommodate every type of building. Concrete, sand, wood, and lampshades are but a few foundations to build unique creations on. The calming music, ranging from medieval Oblivion-esque melodies to soothing piano sounds, instills a relaxing vibe in the creation process.

However, hand tracking feels a little hit or miss right now. There is a nifty feature that by tapping your thumb to your hand, you can “scroll” through the map as you would a smartphone, turning it yellow to signify selection. You can close your fist to move around the map, pinch to move the edges of the mixed reality diorama, or grab blocks and add new ones. But Pocket Lands doesn't always register when I stop making a fist gesture, only to end up on an entirely different side of the map. Or worse, the diorama itself ends up in another area of the room.

While Mountainborn Studios is aware of these false positives, the only current solution is to be gentle with the movements so that they can be properly registered to avoid such nuisances. A bit of comic relief against these issues is the addition of arm-swinging locomotion, which doesn't add much, but it's undoubtedly fun to make that primal motion while exploring. For the avoidance of doubt, artificial stick-based locomotion is also available.

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I wish that I could do more in Pocket Lands right now. Yes, it's a wonderful Early Access release with all the aforementioned details. But I'd love to see more items, block types, and creatures added. Thankfully, the latter is in development, along with new biomes and multiplayer. It's a great playground for creative minds, one that hopes to fill a void after Microsoft abandoned VR support for Minecraft. Here’s hoping that this sturdy foundation builds a lasting legacy.

Pocket Lands is out now in Early Access for the Meta Quest platform.

The XMG Focus 17 M25 offers plenty of value in the mid-range class. The color-accurate display, capable cooling, and high overall system performance make it a great choice for those who want a big-screen laptop without paying the premium for the RTX 5080/5090. The solid, professional looking chassis and good input devices make this laptop a very strong offer in its class.

The Meta Horizon Store's 2025 Holiday Sale discounts blockbuster Quest games for the next three weeks.

You can currently get the Quest versions of titles like Alien: Rogue Incursion, both Arizona Sunshine games, Asgard's Wrath 2, Skydance's Behemoth, Metro Awakening, Reach, and Resident Evil 4, for between 20% and 65% off.

You'll also find discounts on a range of indie titles, such as Arken Age, Bonelab, Dungeons of Eternity, Eleven Table Tennis, Figmin XR, GOLF+, Into Black, Myst, Pistol Whip, Titan Isles, Walkabout Mini Golf, and VRider SBK.

The sale ends at 11:59pm PT on January 4, just under three weeks from now, giving plenty of time for people receiving a Quest headset as a gift this Christmas to get some of the top titles at a discounted price.

Best Buy’s $250 Quest 3S Deal With $110 Of Perks Is Back

Quest 3S is on sale for $250 again, and from Best Buy it comes with $110 of perks again too.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Here's a list of just some of the games you can grab on sale:

• Asgard's Wrath 2: $39 (35% off regular $60 price)
• Wanderer: The Fragments of Fate: $34 (32% off regular $50 price)
• Alien: Rogue Incursion: $14 (65% off regular $40 price)
• Reach: $32 (20% off regular $40 price)
• Human Anatomy VR: $30 (25% off regular $40 price)
• Into the Radius 2: $28 (30% off regular $40 price)
• Skydance's BEHEMOTH: $20 (50% off regular $40 price)
• Arizona Sunshine 2: $18 (55% off regular $40 price)
• Metro Awakening: $20 (50% off regular $40 price)
• BONELAB: $32 (20% off regular $40 price)
• Demeo: $23 (43% off regular $40 price)
• ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos: $16 (60% off regular $40 price)
• Resident Evil 4: $24 (40% off regular $40 price)
• RUINSMAGUS: $20 (43% off regular $35 price)
• Riven: $21 (40% off regular $35 price)
• Myst: $21 (40% off regular $35 price)
• Arken Age: $20 (33% off regular $30 price)
• Shapelab Lite: $18 (40% off regular $30 price)
• Eleven Pickleball: $18 (40% off regular $30 price)
• Ghost Town: $18 (40% off regular $30 price)
• MEMOREUM: $20 (33% off regular $30 price)
• Of Lies and Rain: $27 (10% off regular $30 price)
• MADiSON: $12 (60% off regular $30 price)
• Titan Isles: $20 (33% off regular $30 price)
• MotoX: $7 (13% off regular $8 price)
• GOLF+: $20 (33% off regular $30 price)
• Walkabout Mini Golf: $15 (40% off regular $25 price)
• No More Rainbows: $8 (60% off regular $20 price)
• Dungeons of Eternity: $15 (50% off regular $30 price)
• Waltz of the Wizard: $10 (50% off regular $20 price)
• Plastic Battlegrounds: $8 (20% off regular $10 price)
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners: $15 (50% off regular $30 price)
• Pistol Whip: $15 (50% off regular $30 price)
• SUPERHOT VR: $15 (40% off regular $25 price)
• Moss: $11 (45% off regular $20 price)
• Into the Radius: $18 (40% off regular $30 price)
• GORN: $8 (60% off regular $20 price)
• Hard Bullet: $16 (20% off regular $20 price)
• I Expect You To Die: $14 (44% off regular $25 price)
• I Am Monkey: $12 (20% off regular $15 price)
• Eleven Table Tennis: $18 (40% off regular $30 price)
• The Room VR: A Dark Matter: $8 (68% off regular $25 price)
• War of Wizards: $16 (20% off regular $20 price)

Sale Bundles

Separately, Meta is also offering 15 sale bundles, letting you get multiple games and/or DLC together for a lower price than buying them individually:

• Merry Mayhem: HARD BULLET + BONELAB
• Critter-mas: I Am Cat + I Am Monkey
• Boxing Day: Boxing Underdog + Creed: Rise to Glory – Championship Edition
• Operation: Mischief: Contractors Showdown: ExfilZone + Breachers
• Adventures with Friends: Walkabout Mini Golf
• Un-silent Night: SUPERHOT VR + Pistol Whip
• Sleigh Time: Dungeons of Eternity + GORN 2
• Tales of Yore: Metro Awakening + Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR
• Holiday Survival Bundle: Arizona Sunshine Remake + Into the Radius
• Deck Those Halls: LES MILLS BODYCOMBAT: Fitness Workouts + PowerBeatsVR
• The Walking Dead Series: The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners + The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution
• Thrill of the Fight: Complete Bundle: The Thrill of the Fight + The Thrill of the Fight 2
• Ghosts of Tabor Holiday Play Together Pack: Ghosts of Tabor + Team Tactics
• Fruit Ninja VR: Winter Bundle: Fruit Ninja VR + Fruit Ninja VR 2
• Jingle Bell Bundle: Nightclub Simulator VR + Nightclub Simulator’s multiplayer mode

If you already own one of the games in a bundle, the price is lowered to reflect that.

Puzzling Places adds Journey Mode, remastered puzzles, improved hand tracking and more in a free update.

The Realities.io developed VR jigsaw game, known for turning real-world locations into tactile 3D puzzles, is rolling out a large update for the holiday season. Its headline feature is Journey Mode, a new way to play designed to offer a calmer, low-effort experience.

Rather than the game's normal loop, where the player gets all the pieces of a disassembled puzzle at once, Journey Mode begins with a single central piece and offers only a small set of pieces to add at a time. Players then attach pieces to grow the center, allowing the scene to gradually assemble in an almost guided progression.

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Today's update also overhauls hand tracking, which Realities.io says has been optimized for sharper responsiveness and more intuitive reactions. Updated tutorials have been added, as well as “natural gestures” like poking puzzle pieces to inspect them, dragging them to switch tabs, and a “throw-back” motion to return pieces to their staging area.

Quality of life updates are also promised. These include the addition of a new in-game menu, an updated start screen with quick-start options, personalized stats, and tailored puzzle pack recommendations. Puzzling Places' library features more legible thumbnails for easier browsing, and puzzle and pack ratings are now visible directly from the storefront.

Lastly, the base game's lineup of puzzles has been refreshed, swapping out older puzzles for community favorites. Four puzzles have been remastered with new animations and effects as well.

Puzzling Places' Holiday Update is available now as a free download on Quest, PS VR2, and Pico. The game is also available on Apple Vision Pro, and coming to Steam at a later date.

On Dec. 21, 2025, Ebenezer Scrooge will be haunted for the last time by disembodied spirits wearing Quest 2 or newer headsets.

Thereafter, the first fully embodied telling of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens in consumer VR will play on loop around the holiday each year, replaying the spatially captured performance by Agile Lens.

"One of our white whales we finally achieved this holiday was a method for perfectly recording EVERYTHING that happens during a live show," wrote architect and producer Alex Coulombe over direct message. "Mocap, show cues, audio, even everything the audience does. And we can play it back completely on demand."

Since 2021, Agile Lens has put together the experimental VR telling of A Christmas Carol using the latest cutting edge capture and streaming technologies, including Unreal's MetaHuman avatars. The production, along with other Agile Lens projects like a gigantic holodeck selling real estate in Texas, led the group to develop a tool called "Stage Presence" for the creation of future theatre-based productions in VR.

"We have no plans to shut down the app at this time— after the all-day VR replays on Christmas Eve, likely we’ll leave it as a bit of a museum where you can visit Charles Dickens’s study and see our old “Next Show in…” counter," Coulombe wrote. "Who knows? Maybe someday we’ll find a good reason to bring it out of retirement."

Tickets are free in Quest 2 or newer VR headsets to the final live showings held from Friday to Sunday. The performance stars Ari Tarr as Dickens and Scrooge with Debbie Deer as the ghosts, both of them wearing Quest Pro headsets for face and body capture. You’ll become a ghost yourself during the tellings this weekend, and visible to Scrooge as a disembodied spirit helping him come to terms with his behavior.

"I'm really proud of it. I'm going to miss it a lot. It's been such a joy and such a useful resource to come back to," said Kevin Laibson, who worked as a producer on the production. "You really can't mess up a Christmas Carol – everyone knows it and loves it."

"Likely next year we’ll pick a few dates to trigger some shared VR replays," Coulombe wrote. "The 'live' audience will be there as ghosts of the “present” right alongside the audience ghosts of the “past”— it will all get very meta."

We're extremely curious to see what Agile Lens and their creators do next with theatre in VR and with their Stage Presence tool. There have been some impressive theatrical experiences like The Under Presents and The Tempest and much more made in VR by others, but nothing that's been able to keep a troupe of actors employed continuously.

"VR live theatre is wonderful in terms of accessibility, but it’s still far from the ideal of actual breathing people in the same venue gasping and laughing together," Coulombe wrote. "And so we’d love the chance to combine our mixed reality theatre toolset with our virtual reality theatre toolset for a production that caters to an on-site audience while also inviting participants from around the world to join in. That’s the goal of Stage Presence— a modular toolkit to service a wide range of live XR productions."

Stealth shooter Espire: MR Missions gets a standalone release in early access, and existing Espire 2 owners get it for free.

Revealed last month, Espire: MR Missions expands upon the mixed reality mode previously seen in Espire 2: Stealth Operatives. This comes with 29 different missions that dynamically adapt to your home, taking out guards and navigating traps between 21 small-scale single-room missions and eight large-scale multi-room missions. That's out now for the wider Quest platform.

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Detailing its reasons for making this a standalone launch, developer Digital Lode advised that it's “proven very difficult to maintain the MR mode within the larger Espire 2 VR game” as mixed reality technology evolves. The developer also believes that roomscale mixed reality offers a different appeal compared to Espire 2's fully immersive VR missions.

As such, Espire 2: Stealth Operatives will return to being 100% focused on VR and its existing MR support will eventually be removed. Because of this, anyone who bought Espire 2 on Quest before today's launch will receive MR Missions for free, while all future Espire 2 owners will get a discounted rate.

As for its latest additions, the early access release of MR Missions comes with five new missions and a new target shooting game mode. Digital Lode advised that its core 'Espire Spatial Adaptation System' for adapting levels to your space has seen “tonnes of improvements,” while some mechanics have been simplified. There's also a new user interface that's been designed for mixed reality.

Espire: MR Missions is out now in early access on Quest for $8.99. A full release date is unconfirmed, though the studio advised that it's preparing a roadmap of “new missions, modes, features, and content.”

Zero Caliber is now available on PlayStation VR2.

Originally released in early access in 2018, Zero Caliber by XREAL Games is one of VR's older FPS hits that have since appeared on most major VR platforms. This comes with a campaign that supports single player and up to four-player co-op, PvP game modes, and a Zombies mode. Having originally targeted a December 12 launch, it's now arrived on PlayStation VR2 following a brief delay.

We've yet to go hands-on with this new edition, so we're unsure whether this features any PlayStation VR2-specific enhancements at launch. In a social media reply, the studio confirmed that adaptive triggers support would arrive “either in a day-1 or week-1 patch.” We've contacted the studio asking for further details, and we'll update this article if we learn more.

It's the first time we've seen the Zero Caliber series reach PlayStation, and you may recall a port was planned for the original PlayStation VR. The studio later confirmed this was based on the Quest edition, Reloaded, citing “hardware limitations” as to why it couldn't port the PC VR version. This ultimately never materialized, and today's release is based on the PC VR edition.

As for what's next, XREAL Games previously advised it's planning to bring the sequel, Zero Caliber 2, to Sony's headset following October's PC VR remastered launch. However, a specific release window is currently unknown. Elsewhere, the studio released a new Zero Caliber 2 quality of life update on Quest with new weapons, and a Steam update for Remastered is also arriving soon.

Zero Caliber is out now on PlayStation VR2 and PC VR, while Zero Caliber: Reloaded is on Quest and Pico.

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Spatial Ops expands the mixed reality FPS's map creation tools in today's free update on Quest, also adding custom rulesets and a new co-op survival mode.

In the 'Blueprint Combat Update', developer Resolution Games has introduced the ability to edit Spatial Ops maps in real time before beginning a multiplayer match, where everyone can see the changes immediately. This also adds 'Undo' and 'Redo' tools, hazardous damage zones that slowly drain health, floating barriers, and the option to place text in levels to better guide players.

As for other changes, Spatial Ops now features an online map library, the ability to save a host's map, and new map templates. Custom rulesets can now be saved to individual maps, letting you tweak elements like bot difficulty, friendly fire toggles, weapon tuning, armor visibility settings, and more.

It's also getting a co-op survival mode for taking on challenges together with other players. Supporting this is a new 'Enemy Spawner' object to determine where foes appear, alongside a Flashbang weapon. Finally, there's also a new paid DLC called the “Corrupted Technology Theme,” offering unique props for your toolkit.

It's the latest post-launch update since Spatial Ops entered full release last year, and this August saw Resolution Games release the 'Pulse Protocol' update. That introduced bHaptics support for the TactSuit, TactSleeve, and TactVisor, in-game achievement tracking, campaign rebalancing, an extra large map template, and new features for the Quest-exclusive Arena Mode.

Spatial Ops is available now on the Meta Quest platform. While it didn't receive today's update, a 'Campaign Edition' is also on Pico.

Game Night's new minigame blends Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots boxing with Sumo, and it's out now for the co-located mixed reality party title.

Released last year in early access, Game Night by New Zealand studio Fantail Games is a family-friendly roomscale title that's playable solo or with up to four players locally. Joining this minigame collection as a free update, Final Throwdown only uses hand tracking as you directly control the fists of your robot avatar to punch opponents out of your shared arena.

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Designed around “short, high-intensity rounds,” Final Throwdown sees you knocking other players out of the ring to score points. Throwing them into hoops earns bonus points, while bosses force you to decide whether to cooperate with your opponents or use the disruption to your advantage. Arena height adapts to the shortest player, which allows for seated play. Fantail also states arm reach is normalized to give adults and children equal advantage.

Final Throwdown marks the seventh minigame so far in Game Night, and the fourth it's received since last year's early access launch. Other featured games include Fishing Frenzy where you scoop up and deliver fish, a match-3 spatial puzzler where you connect matching plushies in a conga line, penguin ice hockey, a Whack-A-Mole game to test reactions, and more.

Game Night is out now in early access on the Meta Quest platform.

Co-op platformer VR Giants is now available on Quest 3 and 3S, and you can invite a friend to join you at no extra charge.

Originally released in 2023 on Steam, VR Giants by Risa Interactive is an asymmetric platformer where one player controls a giant called Goliath and another controls a human companion called David. Goliath will guide David through various obstacles by lifting him or acting as a shield, solving puzzles and avoiding hazards as a team to get through.

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Promising a campaign length of 8 hours, VR Giants features cross-platform multiplayer across Quest and Steam. A 'Free Friend's Pass' system (also on PC) lets you invite someone else to join in as David without both of you buying the game, and that uses a room code system.

It features 23 levels across four biomes: Ice, Desert, Volcano, and Pasture. Each area features new hazards, and Goliath can transform into three different forms to help advance. For example, 'Fire Goliath' gives you a lava form, while 'Temporary Goliath' only appears when the button is held. Unlockable Goliath cosmetics are also included.

Both players use VR headsets with the Quest 3 and 3S edition, which differs from the Steam release since that has one flatscreen player using a gamepad for David. Risa Interactive confirmed the Steam version has also been updated to allow online co-op, which was previously limited to local multiplayer only.

Two additional camera modes can also be chosen for David on Quest 3 and 3S, one of which aims for “maximum immersion in VR.” The other more closely matches the flatscreen setup on Steam by offering a 'Cinema Mode' instead, letting you view his role across a virtual 2D screen.

VR Giants is out now in early access on both PC VR and Quest 3/3S.

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