According to a report from The Information, Meta plans to release its next flagship consumer headset, Quest 4, in 2026. Meanwhile, a Vision Pro competitor—likely Quest Pro 2—is reportedly planned for 2027.
According to The Information’s Wayne Ma and Kalley Huang, Meta is planning two consumer-focused headsets for 2026. Codenamed Pismo Low and Pismo High, these are thought to represent Quest 4 and a more affordable Quest 4S (or whatever naming scheme Meta picks for a more affordable variant). That would be two years after the widely rumored launch of a more affordable ‘Quest 3S’ that’s expected to be revealed in September, and three years after the launch of Quest 3.
Beyond those headsets, Meta is also reportedly planning a Vision Pro competitor set for 2027, codenamed La Jolla. While the company’s first “pro” headset, Quest Pro, didn’t find much traction given its price and lack of some key capabilities, Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro has busted open the price ceiling.
That could make even a $2,000 pro headset from Meta look affordable. At the same time, Apple has paved a clear path for what productivity in an XR headset looks like, which Metahasbeenrapidlyadopting.
In the backdrop however, Meta is reportedly tightening its belt on its XR and metaverse organization, Reality Labs. According to The Information, Meta is trying to cut Reality Labs spending by 20%, following years of costs far outpacing revenue.
Image created by Road to VR, data courtesy Meta
This has coincided with some reshuffling of the inner workings of Reality Labs, including laying off “more than a dozen directors and vice presidents in Reality Labs,” The Information’s report claims.
The report also claims Meta plans to launch its first augmented reality glasses next year, but curiously specifies that it will have a display only “in the right lens” of the glasses, suggesting perhaps an advanced pair of smartglasses (Meta Ray-Ban 3?) more than full AR.
It’s Prime Day which means Amazon Prime members get access to exclusive sales through July 17th. Heaps of Quest 2 and Quest 3 accessories are on sale and here you’ll find our top picks.
Quest 3 on Sale During Prime Day
Image courtesy Meta
This one is actually just a coincidence rather than an exclusive Prime Day sale (which means anyone can get in on the savings), but still worth highlighting: Quest 3 (128GB) remains on sale for $430, a solid 14% discount over the usual price. The 512GB model is not discounted.
Quest 3 Prime Day Sales
Quest 3 Straps
As for exclusive Prime Day sales, let’s kick it off with probably the most essential Quest accessory out there, the headstrap. Our favorite affordable Quest 3 upgraded straps from BOBOVR are both on sale.
We like the M3 Mini design because the strap is made to avoid your ears and also pivots, making it easier to put on and take off with minimal readjustment. It also includes an additional rear pad which you can swap to for more grip when playing high intensity games.
The M3 Pro doesn’t just add the battery, it’s a completely different strap design which moves pressure away from your face to your forehead. That makes it easy to use the headset without the facepad, exposing your peripheral view to the real world, which makes for a better mixed reality experience (and usually increases your virtual field-of-view!). Of course when you want to be fully immersed, you can easy put the facepad back on. Like the M3 Mini, the M3 Pro hinge design makes it easier to put on and take off with minimal adjustment, and it includes the additional rear pad for extra grip in high intensity games.
If you really want to deck out your Quest 3, the more expensive BOBOVR S3 is also on sale, priced at $72 (20% discount).
Quest 3 Docks
Next up is Quest 3 docks which not only give your headset its own home, but also keep it charged and ready to go for your next session.
This dock charges Quest 3 using the existing dock pins on the bottom of the headset, so there’s nothing extra you need to attach. It also includes special batteries and battery covers for your controllers, allowing them to charge while in the dock as well. One thing we like about this dock is that it lights up green to show you when your headset and controllers are at full charge. And there’s a button on the dock to turn off the lights in case you don’t want them bothering you at night.
Quest 3 Carrying Cases
If you want a dead-simple case for Quest 3 at an incredible price, it’s hard to go wrong with these Sarlar picks.
For an affordable, battle-tested option, our pick is the KIWI Design Comfort strap. It comes from a brand that has made its name on Quest accessories, and has all the basics you’d want from a Quest 2 strap upgrade.
If you want a better strap and to increase your headset’s runtime, BOBOVR is at it again with a solid and affordable option in the M2 Pro. It has multiple points of adjustment, forehead pad (AKA ‘halo’) design, and includes a hot-swappable battery than can double your playtime on a single charge.
When it first launched back when Quest 2 was new, the Anker Charger Dock was a solidly built option, but felt a little bit on the pricey side. Over time it has come down in price (normally $60), but with this Prime Day deal it’s an easy pick.
Quest 2 Carrying Cases
Our recommendations for simple and affordable Quest 2 cases are the same as the above cases for Quest 3 because they fit the Quest 2 just as well.
Aces of Thunder, from the studio behind the well-known flight sim War Thunder, is set to launch in Q4 on PSVR 2. Alongside a new trailer, the studio revealed today that the game is also coming to PC VR.
From the outset, flight sims in VR have been an obvious choice thanks to their emphasis on immersion. And it’s fortunate that some of the biggest names in flight simulation, like Microsoft Flight Simulator,DCS World, and War Thunder have added support for VR headsets.
But in the vast majority of cases, these VR-optional flight sim games don’t support motion controls fully or even partially. Which means you can’t interact with the plane’s cockpit in the natural way you’d expect to—like reaching out to grab the flight stick or twist and push the buttons and dials in front of you.
Last year War Thunder developer Gaijin Entertainment announced that it would use its flight sim chops to bring a VR-native flight sim, Aces of Thunder, to PSVR 2.
Gaijin announced today that Aces of Thunder is set to launch in Q4 2024. In addition to PSVR 2, the studio confirms the game is also coming to PC VR. A new trailer shows the game shaping up to be one of the best looking VR-native flight sims we’ve seen yet.
“From the very beginning we focused mainly on VR-specific ergonomics and the immersive flight experience achievable with modern hardware. To reach these goals we have rewritten and optimized the VR-subsystem of the Dagor Engine (some of these improvements can be seen in War Thunder already, a game that uses the same engine),” says Vladimir Dranyonkov, game director of Aces of Thunder. “We have re-evaluated our approaches to user interactions along with audio and visuals, so familiar from our previous experience with War Thunder. We also worked on addressing common comfort issues without harming the simulation aspect of aerial combat. This, we hope, will attract new pilots to our virtual skies.”
Gaijin says Aces of Thunder will focus “solely on aerial battles of legendary aircraft in the most iconic theaters of war.”
“More than twenty meticulously recreated models will be available to players at launch. The roster includes the American P-51 Mustang and P-63 Kingcobra fighters, the German Bf 109 and Fw 190 fighters, the Soviet IL-2 attack aircraft, the British Spitfire fighter and the Japanese A6M3 Zero,” the studio says.
So far the price of the game hasn’t been revealed, but we’ll be keeping our eyes on the skies as the Q4 release date approaches.
This week Samsung and Google confirmed their forthcoming “XR platform” will be announced this year, though it’s unclear if it will actually launch before the end of 2024.
It was early 2023 when Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm first announced their collaboration on an “XR platform” based on Android. The timing of that announcement made it sound like we’d probably hear more about that platform and whatever devices it would power in late 2023 or maybe early 2024.
But just a few months later, Apple formally unveiled its long-rumored Vision Pro headset, and announced it would be launching in early 2024.
Since then, we’ve heard little about the XR effort from Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm—save for some rumblings that the companies may have taken a step back to reassess their plans after seeing what Apple planned to launch with Vision Pro.
This week, however, the companies confirmed it will be revealed by the end of 2024—and perhaps even launched by then.
During the Samsung Unpacked event this week, Google’s SVP of Platform & Devices, Rick Osterloh, took to the stage and spoke briefly about the future of the company’s collaboration with Samsung:
“Looking forward, we’re collaborating to bring next-generation experiences across Galaxy products. From smartphones and wearables, to even future technologies, like the upcoming XR platform we’ve been working to develop in close partnership with Samsung and Qualcomm for next-generation devices,” Osterloh said. “You’ll want to stay tuned for that. It’s an exciting new era in mobile computing, and we’re thrilled to take our partnership with Samsung to the next level.”
Samsung’s Head of Mobile, TM Roh, took to the stage afterward to concur, adding that the XR platform in question would come by the end of 2024.
“I appreciate [Osterloh] and his team at Google for their constant partnership that fuels innovation and ignites new possibilities, like our new XR platform coming this year.”
Image courtesy Samsung
We still don’t know exactly what shape the so-called “XR platform” will take. While it was initially expected the companies were working on something to compete with Meta’s game-focused Quest platform, Vision Pro’s emphasis on more general productivity and spatial computing may have changed priorities. And even still, Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm might not want to challenge either front. Instead, they might try to stake out their claim with mobile-focused transparent AR glasses—maybe starting with basic smartglasses functionality.
For now all we know is that we’ll learn more later this year, but it’s still unclear if we’ll see an announcement or an actual product launch by the end of 2024.
What do you think will be revealed, and what would you want to see ideally? Let us know in the comments below!
Quest 3 is on sale for the first time since its launch. It’s a decent discount that’s even cheaper than buying an officially refurbished headset from Meta.
If Amazon runs out of the deal, we’ve also seen stock at Walmart and Target (but you have to make an account with Target to see the sale price).
Unfortunately, the Quest 3 deal only applies to the smaller 128GB model. The otherwise identical 512GB model is still priced at $630. And it seems the long standing bundling of Asgard’s Wrath 2 with the headsets has come to an end.
If you’re planning to pick up the headset today, don’t miss our list of the best Quest 3 accessories.
Meta’s other major headset, Quest 2, is seemingly widely out of stock at major retailers. It’s expected this is in preparation for its next headset. But there’s still a few months before the company is likely to reveal that headset, and the gap seems to have spurred Meta to try to get more Quest 3 units out the door. First with a 0% financing deal and now this straightforward discount.
Bounce Arcade, recently announced and launching this Fall, looks like a unique fusion of pinball and VR, in a way that’s truly native to the medium. It’s an example of the body of VR-native gameplay mechanics that’s still in its infancy.
All video games trace their lineage to arcade games.
I’m not necessarily talking about games in a big cabinet, but any game which has little in the way of narrative, characters, and progression. They’re primarily built around mechanics that are just plain-old fun.
With Pong (1972) we figured out how one axis of input could work. With Pac Man (1980) we added two axes and enemies to chase the player. Super Mario Bros (1985) figured out how we would fit a larger and more complex world onto a small screen. And Star Fox (1993) on SNES laid the groundwork for navigating 3D worlds from a third-person perspective.
It’s the mechanics that drove these games—the ones that are so fun they don’t even need narrative, characters, or progression for them to feel complete.
It took 21 years to get from Pong to Star Fox. And since then, games have only grown in complexity, but only by building on core mechanics that were invented long before.
Platformers that are not conceptually distant from Super Mario Bros are still huge. So are games using third-person views and on-screen reticles for navigation and aiming.
I could go on-and-on with these examples, but the point is, they take time to figure out. And it’s not until you figure them out that you can create compelling games with all the other stuff on top, like narrative, characters, and progression.
It took decades of work to find these core mechanics and eventually turn them into the huge games we know and love today. But, all that work was done specifically for flatscreen games made for controllers or keyboards and mice.
When a new medium like VR comes along—with a whole new kind of input like 6DOF motion controllers—we can borrow from the flatscreen realm, but ultimately the medium needs to invent the mechanics that feel truly native to it.
Many VR games borrow too much from the world of flatscreen gaming. They don’t sufficiently answer the question ‘why play this in VR instead of on a flat screen?’. And these games tend not to find much commercial success.
Then something like Beat Saber comes along. Rhythm games have been around for a long time; but Beat Saber took the overall concept of a rhythm game and paired it with a core mechanic that is truly VR-native. The way you use your body to slice cubes in Beat Saber can’t be replicated in any medium other than VR.
Beat Saber found a core mechanic that feels great in VR. And one day that mechanic will be the foundation for a game that’s not just the arcadey expression of the mechanic, but a large and complex game instead.
But there’s still so much to invent and discover when it comes to VR-native mechanics.
All of this is to say, I love seeing new and creative gameplay ideas that feel truly at home in VR. And what I’ve seen of the recently announced Bounce Arcade immediately struck me as one of those ideas.
We’ve already seen plenty of pinball machine simulations in VR. The kind where you’re literally standing in front of a pinball machine and pressing buttons to flip the flippers.
But Bounce Arcade is taking the overarching concept of pinball and truly and creatively reimagining it for VR. Your fists are the paddles and the world around you is the playing field. It’s a fresh look at what pinball even means when you’ve got the power to alter the player’s entire reality and allow them to bring their hands into the game world.
Bounce Arcade is coming to Quest sometime this fall. So far pricing and other platforms are unconfirmed.
But this isn’t to say that all VR games are destined to be arcade games. To the contrary—what I’m saying is the medium still needs to spend time experimenting and innovating on core VR-native mechanics.
Only once a sufficient number of them are discovered and refined will we start to see a real mass of larger and more complex games that feel properly at home in VR. It’s actually pretty easy with a little imagination to see how you could extend Bounce Arcade’s underlying mechanic into a much more complex and less arcade-centric game.
And honestly, I think there are many more of these VR-native mechanics already out there that simply haven’t gotten enough attention. That’s a huge reason why I’m working on the Inside XR Design video series to highlight these kinds of learnings. If you’ve read this far, I have to imagine you’re interested enough in this topic that you’d probably enjoy checking out the episodes published so far.
There’s at least six really good reasons why getting Half-Life: Alyx onto PSVR 2 is a good idea, and it would be a net positive for everyone involved. So what do we gotta do to make it happen?
Despite launching in 2020, Half-Life: Alyx continues to be one of VR’s absolute best games. It’s production value and incredible attention to detail have allowed it to hold up extremely well, even four years later. But in PC VR land, pretty much everyone who has wanted to play the game probably already has. And hey, if you haven’t, you have no excuse not to buy it at a 66% discount right now!
But there’s another group of people out there with VR headsets who would love to play the game if given the chance.
Sorry Quest friends, I see you. Unfortunately Half-Life: Alyx would need a complete rework just to get it to run smoothly on standalone headsets, which would not only require a ton of work, but also decimate the look and feel of the game to the point of losing its essence. Instead, I’m talking about PSVR 2 owners.
Getting Half-Life: Alyx onto PSVR 2 would be a win all around. Here’s why.
PS5 Has the Power to Handle Half-Life: Alyx
Photo by Road to VR
Taking a made-for-PC VR game and getting it running on Quest just about always requires decimating the game to the point of garish graphics. That’s the unfortunate reality of trying to run PC VR games on a standalone headset. And that’s why so many developers build games that are made with Quest’s performance limitations in mind from the get-go.
Half-Life: Alyx is a visual spectacle, with details unmatched by almost any other VR game you can play. Aside from PC VR, there’s really only one other VR platform that has the power to handle the game the way the creators intended: that’s PS5 and PSVR 2.
Half-Life: Alyx’s minimum VR specs are as follows:
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1600
Memory: 12 GB RAM
Graphics: GTX 1060
PS5 has a rather custom architecture, but here are the roughly equivalent components if it were a PC:
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
Memory: 16GB RAM (unified memory)
Graphics: RTX 3060 Ti
So not only does PS5 exceed the minimum specs of Half-Life: Alyx, but unlike most games, Alyx actually looks and runs impressively well at its minimum settings. And because PS5 is a singular hardware spec, Valve could spend its time dialing in optimizations for this hardware specifically, making sure it looks and runs great on all PS5 consoles.
Those of you who really know your stuff might point out that the minimum specs for Alyx don’t take into account the higher resolution of modern headsets. Valve’s Index has a resolution of 2.3MP per-eye, while PSVR 2 nearly doubles that at 4MP per-eye.
But, PSVR 2 also has eye-tracking which Index does not. That means it’s possible to implement eye-tracked foveated rendering to reduce the number of pixels drawn for each eye without reducing visual quality. Valve might need to build eye-tracked foveated rendering into its Source 2 engine to make this happen—though it’s unclear how much work it would take.
The only major performance conflict between Half-Life: Alyx and PSVR 2 that I can think of would be PSVR 2’s poor reprojection tech. Many PSVR 2 games target a 60Hz refresh rate and then PS5 projects those frames to reach the 120Hz refresh rate of the headset. Unfortunately PSVR 2 has always had worst-in-class reprojection that shows lots of ghosting.
I just don’t see Valve accepting their game running on PSVR 2 with 60Hz to 120Hz reprojection. Sony would either need to agree to finally come up with a better solution, or Valve would have to target a native 90Hz or 120Hz refresh rate for Half-Life: Alyx on PSVR 2.
PSVR 2 Players Are Hungry for AAA Content
PSVR 2 is one of the best VR headsets on the market today, but it’s in an unfortunate predicament. Despite PS5 having so much more processing power available than Quest headsets, the bulk of new games coming to PSVR 2 were designed first and foremost with Quest in mind. Which means most PSVR 2 games hardly scratch the surface of what kind of visuals PSVR 2 is really capable of, even if they get superficial enhancements like improved resolution and textures over the Quest version.
Sony has done little to remedy this issue. While the headset launched with a decent lineup of good-looking VR games, there’s been very little followup on AAA content from Sony. Compared to the original PSVR, Sony just doesn’t seem to be investing in high-quality first-party VR content to attract people to the headset.
And while PS5 might not have a huge userbase right now, you can bet that 90% of current owners would likely buy Half-Life: Alyx, and plenty of existing PS5 owners would consider buying the headset just to play this legendary VR game.
Valve’s Own Headset is Out of Date
Image courtesy Valve
Valve’s first (and so far only) VR headset is even older than Half-Life: Alyx itself, having launched in mid-2019 (compared to Alyx in early-2020). It held up for a good many years—longer than most VR headsets—but it’s officially past its prime.
So while one argument for not putting Half-Life: Alyx on PSVR 2 would be ‘why would Valve do that when they want to keep the game exclusive to PC so they can sell more of their headsets’… there’s really not much of a market left for the five year old device.
There’s Precedent
To some, the idea of Valve putting one of its games on a game console might sound insane. But it’s happened before.
In 2007 Valve released The Orange Box, a collection of Valve’s top games of the era: Half-Life: 2 (with Episode 1 & Episode 2), Portal, and Team Fortress 2.
People were thrilled to be able to play this collection of games that were once mostly exclusive to PC. And I’m sure they’d be thrilled to do the same with Half-Life: Alyx.
The Orange Box was considered not only an excellent value in gaming, but was also a commercial success for Valve by all accounts and a plus for its brand as a top-notch game studio.
Sony Has Embraced Steam… How About a Little Quid Pro Quo?
The forthcoming PSVR 2 to PC adapter | Image courtesy Sony
In the last few years, Sony has upended the long-held tradition of keeping its first-party blockbuster games exclusive to its own consoles. You can now play games like Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Forbidden West, Returnal, and God of War through Steam. And, if you’ve got the PC for it, you can make them look and run even better than they do on a PS5. And given the viral success of Helldivers 2 (Sony’s first simultaneous launch on both PS5 and PC) it’s likely this trend will only continue.
This is undoubtedly a big win for consumers.
Considering the significance of Sony bringing first-party content to Steam, I’m sure the company has been given the white glove treatment from Valve internally; these companies are already talking and working together.
And let’s not forget that Sony is already preparing to release a PSVR 2 adapter for PC, which means PSVR 2 owners who happen to have a gaming PC will be able to play Alyx through Steam. Wouldn’t it be nice for Valve to extend the same the same opportunity to PSVR 2 owners who don’t also have a gaming PC?
Valve is Different
Image courtesy Valve
In almost no other case would any of this have even a remote chance of happening… if Valve wasn’t… well, Valve.
Valve is an incredibly unique gaming company by pretty much every metric. Not just its unique flat management structure and ‘work on what you want to’ culture. It’s also the only major gaming platform that’s privately owned.
That means Valve can make decisions that aren’t predicated merely on what’s the absolutely best thing for their shareholders or bottom line. They can make decisions to do things because it’s what they want to do, not because it’s going to make someone the most money.
Both the Index headset and Half-Life: Alyx almost surely wouldn’t even exist if Valve was a publicly-traded company. Valve invested massive resources into building a top-notch headset and a game for the barely-proven medium. It was a huge gamble that it would be worth it. Surely just making Half-Life: 3 for PC would have made them more money.
But near as we can tell, Index and Half-Life: Alyx exist because people at Valve wanted to make them. They wanted to make an amazing VR game for people to enjoy and a great headset for people to play it with.
Given the numbers, it seems like Valve probably made a return on their investment with Half-Life: Alyx, but almost certainly not as much as they could have made if they opted to follow the most profitable option in front of them compared to the most rewarding one.
That is to say: if Valve was a typical publicly-traded gaming company, there wouldn’t be even a glimmer of hope that Half-Life: Alyx could make it to PSVR 2. But with Valve being Valve, I think there’s at least a chance.
– – — – –
Valve has said over the years that its VR business decisions have been guided by wanting to grow the medium as a whole—hence its hardware-agnostic support for VR headsets on SteamVR. If Half-Life: Alyx would help PSVR 2 thrive as its own VR platform… that’s surely good for VR players, developers, and the medium as a whole.
Sony’s new headset, officially dubbed the SRH-S1 “content creation system” combines a compact form-factor with novel controllers. I got to check out the headset first-hand at AWE 2024 and came away impressed with the headset itself, even if the input and tracking still need some work.
The yet-to-be-priced Sony SRH-S1 is being designed as an enterprise headset. It’s built with Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor for standalone usage. Sony also tells us it can be driven by a PC through a compressed video stream (like Quest Link).
Sony confirmed to Road to VR the headset’s actual resolution is 13.6MP (3,552 × 3840) per-eye, using Sony’s own ECX344A OLED microdisplay. The display is capable of 90 FPS and 1,000 nits (at 20% duty cycle), with 96% DCI-P3 color coverage. That means the Sony SRH-S1 with has higher resolution and better color accuracy than Vision Pro:
Sony SRH-S1:
13.6MP per-eye
96% DCI-P3
Apple Vision Pro
11.7MP per-eye
92% DCI-P3
The Sony MR headset also has compact lenses with a flip-up visor, and two utterly unique controllers: one is a star-shaped pointer, and the other is a ring that goes on your finger.
Photo by Road to VR
The SRH-S1’s ergonomic design is hits all the right notes. The headset has hardware-adjustable IPD, flip-up visor, rear-mounted battery for balance, and eye-relief adjustment. The eye-relief adjustment allows you to bring the lenses as close as possible to your eyes for the maximum field-of-view.
Photo by Road to VR
And though it’s all plastic, the headset and controllers feel well built, including the flip-up visor mechanism. Sony pitches the flip-up visor primarily so a user sitting at a connected computer can see the full resolution of their display, then flip down the visor when they’re ready to view virtual content.
Photo by Road to VR
Granted, even with the eye-relief dialed all the way in, the field-of-view wasn’t expansive. It felt smaller than something like Quest 3, but not too small to be useful. A smaller field-of-view also means the headset’s pixels are even more densely packed, which—if the optics are up to the task—would mean notably sharper imagery than Quest 3 or Vision Pro.
Photo by Road to VR
In my short time with the headset the display looked impressively sharp with absolutely no individual visible pixels. However, the content I saw wasn’t great for clearly comparing how the sharpness stacks up to contemporary headsets. I can say though that the optics appeared to have great edge-to-edge clarity, rivaling what I’m used to seeing with Quest 3’s excellent lenses.
I noticed some reflections in the lenses, though I’m fairly certain most of this was due to external light reaching the lenses from the headset’s open periphery. I didn’t get to try it but Sony has shown the headset with a soft peripheral blocker add-on for when you’d rather have less reflections and more immersion.
The demo seen I saw was a virtual filming setup where I was able to move and adjust a virtual camera that was shooting a virtual scene. I could also control the lighting by moving lights around and charging their colors.
While everything looked very sharp, the content being shown didn’t look well optimized for running on a standalone headset. That made the experience quite choppy—probably not running at a steady 90 FPS as it should—which made the head-tracking feel sub-par.
This probably impacted the feeling of the controller-tracking too, though I think the controllers had their own issues with latency and precision. The ring controller in particular had tons of jitter, making it quite bad for any kind of precision input—even just grabbing and moving things. The star-shaped controller felt much more precise, not just because the tracking was more steady, but also because you naturally hold it with an outstretched index finger, making it a natural ‘pointing device’. Even so it didn’t feel as precise as what you’d expect from a Quest 2 or Quest 3 controller.
Photo by Road to VR
I quite like the concept of the SRH-S1 controllers, but they need some work still on more than just tracking. Both controllers actually have physical buttons on them which are elegantly hidden under the skin… which also makes it very unintuitive to know they even exist.
The rep showing me the headset was trying to describe the location of one of the buttons for me to press by saying something like “it’s on your index finger,” but they weren’t talking about the button under the tip of my finger. Instead, there’s another hidden button that you press with the inside of the first segment of your index finger (before you reach the first knuckle).
The SRH-S1 controller has three buttons on it… but you probably wouldn’t notice unless someone told you about them | Photo by Road to VR
I literally don’t know if I’ve ever pressed a button using that part of my finger. So beyond being invisible, the fact that it’s in a weird place made it even more of an odd choice. It’s not necessarily a bad choice; this might be a great way to get two distinct inputs from one finger, given the unique controller design, but it needs to be much more intuitive.
And, indeed, it’s likely user experience details which will make or break the Sony’s SRH-S1 MR headset as a viable competitor to other headsets on the market. I feel fairly confident the company can get the device’s head and controller-tracking tightened up without any breakthroughs or major redesigns. But does Sony expect enterprise developers to figure out all the small details about how to teach users to use these unique controllers, and how to use them best in their applications?
Sony says the SRH-S1 is specifically made to work with Siemens NX, a comprehensive suite of CAD tools used by Sony itself. Presumably it will work with a wider range of software too, but presently it’s unclear what software platform or software standard the headset will support. Presumably OpenXR compatibility would be a good choice as an open standard, but even beyond that it’s not clear if Sony plans to maintain a software distribution platform for the headset or leave it up to companies to figure out how to deploy and manage the software.
Despite this being an MR headset, Sony unfortunately wasn’t ready to show the passthrough view, saying it was still being worked on.
Sony plans to launch the SRH-S1 headset later this year. But pricing, regional availability, and software compatibility haven’t been announced yet.
Yeeps: Hide and Seek has just launched on the main Quest store. But, even before that, the game racked up some 20,000 reviews on App Lab in just a few months. More than a clone, Yeeps understands what’s special about Gorilla Tag and how to add meaningfully new elements to the experience.
There are those who have dismissed Gorilla Tag as a ‘meme game’ and some kind of viral fluke. And there are those who see something special about the game that’s worth understanding. Given Gorilla Tag’s recent milestone of $100 million in revenue, it’s fair to say the second group has the right idea.
Developer Trass Games certainly sees the value in understanding what makes Gorilla Tag special. With Yeeps: Hide and Seek, launched on Quest App Lab just a few months ago, the studio has successfully emulated the essential arm-based locomotion and social aspect of the game, while fusing it with building elements along the lines of Fortnite and Minecraft.
The game doesn’t merely copy Gorilla Tag’s essential elements, but pushes them further. The social aspect is amplified with in-game items and creation, allowing players to make their own structures, mini-games, and activities. And arm-based locomotion is supplemented with even more free-form movement like gliding, grappling, and launchpads.
And it’s working.
In just four months on App Lab, Yeeps amassed nearly 20,000 reviews. And the game has only just launched into the main Quest Store—where it’s likely to grow even more rapidly.
Gorilla Tag itself followed a similar trajectory. Initially launched on App Lab, the game spent nearly a year there while it spread rapidly through word-of-mouth alone, eventually surpassing Beat Saber as the most reviewed game on Quest—even though it hadn’t launched on the main Quest store by that point.
While Gorilla Tag has spawned countless clones, games like Yeeps and others are taking the parts of the game that work best and turning them into something new. The result has been a new genre of VR games emerging right before our eyes.
Metal: Hellsinger VR is a very unique flatscreen game, and also has the potential to be a very unique VR game. But it’s going to take a little tuning up before launch to really make it sing.
If you’ve never played the flatscreen version of Metal: Hellsinger, it’s probably unlike anything you’ve played before. It’s a fast-paced FPS game that asks you to shoot to the beat. Doing so nets you more damage, more points, and more intense music. It feels completely different from your usual shooter, in way that gets you into an awesome flow.
That flow state can be even more fun with the all-encompassing immersion of VR, and to that end, the idea to build a separate VR version of the game—aptly called Metal: Hellsinger VR—is well-premised. But as ever, porting mechanics that weren’t originally made for VR requires serious attention to detail and polish to make things feel just right.
Metal: Hellsinger VR is coming to Quest, PC VR, and PSVR 2 later this year. I played the newly released PC VR demo, and while the game’s potential to shine in VR is clear, it’s falling just a few notes short of a perfect arrangement. However, this isn’t because the mechanics aren’t well suited for VR, but simply because they need that ‘last 10%’ of polish to really sing. Because nothing is fundamentally wrong with the game, I have real hope that they can tune things up by the time it reaches release.
There’s little doubt that you’ll find yourself unconsciously bopping your head to the beat as you play Metal: Hellsinger VR. The heavy metal soundtrack is solid, and physically aiming your guns and pulling the trigger amplifies the feeling of being totally in tune with the beat.
Gameplay is unabashedly fast-paced, but the developers have built in a decent set of VR comfort options. Teleport movement is unfortunately not available, though I think the developers are warranted in not including it—the pace, flow, and combat balance of the game just wouldn’t be right with teleport. And although the game defaults to smooth turning (not the best idea), snap turning is available, as well as peripheral blinders. Using a heavy blinder managed to keep me comfortable for at least an hour of play, despite all the fast stick movement and double jumping.
The bones here are good, but it’s the essence of the gameplay—and how it feels in VR—that needs to find the right key.
For instance, pumping the shotgun. By default the game asks you to manually pump the shotgun, which should feel absolutely awesome, right on the beat, between shots. But the particular way the pump gesture is detected—and the way the game handles two-handed weapon aiming—doesn’t feel quite right. In the end it often feels frustrating to pump the shotgun, perhaps due to the ‘correct’ window of timing being too tight. Quantizing the pump sound and timing a bit could be one solution to making this feel right.
The developers ostensibly realize the shotgun doesn’t feel quite right, because they included an option to disable manual pumping. As much as I wanted the feeling of pumping the shotgun on my own, disabling it turned out to be a more enjoyable experience.
Reloading the shotgun has a similar issue. In theory, it should be perfect for VR: when you press the reload button the break-action opens and then you’re asked to flick the shotgun closed on the right beat to successfully reload.
But something in the way the ‘flick closed’ gesture is implemented makes it very difficult to time correctly. This is likely a result of the developers having a particular motion in mind for the flicking action, which might not be quite the same way that other people tend to do it.
For instance, do you flick ‘up’? Do you flick ‘down then up’? Must it be a sudden motion? A smooth motion? If you test this with 10 different people, they’ll probably all do it in a slightly different way. And further, at what point exactly in the motion does the game consider the ‘moment’ of the reload? Without communicating this clearly, it’s hard for the player to find the right timing.
This is the kind of thing that requires serious polish in VR to feel fun and fluid. But when it doesn’t quite get there, it winds up feeling tedious and frustrating.
I probably spent 10 minutes just sitting in a corner trying to practice the shotgun reload flick. After a while I started to get the hang of it, but it still feels more tedious than gratifying, and frustrating when you don’t land it even when you felt like you had the right timing.
Another weapon in the game—the dual-wielded pistols—feels similar. Again, they have a reload gesture that in theory should feel awesome in VR (flick your guns inward so the chambers swing into the gun). But the motion required and the timing window never feel quite intuitive.
Image courtesy Funcom
And then there’s the ‘Slaughter’ mechanic—a satisfying finishing move that crushes weakened enemies to the beat. Or it could be satisfying… with the essential VR polish.
In the fantasy of the game, the Slaughter mechanic has you dash toward your victim and chop them in half with a sword, perfectly on the beat.
But in Metal: Hellsinger VR you just press a button and it all happens automatically.
I can’t tell you how incredibly, deliciously satisfying this mechanic could be with just a little more VR-native design put into it. It’s so close… I can feel it.
Instead of simply pressing a button, a ‘pulling’ gesture (as if yanking yourself toward the enemy with an invisible chain) would be a great start to involving the player’s body in the action. And to really make this mechanic feel amazing, asking the player to actually swing the sword at the enemy would make for an incredibly satisfying finishing move.
You can probably imagine it in your mind as one continuous, satisfying motion: reach out with your right hand toward the target and hold the grip button to ‘grab’ them. Yank your hand to pull yourself to them in a dash. Then—with your hand already drawn back from the ‘pull’—the sword appears in your hand and you swing to cleave through the enemy. All to the beat.
The pieces already exist to make Metal: Hellsinger VR an awesome VR game. But as is always the case with VR ports… it’s all in the details.
There’s at least some hope the developers can close this ‘VR gap’ before the game launches. For what it’s worth, I appreciate their commitment to making the game feel at home in VR, even if it wasn’t designed for it in the first place.
Metal: Hellsinger VR has an all new hub area where players can select levels, equip their loadout, and see the game’s narrative sequences, all in an immersive way. They even converted the game’s Settings pages into books that sit on a shelf. They’re a little cumbersome to use at present, but you can tell the developers have their heart in the right place when it comes to trying to make the game feel at home in VR.
The closest thing to Metal: Hellsinger VR that’s actually a native VR game is Pistol Whip. While they’re different games striving for different gameplay, the ‘ease of play’ that can be felt in Pistol Whip is a great bar for Metal: Hellsinger VR to aim for, and one that I hope it can reach.
