Prepare Your Planning Permits As DIG VR Heads To PS VR2 & Steam This March

Just Add Water's comedic construction simulator, DIG VR, makes its PlayStation VR2 and Steam debut this March.

In DIG VR, you become a construction god, digging up pesky dirt around the comically named Diglington in the County of Digshire. As you progress, you'll become privy to hidden lore across the city while unlocking complex machinery and crevice-creating tools like a Circular Saw, Compactor, and Grabber. On March 20th, PS VR2 and Steam players will have their chance to work through the building simulator's quirky campaign and enjoy DIG VR's handful of minigames and sandbox game mode, too.

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We enjoyed our time with DIG VR and gave it a 3.5/5-star review, describing it as “an enjoyable premise backed by a vibrant presentation, comically silly minigames, and beautifully British humor.”

DIG VR launched on Quest last November and recently received fresh content in its follow-up Winter Update. The update welcomed new cosmetics, a time trial mode, and an online leaderboard. Developer Just Add Water also introduced two new radio stations, Oceanic Beach Radio and Cultural Rhythms Radio, for players to listen to as they work.

DIG VR is available on Quest now, and it's coming to PS VR2 and SteamVR on March 20.

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Steam Now Warns Players If Early Access Games Aren't Updated For Over A Year

Steam now issues a warning to players if an early access game hasn't been updated for over a year.

While it's unclear when this specific update launched, SteamDB — a third-party database that tracks everything relating to Valve's platform — recently spotted the change on Bluesky. The exact threshold isn't confirmed but so far, the earliest inactivity warning we've seen is 12 months for Escape The Backrooms, the 2022 horror game that's since removed official VR support.

Escape The Backrooms update warning saying the game hasn't been updated for over 12 months.
Escape The Backrooms update warning as of February 5, 2025

From there, the warning appears to go up on a monthly basis. For example, Build and Drive Racing states it's not been updated for 15 months, Phantom Matrix lists 18 months, while Ashen Arrows and Paranormal Hunter state 19 and 20 months respectively. Other SteamVR Early Access games like H3VR, Ghosts of Tabor, Sword Reverie, Bootstrap Island and Strayed don't show any warnings.

We've contacted Valve for further clarification about this new change, and we'll update this article if we learn more.

It's the latest development we've seen from the Steam Early Access program, which Valve began in 2013. Presently, each EA game requires developers to fill out an FAQ stating why it chose EA, how long they anticipate a game to be in EA, how the full release is planned to differ, and more. This new addition should make it easier for players to determine whether a game remains supported.

Budget Cuts Ultimate & PowerWash Simulator VR Are The Quest+ Monthly Games For February

From room-scale stealth thrills to power washing everything you see, here are the Quest+ monthly games for February 2025.

What Is Meta Quest+?

The Meta Quest+ subscription offering lets you redeem two pre-selected games each month, alongside a rotating selection of titles in its Games Catalog.

Redeeming these monthly games ensures continued access while your subscription remains active. Should you cancel your membership, previously redeemed games become accessible again if you resubscribe.

Quest+ is available on Quest 2, Quest Pro, Quest 3, and Quest 3S.

Last month's redeemable monthly games were Dragon Fist: VR Kung Fu and Real VR Fishing. This month, February 2025, the Quest+ monthly redeemable games are Budget Cuts Ultimate and PowerWash Simulator VR.

Budget Cuts Ultimate

Budget Cuts was one of the earliest room-scale VR titles to take advantage of tracked controllers, originally released as a short demo for the HTC Vive launch back in early 2016.

In 2018 Budget Cuts saw a full release on PC VR, turning the promising demo into a 3-4 hour game. When Oculus Quest released in 2019, Budget Cuts was a top requested title for a standalone port, but there didn't seem to be much prospect of it happening - until it did.

In 2023, five years after its PC VR release, Budget Cuts Ultimate released for Quest and PlayStation VR2, bringing the title and its sequel to standalone and console VR.

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We gave Budget Cuts Ultimate a "Recommended" rating when we reviewed it at launch. "Several flaws hamper this experience and you can tell this was originally conceived during a different time, though great action-stealth gameplay and good humor make Budget Cuts Ultimate worth a look".

PowerWash Simulator VR

PowerWash Simulator VR brings the viral cleaning game to Quest headsets.

In our review of PowerWash Simulator VR we called out its disappointing graphics and soundless ambience, while acknowledging that it "ports a lot of the brilliance that made the original game stand out", giving it a three star rating overall.

PowerWash Simulator VR Review: A Relaxing Port, But No Clean Sweep
Our review of PowerWash Simulator VR is here – it’s a relaxing port, but no clean sweep... Read more:

Last month, FuturLab announced that it would no longer be updating or supporting PowerWash Simulator VR, stating that while the studio “absolutely love and believe in VR,” the VR team was “working on a platform which costs us more than it makes.”

PowerWash Simulator Ends VR Support As Dev Redeploys Team To Other Projects
PowerWash Simulator VR support will not continue on Quest, with FuturLab citing cost concerns and job security.

Quest+ Games Catalog

While Budget Cuts Ultimate and PowerWash Simulator VR are the games subscribers can redeem, Quest+ also offers a games catalog of titles that any Quest+ subscribers can play.

Here's the full Quest+ Games Catalog library as of February 5, 2025:

  • 2MD: VR Football Unleashed ALL☆STAR
  • Acron: Attack of the Squirrels!
  • Asgard's Wrath 2
  • BAM
  • Carve Snowboarding
  • Cook-Out
  • Cubism
  • Demeo
  • Espire 1: VR Operative
  • Fruit Ninja
  • Garden of the Sea
  • Guardians Frontline
  • Hand Physics Lab
  • Home Sports
  • Hunt Together
  • In Death: Unchained
  • Jurassic World Aftermath Collection
  • No More Rainbows
  • Onward
  • Party Versus
  • Premium Bowling
  • Puzzling Places
  • Red Matter
  • Shattered
  • Song in the Smoke
  • Space Pirate Trainer DX
  • Sweet Surrender
  • Synth Riders
  • Tetris Effect: Connected
  • Until You Fall
  • Walkabout Mini Golf
  • Wallace and Gromit in the Grand Getaway

Meta Quest+ costs $8 per month or $60 annually.

Meta Plans To Launch "Half A Dozen More" Wearable Devices

In Meta's CTO's leaked memo, he referenced the company's plan to launch "half a dozen more AI powered wearables".

Andrew Bosworth's memo, which was leaked to Business Insider after apparently being shared with all Reality Labs staff back in November, was a rallying cry for 2025. In it, he told staff that this year will determine whether its hardware & metaverse division is "the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure".

But buried within the memo is also the mention of Meta's plan to launch half a dozen, six, more "AI powered wearables", seemingly referencing this year. So what could these be?

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Oakley Meta Glasses

Two weeks ago, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported that Meta and EssilorLuxottica plan to expand their smart glasses product lineup later this year with Oakley Meta glasses.

Gurman has a fairly strong track record of reporting Meta's moves in advance.

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While the Ray-Ban glasses have a camera on one side and are aimed towards all consumers, the Oakley glasses would have the camera in the center and be intended for "cyclists and other athletes", Gurman said.

HUD Glasses

The Verge, The Information, The Financial Times, and Gurman have all previously reported that Meta intends to release smart glasses with a heads-up display (HUD), codenamed Hypernova, later this year.

It's still unclear whether or not these glasses will carry the Ray-Ban brand, but what is known is that they will include a small waveguide display on one of the lenses to show notifications, output text instead of audio from the Meta AI assistant, and to help frame photos before taking them.

Meta’s HUD Glasses Reportedly Won’t Be Ray-Ban Branded
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In the same report in which he described the Oakley Meta glasses, Gurman  says that Meta employees are telling him to expect Hypernova to cost around $1000. Further, he says Meta "has discussed" including the EMG wristband (demoed with the Orion prototype) in the box of Hypernova, with a backup plan of using touch controls on the temple like its other smart glasses.

The Neural Wristband

As mentioned, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported that Meta's HUD glasses may come with Meta's neural wristband.

Meta has been working on this wristband since at least 2019, when it acquired a startup called CTRL Labs, and at Meta Connect 2024 it demoed its latest version of the band as the input device for the Orion AR glasses to select press and influencers.

The neural wristband leverages a technology called electromyography (EMG) that can track subtle finger movements by sensing muscle activation in your wrist.

In practice, this lets the wearer use their thumb as a virtual D-pad, without the need to be in view of any camera, letting you "swipe, click, and scroll while keeping your arm resting comfortably by your side". This would even work if your hand was in a jacket pocket, or any other scenario where it's completely occluded from the glasses.

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Around a year ago, Mark Zuckerberg said the neural wristband would ship as a product "in the next few years".

Meta Buds?

In the same report in which Gurman described the Oakley Meta glasses and the apparent price and input device for Meta's HUD glasses, Gurman said Meta is also working on an AirPods competitor.

Gurman claims these Camera Buds, as they're called internally, would "built-in cameras that can see the outside world and take action using AI".

However, he also says there have been "snags" with the device's development. "It’s harder for people with long hair to use the device", he writes, and Meta is still unsatisfied with the angle of the cameras. For these reasons, and because development is still early, Gurman expects Meta's earbuds "likely wouldn’t hit the market for a couple of years".

A Smartwatch?

Back in 2021, The Verge's Alex Heath reported that Meta was working on a smartwatch. The device was said to have two cameras: one on the front for video calling, and one on the rear to be used as an action camera, as the main watch body would have been easily detachable from its frame.

Heath's report said Meta planned to launch the watch in summer 2022 with a price of around $350. But just as that summer arrived, Bloomberg reported that Meta had canceled the watch, in a report that included apparent images of it.

According to Bloomberg, the reason behind the cancelation was that the company discovered that the rear camera would have made it impossible to add neural sensing, electromyography (EMG), in future versions, which was its long-term plan.

Images of the canceled Meta smartwatch, leaked to Bloomberg.

Two and a half years later, in the same report in which Mark Gurman described the Oakley Meta glasses and the apparent price and input device for Meta's HUD glasses, Gurman said that Meta had restarted work on a smartwatch.

"Meta is now again weighing the idea of releasing a watch as early as this year — with a display that would be able to show photos taken with the company’s smart glasses", Gurman wrote.

What Else?

So far we've listed five likely candidates for hardware Bosworth was referring to. It's possible his mention of "half a dozen" was rough, rather than meaning precisely six, and these are all

But could there be something else on Meta's hardware roadmap that no one has yet predicted? We'll keep a close eye on the company for any hints or leaks at its hardware roadmap for 2025.

Hands-On: The Roto VR Explorer Chair Turns You In VR

The Roto VR Explorer attempts to change the way you engage with VR experiences by using motorized 360-degrees spinning motion and haptic feedback. Officially listed as a Made For Meta product and priced around $800, we took the Explorer for a spin. Read on for our hands-on report.

Roto's aim with the Explorer is to entice VR gamers who crave a seated experience that's a step up from traditional swivel chairs. In the Roto Explorer, you feel the sensation of rotation provided by the chair's motor activated by an included tracking puck that is attached to the top of a headset, causing the chair to rotate itself to match the direction of your gaze. In select titles that use the Roto VR SDK, of which only one exists so far, the chair instead rotates to match the position of the virtual vehicle you're in, adding a deeper sense of realism.

The Facts

What is it? Motorized 360° spinning / haptic chair for VR
Platforms: Quest (other headsets via external head tracker puck)
Company: Roto VR
Price: $799

Unboxing and Setup

Weighing in at a whopping seventy-five pounds, the Explorer package required some muscle and a little bit of assistance to maneuver from the porch into my setup area. Thanks to a well-organized manual and easy-to-follow video guide, after about 30 minutes of contorting myself across my living room floor, I found myself perched atop a modern-looking stool with adjustable seat height and footrest, a built-in cable management system, and onboard haptics.

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Once it was all set up I strapped on the included head tracking puck completing a full 360-degree turn was fluid and the chair is responsive to rapid direction changes. The Roto Explorer also features built-in haptics via a transducer bolted to the seat bottom, but the effect in most games is little more than repurposed bass translated into vibrations from the seat cushion. There is a Roto SDK developers can add to enhance this, but from my time in the chair the haptics are nothing like the feeling you might get in specific areas of your body from vests like bHaptics. That said, wearing one of those vests in combination with using the chair could be a thrilling experience.

What’s In the Box

Roto VR Explorer Chair
Head Tracker
AC Adapter
Basic Cable Magazine

Specifications:

Height: 88.5 cm / 2 ft 10 in
Rotating Diameter: 84 cm / 2 ft 9 in
Weight: 30 kg / 66 lbs

Gameplay Testing 

While I initially thought the Roto Explorer would be amazing for racing and flying games, I quickly remembered those kind of games really wouldn't be a good fit for this chair in its current state due to the fact that it currently has no form of VR motion compensation. Elliott Myers, founder at Roto VR, tells UploadVR they're working on first party motion compensation software that would allow virtual environments to react to the movements of the chair, and vice versa.

Without motion compensation in place, as you turn the wheel in a virtual car or tilt the stick of an aircraft to the side, the seat won't change its physical direction to match your new virtual direction. So games like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 and Assetto Corsa EVO are not better in this chair than any other, though we'll follow up if that changes.

What is a good fit for the Roto Explorer, though, are VR games with gaze-based directional movement. That means titles like Iron Man VR and SWARM 2 where you already tilt your head as part of your movement. These match up their gameplay incredibly well to the chair's effects.

Iron Man VR's gaze-based navigation seemed synced up with the rotations of the chair. Pulling off superhero maneuvers high above the ground, as I turned fluidly in the direction of my gaze, the chair amplified my sense that I was actually flying as Tony Stark freshly suited up in a Mark V flying freely through the skies.

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Switching to SWARM and SWARM 2, I navigated their familiar and chaotic worlds in ways I never had. Swinging and flying across the maps provided a visceral intensity. The chair's responsiveness kept pace with my rapid head movements, and the tracking felt solid. The rotating chair turned this game I had played so many times into something a bit different, helping me become more fully immersed.

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Testing FPS and action titles felt a bit odd at first. I've played a lot of VR shooters from the comfort of my regular office chair over the years, but feeling the seat rotate as I turned my head took some getting used. After a few minutes though, I started to see the utility in having this chair as a gameplay enhancement in these titles. You can turn pretty quickly to face on an oncoming enemy and this was a cool feeling, although not as much a game changer as the sensations you get in titles with flying or swinging involved.

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The last game I tested, and currently the one and only native game to use the Roto SDK, was Dig VR. Hopefully we'll see more developers incorporating the Roto VR SDK into games where use of the chair would feel appropriate. At the time of this writing, if you buy a Roto VR Explorer, Dig VR is the only natively working game available.

Motorized Swivel VR?

The spinning mechanism and haptic feedback of the Roto VR Explorer does provide a more immersive gaming experience for certain titles, adding an exhilarating layer of physical sensations to VR gameplay. It’s also relatively quiet during operation, provided the rumble feature is turned off, which is a plus for late-night gaming sessions in family households or apartment buildings where you don’t want to disturb the neighbors. For such an expensive chair, though, the comfort could be much better. I'm 5'11" and weigh around 260 pounds, and found the rounded stool-like seat and chair's low back were too small and stiff for my body type. After about 20-30 minutes in the chair my hip and back started to hurt. This aching made me want to stop playing, which is not typical for seated VR sessions where I would normally spend several hours playing.

The footguard is also not permanently attached and, during some of my game testing sessions, my feet would brush against it, causing the loosely fitting plastic shell to shift out of place. This triggers a very shrill alarm, creating a jarring distraction during intense moments of gameplay. The alarm is so loud that the sound has been the subject of a few complaints from my family members. I hope in the future Roto VR provides a way to either turn this volume down or, even better, just disable the alarm altogether.

Comfort Enhancements On The Way

While at CES this year I tried comfort and quality of life upgrades on the way from Roto VR. The demo at the booth featured a full seat back and various controller attachments that look to make the experience more comfortable and functional. While there, I also talked to Steve Corrigan from Roto VR about the company's latest efforts.

We've opted to publish this hardware analysis as a hands-on breakdown rather than a formal review because, while we think this is interesting for our readers to know about, Roto VR needs to gain more native support from developers and offer solid motion compensation for traditional simulator style games to warrant serious consideration. We'll revisit this hardware for a full review in the future once we have had a chance to test out the comfort enhancements and if the company should see broader developer support.

Overall, the Roto VR Explorer chair does deliver an innovative approach to seated VR and one that enhances the immersive qualities of certain games. My time spent playing games like Iron Man VR and SWARM 2 was exhilarating, but reconciling these standout experiences with the chair's cost isn't going to work out right now for the vast majority of VR owners.

While I enjoyed my time using the Roto VR Explorer, I can't justify replacing my regular and very comfortable swivel chair. A seat that turns you in VR is an interesting idea, but with only one game officially supported, no motion compensation, comfort issues for plus-sized players out of the box and an entry price of $800, there's a long way to go before Roto is ready to change the way most people enjoy seated VR.

VR Arcade Shooter Aim Assault Is Launching A Steam Demo Next Week

DIVR Labs' VR rails shooter Aim Assault is debuting a demo on February 13 for PC VR.

Developed by DIVR Labs, Aim Assault is a VR homage to the rail shooters of arcades past. Set across a series of high-octane combat levels, players are tasked with tinkering and perfecting their gunplay style as a complex barrage of enemy fighters seeks to take them out. The studio recently released gameplay demo footage, which you can see below.

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“VR gave us a rare opportunity to recreate the arcade shooters we all loved as kids in a new way,” explained Aim Assault Game Director Jakub Kucera via the Steam Page. “Because of VR, we have new tools to immerse players even more into a game full of action.”

According to the Steam Page, Aim Assist also features a global leaderboard with multiple loadout and difficulty options to choose between when competing for high scores. Players can pick to dual-wield or single-wield their guns, as well as toggle on and off their crosshairs. Aim assist is not supported, reloading is done by pointing your gun to the ground, while shooting medkits increases your health.

The free demo will focus on the first level of Aim Assault’s campaign, allowing players to experience high-octane bullet dodging first-hand. This comes ahead of the full release, and the release date is currently unconfirmed.

Aim Assault's demo will be available on February 13 for PC VR.

Boxed Out Is A Colorful VR Puzzle Game Heading For Quest This March

Boxed Out, a color matching VR puzzle game, is heading for Quest next month.

Developed by Red Chain Games, who are also handling upcoming VR aerial combat game Supersonic Fight, the game initially launched in 2017 for PC VR before reaching PlayStation VR in 2021. Previously titled Boxed In, it's been renamed 'Boxed Out' on Meta Quest to avoid clashing with a different game of the same name. Here's the announcement trailer.

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Red Chain Games describes the title as a fast-paced game where players are trapped in a room filled with continuously multiplying boxes. Using a device known as the BlockOTron™ 3000, this allows you to change the box colors and matching up the same colored blocks causes them to explode, while the pace gradually increases.

Promising a soundtrack ranging from EDM to Saturday Morning Cartoons, Boxed Out also includes four themes at launch: Original, Pastel, Code, and Soft Play. In a press release, the studio confirms more themes will arrive over the next 12 months. The trailer also highlights a hidden jetpack minigame inspired by Pilotwings, where players fly through rings across a tropical island.

Boxed Out arrives on March 24 for the Meta Quest platform.

Meta's VP Of VR/MR, Mark Rabkin, Is Leaving The Company Next Month

Meta's VP of VR/MR, Mark Rabkin, is leaving the company in March, citing "family health issues".

Rabkin has been at Meta for 18 years, having joined as a software engineer working on ads back in 2007, and has led the Quest headset and Horizon OS teams at Meta for just over four years, since just after the launch of Quest 2.

"I really tried to tackle both the home and work challenges at once [...] but, in my heart I know clearly that I have to pause and focus on the most important board in front of me: the home one", Rabkin writes in his departing note, shared on Facebook.

Despite these family challenges, Rabkin describes 2024 as "a pretty amazing work year", highlighting the significant 2D window positioning upgrades his teams brought to Horizon OS, as well as the opening up of the store and launch of Batman: Arkham Shadow.

"Through the year, I really tried to tackle both the home and work challenges at once. And it was a pretty amazing work year. We launched our amazing Quest 3S headset, so many incredible things in the OS (2D apps! Spatial Computing OS + UX! Open Store! Media! Batman!), and also cooked up some disruptive, stunning innovation for the future. I had a lifetime honor to present our vision at Connect.

But, in my heart I know clearly that I have to pause and focus on the most important board in front of me: the home one. I am going to be leaving Meta and taking a significant period off from working to focus on that and make it go as good as I can make it. It’s the toughest of calls. It’s also the right one."

He goes on to describe presenting Meta's vision for Horizon OS at Connect 2024 as a "lifetime honor", and references unannounced "disruptive, stunning innovation for the future".

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Meta teased “the future of Horizon OS” at Connect today, showing a concept of a complete redesign.

Meta isn't yet saying who will take Rabkin's place, though told Meta Reality Labs staff that Vishal Shah, Meta's VP Of Metaverse, will "share the great plan he already has in store for the role and its timing very soon."

"MR/VR/XR/AR devs and fans – I will leave you in good hands. More to come.", Rabkin says in a post on X.

On Threads, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Rabkin's tenure at Meta an "amazing run", and said that he's "welcome back anytime", suggesting Rabkin may one day return to Meta Reality Labs.