Meta is prioritizing shipping an ultralight Horizon OS headset with a tethered compute puck in 2026, multiple sources tell UploadVR.

The two previously leading candidates for a Quest 4 series, codenamed Pismo Low and Pismo High, have been canceled, these sources suggest, while the next candidate for a traditional form factor Quest most likely wouldn't ship until 2027.

Simultaneously, the company is accelerating its plans for an extremely light open-periphery headset with a tethered compute puck running the same Horizon OS as today's Quest headsets, codenamed Puffin, hoping to launch by the end of 2026. Meta is exploring multiple display system approaches for Puffin, at differing price points, and hasn't yet settled on which it will ship.

VR enthusiasts Luna and Brad Lynch have also publicly posted about Meta's changing headset release plans.

The Reality of Hope is a new short film about Hiyu and Photographotter’s journey. The documentary explores the dynamics between them as well as the challenges of traveling halfway around the world to make the surgery happen. Through each obstacle presented, the two friends are buoyed by the VR community and each other. Joining their journey is director Joe Hunting and producer MaxFilms. Hunting previously captured VR stories of friendship with We Met In Virtual Reality in 2022. His experience filming people connecting online and offline resulted in another effort that's been selected by Sundance for the year. Hiyu and Photographotter cross the boundaries of reality within the documentary to show their true selves throughout. Hunting considers this to be pivotal in the work, and it is a line he didn’t cross in We Met In Virtual Reality, which aired on HBO Max.

MIXED is discontinuing its reporting. Going forward, MIXED editors Josef and Tomislav will report for Heise Online.

For ten years, MIXED has closely followed daily developments in the VR and AR industry. As the largest German-language source on the topic, MIXED has published over 17,000 articles during this time. Its English counterpart, launched at the end of 2021, has grown to over 5,000 articles.

The conditions faced by small, independent publishers like MIXED have become increasingly challenging. Over the last two years, Google has made significant changes to its search engine, which has made it very difficult for smaller publications like MIXED to maintain visibility and cover their costs. Competition for readers' attention has also intensified, and this will only increase with the impending AI-driven transformation of the internet. Meanwhile, we feel that public interest in VR and AR has not grown strongly enough to counteract this downward trend.

Against this backdrop, it is with a heavy heart that we have decided to cease operations on June 1, 2025.

This video shows the setup, review, and gameplay of the fully tracked UDCAP VR Gloves by Udexreal, which allow you to play all PCVR games and use any headset without traditional controllers.

Eight years after Nibre’s MotherVR mod put basic VR support in Alien: Isolation, a different modder is attempting to complete the job with a full overhaul. Read on for our first impressions of the GRAND-MotherVR Mod.

When shown at E3 in 2014, Creative Assembly's Alien Isolation had a VR mode that could be accessed with early Rift developer kits, much to the delight and horror of enthusiasts. This was exciting because it came at a time when consumer facing virtual reality headsets were not yet available and VR gaming was still a niche contained within a small community of hardcore enthusiasts and software developers.

Now in 2025, the GRAND- MotherVR mod by JayP has been publicly released on the Flat2VR discord server. This mod isn't just an update to the initial foundation laid out by Nibre’s classic, it's more like the complete overhaul many of us had dreamed of seeing all those years ago. JayP's mod has introduced improved motion controller support with 6DOF tracking, along with various other quality-of-life improvements and even a nice graphics update.

GRAND-MotherVR transforms Alien: Isolation into an even more nail biting experience than ever before, capturing the claustrophobic tension of Sevastopol station and adding newfound fidelity.

Brand ambassador and referral programs are everywhere, aiming to drive engagement and sales through influencers and loyal fans alike. But last week, Pimax crossed a line, the company publicly admitted. It was discovered the PC VR headset company was secretly aiming to launch a program that offered rewards for verifiably positive forum posts—an ostensible attempt at astroturfing that quickly unraveled.

It all started with Reddit user ‘Mavgaming1’ last week, who leaked a private conversation initiated by Pimax through its official Discord. The proposition was clear: Pimax was looking for users willing to take part in a new Community Engagement Program, which would allow them to collect points to unlock tiered rewards by posting about the company on social media.

The program, which Pimax confirmed with Road to VR to indeed be genuine before being discontinued following the leak, featured everything from $5 Steam gift cards to hundreds of dollars in discounts off future purchases of Pimax hardware. The top reward tier even offered a $1,000 subsidized trip to the company’s Shanghai headquarters.

The only thing selected participants needed to do was type up a verifiably positive post for Reddit “or any other forums you visit,” submit it to Pimax for approval, post it online, and rack up the points. Below is an excerpt from the posting guidelines given to Mavgaming1 via Discord.

Pimax is a sleazy company.

From tomorrow, PlayStation VR2 will be on sale for $350 for two weeks as part of Sony's Days of Play 2025 sale.

That's a $50 saving from the headset's regular price of $400, which it was cut to in March from its $550 launch price.

The discount will be available on PlayStation Direct, as well as "participating retailers". It will apply to both the regular package and the bundle that includes Horizon Call of the Mountain, which are for some reason the same price, so you should always grab the latter if it's available.

Sony is also offering $50 off the PlayStation 5 Pro console, which upgrades the graphics of around a dozen PS VR2 titles.

Into The Darkness VR offers two distinct ways to play. Story mode puts you through a six-level campaign, blending narrative with action-packed set pieces. If you’re more about experimenting, the sandbox mode drops you into a sprawling environment packed with rooms and props, where you can summon enemies, weapons, and items at will — perfect for testing the game’s physics to your heart’s content.

The team at 9 Lives has locked in May 29, 2025, as the Early Access launch date for PC VR headsets, with pricing set at just under $20.

Play For Dream MR, the high-end Android standalone headset, now has Guy Godin's app Virtual Desktop on its store.

Originally founded in China as YVR in 2020, the headset company renamed itself to Play For Dream and reincorporated in Singapore alongside launching its third headset, called Play For Dream MR, which it started shipping this year.

Play For Dream MR is a high-end standalone headset running the company's own fork of Android, with the kind of specs you might have expected from a Meta Quest Pro 2. Priced at $2000, it features Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset, 4K micro-OLED displays, eye tracking with automatic IPD adjustment, and comes with tracked controllers. It has a 1-hour battery, built into the back of the strap, and thus Play For Dream recommends pairing it with an external battery pack.

The Xreal One and Xreal One Pro glasses connect to a smartphone, game console, PC, or Mac via a USB-C cable. They project content onto a virtual 1080p display that floats in front of you. The Xreal One has a 50-degree field of view, while the Xreal One Pro has a 57-degree field of view. This is equivalent to viewing a 70- or 85-inch TV from two meters away.

The Xreal Eye accessory is designed to change this and add spatial 6DoF tracking to the display glasses, Xreal announced at a launch event in Japan.

The accessory weighs just 1.5 grams and is inserted between the lenses. In addition to 6DoF tracking, Xreal Eye can be used to take photos and videos with up to 12 megapixels. A review will have to show how good these images and the 6DoF tracking are.

Developed by Luminary Creations, Wiped Clean is a crime scene cleaning simulator that asks you to uncover mysteries, one pool of blood or dead body at a time. The twist here is that you aren't just regular cleaners and are instead undercover agents, attempting to infiltrate a sketchy organization called the Syndicate as you investigate a dangerous conspiracy.

Wiped Clean VR will debut on June 1 for Steam, and it's out now on Quest.

Here are the best fixes so far to get this headset to work well.

Udexreal is a Chinese company that proposes a tracking glove called UDCAP. The peculiarity of this glove is that it is (according to the company) the most lightweight VR glove on the market. It weighs only 45g.

Udexreal can make a glove that is so thin and lightweight because it has implemented a sensor to track the fingers which has only 0.1mm of thickness. On the website, they mention the creation of a special “polymer material” that allows them to create “elastic sensors”. I guess we are talking about sensors that can detect how much they are bent, from which it can be extrapolated what is the bending angle of each finger. Regarding the number of sensors installed on the gloves, there is some confusion: during the event, I’ve been told there are 13 sensors for every finger, while on the website, they report having 12 sensors for the whole hand. I’ve written an email asking for clarification and will update the article as soon as I have an answer.

The gloves have both a consumer and an enterprise version. The consumer version is meant to be used especially in social VR applications like VRChat, to have all your fingers tracked reliably, so that you are social interactions are more natural. There is also an enterprise version that is dedicated to training and other B2B use cases. The company also advertises the use of the gloves for robotics applications. At the booth, they did not want to talk to me much about the B2B destination, though, because the focus was on the consumer side.

On the index finger, it is possible to install an add-on that transforms your glove into a fully fledged VR controller: the add-on has a little thumbstick and two tiny buttons (basically A/B buttons), so that you can have the full set of input of an Oculus Touch controller, but with all your fingers tracked.

The Udexreal UDCAP VRGlove is already available on the website of the company, which ships worldwide. The PR mentioned that the price should be $699, but there are some generous discounts available. For this reason, the shop page already reports $599, but she mentioned that if the gloves are bought through some partners (maybe influencers who are sharing discount codes), the final price can become as low as $530-$560.

Play For Dream MR, the high-end Android standalone headset, is getting Guy Godin's app Virtual Desktop next week.

Originally founded in China as YVR in 2020, the headset company renamed itself to Play For Dream and reincorporated in Singapore alongside launching its third headset, called Play For Dream MR, which it started shipping this year.

Play For Dream MR is a high-end standalone headset running the company's own fork of Android, with the kind of specs you might have expected from a Meta Quest Pro 2. Priced at $2000, it features Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset, 4K micro-OLED displays, eye tracking with automatic IPD adjustment, and comes with tracked controllers. It has a 1-hour battery, built into the back of the strap, and thus Play For Dream recommends pairing it with an external battery pack.

Bootstrap Island is a survival game inspired by Robinson Crusoe. It was developed from the ground up for PC VR.

You are the sole survivor of a 17th-century shipwreck. In order to survive on the mysterious tropical island, you must adapt to your surroundings, fend off wild animals, explore the island, and develop your skills.

Bootstrap Island entered Early Access in early 2024. Since then, three major updates have been released, introducing an inventory and system for building shelters and managing scarce resources, a boss fight against the Jungle Overlord, and a dynamic weather system.

Now, indie studio Maru VR has unveiled the official roadmap for Bootstrap Island (see trailer below). It lays out the studio’s vision for the game from its initial state to the planned end of Early Access in the first quarter of 2026.

At SID Display Week 2025, Samsung is showcasing two new micro-OLED panels that can deliver brighter 4K per-eye headsets with richer colors and no motion blur.

Micro-OLED displays are fabricated directly onto silicon wafers, a distinctly different manufacturing process to regular OLED, and offer much higher pixel density than any other production-ready display technology. Micro-OLED displays thus enable high resolution headsets with relatively slim designs - and of course OLED's signature infinite contrast with rich colors and true blacks.

Currently 2.5K micro-OLED displays from Chinese supplier SeeYA Technology are used in the Bigscreen Beyond series, while 4K micro-OLED displays from Sony are used in Apple Vision Pro, and BOE's 4K micro-OLED displays are used in Play For Dream MR and Shiftall MeganeX superlight. More headsets using a new Sony 4K micro-OLED are set to launch later this year, from Samsung, Sony, and Pimax.

VRChat credits buy avatars made by a new group of creators skilled in the art of virtual reality fashion. The new system allows users to try on sellers' avatars in a private space before buying. "The Marketplace is an in-client store that allows users to buy and sell avatars," a VRChat representative explained over email. "Not only does this give creators another platform to monetize on VRChat, but it also makes finding an avatar far, far easier than before."

VRChat credits buy avatars made by a new group of creators skilled in the art of virtual reality fashion. The new system allows users to try on sellers' avatars in a private space before buying. "The Marketplace is an in-client store that allows users to buy and sell avatars," a VRChat representative explained over email. "Not only does this give creators another platform to monetize on VRChat, but it also makes finding an avatar far, far easier than before."

Assetto Corsa EVO launched earlier this year in early access, serving up a PC VR mode that wasn’t exactly a hit due to some pretty questionable overall optimization. Now, developer KUNOS Simulazioni have released the game’s 0.2 update, which also includes some much needed VR performance tweaks.

The 0.2 just dropped for Assetto Corsa EVO, which includes a heap of new content, including seven new cars: Maserati GT2, Lotus Exige V6 Cup, Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA, Alfa Romeo 75 Turbo Evoluzione, Porsche 911 Turbo 3.6, Mazda MX-5, and Honda NSX-R. There are also two new tracks: Circuit of the Americas (COTA) and Donington Park.

Overall, the game now boasts both single player ‘Open Mode’ as a way to access all game cars without limitations, and a single player ‘Career Mode’, offering game economy and progression mechanics.

There’s nothing quite like The Midnight Walk. The Swedish studio Moonhood has pulled off something rare in today’s gaming landscape: every object in the game was first hand-sculpted from clay, then scanned in 3D, and finally animated with a stop-motion effect. This gives the entire world a tactile, one-of-a-kind look where you can almost see every fingerprint and every tiny imperfection in the clay.

The catch? In VR, the game’s resolution is so low that most of these lovingly crafted details are lost in a haze.

The Midnight Walk is available for both PC and PlayStation 5, with VR modes on both platforms. I tested the console version with PSVR 2, the PC VR version using both PSVR 2 with the PC adapter, and Meta Quest 3 via Link cable. The low-res, dull look is present across the board, but it’s especially noticeable on the PS5 with PSVR 2.