Beat Saber just released an upgraded version of its Imagine Dragons DLC Music Pack, featuring two new songs and redesigned maps for the existing tracks.
The Imagine Dragons DLC tracks for Beat Saber first released in 2019, featuring 10 songs available for purchase individually or as a bundle. Since then, the team at Beat Games released a bunch of other DLC tracks and made some significant updates to the game, including new note types and an upgraded lighting system.
Given those changes since the initial release, Beat Games released a ‘new and improved’ Imagine Dragons DLC pack earlier today. The maps for the existing 10 tracks have been redesigned, now featuring arc and chain note types, alongside upgraded environments that use the game’s new lighting system and color scheme. Meta says that players “will immediately notice that the 10 legacy tracks have improved mapping and flow.”
The upgraded pack also includes two new songs – Bones and Enemy, the latter of which is the theme song to Netflix’s show Arcane, set in the League of Legends universe.
The upgraded pack now features 12 tracks total and is available for the same $14.99 price as the original, with individual tracks available for $1.99.
Meta says that existing owners of the former 10-track DLC bundle will be able to purchase an ‘upgrade’ that includes the two new tracks for $2.50. It’s unclear whether existing individually-owned tracks or those who do not purchase the $2.50 ‘upgrade’ will automatically receive the updated versions of the tracks for free. UploadVR has reached out to Meta for clarification and will provide an update if we receive a response.
If you're on the hunt for the Demiguise Statues in Hogwarts Legacy, let this guide be your Revelio spell on their locations. There's 30 in total to track down.
Population: One developers BigBox VR announced that the game will be going free-to-play on Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro from March 9.
After launching in late 2020 for $29.99, Population: One will be free-to-play for everyone on the Quest platform from next week. Existing owners of the game (or those who buy and open a copy before March 9) will receive the ‘Original Banana Bundle’ as compensation, which includes the legendary PJ (Potassium) character, the Prestige Arsenal (four legendary characters and 14 rare guns), an exclusive spray, 1000 gold and more. You can check out the full details in the graphic below.
After March 9, new free-to-play players will be able to earn experience and unlock rewards up to level 10 on the progression track. Those who want to continue unlocking rewards will have to pay for ‘All Access’, which will cost 750 in-game gold (available for $14.99 in the Quest store at the time of writing).
Population: One is also available on Rift and Steam for PC VR, but will not be going to free-to-play on those platforms and will see a price reduction down to $19.99 instead. BigBox says that “similar to other games, the value price on those [PC VR] platforms will be used to prevent potential cheaters from making a new account on Steam/Rift easily.” However, those who purchase the game on PC VR will receive 1200 in-game gold, equivalent to $19.99 in value.
The move to free-to-play on March 9 also comes alongside a game update that includes sandbox changes, a new single-player mode with dynamic bots, map changes, balance changes and a graphics update featuring improved resolution and real-time shadows.
BigBox says that more modes, features and maps are planned for the rest of 2023.
An open-source project is bringing controller-free hand tracking to PC VR headsets.
The open-source Linux-based OpenXR platform Monado just added hand tracking. Hand tracking is a built-in feature on standalone headsets like Quest, Pico 4, and Vive XR Elite, but isn’t currently natively available on SteamVR except through 3rd party attachments such as Ultraleap.
The new feature fully supports Valve Index and has “degraded quality” support for Oculus Rift S and WMR headsets like HP Reverb G2 – though that should be fixed “soon”.
Collabora, the group developing Monado, claims the feature can track fast hand movements and is usable for drawing, typing, and UI interaction in specialized apps. It’s mainly intended to be used with your hands separated, with “limited” support for hand-over-hand interactions.
Monado also supports inside-out headset tracking on Linux, allowing Valve Index to be used without the need for base stations.
Of course, almost all PC VR owners use their headsets through Windows, not Linux. Collabora says a Windows SteamVR driver for its hand tracking tech should arrive “in the coming weeks”, alongside improvements to stability and jitter.
Whether the driver will become popular enough to encourage developers of games with support for hand tracking on standalone headsets to also support it on PC is a very different question, but for specialized applications this could still prove a very useful feature.
Two open-source demos show how WebXR could be used to make full-fledged games.
WebXR is an open standard API that enables webpages to display immersive content on headsets that tracked controllers can interact with. WebXR experiences are rendered with the WebGL API, which is based on OpenGL ES. You can access WebXR apps near-instantly via a browser like any other web app. No installation or updates are required, and the developer doesn’t need approval from a central app store authority.
Meta’s Project Flowerbed is a game where you use seeds to plant and grow flowers, trees, and other plants. It features a user interface, teleportation, an in-world camera, spatial audio, and appealing graphics with PBR materials, detailed geometry, and real-time lighting.
The source code for Project Flowerbed is accessible on GitHub, and Meta’s developer blog post explains the technology stack used. It uses the most popular WebGL library for rendering, three.js, with the third-party three-mesh-ui extension for the world-space user interface and three-mesh-bvh for raycasting and collisions. 3D assets are in Khronos’ glTF file format, while the howler.js library is used for spatial audio. Meta developed its own entity-component system (ECS) for logic, as well as other systems like a JSON to UI panel importer, all detailed in the blog post.
Creative agency Paradowski Creative also released the source code for their WebXR putting game this week, Above Par-adowski WebXR Mini-Golf. It also uses three.js, combined with the popular A-Frame entity component system and NVIDIA’s PhysX physics engine running in the browser via WebAssembly. While Project Flowerbed runs at 72Hz, WebXR Mini-Golf runs at 90Hz. Since it launched in November, Paradowski says WebXR Mini-Golf has been played by more than 70,000 VR users.
Paradowski Creative is working on a second WebXR experience called The Escape Artist, an escape room game with puzzle mechanics slated for release next month.
WebXR on Quest still lacks one key ingredient, however: convenient payments. The critical advantage of publishing a native application on App Lab is that implementing monetization is trivial, either by charging for the app or via managed in-app payments.
Meta recently added the ability for websites to add a button to let you remotely launch a URL on your Quest, including WebXR experiences, and Project Flowerbed leverages this. To try it on your headset, just go to the Project Flowerbed web page on the device you’re reading this article on and click ‘Send to Headset’ – no need to search for and find it in the Quest browser.
Above Par-adowski WebXR Mini-Golf doesn’t use this feature, but you can easily find it by Googling ‘WebXR minigolf’ in the Quest browser.
iFixit’s PSVR 2 teardown brings a controversial revelation about its display panels.
Shahram Mokhtari took apart the new headset to assess its repairability and inspect its components in a fascinating video we recommend you watch. Mokhtari then took a magnifying glass to the OLED panels, revealing the subpixel arrangement.
Each “pixel” in a display is actually made up of primary color subpixels. That’s usually red, green, and blue (RGB) and all modern LCD panels have the full three subpixels for each pixel. Most OLED panels, however, use a different subpixel arrangement called PenTile. PenTile has the full number of green subpixels, 1 for each pixel, but only half the number of red and blue subpixels.
The original PlayStation VR featured a full RGB subpixel arrangement and it was one of the only non-PenTile OLED panels ever shipped in a consumer product. While on paper PSVR 2 has four times as many pixels PSVR, the difference is not so extreme when subpixels are considered.
PlayStation VR
PlayStation VR2
Panel Type
OLED
HDR OLED
Pixels Per Eye
1 million
4 million
Subpixels Per Eye
3.1 million
8.1 million
Alongside the diffusion filter we predicted teardowns would find in our technical analysis, the PenTile subpixel arrangement likely contributes to the perceived “softness” of PSVR 2’s image compared to even lower resolution LCD headsets. The display driver chip uses a technique called subpixel rendering to translate regular RGB input into a PenTile output, but the result is a loss of visual detail compared to full RGB panels.
Image from MobCompany.info showing RGB and PenTile 1080p smartphone panels.
OLED panels provide vibrant colors and unrivaled contrast with true deep blacks, but those advantages come at a cost. Whether that cost is worth those benefits is a controversial question, one that each VR gamer will decide for themselves.
The Verge’s Alex Heath reports Meta canceled hardware codenamed Cardiff.
In his Command Line weekly newsletter, Heath writes he “heard of at least two early-stage hardware prototypes, one codenamed Cardiff and the other Hermosa, that have been canned recently.”
In May last year, The Information said it viewed an internal Meta roadmap showing the next two mainline headsets after Quest 2 and the first two high-end headsets (the first being the Quest Pro released in October). The two mainline headsets were said to be codenamed Stinson and Cardiff and set to release in 2023 and 2024 respectively.
Stinson is almost certainly Quest 3, as Meta has effectively confirmed it’s launching this year. So what exactly would Cardiff have been? There are a few possibilities to consider.
Quest 4?
Qualcomm seems set to update its XR2 chipset after three years, but the VR market would probably need to get much bigger to accelerate this cycle. Quest 3 is set to release three years after Quest 2 alongside the next generation XR2, but it’s possible Cardiff could have been a move to a yearly release cycle with relatively minor improvements.
This seems unlikely though, and such a move would discourage some people from buying because they’d worry their headset would be quickly outdated.
Quest Lite?
Cardiff could have been a lower cost option aimed at bringing VR to many more people than even Quest 2 and 3. But what exactly would Meta cut or reduce? A weaker processor would limit the applications it could run, while a lower resolution display wouldn’t save much on cost. Savings could be achieved by removing mixed reality sensors, but this wouldn’t match Meta’s long-term strategy and limit the userbase for mixed reality content.
Quest 3 Plus?
The price and feature gulf between the $400 Quest 2 and the $1500 Quest Pro is vast. Quest 3 is set to get color passthrough for mixed reality but leaked schematics suggest it won’t have eye or face tracking.
The most likely possibility is that Cardiff would have sat between Quest 3 and Quest Pro 2, offering features like eye tracking while priced lower than the next-generation high-end device.
As for Hermosa, there hasn’t been any reporting suggesting what it could have been, and we haven’t heard anything either.
If you know anything about Cardiff or Hermosa, please email tips@uploadvr.com or contact me on Twitter.
As shown in no particular order, these are our top five PSVR games that we’d love to see on PSVR 2.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
Resident Evil Village is one of PSVR 2’s major launch games, so we’re hopeful that Resident Evil 7 will eventually follow. While official VR support remains PSVR exclusive for RE7, Capcom remastered the flatscreen version of this acclaimed survival horror for PS5 last year, adding ray-tracing support, improved framerates, haptic feedback and resistance triggers. This remains one of VR’s scariest games, and we’d love to see it back with further enhancements.
Blood & Truth
PlayStation VR Worlds might have been little more than a PSVR demo disc, but the London Heist minigame remains a standout. Sony London expanded this into a full release with Blood & Truth, which sees you saving your family from a London crime boss. With its high production values and entertaining set pieces, London Studio’s hit FPS deserves a second chance.
Wipeout Omega Collection
As the remake of a remake, Wipeout Omega Collection can feel overfamiliar for long-term fans, but it’s one of the best entries in this beloved sci-fi racing series. Elevated further through its optional PSVR support, Wipeout’s campaigns for HD, Fury and 2048 are all playable alongside multiplayer, and you can access three VR-exclusive ships. Omega Collection is highly polished, thrilling, and easily worth a second look.
Astro Bot Rescue Mission
Astro’s Playroom is an enjoyable showcase for the DualSense controller’s abilities on PS5, and we would love to see Astro Bot Rescue Mission back on PSVR 2. Initially featured in Sony Japan’s The Playroom VR mini-game compilation, Rescue Mission took this petite and adorable robot on a 3D platforming adventure to save his friends. It’s an absolute joy that remains the no.1 pick in our best PSVR games list.
Star Wars: Squadrons
Star Wars is already on PSVR 2 in Tales From The Galaxy’s Edge – Enhanced Edition, but we’d never turn down more adventures in a galaxy far, far away. Alongside Vader Immortal, EA Motive’s Star Wars: Squadrons also released on PSVR and provided something completely different. Swapping lightsabers for X-Wings and TIE Fighters, this space dogfighter comes with a full campaign, online multiplayer, and optional VR support. Considering EA ported Jedi Fallen Order to PS5, we hope Squadrons will follow one day.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav casually let it slip that Mortal Kombat 12 could be releasing this year during an earnings call. Here's what we know.
The NES Classic and Nintendo Switch Online have given new life to some of our favorite 8-bit classics. Check out our picks for the best NES games of all time.
Gun Jam VR, the rhythm FPS from Jaw Drop Games and Raw Fury, is now available for Quest 2 and Quest Pro. This fast-paced wave shooter blends intense firefights with a unique beat-pattern shooting mechanic.
An omnipresent beat dominates the futuristic city of Mubel – forcing the inhabitants to dance to its hypnotic tune. It’s up to you to blast your way out of the controlling rhythm by obliterating your robotic opponents to the beat using a pair of dual-wielded weapons.
As with many wave shooters, the concept of Gun Jam VR is simple – enemies appear onscreen and it’s your job to shoot them before they shoot you. If you get hit too many times you die and have to repeat the stage. However, where you might find this game differs from your average wave shooting affair is in the execution.
One of the most distinctive aspects of Gun Jam VR is the beat-pattern shooting system that relies on timing your actions to a rhythm meter. The meter is synced to the beat of the in-stage music and indicates the best time to fire for maximum damage and points. You can think of the gameplay as a Guitar Hero meets Space Pirate Trainer crossover.
The color of your bullets will change depending on how well you shoot to the beat, with gold bullets indicating a perfectly timed shot. Enemies on the other hand have no such rhythm-based shooting requirements and will consistently rain fire down upon you throughout each stage. The sustained action keeps you moving in an effort to dodge the barrage of incoming flak and results in a decent workout.
However, I did feel like there was a mismatch between my beat-based blasting and the enemy’s actions. It was as if myself and the game were at odds with each other, and lacked the same sense of flow you might feel from similar rhythm-based games where on-screen targets are synced to the music.
As for the music itself – your preference for EDM and Metal tunes will go a long way to making or breaking the experience. I was personally somewhat agnostic about the choice of soundtrack, neither really loving nor hating what was on offer. I also found it could do with a wider track selection to prevent the same song from repeating too often across multiple stages. You can check out the trailer below for a sample of the music style.
The enemies themselves come in a few varieties – from the numerous but weak robot dogs to formidable tank-like mechs equipped with rapid-fire weapons and rockets. Each one has a distinctive style of attack that forces you to adapt to each situation and keeps you on your toes.
When it comes to weapons you get two gun types on each level and the ability to switch between them with the press of a button. Selecting the right gun for the right moment is crucial for success. For example, a cluster of flying drones can be quickly dispatched using an area-of-effect type weapon like the shotgun whilst a sniper lurking in the distance is best taken out using something more powerful and precise like the revolver.
Many of the weapons come with a welcome dose of auto-aim which is much needed as the frenzied action barely leaves much time to line up your shots. I found the auto-aim can take your shot in a direction you didn’t want it to go, while weapons like the shotgun still rely on your aiming skills.
There’s a good variety of level types from multi-story towers and nightclubs to moving platforms and a speeding train. Some of them include environmental hazards that can take out enemies in a number of satisfying ways. Hazards range from classic exploding barrels to events triggered by shooting a target – like a crate that drops down crushing enemies below, or a train that speeds past wiping out anyone in its way.
Gun Jam VR Review – Comfort
Gun Jam VR is a comfortable stationary experience but can get a bit more intense on some stages that involve moving platforms or vehicles. There is a vignetting option with adjustable strength to help improve comfort for the parts that include motion. It is best played standing due to the physical activity required to dodge enemy attacks and also contains flashing images throughout.
Yet the variety isn’t enough to completely stave off the repetitious gameplay. More than once I found myself slipping into a disengaged autopilot as I lazily blasted in the general direction of the enemies and let the auto-aim do the rest. This was partly due to the lack of challenge – I was able to complete the main arcade mode in just over 2 hours, clearing most stages on my first try.
After beating the final stage my journey came to an abrupt and disappointing end without so much as a congratulatory message before I was taken back to the main menu. There is also a free-play mode if you want to continue your journey and replay the completed stages with modifiers that make the game harder (or easier) for a new gameplay experience. But the attraction of playing with modified gameplay mechanics or trying to best my previous score wasn’t enough to entice me back – at least for now.
Gun Jam VR Review – Final Verdict
While some of Gun Jam VR’s gameplay mechanics fall short and the soundtrack may not be to everyone’s liking, it’s still a solid and satisfying experience overall. Gun Jam VR is a wave shooter at its core and suffers from the same pitfalls as similar games of this genre. Standing in one spot shooting waves of enemies can quickly get repetitive. Gun Jam’s weapon variety and unique mechanics aren’t enough to completely save it from the jaws of tedium.
This quest features many tricky puzzles to trip you up. To make sure this little Niffler makes it back home safe, here's how to find Rococo in Hogwarts Legacy.
You may not be able to take to the physical skies yourself any time soon, but you can take to the virtual sky with our list of the best free flight simulators.
No matter which of these cars you end up picking, you can rest assured that it'll win its fair share of races. Here are the fastest cars in Grand Theft Auto V.
Quest headsets had an option to update apps automatically in the smartphone app, but it didn’t work reliably. Even if you left your headset charging for hours you might put it on to find the app you wanted to use required a lengthy update. Waiting for an app to download is a terrible experience when you’re stuck in a headset. You could take the headset off, but then you’d have to guess when the update might finish or periodically put it on again to check. This could lead to shortened VR play sessions and turn some people away entirely until the next play session.
While not documented in the official changelog, I can confirm that the version 49 system update fixed this problem, as Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth had hinted. Quest system updates sometimes require your headset to reboot before fully applying and that’s what happened for me. Over the past month of testing when I’ve left my Quest Pro or Quest 2 charging they automatically downloaded app updates. So now VR is ready whenever I am. For Quest Pro owners, the update also means Meta delivers on the promise of its charging pad to keep VR ready anytime.
There are still other sources of friction to getting into a VR session but this one was arguably the most time-consuming and frustrating. With improvements like this and Direct Touch, Meta is smoothing out the experience of owning its headsets ahead of the planned launch of Quest 3 later this year.
The Google Play Store is loaded with some terrific titles — and some terrible ones. We've vetted all the options to bring you the best Android games around.
Time to mount up on your broom and soar. To save you the hassle of flying around aimlessly, here are all the Landing Platform locations in Hogwarts Legacy.
Meta added a hand tracking teleportation system to its Interaction SDK.
The Interaction SDK is a Unity framework providing high quality common hand interactions for controllers and hand tracking. It includes direct object grabbing, distance grabbing, interactable UI elements, gesture detection, and more. This means developers don’t have to reinvent the wheel, and users don’t have to relearn interactions between apps using the SDK.
The next version of Interaction SDK adds gestures and visualization for teleportation and snap turning when using controller-free hand tracking. Gesture based locomotion systems like this are necessary for adding hand tracking to apps and games where you explore a virtual world.
To point to where you teleport you turn your hand to the side and extend your index finger and thumb while closing your other fingers to your palm. To perform the teleport, just pinch your index finger to your thumb. It’s somewhat similar to the pinch “click” used in the Quest system interface, but with your hand rotated.
Some hand tracking apps such as Waltz Of The Wizard already implement their own teleportation gesture, but Interaction SDK should let any developer add it without needing to build their own.
You can try out Meta’s hand tracking teleportation system in the First Hand demo on App Lab. It showcases many Interaction SDK features, and now has a Chapter 2 to show locomotion too.
Spider hunter game Kill It With Fire is coming to VR headsets later this year.
This new VR version of the game is set for release on Quest 2, SteamVR, the original PSVR and PSVR 2. While we don’t have any VR gameplay just yet, you can check out the trailer for the flatscreen version embedded above.
The game will see you go to war with house spiders, tearing rooms apart and building new tools from household items to get rid of the arachnids menaces once and for all:
The leggy lurkers hide anywhere and everywhere. Even the odds collecting a bevy of weapons, utilising state-of-the-art spider-tracking technology, and mastering the new VRACHNID() gloves to better detect the eight-legged enemies. Follow the tracker and listen for the telltale squeaks indicating spiders, spiderlings, and other unholy abominations.
Smash arachnids with office supplies and frying pans, blast spiderlings with shotguns, and slice through eight-legged armies with ninja weaponry. Lob TNT at them for good measure. Still feeling phantom legs crawling around? Whip out that flamethrower and burn it all down.
Development of the VR release is being handled by Casey Donnellan, the same solo developer behind the flatscreen release, and published by tinyBuild. “Fans have been asking for a VR version of Kill It With Firesince the very first footage of the original game,” said Donnellan, in a prepared statement.“I’m really happy that we can finally put horrifying spiders on a screen less than an inch from players’ eyeballs!”
Hello Neighbor: Search and Rescue will release May 24 for PlayStation VR2.
Developers tinyBuild first revealed the game several months ago, announcing a simultaneous launch on PSVR 2 and PC VR on February 22. However, a few weeks before PSVR 2 launch, the game’s release date was removed and it was seemingly delayed with no update release window.
This week, Hello Neighbor: Search and Rescue’s PlayStation page was updated with a new release date, accepting pre-orders for May 24, 2023. The PC VR release remains unconfirmed and is still listed as ‘Coming Soon’ on Steam. We sought confirmation from a tinyBuild representative on both the PSVR 2 and PC VR release dates and will update this piece if we receive a response.
Hello Neighbor is a popular flatscreen franchise and this will mark its first venture onto VR headsets. Described as a VR horror-puzzle game, tinyBuild says that players will “sneak into your creepy neighbor’s house to save your friend,” with multiple playable characters, environmental puzzles and non-linear exploration.
Guardians Frontline is almost here – Fast Travel Games confirmed that the FPS and RTS hybrid hits Quest and PC VR on March 9.
Originally released as Guardians VR on App Lab, SideQuest and Steam Early Access, developer VirtualAge took direct inspiration from Halo and Starcraft with Guardians Frontline, which significantly expands upon the original version. Offering a single-player mode, four-player co-op and an eight-player PvP mode, the game also features an in-game level editor and custom maps can be shared with other players. Here’s the official description:
With a dangerous alien onslaught looming, players must take control of the battlefield to protect the federation as they work to extract a mysterious power source. Strategically place buildings for cover, call in space crafts for air support, or face the enemy head-on with powerful heavy weapons.
“Every encounter in Guardians Frontline is unpredictable,” claimed Carles Ballabriga, CEO of VirtualAge, in a prepared statement. “The strategy that worked for your first game isn’t guaranteed to work on the second, third, or even fourth game. Think outside the box, be creative, and give all of its mechanics a try to find the best combination to succeed.”
We went hands-on with Guardians Frontlinelast September, believing it offered a promising halfway point between the FPS and RTS genres. Calling Frontline “more than the sum of its parts,” we weren’t completely sold on the FPS mechanics but praised its strategic gameplay. “Individually, the FPS gameplay isn’t terribly exciting but it compliments the strategic side well, offering a nice change of pace.”
Guardians Frontline arrives on March 9 on Meta Quest 2and SteamVR for $24.99.
Mixture is out now from developer Played With Fire and published by Beyond Frames Entertainment and it offers a fantasy action-adventure spanning both first and third person perspectives.
Mixture’s distinctive hand-painted textures and unusual gameplay are backed by a considerable amount of world-building lore. Here’s a deep dive look into the world. Remember there are spoilers to be found here, so be warned if you plan to head intoMixturesoon.
Biomes There are four biomes to explore in Mixture, plus a couple of additional locations including the hub fortress at the beginning of the game. These areas can range from lush and light areasto vast mountain areas or dense, dark corridors, massive fortress-like structures, canyons andpeaks, as well as treacherous paths with lurking spiders.
Sola & Sephairos Our heroine Sola was a Light Strider – one of the few inhabitants of the Realm of Light who ever visited the Realm of Matter. Tempted by darkness, Sola stole a shard of light and, as punishment, she was sealed inside the armor and shaped into the Steel Moth. Banished to Purgatory, she joined other fallen knights to create the Order of Light. Their aim is to cultivate virtue and bravery while recreating luminous gardens reminiscent of their former world.
Sephairos, meanwhile, is The Alchemist – quiet, angry, scheming, and cold-blooded – he’s focused on taking steps that will allow him to relearn lost alchemic blueprints. Secretly, the Alchemist aims not only to regain his full power, but also to realize his ancient ambitions and become a godlike ruler of the land.
You’ll play as both Sola and Sephairos simultaneously, with the small moth knight navigating the game’s environments as you embody Sephairos at full-scale. Sola seeks precious treasures and, after releasing Sephairos from a medallion, they strike a pact and form an unlikely friendship.
Mixtures & Collectibles As the game progresses, your alchemist powers grow as you encounter an array of enemies and bosses. You’ll collect sulfur, salt, and mercury from the environment to put together into six types of mixtures. These mixtures – crystallize, glue, repel, revive, crack, dissolve – can lead to an array of effects for both core interactions and in battle. The crack mixture, for example, can make formerly impenetrable substances suddenly destroyable.
There are also glyphs around the whole realm of alchemy with inscriptions that fully reveal themselves if you draw along the line of the suggested symbol. The Alchemist’s magnetic hand can pull particles or affect movement. Sola, meanwhile, can wear special capes made from rare items you find in the world.
The Quest The game begins with The Alchemist awakening from a long imprisonment and joined by Moth. As you progress, you’ll encounter an array of bosses ranging from the Snake Guardian to Octavia the Octopus of the Mercury Sea and Qon the Spider Necromancer from the Depths.
Can you find your way through it all to open the gate to the Realm of Light?
The Alienware x15 R2 gaming laptop, which is $700 off from Dell, will be able to smoothly run video games with its Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card.
Much like a Dodo, it can feel impossible to actually find one, but if you're on the hunt for a Diricawl in Hogwarts Legacy, here's how to find and catch one.
PlayStation VR2 launches this week, but what are the best PSVR 2 games to play at launch? Here are our picks based on what we’ve tried already on PS5 or previously on another system.
If you’re picking up a PSVR 2 this week, we’ve put together this list of games to try at launch. The entries are based on experience while testing the headset for our PlayStation VR2 review and presented in no particular order.
Now before getting to the list, we should mention Resident Evil Village‘s VR mode in PSVR 2 will likely be one of the most harrowing and intense experiences you can have in a VR headset, with Capcom making a demo experience available for launch. We’ve started playing the game and while we’re having a great time, we’ll also note that it’s an intense experience – both in terms of content and VR comfort. Keep an eye out for our full review next week.
At the other end of the intensity spectrum, we should also call out standout introductory experiences Job Simulator and What The Bat? as both comfortable and playful introductions ideal for showing off your new VR headset to friends or family.
That in mind, here are our picks for the best PSVR 2 games to try at launch.
Best PSVR 2 Launch Games
Horizon Call of the Mountain
If you want a full breakdown of why this game is one to try, you can read our Horizon Call of the Mountain review. In summary, this is a must-have for anyone with a PSVR 2 headset – it features engaging gameplay and environmental details that feel comparable to Half-Life: Alyx. It’s definitely one to check out.
Demeo
This dungeon-diving turn-based game is both brutally challenging and an endlessly rewarding social experience with some of the most robust cross-platform multiplayer support available. You can play cooperatively with others across both traditional PC or PlayStation 5 platforms, as well as in VR from Quest 2 to SteamVR to PSVR 2. It was our game of the year in 2021 and, in 2022, we picked it as the best updated game of the year too as developer Resolution Games added significant new features to the title. Now you can even make a dungeon run with only two players as each player controls two of the in-game characters.
Pistol Whip
Pistol Whip is now easily a VR classic and also incredibly easy to pick up and learn as a new player, so it’s a great pick to try out on PSVR 2 at launch. We’ve given the PSVR 2 version a shot and had a fantastic time with it. So whether you’re a new player or a veteran, Pistol Whip is a fantastic option – plus, existing owners of the game for PSVR will receive the PSVR 2 upgrade for free.
Gran Turismo 7
This free update brings full VR support to the entire game, allowing you to get around the full Gran Turismo experience using PSVR 2. The only omission from the base PS5 game is splitscreen multiplayer support, for obvious reasons. If you already own it on PS5, you won’t have to pay a dime for the PSVR 2 upgrade – it’s entirely free. If you’re waiting for more details, stay tuned for our full GT7 PSVR 2 review coming soon.
Kayak VR
A fan favorite of PC VR users, this calming and stunning experience is coming to PSVR 2 at launch. It’s one of the most visually impressive titles we’ve played so far, making it a solid choice for launch. Plus, the PSVR 2 version includes a ‘Tour Mode’ where everything is taken care for you – don’t worry about paddles, just sit back and enjoy the view.
No Man’s Sky is now available for PlayStation VR2, after initially being about announced as a launch window title.
Today is the day we’ve all been waiting for – PSVR 2 launch day. However, it seems there’s still a few surprises for those getting their hands on a headset today. While we thought it would be a bit longer until No Man’s Sky released its update with PSVR 2 support, Hello Games confirmed that it’s available today as part of the game’s first major update of the year.
The Fractal update, version 4.1 of No Man’s Sky, brings a bunch of new features to all versions of the game and some VR-specific changes as well. Hello Games says that the heads-up display (HUD) and user interface were completely remade for VR in this update to “ensure every interaction available in the game feels natural and built for purpose.” This includes new “VR-only” options for several interactions, such as directly grabbing plants and collectibles with your hands, physically opening cockpits and piloting spaceships directly with a throttle.
For PSVR 2 specifically, there’s support for headset haptics and adaptive trigger integration on the Sense controllers. No Man’s Sky also takes advantage of the increased horsepower of PS5 to offer better reflections, terrain tessellation, ultra quality textures, denser foliage and an increase in draw distance.
A Fisherman’s Tale released in 2019 with “best-in-class” puzzle design as it achieved a “perfect storm of gameplay, immersion and narrative.”
Our review’s biggest critique was that the game developed by Innerspace VR was too short, even as it was nominated for multiple game of the year awards. Over three years later, Another Fisherman’s Tale will continue the story as it promises “a new adventure, coming soon to all major VR platforms,” according to an announcement prepared by Vertigo Games.
The trailer below teases the 5-6 hour adventure:
Another Fisherman’s Tale should launch this year on PSVR 2, Meta Quest 2, and PC VR platforms. Here’s a description from the team behind the game:
“Another Fisherman’s Tale continues the story of Bob the Fisherman, crafting a magical and moving narrative about the meaning we create in life by building and rebuilding our authentic selves. Developed from the ground-up to maximize the capabilities of modern VR tech, Another Fisherman’s Tale introduces a set of all-new core mechanics: this time, the player’s own body is the primary puzzle to be solved, creating unconventional gameplay based on dismantling and rebuilding their in-game form.
Gameplay examples teased by the developers include detaching your limbs and hands to control them remotely, or replacing limbs with objects like pirate hook hands to climb up walls, or controlling the environment with puppeteering. Players will be “Nina, the daughter of the original game’s protagonist, as she discovers models, notes and photographs that document her father’s mysterious past, as well as her own childhood. Recollecting Bob’s grandiose stories of pirates, sunken ships, treasures and mystical locations, Nina begins re-enacting his adventures and dives head-first into an imaginative world of memory and fantasy.”
We’re extremely curious to learn more about Another Fisherman’s Tale as Creative Director Balthazar Auxietre’s work at Innerspace has been some of VR’s most captivating. As far as Vertigo, the developer and publisher is teasing five more unannounced games to reveal at some point with four of them slated for release in 2023.
Pico headsets are now fully compliant with the OpenXR standard, the company says.
OpenXR is the open standard API for VR and AR development. It was developed by Khronos, the same non-profit industry consortium managing OpenGL. OpenXR includes all the major companies in the space such as Meta, Sony, Valve, Microsoft, HTC, NVIDIA, and AMD – but notably not Apple. Itofficially released in 2019.
The eventual promise of OpenXR is to let developers build apps that can run on any headset without having to specifically add support by integrating proprietary SDKs. Developers still need to compile separate builds for different operating systems, but all current standalone VR headsets use Android.
Meta deprecated the proprietary Oculus API almost two years ago in favor of OpenXR, so Pico’s change should make it easier for certain OpenXR apps to be ported over. But ‘certain’ here means native apps written using a custom engine. Most mobile VR apps and games are made in Unity, and Pico’s Unity OpenXR Plugin is marked as “an experiment version and is not available for formal development”, last updated in October.
Even if the Unity integration supported OpenXR, there are other barriers to releasing VR apps to other stores. Platform-level APIs like friend invites, parties, leaderboards, cloud saves, and avatars still differ. Porting involves a lot more work than the dream of OpenXR may suggest.
The flying broomstick is vital for traveling the huge map. If you're itching to get your very own broom in Hogwarts Legacy, we've swept up all the details.
Tencent reportedly plans to bring Meta’s Quest 2 to China.
Last week Reuters reported Tencent is scrapping its own in-development VR headset due to the high cost of the project and internal projections that it wouldn’t be profitable until 2027. Chinese outlet 36Kr now reports that Tencent plans to work to bring Quest 2 to the Chinese market instead.
To sell many kinds of products in China, foreign companies must partner with a Chinese company or set up a local subsidiary. Tencent would thus sell and support Quest 2 in China, while the report says both companies would work together on localization and translation of Quest Store content. Tencent is also apparently discussing launching its own VR content on Quest.
As the report points out, this wouldn’t be a new type of arrangement for Tencent as it has already been selling and supporting the Nintendo Switch to the Chinese market since 2019. The executive put in charge of Tencent’s new VR venture is apparently the same one who handled the Nintendo partnership.
The report also claims Tencent had battled with ByteDance to acquire the Chinese VR market leader Pico in 2021 but lost because ByteDance’s bid was significantly higher. Given that Pico last year expanded from the China market into several western markets like Europe and Japan, it’s interesting that Meta could now be poised to take on Pico in its home turf. Meanwhile, Pico is reportedly laying offhundreds of staff just four months after the release of Pico 4.
No timeline is given for when Quest 2 could launch in China in the report, which begs the question: with Quest 3 less than 10 months out, why wouldn’t Tencent just wait for it first?
To get the most bang for your buck, with no hidden gems that go under your radar, here are the best games to play on PS Plus Essential, Extra, and Premium.
If you're going to take down the robot revolt, you'll need to come prepared. These are best skills in Atomic Heart to make things a bit easier on you early on.
It doesn't matter if you're looking for an ergonomic mouse, a gaming mouse, or a trackball -- our list of the best wireless mice has an option for you.
Pico is laying off hundreds of staff, South China Morning Post reports.
The report cites “two people familiar with the matter.” One of those people reportedly said the cuts represent a “substantial portion of Pico” with some teams seeing as much as a 30% reduction. The other person reportedly said even some higher-level positions are affected.
No reason for the cuts is given, but a November report from Sina Technology claimed early Pico 4 sales weren’t meeting expectations, leading the company to reduce production orders. However, Pico claimed preorders had seen “unprecedented” demand, and Pico 4 was by far the fastest growing headset on SteamVR in November.
Pico is no newcomer to VR – it revealed its first headset in 2016. In 2021, it was acquired by ByteDance, the Chinese tech giant behind TikTok. Pico always sold to Chinese consumers, but elsewhere it had previously focused on businesses. This changed last year with the launch of Pico Neo 3 Link to European consumers. However, thatwas pitched as a “beta program.” The following headset, Pico 4, was its first serious consumer play and the first serious competitor to Meta’s Quest 2.
Pico 4 is powered by the same Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 processor used in Quest 2 but has arange of improvements:a slimmer and lighter design, higher resolution, wider and taller field of view, color passthrough, precise motorized lens separation, and improved controllers. However, content is king – while a significant chunk of Quest’s content library has been ported over, ByteDance has yet to offer exclusive titles that match the likes of Meta’s Resident Evil 4, Population: ONE, Onward, Iron Man VR and more. Pico announced its first major exclusive, Just Dance VR, last year alongside Pico 4, set for a 2023 release.
Pico 4 isn’t sold in North America. However, last year the companyposted a job listingfor a position that would be “responsible for the sales and marketing of Pico’s overall product in the US consumer market,” suggesting that approach might change in the future.
Andrew Eiche is taking over Job Simulator studio Owlchemy Labs.
The long time operations head at the Google-owned VR development studio is taking over for Devin Reimer, who says he’s leaving “to focus on new opportunities outside the company” after 12 years with the studio. Eiche joined Owlchemy in late 2015 as a producer before the 2016 launch of Job Simulator, one of VR’s most well-known and highest selling titles.
“As CEO, my mission is to keep Owlchemy Labs on our proven path of success and to continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible with VR,” Eiche said in a prepared statement. “I share Devin’s vision of the studio’s future and our mission, of making ‘VR for Everyone,’ remains unchanged. Our games will continue to push boundaries while maintaining their signature quirky feel. We will also continue to invest in VR’s future and explore new ways to push the technology forward.”
In 2017, Google acquired the studio as Owlchemy’s follow-ups Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, Vacation Simulator, and Cosmonious High expanded core VR interaction systems driving the titles.
We’re curious to see where Owlchemy goes next given context that Google laid off thousands of employees at the start of the year while also reportedly working with Samsung to provide “the software” for an XR platform. In 2018, Google had shipped the Mirage Solo standalone VR system in partnership with Lenovo and there was even an add-on for developers to explore the exact sort of hand controlled interactions championed by Owlchemy for years. As Meta (then Facebook) announced the $400 entry level Quest standalone VR headset, however, Google shifted directions to focus on a series of AR-centric features for smartphones. Owlchemy’s games represent some of Google’s limited public-facing work in VR over the last five years.
Eiche’s statement doesn’t give a whole lot of guidance on the subject, but we’d be extremely curious whether Owlchemy’s “insanely re-usable” tools might be applicable to a new generation of VR development tools from Google. The studio has been focused on hand tracking in recent years and Owlchemy’s announcement of the change in leadership mentions that Eiche will manage “the company’s ongoing efforts into VR development and hand tracking”.
To be clear, this feature requires developers to specifically support it in specially designed apps or modes of existing apps. It’s calledShared Spatial Anchors, an extension of the existing Spatial Anchors feature that lets you place virtual content in a specific position in your room so it stays there the next time you use the app.
Some Quest games such as Space Pirate Trainer DX already support colocation by having all players manually touch the controllers to a calibration point in the real world, but Shared Spatial Anchors is automatic.
But how does it work? Camera-based markerless positional tracking systems generate a spare 3D point cloud of high-contrast static features in your environment. To use Shared Spatial Anchors you need to enable ‘Share point cloud data’ in your headset’s privacy settings. This lets the point cloud be transmitted from your headset to other headsets, via Meta’s servers. The system software will find patterns that match its own point cloud and use this to align the virtual spaces.
Shared Spatial Anchors has been available for Quest Pro since December, and is now available for Quest 2 too.
The Alienware Aurora Ryzen Edition R14 gaming desktop, powered by the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X processor and 16GB of RAM, is on sale from Dell with a $680 discount,
In this week’s episode of the Between Realities VR Podcast, Alex and Skeeva host Geenz, graphics programmer for the social Metaverse platform NEOS VR.
Geenz explains what makes NEOS different from other social VR apps. Other topics include the imminent PSVR2, Meta’s influence in the VR industry, and the importance of personal expression through avatars online.
VR painting app Vermillion launched a beta for a new overlay mode this week, allowing you to paint with Vermillion’s easel in other SteamVR apps like Half-Life: Alyx or Skyrim VR.
Although it’s still in beta, opting into the overlay mode lets you bring Vermillion’s core tools into another app, which you can use for inspiration or reference when painting. The video embedded above, from Elizabeth Edwards, is a fantastic example of how the feature works – you can watch Edwards paint a portrait of Russell from Half-Life: Alyx in situ, just like you would in real life.
While Vermillion is available on multiple VR platforms, this beta overlay feature is only available on SteamVR for the moment and, as you can imagine, requires a fairly beefy PC setup. The feature isn’t limited to Half-Life: Alyx either; you should be able to use it with any VR-supported title on Steam.
Thomas van den Berge, Vermillion’s sole developer, noted that the overlay feature wouldn’t currently work natively on Quest, as the system can’t handle two games running simultaneously. That being said, Quest users with a PC VR setup will of course be able to try it out over Link.
You can opt into the overlay beta by right clicking on Vermillion in your Steam library and selecting Betas, then ‘overlay’. You’ll have to opt out of the beta to go back to the standard Vermillion studio.
Vermillion launched in 2021 for PC VR and early 2022 for Quest. Last December, it also added support for multiplayer, which allows multiple users to gather in a room and paint together in VR. You can read our interview with van den Berge from 2021 here, where he talks about how Vermillion brings accessible and realistic oil painting into VR.
The Best Buy Presidents Day sale is now online, offering significant discounts on various kinds of laptops from popular brands like Lenovo, HP, and Microsoft.
Remember Metroid Prime 4? It's apparently still in development, though little else is known about the project. Here's everything we know about Metroid Prime 4.
The Call of Duty series has been around for over 15 years, with several stellar -- and some not-so-stellar -- games. In this list, we rank all mainline entries.
Apple has postponed the launch of its AR/VR headset yet again, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports.
The introduction was apparently originally planned for April, but should now happen at the annual WWDC conference in June. It should then go on sale later this year, Gurman writes, matching what prominent supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed in December.
Kuo’s December note blamed the delay on unspecified“software-related issues”. Gurman describes the problem as “issues with sensors on the device to enable the hand and eye control mechanism”. Three weeks ago Gurman described the headset using a combination of eyetracking and finger pinching as its primary control mechanism, alongside Siri voice commands.
This is just the newest of many reported delays. In 2019 The Information reported Apple planned to ship a headset in 2022, as did Gurman in 2020 and Kuo in 2021.But come January 2022 Gurman reported this had been delayed to 2023 due to “challenges related to overheating, cameras and software”.
Last year The Information published an investigative report detailing the headset’s troubled development and changing form factor. The report outlined an evolution from a thin-client paired with a wireless console to a fully standalone device covered with sensors and an external display showing the wearer’s eyes. It also suggested Apple’s project suffered from “overengineering, too-complicated solutions that often result from poor planning”.
In August an Apple-linked company filed to trademark ‘Reality One’, ‘Reality Pro’, and ‘Reality Processor’, suggesting the headset and its processor will be branded Apple Reality. Gurman previously reported Apple is working on a VR client for FaceTime with face tracking for driving avatars, a VR version of Maps, spatial versions of Notes and Calendar, the ability to view a Mac’s display in-headset, and AR/VR tools for developers.
The Information and Gurman have previously reported the product will be priced around $3000. Kuo claimed it will weigh noticeably less than current VR headsets and feature high resolution OLED microdisplays, while The Information has claimed it will be powered by the M2 chip seen in the latest MacBooks and feature hand tracking, eye tracking, face tracking, leg tracking and iris scanning for logins and payments.So if the reports so far are to be believed, Apple’s product will have higher resolution, a more powerful processor, more features, and a slimmer design than Meta’s Quest Pro – though at a higher price. And given Meta reportedly plans a successor for 2024, Apple’s headset might spend more of its lifecycle competing against Quest Pro 2, which might feature OLED microdisplays and a new chip too.
) gloves to better detect the eight-legged enemies. Follow the tracker and listen for the telltale squeaks indicating spiders, spiderlings, and other unholy abominations. 
