Mint Virtual Reality

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has been pushed back by six weeks, so it will now release on April 28.

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Thankfully, a fast travel system exists in Forspoken, but not immediately. Here's how to unlock and use fast travel to cut down on your travel time in Athia.

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Meta-owned Ready At Dawn shocked fans of Echo VR with the announcement that the game will shut down.

The multiplayer game’s servers will be turned off this August, ending support after six years as Ready at Dawn moves onto its next project. The shutdown applies to both Echo Arena and Echo Combat.

Released as a standalone multiplayer game in 2017 built on top of some of the zero-g gameplay seen in Lone Echo, Echo VR became a standout title for Quest headsets with full release in 2020. Just a few years later, Ready At Dawn is closing down its servers on August 1, 2023 at 10am PT. Announced through Medium, the studio explains the team is shifting focus onto its next project, writing: “We can’t say anything about it yet, but we are all excited and need all hands on deck.”

You can read the statement below:

At Ready At Dawn, we pride ourselves on being open and communicative with our community. To that end, we have news to share… after many discussions internally and with our partners at Meta, we have made the difficult decision to shut down Echo VR. What does this mean for Echo VR? Well… we’re not shutting it down tomorrow. Echo VR will continue running until August 1, 2023–10:00 AM Pacific, at which point servers and services will be shut down preventing any further play. By no means was this decision made lightly. But it was made for many good reasons and chief among them is the studio coming together to focus on our next project. We can’t say anything about it yet, but we are all excited and need all hands on deck.

Good morning Echo Units. Here is the annual update for our amazing community. https://t.co/QY6xDYVJ6A

— Echo Games (@EchoGames) January 31, 2023

Ready at Dawn is making most of the free-to-play game’s past rewards available through a ‘Giveback Event’. While Season 7 rewards will arrive at a later date, all you need to do is play one match of Echo Combat or Arena to unlock the following.

• All Epic + Superb rarity chassis/booster/bracer sets from Echo Pass seasons 1–6
• All Chassis Variants
• All non-3D rewards from Echo Pass seasons 1–6
• All Echo Shop items, including Starter Bundle
• All previous event rewards
• Some previously unreleased rewards

However, the Giveback Event doesn’t cover VRML rewards or the LE2 Chassis, while Legendary sets from previous seasons will be placed on sale through the Echo Shop at a reduced price. Lastly, all premium add-ons, such as Echo Combat, the Starter Bundle, and Echo Points, have been removed from sale as of today.

Echo VR doesn’t have long left but if you’re curious to jump in, it remains free-to-play on the Meta Quest platform and Rift headsets until August 1, 2023. Meta acquired Ready At Dawn in 2020 and has already confirmed publicly that its follow up to the Quest 2 system is due out “later” in 2023.

You can find out more through Ready at Dawn’s full shutdown FAQ on the announcement post.

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Valiant Hearts: Coming Home is the kind of game Netflix should use to help define its gaming offerings.

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The recently released VR remake of Colossal Cave attempts to translate the original 1970s text adventure into a brand-new medium, while retaining the design of the original. Unfortunately, we can’t recommend the end result. Read on for our full Colossal Cave Quest 2 review.

The original Colossal Cave released in 1976 as one of the first all-text adventure games for computer systems. Almost 50 years later, adventure game legends Roberta and Ken Williams have brought the title to life on modern platforms. Reimagined in 3D for the first time, this new version of Colossal Cave is available on consoles, Quest 2 and Quest Pro, with a PSVR 2 release coming in March as well.

Ken and Roberta Williams have been very clear in communicating with the community that the new VR release of Colossal Cave has fundamentally not been changed in a design sense. This reimagining features the exact same puzzles, solutions, points system and content as the original. However, instead of interacting through text responses and imagining what’s being described to you over text, the game now features a whole 3D world to explore. In our hands-on preview last year, we said that experienced Colossal Cave players would probably feel like this new 3D version of the game is “a bit like watching a movie adaptation of a novel you’ve read to pieces.”

Control Conundrums

On a conceptual level, it’s remarkably cool to see such an iconic and landmark game be reimagined in 3D, both for flatscreen and VR platforms. The adaptation process would be tricky no matter what approach you take, and the effort to both preserve and update a piece of gaming history is commendable. The significance of such a release is certainly not lost.

However, Colossal Cave’s VR implementation completely misses the mark with several fundamental flaws that create an overwhelmingly tedious experience. Loading the game up for the first time, you’re presented with two movement options – ‘Comfort Locomotion’ and ‘Classic Locomotion’. Despite the names, neither of these options are industry-standard, comfortable nor intuitive to use.

Comfort Locomotion is the ‘preferred’ option that is ‘designed to reduce comfort sickness.’ With this option selected, you walk forward with the left Touch controller’s trigger and backwards with the grip button. You can change direction by physically moving the controller (like a rudder), or through thumbstick snap turning when stationary. It’s feels completely unintuitive to use.

Classic Locomotion is more akin to a traditional thumbstick-based movement system. You move forward and back with the left thumbstick, while snap turning is handled by the right thumbstick. In this mode, forward movement follows the direction of your head, but not continuously – it only moves forward in the direction your head was facing when you began pressing the thumbstick forward. Even if you look in a different direction while in motion, you’ll keep moving in the original direction. You can snap turn mid-movement or move diagonally with the thumbsticks, but the entire scheme ultimately still doesn’t feel quite right to use. It’s the closest option to what you’ll find elsewhere, but still different enough to be frustrating.

No matter which control scheme you go for, there’s no further options for vignetting, teleport movement or other comfort settings, besides an option to change movement speed. This means players who are susceptible to motion sickness and nausea will have to proceed with caution.

Let’s (Not) Get Physical

However, if you manage to get past the baffling movement options, the next misstep is the game’s interaction system. As you move through the depths of Colossal Cave, you’ll come across items and elements that you can interact with. However, instead of physically interacting with the world, Colossal Cave equips players with a raycasted cursor extending out from one controller.

You aim this cursor around like a laser pointer, using it to examine items or touch/take them. The former ‘examine’ function is an inclusion that harks directly from the original game, but nonetheless feels odd when used in VR. You’ll find yourself listening to the narrator describe your environment or an item to you, as if you’re not already looking at it with your own two eyes. However, the real problem is that instead of picking up items within arm’s reach, you’ll use your controller-aimed cursor to point at items, select them and press floating buttons to perform actions like pick up or use.  This means that when you’re in front of a closed door, for example, you click on the door with a cursor to open it, instead of pushing the door open with your virtual hands. Similarly, instead of picking up inventory items with your hands, you’ll use your cursor to select them and drag them into a floating ‘drop’ or ‘use’ button, pictured above.

It’s essentially similar to a point-and-click adventure game, except in VR. A recent post from Roberta and Ken Williams justified this decision as a way to ensure the game had a “cool retro feel” as opposed to something more modern. However, it severely impacts the game’s immersive potential – you may be walking through this new 3D world, but you’re also completely disconnected from it, interacting from a distance and without any feeling of physical participation.

Earlier this month, Roberta Williams told UploadVR that Meta originally opposed the point-and-click interaction system. “[Meta] wanted the real physicality. You’ve got your hands out there, you can grab and manipulate this stuff. I knew that that would be more difficult to pull off. I think they wanted the really physical stuff and it’s not a physical game.” While it’s true that the original Colossal Cave is not a physical game, taking those text-based actions – take, use, look – and giving players a way to perform them physically for the first time through VR is what would have made this release special. It’s the difference between just moving through an immersive environment and actually getting a feeling of true presence and participation, as if you’re really in the game world.

Using Touch controller cursors to click through menus and perform actions for you may be more true to the text inputs of the original game, but it feels completely out of place in a modern VR release. What’s worse is that the game also gives you the option to attempt an action that won’t do anything, only to inform you via the narrator. You’ll sometimes press ‘Use’ or attempt to grab an item with the cursor, only to hear the narrator proclaim “Nothing happens” or “You can’t do that.” It’s another hangover from the original text release – essential in that version, but unnecessary and immediately tedious in VR.

Going beyond those core problems, there are other minor issues that make the game feel unpolished and rough around the edges as well. I frequently got stuck on geometry when moving, hit frustrating invisible walls in the environment or found myself repositioned around the wrong way when entering a new area.

The user interface is visually uninteresting and some elements, such as the score display on the Touch controller rings, look half-hearted, verging on amateurish. It doesn’t help that Colossal Cave opts to use the default white Touch controller skins. A little effort to create personlized or themed controller skins for the game – as you see in most other VR releases – would have gone a long way for polish and cohesiveness.

Colossal Cave Review – Final Verdict

Between all of the game’s fundamental and minor issues, it was hard to play – let alone enjoy – the actual core Colossal Cave experience that this release has reimagined. I soon gave up trying, and opened up the original text-based version instead.

Aiming for a “cool retro feel” with Colossal Cave’s reimagining is a sweet sentiment that honors the original game’s place in history. However, the result also makes some poor assumptions about what VR affords the player. It takes a game from an age in which it was tedious to play games – the rewards of trial and error spread across hours – and carries it over, with few changes, to a medium where tedium is poison.

The audience that will find something valuable with this VR reimagining is incredibly small, mostly split between players with experience of the original or those curious about video game history. Even for them, the VR design choices will be jarring and hamper the core Colossal Cave experience, rather than enabling it. That audience, however, does not include those looking for a satisfying adventure in VR and that’s why you should probably steer clear of Colossal Cave until further notice… At least in VR, anyway.

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UploadVR focuses on a label system for reviews, rather than a numeric score. Our reviews fall into one of four categories: Essential, Recommended, Avoid and reviews that we leave unlabeled. You can read more about our review guidelines here. 

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A new report from Bloomberg suggested Sony is “disappointed” with early pre-orders for its upcoming PSVR 2 headset, leading the company to reduce shipments ahead of launch.

Bloomberg’s report suggests Sony reduced projections “dramatically” for its initial PSVR 2 launch after disappointing pre-order numbers. Another report today from Gamesindustry.biz, however, seemed to refute Bloomberg. Notably, even now if you place an order for PlayStation VR2 it is scheduled to arrive during the February 22 launch week. The listed date suggests Sony had the infrastructure in place to take enough pre-orders that it would begin showing later timing for shipments if demand was high enough.

Bloomberg’s sources claim that Sony previously aimed to have 2 million headsets ready for launch, but halved its shipment forecast down to a million units for the quarter. We reached out to Sony for comment and will update this post if we hear back. Sony also reportedly told a supply partner to expect reduced display panel orders in light of the lower-than-expected demand. Between April 2023 and March 2024, Sony now plans to ship around 1.5 million PSVR 2 units, according to Bloomberg.

There are a variety of factors that could be influencing PSVR 2’s initial sales. One is timing – before we had an official release date, it seemed like PSVR 2 might launch at the end of 2022 to compete with Quest 2 during the holiday season. However, reports of delays came through mid-last year, and Sony later confirmed a release window of early 2023.

Another factor could be pricing. Sony’s PSVR 2 headset is $550 and also requires a PS5, sold separately starting at $400. Other VR headsets, such as Quest 2 and Pico 4, provide all-in-one standalone VR starting at $400 and $500 respectively – cheaper than the PSVR 2 headset alone.

PSVR 2 launches on February 22 with an impressive lineup of launch titles. We’ll have hands-on reports of the lineup and hardware as soon as we can, and we’ll be curious to see whether anything changes relative to the headset’s demand after release.

Editor’s note: Article was briefly published and then immediately updated with additional context. 

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From creative action games like Hi-Fi Rush to JRPGs like One Piece Odyssey, don't miss these great January games.

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PlayStation VR2 or PSVR 2 is officially confirmed and it’s not long before you can finally get your hands on it.

We originally published this overview of PS5-powered VR all the way back at the beginning of 2020 and have been updating it periodically, most recently in July 2022 and now again just a few weeks before its release on February 22, 2023.

Following the PS5 launch in November 2020, Sony confirmed its future plans for VR in February 2021. At the time, very little was known but by CES 2022, Sony gave us our first look at PlayStation VR2 (PSVR 2) alongside an announcement trailer for Horizon Call of the Mountain. A gradual trickle of new information followed and since then, we’ve now got the full rundown on specifications, pricing, the controllers and more, alongside a large list of confirmed PSVR 2 games.

There’s a lot of information to get through, so we’ve rounded up these details and other bits of info to help fill in the picture. PSVR 2 is shaping up to be a key aspect of Sony’s plans for 2023 and beyond, so here’s everything we know about PlayStation VR2.

PSVR 2: Everything We Know About PS5 VR

PSVR 2 Design Revealed

After a year on from its initial announcement, we finally know what PSVR 2 actually looks like. The headset boasts a sleek white look with a white shell similar to the PS5 console’s faceplates (and not too far off from a Meta Quest 2). Take a look below.

Not bad, right? We’re keeping the halo strap design from the original and you can see four front-facing cameras on the visor for inside-out tracking. The motion controllers also now have the same white shell (you can see the initial designs in black below). But let’s get into what all of this actually means.

PSVR 2 Release Date

PSVR 2 will release on February 22, 2023. Confirmed through a PlayStation Blog post last November, there had previously been considerable speculation about whether it’d launch in 2022 or 2023.

In a separate PlayStation Blog post in February 2021, CEO Jim Ryan confirmed a new headset is in the works. Then, at CES in January 2022, Ryan confirmed the device would be called PlayStation VR2 (it had previously been referred to as ‘the next-generation of VR on PS5’). During a recent developer conference, the company reportedly codenamed the headset NGVR, or ‘Next-Generation VR’.

There was some uncertainty about if PSVR 2 could ever happen. In the weeks leading up to launch of the PS5, Sony delivered some mixed messages about the future of VR. In an interview with The Washington Post in October 2020, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan said the future of the platform was “more than a few minutes away”, and the recent closure of Sony’s VR-dedicated studio in the UK didn’t inspire much confidence. Now, we can rest easy that those fears were unfounded: PSVR 2 (or PS5 VR) is nearly here.

PSVR 2 Specs: Near-4K Resolution, Wider Field Of View And A PSVR vs Quest 2 Comparison

Official PSVR 2 specs have now been announced and confirm UploadVR’s report of the first reveal details in May 2021.

The headset features a massive jump in display resolution over the original with 2000×2040 per eye and retains an OLED display with HDR support. It’s also got a 110 degree field of view and new features like eye-tracking and in-headset vibration. Below is the spec sheet stacked up next to the original PSVR’s specs and a comparison to Meta’s Quest 2, too. You can also read a much larger comparison between Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro right here.

Specs	PSVR 2	PSVR	Quest 2
Display Per Eye	2000×2040	960×1080	1832×1920
Display Type	OLED	OLED	LCD
HDR?	Yes	No	No
Refresh Rate	90Hz/120Hz	90Hz/120Hz	72Hz/90Hz/120Hz (limited to only some apps)
Field of View	110°, direction undisclosed	Estimated around 95 degrees horizontal, 111 degrees vertical	Up to around 96 degrees
Lens Separation	Adjustable and fit can be guided by eye tracking	Yes	3-point adjustable
Eye Tracking?	Yes	No	No
Hand Tracking?	No	No	Yes
Headset Vibration	Yes	No	No
Microphone?	Yes	Yes	Yes
Audio	Headphone jack	Headphone jack	Built-in speakers, headphone jack
Controllers	Bundled Sense controllers with buttons, sticks, capacitive touch sensors, high fidelity haptic feedback, trigger resistance	Support for DualShock 4, PS3-era PlayStation Move controllers and rifle-shaped Aim controller	Bundled Oculus Touch controllers with buttons, sticks and capacitive touch sensors

PSVR 2 Will Run On PS5 Via A Single Wire

This one’s a bit of a no-brainer but, just in case you didn’t know; PSVR 2 will run on PS5. Sony’s latest console saw a global release in November 2020 and, although supply has been an issue due to the semiconductor shortage, stock levels have since improved.

In February 2021’s blog post, Ryan confirmed that the new headset connects to the console via a single cord, meaning a much simpler setup than the mess of wires included in the original PSVR. There’s no confirmation of any possible wireless connectivity just yet, but we’ll come to that in a bit. Either way, the added processing power of the PS5 should go a long way to improving the PSVR experience. Again, more on that further down.

PSVR 2 Has Inside-Out Tracking – You Won’t Need A Camera

The original PSVR had a camera-based tracking system that required you to place a PlayStation-branded camera in front of your play area. It allowed for full positional tracking when facing the lens, but there was a lot of drift and motion controls would be lost if their lights were obscured from the camera, so no turning your back around. PSVR 2 won’t have this issue – cameras on the headset will track the controllers and thus give you a much easier setup and a much greater degree of freedom.

PSVR 2 Features Include Eye Tracking, Foveated Rendering And More

Beyond the PSVR 2 specs, the headset will have some big new features. The kit will be able to track the direction of your eyes, for example, to use a technique called foveated rendering. This is when an experience only fully renders the area of a screen you’re looking at; the rest isn’t fully rendered but this should be noticeable in your peripheral vision. This should help dramatically improve performance on PS5. It can also be used to mimic your eye’s gaze on a virtual avatar. It’ll also have a lens separation adjustment dial for people to find the clearest image possible with.

Eye Tracking Comes From Tobii

In 2022, Tobii confirmed it was in negotiations with Sony to be the eye tracking supplier for PSVR 2. In July, the company confirmed a deal had gone through and that the company’s eye tracking tech will be integrated into the headset. Currently you can find the company’s solution in other headsets like the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition and the Vive Pro Eye.

It’s Got Haptics… In The Headset

 

Another interesting feature is the haptic feedback within the headset itself. This apparently isn’t as advanced a sensation as the haptic feedback seen in the new DualSense controllers. We’ll need to test out the effect it has on immersion and comfort across a number of apps to really get a good sense of how important it is to VR gaming.

The First PSVR 2 Game Has Been Announced

Sony’s CES announcement wasn’t just for a name – we also saw the first-ever PSVR 2 game confirmed. That game is Horizon Call of the Wild, a spin-off to Sony’s popular open-world series set in a post-apocalyptic world with robot dinosaurs. It’s been developed by Firesprite, the studio behind The Persistence that Sony acquired in 2021, with help from Horizon developer Guerrilla Games. You can see the first trailer for the project above – you won’t be playing as series protagonist Aloy but you will meet her as you take on the role of an entirely new character. It should be out at launch on February 22, 2023.

…And Others Have Been Confirmed

We’re keeping a list of all confirmed and rumored PSVR 2 games and right now, over 30 titles have been confirmed for the launch window alone.

Alongside Horizon, that includes a Firewall Zero Hour sequel, Firewall Ultra, Gran Turismo 7, Beat Saber, Resident Evil Village, Among Us VR and plenty more. Rumor-wise, Half-Life: Alyx leads the charge, but no official confirmation yet.

PS5 Specs Show Promise For PSVR 2

The PS5 is an absolute powerhouse, capable of delivering native 4K games with stunning graphics. Meanwhile, the specs promise PC-like power in console VR. Here’s a chart outlining the specs for the console stacked up against the PS4 and enhanced PS4 Pro, whipped up by our own David Heaney.

Based on these specs, PS5 is comparable to Nvidia’s RTX 2070 Super in terms of GPU power, and six times more powerful than the standard PS4. That will enable a huge leap forward for console VR games; hopefully no more blurry PSVR ports at the very least. In fact we’ve already seen as much; while No Man’s Sky is getting a native PSVR 2 port, the PS4 version can tell it’s running on PS5 via backwards compatibility and delivers much clearer visuals than on PS4 (see below).

Plus the console boasts an on-board solid-state drive (SSD) that Sony says reduces load times to near-instant. Again, that could have a big impact on crafting believable virtual worlds.

PlayStation VR 2 Sense Controllers Are Inspired By DualSense

Another piece of official information Sony has revealed about PSVR 2 so far is for the controllers. Earlier in 2021, it revealed these orb-shaped devices, which look like a huge step up from the now decade-old PS Move controllers used with the first PSVR. Sony has since revealed these are officially called the PlayStation VR 2 Sense controllers.

Sony confirmed the Sense controllers will even implement features seen in the PS5 DualSense controller. This device iterates on the DualShock 4 with advanced haptic feedback technology and trigger resistance, two features that seem ideal for future VR support. If you haven’t, give Astro’s Playroom a try and marvel at the feel of Astro’s footsteps across different surfaces, or the push-back you can feel when controlling him in spring mode. They give you plenty of hints about what to expect from the VR controller.

Finally, no more Move controllers.

Wireless, Resolution And More: Sony Research Suggests Possibilities For The Future

Sony’s research into a successor headset for PSVR 2 dates back years. In mid-2019, Sony’s Vice President of R&D, Dominic Mallinson gave a talk outlining what to expect from the next generation of VR headsets.

He outlined devices that boast ‘roughly double’ the pixel count of then-current headsets (PSVR, Rift, Vive) and support for high dynamic range, which brings a wider array of colors to the screen. Plus Mallinson pointed toward a wider field of view to see more of the virtual world, and optional wireless support.

Granted, PSVR 2 connects to PS5 via a single cord, but that might not be the whole story. Mallinson’s quotes pointed toward the possibility of two models, or maybe that wire being an option. This was just a prototyping phase, of course, and there’s been no indication of a wireless model coming anytime soon.

There’s also been a steady stream of revealing patents for a potential PSVR 2 over the past few years. We’ve seen filings for new tracking tech, systems for local multiplayer VR and more.

While You Wait, PS5 Supports PSVR For Backwards Compatibility

Not only is PS5 backwards compatible, but the console also supports the original PSVR, too. That means you can play original PSVR games on the headset, but you’ll need a special adapter to attach the PS4 Camera to your PS5. You can’t use the new HD Camera for PS5 with the headset, but Sony is sending out the adapter for free and bundling it in with new units. You’ll need to use all of your existing controllers for PSVR on PS5, though gamepad-supported games that don’t use tracking like Resident Evil 7 can use the next DualSense controller.

We also know that PSVR developers can update their titles with PS5-specific features, perhaps improving the visuals and performance of existing games. Along with the No Man’s Sky visual upgrades, Blood & Truth has improvements as does Firewall: Zero Hour. Bear in mind that not every PSVR game is compatible with PS5. Sony says the ‘majority‘ of PS4 games will work on PS5, but we do know Robinson: The Journey from Crytek isn’t compatible with the new console.

…But PSVR Can’t Be Used With New PS5 Games

While backwards compatibility support for PSVR seems robust, one thing you can’t do is use the headset with new PS5 games. That means cross-generation games with PSVR support on PS4 like Hitman 3 and No Man’s Sky don’t support PSVR on PS5. You need to run the old versions via backwards compatibility for it to work.

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What’s your take on PSVR 2? Are you looking forward to the headset? Let us know in the comments below!

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If you're looking to add some additional pairs of underoos to Spongebob's health pool, you won't want to miss the game's couple of hidden health upgrades

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SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake isn't as polished or ambitious as a Nintendo platformer, but it doesn't need to be.

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HBO's The Last of Us sets a new gold standard for video game adaptations, but some of the game's power is still lost in translation.

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Barbaria is coming to Quest 2 and Quest Pro on February 9, bringing an exciting mix of first-person combat, asynchronous multiplayer raids and diorama-like base building.

The game previously released in Early Access via Steam for PC VR and its upcoming Quest release will coincide with the Steam version exiting early access and entering full release. Developed by Stalwart Games, Barbaria promises to give players a little bit of everything:

Use fists, axes, swords, bows, rocks, or anything you can grab to dominate your foes in intense 1st-person combat. Then jump out to your immortal form and watch your minions carry on the battle while you rain down meteors from above. Systemic combat, versatile enemy AI, and player-created defenses make every battle unique.

But remember, you aren’t the only Semigod in Barbaria! Attack other players’ realms to increase your Mightiness, and receive rewards when you successfully repel others. Watch replays in miniature from your Stronghold, then strategically place and upgrade more structures, champions, and minions to keep future attackers at bay.

You can check out those mechanics in action in the trailer embedded on the Quest Store listing. Anyone else getting Gorn vibes, or just me?

February is set to be a stacked month for VR players, with Barbaria, Drop Dead: The Cabin and Windlands 2 all arriving within a couple of weeks. After that, it’s PSVR 2 time – the console launches on February 22, alongside an absolutely stacked set of launch titles.

Keep an eye out for more Barbaria news and our full review as we get closer to release on February 9.

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In this week’s episode of the Between Realities VR Podcast, Alex and Skeeva host Jeff Rayner, CEO of MXTreality.

Jeff explains how he started his VR development studio which specializes in using high-end equipment and accessories like Teslasuit. Other topics include the importance of body presence in VR experiences, how VR can be used to make real contributions to Mars exploration, and the current state of brain computer interfaces.

— Between Realities Links —
Merch Store: https://teespring.com/stores/between-…
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/BetweenRealities
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/BetweenRealities
Twitter – https://twitter.com/BtweenRealities
Discord – https://discord.gg/EvNnj2w
Facebook – https://fb.me/BetweenRealities
Alex VR – https://www.youtube.com/Alex_VR
Alex VR’s Twitter – https://www.twitter.com/Alex__VR
Skeeva – https://www.youtube.com/Skeeva007
Skeeva’s Twitter – https://www.twitter.com/Skeeva

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The Oculus Quest offers a fantastic virtual reality experience without the need for a gaming PC. These are the best Oculus Quest games available right now.

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With its large screen, the iPad Pro is great for gaming. We've rounded up some of the best iPad Pro games around, from strategy games to shooters.

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2022 was a strangely slow year for VR.

It started out promising, with potential for several new hardware releases and games to match. But by the end of the year, pandemic and supply chain delays meant that many of those new products got pushed into 2023. Until Pico 4 arrived in October, Quest 2 remained the sole market leader with little to no competition.

Last year, we named What the Bat?, from independent studio Triband, as our 2022 VR Game of the Year. While the game is spectacular and completely, 100% deserving of the title, it also released in a year with a distinct lack of ‘AAA’ (or as close as VR can get to AAA) titles, which gave it more room than normal to shine. In any other year, there’s every chance that its competition may have included some massive big hitters from studios owned by Meta or Sony.

This speaks to an ongoing wider problem with the content library on Quest 2. After almost three years since its release, there’s been a significant lack of major, headline-grabbing first-party releases from Meta.

This isn’t to say Quest 2’s library isn’t engaging or well-stocked – if you look at our list of 25 Best Quest 2 Games, you’ll see it’s hardly lacking quality titles – but there’s been a complete lack of blockbuster, tentpole releases from any of the studios Meta has acquired over the last decade. No doubt the pandemic put strain on those studios and forced unwanted delays, but even so, Quest 3 is reportedly just around the corner. If Quest 3 releases later this year as suspected, how will we remember the library of content on Quest 2 across the headset’s lifecycle?

Missing In Action

In March 2021, Mike Doran, then Director of Production at Oculus Studios, indicated that “the average development cycle for Oculus Studios VR titles is getting longer,” but that players would “start to see bigger, more complex games as a result.” When talking about Oculus Studios’ long-term projects a few months later in September, Doran said he “couldn’t say for sure when announcements will happen,” but confirmed that in-development projects were “all targeting Quest 2.”

Doran also said that players would see new Studios content within the next two years, not just the next three to seven. That was in March 2021. In just a couple of months, we’ll have reached that two-year mark – so, what does Meta have to show for it?

Announced soon after Doran’s comments above, 2021’s Resident Evil 4 VR has arguably been the most high-profile release on Quest 2 so far. Since then, Meta hasn’t released anything remotely close in scale or caliber to Resident Evil 4 VR. The big holiday release for Quest in 2022 was Iron Man VR – a port of a previously-exclusive PSVR game from two years earlier.

Despite this, we know Meta owns several prominent VR game studios working on those long-term projects that Doran spoke about. Meta purchased developer Sanzaru Games in February 2020, yet there’s been no news on the studio’s next project after its 2019 PC VR hit Asgard’s Wrath.

Likewise, Meta acquired Lone Echo developer Ready At Dawn in June 2020. The studio announced an end to support for Lone Echo II and Echo Combat on PC VR mid-last year, stating that it was in the early stages of work on “new, exciting projects.” Given that timeline, it seems unlikely we’ll see a big release from Ready at Dawn within the next year or so.

While Meta-owned Beat Games has consistently provided Beat Saber players with updates, DLC packs and new content for Beat Saber, the studio also previously teased new cosmetic saber content and what looked like some form of progression system. Beat Games said that teaser was only “part of a much bigger project.” That was in October 2021 – there’s been no updates since.

In May 2021, a Facebook comment from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accidentally let slip that Onward 2 was in development at Downpour Interactive, a studio Meta acquired a month earlier. We’ve still yet to see any other official comment or confirmation on the sequel. Likewise, we know that the recently-acquired Camouflaj, developers of Iron Man VR, are working on a Batman VR game for Quest, but that’s yet to be officially announced. Who knows how far off that is.

Even moving past first-party projects from Meta-owned studios, there are several other projects that remain missing in action, such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. In 2021, Meta announced that a VR adaptation of the classic Rockstar title was in development for Quest 2, handled by Sydney-based studio Video Games Deluxe. Since then, there’s been zero updates on development progress and no indication of a release window for the title.

In September 2020, Meta (then Facebook) announced that Splinter Cell VR and Assassin’s Creed VR games were coming to Oculus (now Meta) devices. Almost three years on from that announcement, Ubisoft cancelled Splinter Cell VR last July and there’s been no official updates on Assassin’s Creed VR either. Though supposed leaks may have indicated the latter is still on the way, there’s really no telling and it’s possible that Assassin’s Creed VR, San Andreas or other first-party Meta projects have already been canceled. 

While not confirmed, The Verge also recently reported “hearing” that a VR version of Roblox is in the works for Quest, aiming for a late 2023 release.

Looking Forward

Between Meta’s first-party projects and partnerships with third parties, it all adds up to a fairly impressive line-up of blockbuster, high-interest releases for the Quest platform. The experience of those studios and the prestige of the associated intellectual properties could result in major releases on a scale that we haven’t really seen on Quest, with the potential to draw in whole new audiences and excite existing headset owners. However, the Quest 2’s lifecycle is quickly coming to an end. If it releases later this year, then Quest 3 will become the ‘current’ generation of Quest headset and the target platform for all those in-development projects could be up in the air soon after.

Following the Quest 2’s release in 2020, there was an intermediary period of about a year where all new content supported both the original Oculus Quest and the new Quest 2 headset. Resident Evil 4 VR became the first Quest 2 exclusive in late 2021, setting a precedent that would quickly become the norm just another year later. At the beginning of 2023, it’s rare to see a Quest release with support for the original Quest. Now the original Quest is heading toward the end of its life.

In October 2022, a Meta blog post stated it would be “a while” before the company could share what some of its studios are working on and Meta provided UploadVR with a comment at the time that encouraged us to “tune into the Gaming Showcase next year.”

With a Gaming Showcase confirmed for 2023, there’s still a chance that some of Meta’s in-development projects release this year for Quest 2. Across the next couple of years, we might even see a fair few releases with support for both Quest 2 and Quest 3. The Quest 2’s XR2 chip is also seeing use in other headsets such as the Pico 4 and Vive XR Elite, and that might help extend the Quest 2’s lifespan because developers could optimize games for one chip across multiple headsets. 

However, given the aforementioned comments from Doran and the other information we have on studio timelines, it’s uncertain exactly how many releases we can reasonably expect to drop over the next two or three years. Extending beyond that period, it’s entirely possible that studios start to drop Quest 2 support somewhere along the way.

It’s clear the cogs are turning on some hard hitters for the Quest content library, but then again, they have been for many years now. Game announcements amount to nothing until the projects are released to consumers. With few games to show from Meta during its lifecycle, Quest 2 is under threat of becoming a headset that sold millions of units but only received a handful of first-party titles, despite multiple big studio acquisitions and partnerships. 

Sony is bringing years of gaming experience to the table with PSVR 2, across the entire pipeline – from development to release scheduling to pre-release marketing. Even if the hour is growing late late to do too much more with the Quest 2’s content library, Meta needs to learn from its lost potential and apply those lessons going forward. If Quest 3 is to succeed, Meta needs to support the independent and smaller scale releases with market-leading and engaging first-party content, alongside other tentpole releases spawned from third-party partnerships. As more players enter the arena, Meta’s first-party content library needs to be absolutely outstanding – a standard they’ve yet to prove they can reach.

via Mint VR

These PSVR2 games are looking like winners for Sony's new headset.

via Mint VR

Meta is testing dramatic discounts for Quest Pro just three months after release.

Quest Pro debuted in late October 2022 for $1,500 with self-tracking controllers, partial light blockers and a charging pad included in the box. The headset is a first-generation device in a new high-end product line for Meta targeting mixed reality developers, early adopters, developers and businesses. Facing inbound competition from the likes of the Vive XR Elite priced at $1,100, some of those early adopters may be feeling the sting today at seeing Quest Pro matching that price in the United States. The $400 price drop is so significant that if early Quest Pro buyers had waited just three months they could have bought a Quest 2 and a Quest Pro together for the same amount of money.

Store listings in the United States for Quest Pro now show the limited time discount to $1,100. In the United Kingdom, the price is £1,300 with tax included. The high-end mixed reality headset features color passthrough and pancake optics for a slimmer visor. It also moves the battery into the cradle at the back of the head for a more balanced design. For buyers, Quest Pro runs all the same games compatible with Meta’s $400 market-leading Quest 2, while developers can test out new features like the embedded face and eye tracking sensors. We’ve had issues with the Quest Pro’s microphone and, to fully block light for immersive VR gaming just like Quest 2, Meta separately sells a “full light blocker” for $49.99.

The upcoming Vive XR Elite features a slim visor design as well as modularity that can accommodate swappable batteries. It doesn’t feature face and eye tracking sensors as part of the core package, and while that could come with future add-ons we haven’t seen any VR developers using those features in ways that hugely benefit users. The face and eye tracking sensors on Quest Pro are optional and off by default. Apple is reportedly readying a super high-end standalone mixed reality headset expected to release this year, and Meta faces resurgent competition in standalone VR from TikTok’s China-based parent Bytedance, with the Pico 4 line of standalones competing in some European markets.

Meta is expected to release the Quest 3 headset later this year to replace the aging Quest 2 in the same price range. The new entry level headset is likely to run on a much more powerful next-generation chip that could bring significant graphics upgrades over all current standalone designs. While Quest Pro runs on a modified XR2 processor with access to more power than the one inside Quest 2, the likelihood that an XR2 Gen 2 processor from Qualcomm could be such a major upgrade may end up shortening the shelf life of the Quest Pro.

via Mint VR

The PlayStation 4 is home to some of the best games, period. Here, we highlight the best games the platform has to offer, from shooter to RPG and puzzle.

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With dozens of options of classes to pick from, it can be hard to know which ones are best. Let's run through some of the best options for each type to go for.

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Game streaming is still in its infancy but is evolving quickly as technology progresses. This list features the best game-streaming services to try in 2023.

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Short battery life and a high price tag turn an otherwise great PS5 controller into a bit of a luxury.

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By using your hands for shadow puppetry, Silhouette is one of the more unique VR puzzle games in recent times, and that’s available now on Quest 2.

Developed by Team Panoptes, best known for PC VR game Panoptic, Silhouette presents a a casual adventure game exclusively controlled by hand-tracking. You aim to guide shadow creatures to safety, manipulating light, walls and environments with your hands. It contains 28 different puzzles split between four separate environments, and Team Panoptes previously told UploadVR it takes 3-4 hours to complete. You can watch the release trailer below:

We had favorable impressions in our Silhouette preview last year, praising the uniqueness of its hand tracking mechanics.

It’s a basic puzzle concept – variations of which we’ve seen before in other non-VR games – but it’s the combination with hand tracking that offers something new and immersive. Casting shadows lets you discover creative solutions to the puzzles, such as using your shadow to create bridges or block streams of water… It’s an approach that avoids the frequent disconnect found in many hand tracking experiences, where a virtual interaction with a virtual object draws attention to the absence of any physical object in your real hands.

Silhouette is available now on the Meta Quest platform for $9.99.

via Mint VR

The Nintendo Switch is home to a superb library of games, and more are on the way. In this list, we go through the most anticipated Nintendo Switch games.

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The Xbox Series X game library is set to grow a lot in 2023. Here's every game you have to look forward to in the next year, and beyond.

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There are plenty of upcoming PlayStation 5 games to look forward to, and here we highlight the system's most anticipated titles.

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We taught kids geography and tracked down a mochi thief in a hilarious two-hour demo of Like a Dragon: Ishin!

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tinyBuild Games confirms Not For Broadcast VR, a standalone adaptation of the darkly comedic propaganda sim, will arrive this March on Steam and Quest.

Released last year for PC, Not For Broadcast is an FMV adventure set in an alternate 1980s Great Britain, where an authoritarian political party has taken power. Playing as janitor turned broadcast editor Alex Winston, you’re tasked with ensuring live broadcasts go smoothly for National Nightly News. Between picking camera angles, censoring certain words and fixing malfunctioning hardware, tinyBuild warns “your choices will come back to haunt you.” You can watch the announcement trailer below:

Unfortunately, if you previously bought the original Not For Broadcast on Steam, this isn’t a free update to the existing flatscreen game. Instead, Not For Broadcast VR is a new Steam release requiring a separate purchase. Here’a the full description:

Not For Broadcast VR takes the gameplay, story, and gripping dark comedy of the original award-winning FMV adventure and brings you closer to the news than ever. Get a full view of the entire newsroom, interact with your equipment and punch, slap and grab anything that dares to get between you and the truth. Egotistical celebrities, dishonest politicians, and strange sponsors clash on the airwaves. You’re in the chair to ensure that the show goes on uninterrupted. Or at least, that’s what you’re getting paid for. There’s now nothing stopping you from spending all day hitting yourself on the head with VHS tapes, we suppose.

Not For Broadcast VR arrives on the Meta Quest platform and SteamVR on March 23.

via Mint VR

Orbital Strike VR takes a different approach to space combat. Controlling a fleet from outside the cockpit, it arrives on PC VR on January 31.

Previously seen in the Upload VR Showcase Summer 2022, Orbital Strike VR comes from a two-person duo at Draconis Interstellar, Bart Gunderman and Victor Libran. Designed for room-scale and seated VR, it avoids the more traditional space dogfighting seen in EVE: Valkyrie and Star Wars: Squadrons, though you’ll still direct your fleet’s ships into battle. Featuring a full campaign and online co-op, you can read the description below:

Orbital Strike VR is a tactical space combat sim with a unique twist that takes players out of the cockpit and into the element. Fleet pilots are fusions of skydiver and fighter ace, responsible for direct action and providing terminal guidance for capital ships in their fleet.

We recently spoke with Gunderman to learn more, who informed us that Orbital Strike VR is a game seven years in the making. “It all started in a parking lot in Atlanta, early 2016. Victor and I were working at a startup at the time,” he told us. It was around this time he ordered the original HTC Vive for prototyping and it wasn’t long before the pair entered VR development.

Early efforts culminated in Orbital Strike Arena six months later, which has since been delisted. Gunderman admits mistakes were made. “It was very much a hobbyist and first game dev title and we did everything wrong.” He hopes to make amends with former players. “For anyone that has Arena in their libraries, we’re attaching the new game to their library as a sort of thanks and apology! We kept up with updates for about a year and a half before we called it quits. No-one had logged into the servers for months. So… a lot of lessons learned.”

As for Orbital Strike VR, Gunderman calls its story a continuation of his 2013 mobile MMO twin-stick shooter, Embersol: Mercenaries. “I kept it up as a side project for another 4 years. It wasn’t huge, a few thousand players over that time, but it was a success for me as far as side projects go. Hopefully, some of the old players can jump back in and continue Starfall’s journey.”

Asking what inspired this unique gameplay, Gunderman explains the pair were “chasing the fun.” This began as a more traditional space sim, where you’d pilot a ship from the bridge that could blow up and if that happened, you’d head back to your base. Wanting to let players “jetpack their way back” with just your spacesuit and build a new ship, he confirms the traversal alone proved entertaining.

We both saw that just this experience could be a game by itself. We made it the core pillar: The thrill of flying in space, cooperatively. Everything else settled into place after that. If it didn’t help that core pillar, we cut it, and that definitely helped get us to finally finish the game.

With early access builds recently going out, we asked if the duo had taken onboard any feedback. Gunderman confirms locomotion options were a high priority, and the team’s currently working on in-ship/station smooth locomotion for release. “During development, we’re hyper focused on the game itself. Tactics, weapons, enemy balancing, missions, etc. For a lot of people, when they boot the game up for the first time, they head straight for the settings menu and if they don’t see their preferred locomotion option, you’ve lost them!”

Plus, some players across Oculus, Vive, Windows Mixed Reality, and Pico 4 headsets faced issues with controller bindings. “Within 48 hours after sending early access keys, we had completely revamped every control, added recenter options, and new controller graphics. A lot of focus on that initial player experience, before you even get thrown in your first capital ship fight.”

Orbital Strike VR is only confirmed for SteamVR for now, but the team’s looking into other platforms. “There’s a huge audience on the standalone platforms that we’d love to get the game out to.” Gunderman also expressed interest in PSVR 2 eye tracking and cross-play support. “The tech we would have to build for cross-play on PSVR 2 would significantly speed up the development for Quest, Pico, and other standalones.”

However, cross-play would be a technical challenge, as the game uses Steam Datagram Relay (SDR). “Orbital Strike was originally designed as a PVP game so a lot of the backend was built to be geared for that … As soon as we have the cross-play networking sorted, we should have some news about other platform releases.”

via Mint VR

Mighty Coconut’s ambitions are growing and the Atlantis course available now showcases the clearest view yet of the studio’s vision for Walkabout Mini Golf.

The studio is asking $1 more for Atlantis compared to its previous paid add-ons, $3.99 instead of $2.99, with the price increase reflecting the studio’s growth employing more specialized artists and engineers to deliver a sharper vision of VR mini golf. Atlantis launches alongside the 4.0 release of Walkabout with a roughly 33 percent resolution increase on standalone headsets like Quest 2, according to Mighty Coconut.

“Now we have a lot more really specialized people doing their absolute best work,” studio head Lucas Martell told us in a tour of the course embedded in the video below. “We’ve been able to pretty drastically increase the resolution that you’re seeing. And that just came with upgrading every single one of our systems, just optimizing everything even more and…it really is a lot crisper in headset.”

Lost Cities: Atlantis

The DLC course is the latest in Walkabout’s Lost Cities series, joining Shangri-La, Gardens of Babylon and El Dorado, with Atlantis’ bottom-of-the-ocean design adding hundreds of intricately animated sea animals swimming by. Some of the larger sea life is rideable too, accessible by pointing your club toward the sky and pushing up on its thumbstick to fly over to the whales, sharks, stingrays or sea turtles. You can also go into god mode and teleport onto them. While you won’t see a mermaid in Atlantis, Mighty Coconut decided they’re fans of mini golf and built a course in the ruins of the legendary city.

The physics in Atlantis operate the same as above ground courses, but colorful coral everywhere and tiny bubbles floating from each hole deliver a convincing ocean environment amid the ancient architectural rubble. While the developers explored bioluminescence for the harder night mode version of the course, Martell says they opted to go further and implement the long-requested look of black lights.

“It really is just as big of a wow moment…the difference between night and day,” Martell teased. “Hard mode is stunning, completely different.”

While Atlantis is technically not Walkabout’s first underwater course because 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea already introduced the idea last year, players were in submersibles there with a giant squid attacking. Martell said some players found their thalassophobia — fear of large bodies of water — triggered on that course. Atlantis, meanwhile, aims for a feel that’s “very cozy and it still feels grounded”.

Atlantis is available now on Steam and Quest stores for $3.99 as a paid add-on to Walkabout Mini Golf. Future DLC courses are expected to be priced $3.99 as well and Mighty Coconut is working on a slate that stretches into 2024 with both licensed and original content. We’ve been touring through Walkabout’s courses with its creators explaining the evolving design process. Check it out in the playlist embedded below.

“For each new DLC, Mighty Coconut pushes right to the edge of what is possible on standalone VR, while also introducing some graphical feature that no one has seen on our mini golf courses before. Atlantis happens to represent a huge push forward for us in a lot of directions, artistic and technical,” said course designer Henning Koczy in a prepared statement. “More detail, more colors, more polys, more sun-rays, more swaying plant-life, faux-caustics over every surface, more atmosphere and particulate. More animated characters in the form of large sealife and the big innovation: a performant system for schooling and rendering hundreds of fish. Literally everywhere you look, the course is teeming with life. There is no view you can take in that will be the same next time you look. All of this culminates in one big open, dynamic and immersive world where players can not only play minigolf, but spend hours happily exploring.”

 

via Mint VR