Please note that this list was provided two weeks ago by Valve and is subject to change. Developers can (and previously have) drop out of Next Fest if their demo is not ready or release a demo on short notice.
In response to fan feedback, the new 'Survival Mode' allows players to play the game without the restrictions of the main campaign.
Neolithic Dawn, a survival game set in the neolithic era, started out in Early Access on Quest in June 2025 followed by PC VR in September. Both versions went to full release in December 2025.
The latest update from developer Neolithic LLC adds a fan-requested quick play 'Survival Mode' option. This new mode has every map unlocked and is free of any objectives and story-based missions to complete, designed for players looking for a more open, sandbox survival experience.
The update also expands the Saugeen Bluffs area, adds support for bHaptics vests, and improves the main menu interface and inventory system.
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We went hands-on during the Early Access period and had a mostly positive experience despite the bugs and jank to be expected in Early Access titles. In our hands-on piece, we said "Exploring the world is wonderful. Environments are vast and varied. There are moments of pure wonder and true terror."
Iron Guard: Salvation, a VR sci-fi tower defense game, is launching on PlayStation VR2 in March.
Iron Guard: Salvation is a tower defense strategy game in which players must build and upgrade bases and weapons while managing resources and fending off waves of enemies in VR. A story-driven campaign mode offers a cinematic experience across 30 hand-crafted missions.
Iron Guard: Salvation is a direct sequel to Xlab Digital's Iron Guard, which first debuted in 2021 and was ported to PS VR2 last year.
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We previously reviewed Iron Guard: Salvation when it released on Quest, where our reviewer found it to be a strong tower defense game that might have benefitted from heavier implementation of RTS mechanics and inclusion of a multiplayer mode.
Underwater PC VR narrative puzzle game Echoes of Mora will launch in April on Steam.
Selkies Interactive announced at the recent Convergence Games Showcase that their debut title, Echoes of Mora, will launch April 29 on Steam. The announcement comes alongside a haunting story trailer and a 30-minute playable demo during Steam Next Fest, which begins today.
Echoes of Mora is described by its makers as an exploration-driven mystery with high emotional stakes, a fusion of Subnautica's atmospheric aquatic exploration and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture's melancholic storytelling. You follow and guide Mora. After her brother disappears near a cursed lake, Mora sets out to find him. As the lake's water rises, threatening the village, your help is crucial. You'll share clues you find in the underwater world, guide Mora in the past, and accompany her on a time-bending journey that could decide the fate of her family and village.
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When we previously covered Echoes of Mora, our writer felt that "While [Echoes of Mora] is by no means a seamless swimming simulator, its compelling narrative beats and dreamy world design provide more than enough intrigue to earn it a place on my wishlist."
You can wishlist Echoes of Mora on Steam today in advance of its full release in April.
MacGyver-esque narrative VR puzzler Fixer Undercover hits Quest on February 26, with PlayStation VR2 and PC VR to come later.
Fixer Undercover was first revealed as a demo on the now defunct Meta Quest App Lab in 2024 and officially announced at the UploadVR Summer Showcase last year, promising a return to the VR escape room style puzzles popularized by games like the I Expect You To Die series and The Room VR: A Dark Matter.
As a special agent codenamed 'The Fixer', players will infiltrate a prison under the guise of a maintenance worker. Alongside a witty drone named Winston, a set of basic handyman tools like a hammer, grinder, pliers, and pipe wrench are used to solve a series of environmental puzzles.
Per a post on developer Creativity AR's Discord, it expects a full playthrough to take roughly six to eight hours.
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Fixer Undercover Gameplay Trailer
Fixer Undercover was originally planned as an Early Access release in late January, but Creativity changed course in a social media post, saying "To be completely honest: we looked at the project and realized it wasn't ready to open its doors yet... We want to release a complete game, not a broken one. We apologize for the delay."
Fixer Undercover releases this Thursday on Meta Quest 3, 3S, and Pro for $14.99. The game's official website states that versions for Steam and PlayStation VR2 are planned for "a later date." The game can be wishlisted on Steam now.
Apple Immersive documentary Top Dogs brings you up close with spectacular champion breeds, but traditional filmmaking choices keep the immersion from taking Best in Show.
Apple Immersive Video is particularly well suited for narrative documentary content. It can give visitors virtual access to real, visually stunning moments in behind-the-scenes experiences and destinations that most of us will not be able to physically visit in our lifetime. The forced perspective of the 180-degree format also offers a familiar entry point for acclaimed directors accustomed to crafting video content for traditional flat screens.
What Is Apple Immersive Video?
The Apple Immersive Video format is 180° stereoscopic 3D video with 4K×4K per-eye resolution, 90FPS, high dynamic range (HDR), and spatial audio. It's typically served with higher bitrate than many other immersive video platforms.
We highly praised Apple Immersive Video in our Vision Pro review. It's not possible to cast or record Apple Immersive Video though, so you'll have to take our word for it unless you have access to a Vision Pro.
Paired with Apple TV’s reputation for visually polished and compelling storytelling, I went into the two Top Dogs Apple Immersive episodes with high expectations. But narrative and compelling visuals were not enough to create quality immersion. My role in the world of Top Dogs remained undefined, and certain creative choices gave me reason to…paws. It did not fully consider how experiencing the benefits of immersion inside a headset should feel different from simply watching a story unfold on a screen.
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Spectacular dogs and clear storytelling.
The behind-the-scenes access that gets you up close to some incredible dogs makes this worth stepping into. I found myself face to face with breeds I have only ever seen on screens or in photos, and others I had never encountered before, each impeccably groomed and styled for the spotlight. The sheer range of dogs and their personalities is striking. They are the undeniable stars, and the stereoscopic depth brought me closer to these dogs than a traditional screen ever could.
The narrative also worked well. In just a combined thirty three minutes, I walked away with a clear understanding of how this renowned competition works. I learned what judges evaluate and gained insight into different aspects of the events. Participants are introduced cleanly. Stakes are easy to follow. Despite the short runtime, nothing feels rushed.
In many ways, I felt closer to this world than I would through a traditional screen. But getting close is not the same as feeling fully present within it.
Proximity is not the same as presence
Across both episodes, I kept returning to one question: who am I supposed to be here? Given Apple TV’s storytelling pedigree and the immersive potential of Apple Vision Pro, I expected Top Dogs to place me unmistakably inside its world rather than remind me at times that I was still watching from constantly shifting camera positions that were often stationary and sometimes moving speedily. My sense of embodiment wavered as scale and perspective changed without explanation or logic. Quick cuts shifted me from floating down an aisle of Dalmatians at eye level with their handlers, to sitting close-up at eye level with dogs, to looking up at handlers.
As a visitor to the documentary, I also did not feel like my presence was intended to be acknowledged. Those being interviewed spoke to an off-camera interviewer and avoided glancing into the lens, a choice typical of traditional flat-screen content. The only characters that seemed to recognize my presence on occasion were some of the dogs who took momentary interest in the camera. Locking eyes with Australian Shepherd Viking, 2024 Best in Show winner, was memorable. I impulsively shifted back when another dog jumped to the camera for a kiss. More moments like this would have helped with the sense of presence.
Traditional film language can limit immersion.
Directed and narrated by BAFTA and Peabody winner John Dower in his first immersive documentary, Top Dogs reflects a filmmaker clearly comfortable with traditional documentary language. But immersive storytelling demands intention around experience, not just storytelling.
The flyball competition segment showed what worked. The camera remained steady and well positioned as if I was watching from the sidelines. It gave me enough time to take in the space and choose where to look. The more time I had to notice details within the scene, the more immersed I felt. As the dogs sprinted back and forth, I turned my head naturally to follow them. The action defined my movement in the world. In contrast to many other moments in Top Dogs, this moment allowed me to feel confident in my spectator perspective, and present.
Framing and editing choices, however, often reflected traditional documentary grammar in ways that weakened immersion. Action and even faces were occasionally partially cropped within the 180 degree frame. Extreme close ups that might feel intimate on a flat screen felt odd and uncomfortable in headset. Photos appeared floating in black backgrounds rather than integrated into the environment. On screen text reinforced the sense of watching a framed production rather than being there. The quick cuts also shifted me between locations and perspectives without spatial grounding or transition of any sort. I would have liked to see more movement from the dogs and less movement from the camera.
When traditional documentary grammar dominates, the headset begins to feel optional. At several points, I found myself toggling from full Immersive Video to the windowed view to avoid some creative choices that felt jarring when fully immersed. I also found myself wondering why this was not simultaneously released as Apple TV content for more people to see it outside headset, given how closely its film language already aligns with traditional screens.
Google Glimmer is the company's design language for the interfaces in coming Gemini smart glasses with transparent heads-up displays, and eventually true AR glasses too.
Small Screens Without The Struggle
On a traditional screen, designers fill a rectangle, and a VR headset stretches the canvas to a full sphere. On display glasses, the usable area is much smaller and always competes with real life. That alone calls for apps with glanceable layouts and a simple menu system. We saw a demo of Google’s prototype smart glasses at last year’s I/O.
Google Glimmer suggest light content on dark backgrounds.
Google describes the display as a space you opt into with focus, not something you passively absorb. These glasses are essentially heads-up displays (HUDs), not screens you stare at for hours. For daily use, display smart glasses should use a small area that allows you to shift attention briefly, then return to the real world at a moment’s notice.
Since screen colors blend with the background, Google recommends maintaining intensity instead of maximizing saturation since darker colors fade away on transparent screens.
Resolution, Aspect Ratio, And Font Limits
Google also covered legibility, noting designers should base font size on what the eye can see clearly at arm’s length. Smart glasses displays often have tighter resolution limits and less forgiving optics, especially near edges. The predictable aspect ratios of mobile design no longer apply.
Bold type is easier to read on transparent screens.
Apps shouldn’t display dense lists in tiny type, and even content should shift toward fewer words. Readability requires stronger contrast, heavier fonts, and clearer spacing. Google suggests its Sans Flex typeface as a good choice.
Power Is Part Of The Design
Battery life is another hard constraint for smart glasses, since weight is held to a minimum. Google calls for outlines instead of filled blocks to avoid halation (light bleed) and reduce power drain. Fewer lit pixels, transient messages, and optimizing motion are less taxing on the tiny thermal and battery envelope of smart glasses.
Transparent displays benefit from brighter graphics with less saturated colors.
Google’s Glimmer is more than a style preference. It’s a plan to make the most of the limited display area, real-world backgrounds, legibility limits, and the challenges of daily use. To learn more, check Google’s guide on Jetpack Compose Glimmer.
Pirates VR arrived to standalone VR a full year after its original PC VR release. As expected, there have been some graphical compromises to bring the game to Quest, but the overall experience remains intact.
UploadVR originally reviewed Jolly Roger on PC VR in 2025, so if you are curious about the actual game itself, you should read our review. Note, however, that the game has received significant updates since then that address some things pointed out in the review. For this article, I replayed the entire game on PC VR, followed by the Quest port, so I experienced the improvements firsthand.
The sardonic, oftentimes annoying parrot companion's dialogue can be toggled on or off. Frankly, this option alone is worth half a star back on the rating (I'm only half kidding). A new intro and notes scattered throughout the campaign flesh out the story a bit more by filling in the backstory of Davy Jones and a reason why the player character embarks on the quest to begin with. Motion controls have been implemented to the swimming sections, a welcome addition for immersion. Lastly, the enemy AI is stated to be improved.
Equipment Used
My PC uses a Ryzen 5 5600X processor with 64 gigs of DDR4 RAM and an RTX 5070 Ti GPU.
I replayed the PCVR version on Steam using a Quest 3 via Virtual Desktop on the Ultra preset in VD. In game, I left the graphics on the default medium setting. The highest caused some stutters on my PC when I started recording.
For standalone, I played and recorded natively on Quest 3 with a metrics meter running to monitor framerate. This game is NOT available for Quest 2 or Quest Pro, so those were not tested.
You can find the minimum and recommended specs on the Steam page to learn more.
The Quest version uses two common standalone VR optimization methods. The first is Application Spacewarp (ASW), an optimization technique where the game renders at 36 frames per second, then the system synthesizes the missing frames to output 72 frames per second to the display. This is most noticeable in the form of micro stutters when grabbing objects. The second is fixed foveated rendering, where pixels on the periphery of the field of view are rendered at a lower resolution than the center of the view. This is noticeable if you keep your head still and move your eyes in any direction.
The aforementioned new intro is a good place to start when comparing the graphics. This scene has a pirate, the brother of Davy Jones, sending you on a quest to find the infamous pirate and his treasure. On both versions, the lone candle on the table provides some dynamic lighting. Doing something as simple as picking up a wine bottle and watching the light of the candle dance around it would've been unheard of for standalone a few years ago. The lamp you acquire early in the game also behaves the same way. Most of this game takes place in dark caves and dungeons and the lamp lets the developers keep dark corners dark, instead of that sort-of-dark-but-really-just-gray darkness seen in previous standalone efforts. Having said that, there is a significant difference in the lighting. The lamp on PC illuminates and casts shadows against everything while the Quest lamp is more selective.
Pirates VR: Jolly Roger PCVR vs Quest comparison
I expected the draw distance looking out to the ocean to be reduced by a heavy use of fog, but that's not the case. The entire area is intact with a surprising amount of detail preserved. Little things, like the dust particles when grabbing a vine add to the overall experience. However, looking out to the horizon caused a major frame drop I experienced in the game, going from 72 to the low 50s. There is quite a bit of texture pop-in, but that was there with the PC version as well (especially underwater) unless the PC graphics were highest setting and even then, the odd rock or bush would still pop into view as you approached it. The level of detail and texture quality on the environment items (rocks, ground, walls, plants) have clearly been reduced, but not to the point of breaking immersion. The skeletons you spend the entire game fighting are more detailed on PC than Quest, but this didn't really stand out until encountering the enemies wearing clothes later in the game.
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Even the water (mostly) holds up. Water in general is a struggle for standalone headsets and Jolly Roger doesn't buck that trend, but it holds up better than most Quest games. There's an extensive stretch spent underwater about a third of the way through the game and Split Light Studio (in partnership with Incuvo) translate that well to standalone, albeit with an odd blue sheen in the distance I did not notice on PC.
Overall, this is a strong PC to standalone port. It feels more like playing a PC game on the lowest settings with reduced texture quality as opposed to past Quest ports where entire assets, like grass, benches, and trees are removed and draw distance is drastically reduced.
You can play the 4v1 zero-gravity survival horror game Blackgate as the paywalled alien for free right now until Monday.
Blackgate, heavily inspired by Dead By Daylight and Echo Arena, pits four engineers against one alien for survival. Engineers fly around the space station repairing systems and unlocking an armory full of weapons to incapacitate the alien before it gets to them all. The game is free to play for engineers with an additional $19.99 purchase required to play as the alien.
We played the game in Early Access, noting "it's a game attuned to and takes advantage of VR... Fully immersed in that world, the sense of dread you feel even when other people are nearby is wonderfully achieved." However, the limitations of its host-driven online play made it difficult to finish matches.
For the free to play weekend, starting right now and ending at 10am EST on Monday, the paywalled alien character is free for all players. Developer Megaverse, an original IP division of Fun Train, says it is running this event as a thank you for a recent influx of new players.
In a developer post about its other horror title, The Exorcist Legion VR, undergoing a name change, Fun Train noted a monthly active player base of seventy-five thousand players as of January.
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Blackgate is available on Quest headsets. A PC VR version has been announced with no release date as of yet.
If you've been craving a visit to a cluster of islands that feels like a mix of Animal Crossing and Webfishing, Fish! in VRChat is worth a look.
The new social fishing world from TrickForge Studios features four scenic islands full of unique inhabitants as well as upgradable rods, an array of purchasable boats, and over 20,000 fish to possibly catch.
The islands of Fish! are vibrant with their own special themes.
Loading the map will welcome players to a main lobby where they can choose to go through a short tutorial to understand how fishing mechanics work. Pulling the trigger on a VR controller while holding a fishing rod will cast the line.
Once a fish bites, an exclamation point will appear above the bobber. Press the trigger button while the exclamation point is active and a fishing minigame will begin. Repeatedly pulling the trigger while keeping the fish icon within the goal area of your line will help to reel the fish in. If the fish falls outside of the goal area for too long, the minigame will fail and the fish will escape.
The shops in Fish! stay open 24/7.
Once the fish is caught, it will remain in the player's inventory until it can be sold at the village's shop. Each island has a store for selling goods as well as offering new fishing rods and different types of boats (surfing board, rowboat, dinghy, racing boat, and yacht). Captured fish can contain various appearance and size traits that can affect sale value.
Along with catching fish among the islands is the possibility of obtaining special relic pieces that can be used to enchant fishing rods. Hidden along the nooks and crannies of each island are also scraps of metal that can be used to play a special prize machine for perks, experience, and game currency.
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Although Fish! contains cozy design, it's also hiding plenty of secrets. On one island I found a villager inhabiting a dirt-laden shack who remarked that something terrible occurred to the house's previous inhabitant but wouldn't say what. A small distance away I spotted a headless ghost wandering along a path next to the swamp. A walk up that same path leads to a church where an ungodly eye shines atop the steeple.
Fish! is a standout experience both as a playable game and as an online "destination" to visit. Weather and day cycles affect the islands to provide different vistas throughout play. A sunny day can be overtaken by fog and moody rain, giving way to serene evenings. It truly feels like a fun-filled vacation.
Try to fish out of the fountain if you find yourself here.
Godfall, head of TrickForge Studios, spent almost 8 months with his team to bring the experience to life. The soundtrack and environmental modeling were handled by Godfall and Svenssko while coding and programming were completed by Kittehkun and Gamerexde.
"I think developing for immersive platforms might be in a really good state right now," Godfall explained in an interview with UploadVR. "The goal at TrickForge Studios currently is to keep making great VRChat games, and then expand into Steam and console games in the future."
You might find precious scrap among the wreckage on different islands.
Fish! is currently in beta with expectations to wipe player progress upon the release of 1.0 at the end of the month. Visitors can enjoy the preview with their friends as long as they understand progress must be reset due to the map needing a fresh upload to debut the full game. TrickForge Studios has announced new areas upon the 1.0 release along with secrets and additional content.
"We want to offer everyone a full game experience, with simple optional transactions," said Godfall. "We are very passionate about FISH! and we want to keep the integrity of it."
You can find Fish! on VRChat, available in VR on standalone and PC VR headsets.
Birdseed is a cozy, free-to-play game about photographing silly birds. And trying the Early Access release, I simply love it.
Games are so often obsessed with spectacle, which is paradoxically one of the reasons I so dearly appreciate Birdseed. This gentle game about watching and photographing comically cute birds doesn't shout or overstimulate you. Instead, it invites you to relax, slow down, and simply enjoy a peaceful slice of nature filled with charming, delightfully curious birds.
After my first hands-on session with the Early Access release, I found myself returning over and over, not just to satisfy daily objectives and collect more in-game currency, but to simply exist, to listen to music or the sounds of nature, to hang out and shoot some photos of my hilarious birdbrained pals.
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Serious Photography?
As someone who's been a photographer for over 20 years, and a writer covering the camera industry for more than a decade, I was especially interested in how Birdseed, a game about photographing birds, handles the art and craft of photography.
While I personally love mechanical cameras and the extreme nuance of making a picture with a dedicated camera, adjusting aperture and shutter speed, ISO, and reading all about the finer points of depth-of-field and circle of confusion and other photography nonsense that most of the humans on Earth have never heard about, I understand that highly technical simulations of making pictures don't always make for a good gaming experience. For most people, serious photography is obtuse and opaque and boring.
Birdseed sidesteps that by being incredibly simple. You can't move very far. In fact, you stand (or sit) in just a small central viewpoint from where the whole of your observation and photographing occur. You hold a camera, and that camera has just two controls: It can zoom in and out, and it can take a picture. That's it (for now). There are unlockable lenses of different focal lengths that can be interchanged, and future updates will likely bring art lenses and special effect filters and all of that good stuff. But for now, we're basically using a point-and-shoot, a type of camera that works as its name suggests. Point it at something, shoot, and a picture comes out.
The simplicity of gameplay is beautiful, and perfect for a game that's trying to do what Birdseed is trying to do. That is, put a camera in your hand, and give you something to point it at.
The environment is far from photorealistic, but it still manages to be lush and pretty, presented with artfully-crafted cartoonish simplicity. A pastel sun creeps low across a distant mountain range. Marshmallow clouds drift across the azure sky. Sparkling water dances down a falls while towering evergreens sway in the breeze. And within this beautiful nature scape flit birds of all sorts.
They dance among the branches, preen on the rocks, and soar high in the sky. And they look absolutely stupid (complimentary). They're goofy and silly, delightfully plump and bouncy. Their enormous eyes blink dumbly as they flutter and squawk and bounce. Even when diving on the wind, they look more like bowling pins than sleek products of a million years' evolution. I love these dumb birds.
The Decisive Moment
You have twelve pictures per day, as you're using a film camera, and these images are instantly ejected to be held, looked at, and then stored automatically in your photo album. Photos are rated for their content, as well as for the rarity of the bird, and the bird's poses or actions are marked as well. Capturing a rare bird or a bird in a rare action or pose will rate higher, and higher ratings or achieving certain challenges (for example, photographing a specific type of bird or making a three-star photo) will earn in-game currency which can be spent to buy new lenses and cosmetic items, such as new skins for your camera.
The scarcity of available photos per day is an interesting mechanic, and one that I appreciate. As happens in real life when we're shooting a film camera, the knowledge that we only have a limited number of shots tends to change the way we photograph. It forces me to pause for a moment, or to think deeper during the act of making an image. Do I really want to use a frame to make this photo? The result is that I either make better pictures, or sometimes I miss out. I found the same thing happening in Birdseed.
Exhausting your daily supply of film doesn't necessarily mean the play session is over. You can still hang out in the environment, watch birds, and enjoy the scenery. There's even a radio with which you can listen to some chill tunes.
If there's one major strike against Birdseed, it's that the game is not technically solid. During my play sessions, there were several instances of the game crashing. Restarting my Quest 3S smoothed things out temporarily, but a few more crashes led me to uninstall and reinstall Birdseed, which seemed to mostly solve the problem.
For now, and when it works without crashing, I'm enjoying every minute that I spend in Birdseed. Though those minutes amount to just about 30 per day, it's a nice half hour in VR. Birdseed has been a lovely experience that will surely only become more endearing, fully-fledged, and enjoyable when the game officially releases in March.
Birdseed VR is out now in Early Access on Quest 3 and 3S, with the full release coming in March on Quest and Steam.
The musical rhythm climbing game is coming to Meta Quest Early Access on March 5th.
Developed by Zeitlos Interactive, Peak Rhythm is a VR climbing game that challenges players to climb in sync to an exciting soundtrack. Players grab handholds in time with the beat, which is visually denoted by "Timing Rings" which tighten around the various handholds.
Multiple types of grips add variety. Twist grips ask that you twist your wrist like a volume knob, and Double grips demand you grab hold with both hands. Grip and climb at the right moment and you're propelled ever higher; miss the beat and you fall. The higher you climb, the higher your name lands on the leaderboard.
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The game is launching in Early Access with original tracks spanning several genres, including Drum & Bass, Dubstep, House, and Disco, with tracks from FEISTLING, Killin' Void, Ion Diary, and funiel.
Also launching in Early Access is a fully functional Beatmap Editor, supporting custom maps and players' own music files. Multiplayer is planned as an Early Access update shortly after launch.
Peak Rhythm launches in Early Access on Quest on March 5, 2026 for $12.99.
Horizon+ crossed over 1 million "active subscribers" in 2025, according to Meta.
If you're unaware, Horizon+ is Meta's $8/month game subscription service for Quest headset owners. Subscribers get access to a Games Catalog of around 50 major VR titles, as well as an Indie Catalog of around 50 smaller titles, for a total of around 100 games.
The Games Catalog has grown to include some of the biggest and best VR games of all time, including Asgard’s Wrath 2, Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, Cubism, Demeo, Dungeons of Eternity, Eleven Table Tennis, Ghosts of Tabor, Into the Radius, Job Simulator, Kingspray Graffiti, Les Mills Bodycombat, Maestro, Moss, Pistol Whip, Puzzling Places, Real VR Fishing, Red Matter 1 & 2, Synth Riders, The Climb 2, and The Thrill of the Fight.
Subscribers are also offered two specific games each month, pre-selected by Meta. Redeeming them lets you play them while you remain subscribed, or when you resubscribe in future.
One million subscribers would represent just under $100 million revenue per year, assuming they stick around that long.
All new Quest 3 and Quest 3S purchases come with 3 months of Horizon+. While these new users presumably aren't included in Meta's 1 million figure, we've reached out to the company to explicitly ask.
On a purely financial basis, assuming you're not fundamentally against the idea of a subscription, Horizon+ offers excellent value, and so reaching 1 million subscribers isn't particularly surprising.
Back in October, Meta opened enrollment in the Horizon+ Games Catalog and Indie Catalog to any interested developer, providing they meet the strict requirements.
Horizon+ represents a gradual but significant shift in the way many VR headset owners access premium titles since the launch of the original Oculus Quest almost seven years ago. It could have significant upsides for developers enrolled in the program, while bringing reduced spending for those not.
Apple too takes a similar approach on Vision Pro with the $7/month Apple Arcade subscription, but goes further, not offering the ability to outright buy many of the platform's top games.
Hidden IO's latest update to ZIX upgrades the Unity engine to push the game forward while its new free-to-play spinoff aims to grow its player base.
Neon-themed co-op roguelite ZIX was hitting performance ceilings, according to Hidden IO, limiting its abilities to increase enemy counts and the overall pace of the game. The new Foundation update upgrades the Unity engine, bringing "meaningfully better" performance and enabling higher enemy counts and more intense encounters on each run.
In the dev post, Hidden IO also confirmed it is working on Gogo Dojo, a new free-to-play title designed to showcase the best of ZIX's gameplay style in an easier, more accessible setting. Pre-alpha playtesting for Gogo Dojo is said to start 'soon' in Hidden IO's Discord.
Explaining why it is developing a free game, Hidden IO stated "ZIX lives or dies by how many people play it. We can’t sustain development without players, and the current VR landscape is tough. Many studios are struggling, and we’re not immune to that reality."
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ZIX VR Game Trailer
The Foundation update is said to set the stage to expand ZIX in the future, including a revamped progression system and expanded build variety.
ZIX is available now in Early Access on Quest 3 and Steam for $19.99.
Meta published a blog post for developers wherein it lays out its new strategy for the Quest ecosystem and Horizon Worlds, taking the two in separate directions.
Titled 'Our Renewed Focus in 2026' and written by the VP of Content at Meta Reality Labs, Samantha Ryan, much of the post repeats what CTO Andrew Bosworth has already said in a series of public interviews and Instagram "ask me anything" sessions in recent weeks.
The gist of Meta's new VR and metaverse strategy, according to its executives, is that Horizon Worlds will become "almost exclusively mobile", and the platform will no longer be pushed on Quest owners. Meanwhile, on the VR side, Meta will focus on funding and supporting the third-party developer ecosystem instead of putting out its own blockbuster VR games to compete with them.
Meta is removing individual Horizon Worlds destinations from the in-VR store on Quest, Ryan writes, and "separating worlds from the Store" in the smartphone app.
"We heard your feedback loud and clear, and after a year of collecting data and running experiments, we agree. We’re removing individual worlds from our store shelves in VR, and we’re separating worlds from the Store in our mobile app. This change should result in more impressions for apps on the store."
Last month, Meta also announced that Quest's new 'Navigator' UI will soon become the default and the Horizon Feed will be removed, meaning the headset will boot to a grid of your installed apps. Some Quest owners on the Public Test Channel (PTC) have also received a refreshed Navigator that lacks the 'Worlds' button.
The post also seems to take aim at the gloom and doom discourse around the future of the Quest platform that followed Meta's shutdown of three of its acquired VR game studios, significant layoffs at a fourth, cancelation of the Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel, and deprecation of Horizon Workrooms and Quest headsets for business offering.
As well as noting that Meta has "a robust roadmap of future VR headsets", echoing comments from the CFO and CTO, Ryan claims that VR "is still growing", and that Quest had "a tremendous holiday season that was on par with our 2024 results".
"Total payment volume on the platform remained similar year-over-year in 2025", Ryan writes, also noting that Quest headset sales remain "far ahead of all competitors" while Meta remains "the single biggest investor in the VR industry".
In what seems to be an attempt to reassure developers, Ryan claims Meta is "focused on supporting the third-party developer community" through "strategic partnerships and targeted investments".
Last year multiple new VR games earned millions of dollars of revenue on the platform, Ryan claims, including UG, Hard Bullet and The Thrill of the Fight 2.
"While we’re proud of the world-class work from Oculus Studios over the years, among 1P and 3P apps, 86% of the effective time people spend in their VR headsets is with third-party apps", Ryan notes.
Ryan also claims that in 2025 Meta invested "nearly $150 million in VR developer programs".
Of course, words are cheap, and since acquiring Oculus almost twelve years ago, Meta's VR strategy has constantly shifted under developers' feet. Many will be weary of this instability, and UploadVR will keep a close eye on the Quest platform in the wake of Meta's latest change of direction.
ByteDance's Pico will detail its competitor to visionOS, which will include a shared-space for 2D and spatial apps to run together, set to debut in its next headset.
We first heard that the owner of TikTok's VR platform Pico was working on a high-end headset over two years ago, when The Information reported that Pico 5 had been canceled in favor of a short-term Pico 4 refresh and a longer-term Apple Vision Pro competitor called Project Swan.
Now, Pico has listed a GDC 2026 talk titled 'Bring Your Apps and Games to General Spatial Computing with Project Swan', set to take place on March 12.
The listing says the talk will guide developers through building or porting games to its upcoming "flagship device for general spatial computing", running "Pico OS 6".
Notably, the listing mentions that Pico OS 6 supports "a new paradigm for spatial experiences in which games and apps coexist, allowing a primary experience to run alongside companion applications in a shared environment". Currently, only Apple Vision Pro's visionOS supports this concept of an XR shared space, with both 2D windows and 3D volumes, while Meta's Horizon OS and Google's Android XR are limited to running one spatial experience at a time.
While the listing describes Pico OS 6, it doesn't say anything about the upcoming headset itself, other than calling it a "flagship device". What exactly will it be?
Back in July, The Information reported that Pico was working on an ultralight headset resembling a pair of goggles, with an onboard dedicated image coprocessor and a tethered compute puck, similar to Meta's next headset.
Then, in November, a Chinese news outlet reported that ByteDance's Vice President of Technology said that Pico's 2026 headset will have 4K micro-OLED displays and a dedicated R1-style passthrough chip.
UploadVR's Mike Johnson and Kyle Riesenbeck will be in attendance at GDC 2026, and we've reached out to ByteDance in hopes of going hands-on with Project Swan. We'll let you know if we get a response.
The Exorcist: Legion VR has been forced to rename to Exorcism of the Legion (Last Rites).
Fun Train announced that the license holders for The Exorcist IP chose not to renew the license for the well-regarded horror title. As a result, the game will continue to be available under its new name, Exorcism of the Legion (Last Rites), a name Fun Train fully owns.
This change will take effect when players update the game on their platform of choice. The Steam, Quest, and PlayStation VR2 store listings already show the new name, though the original PlayStation VR version is still listed for sale under the original name, both in a complete set and as individual chapters.
Fun Train's Tarzan VR was delisted from all VR storefronts at the end of January after Fun Train opted out of renewing the license. Additionally, The Twilight Zone VR has also been renamed 'Tales From the Zone' on the Quest and PS VR2 stores.
A sequel, The Exorcist: Legion SIN (Safety In Numbers), with co-op gameplay was announced in late 2021. After an initial delay into 2023, Fun Train announced the game was shelved indefinitely due to the changing VR gaming landscape.
Exorcism of the Legion (Last Rites) is available on Meta Quest and Steam for $24.99, and on PS VR2 and PS VR1, the latter under its original name, for $29.99.
The bizarre weaponry and battle-ready pets of comic shooter Vortex 9 are coming to VR soon on Quest headsets.
Developed by iWorlds, the VR port of Vortex 9 will launch on Meta Quest on February 26. The shooter has previously been released as a free-to-play game on iOS and Google's Play Store, where it has cumulatively amassed more than 10 million players. The VR port will be Crossplay compatible, which could help the game's transition to VR.
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Vortex 9 hangs its hat on absurdity. Players customize a variety of stylish heroes and jump into colorful arenas wielding over-the-top weapons, such as battle lollipops and bubble miniguns. Players can also create and play with cute battle pets across several multiplayer modes, including Team Battle, Solo Deathmatch, and Capture Point.
The infamous cave in which a youth football team was trapped in 2018 is coming to VR spelunking game Cave Crave.
3R Games has announced that the next real-world cave to appear in their virtual reality spelunking game Cave Crave will be Thailand's Tham Luang. The cave gained international attention in 2018 when a youth football team became trapped in the cave by rising flood waters.
To ensure accuracy and appropriate context, the studio is collaborating with diver Vern Unsworth, who directly participated in the rescue, and 3D cave-scanning expert Roo Walters. The new cave will appear in Cave Crave's Tourist Mode, a non-gamified virtual recreation of real-world locations.
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This addition to the game's "real cave" experiences follows an earlier update that added Utah's Nutty Putty Cave, another real-world cave that closed in 2009 after the death of John Edward Jones. 3R Games is careful to note that their real cave recreations aim to offer a way to explore dangerous or permanently closed sites that's both respectful and authentic, and not gamified experiences.
In Cave Crave, you'll explore tight tunnels and caves, spelunk your way through the darkness, mark walls with chalk and use various other caving tools to plumb the depths and escape to the safety of the open air.
Previous updates have added an Arcade Mode, which turns the game into a competitive race against time, where you aim for the quickest run on the online leaderboards.
The music-driven arena combat title is scheduled for release on PS VR2 on March 5.
Rager drops players into a stylized arena for intense, timing-based combat in tune to a dubstep-glitchy-rock soundtrack. We first tried the game as a demo on Steam and said "With a full pace of strikes, blocks, and ducks, RAGER makes me feel like I'm engaging with an immersive fitness routine that's straight out of a movie."
Rager first debuted on Steam and Quest in Early Access in October 2025. A November 2025 update added a new 'freestyle mode' with four new levels. At the time of this article, it remains in Early Access on both platforms with no date for a full release.
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The PS VR2 version will launch with a full campaign comprised of twelve levels and three boss fights along with the aforementioned freestyle mode. The game runs at a native ninety frames per second, features headset haptics, and utilizes eye-tracked dynamic foveated rendering for better visuals and performance.
Meta is accelerating its plans for a Meta Ray-Ban Display successor, hoping to launch later this year, The Information reports.
The current Meta Ray-Ban Display, exclusively available in the US for just under five months now, is a monocular device. It has a small display in the right lens, while your left eye sees nothing. In our review, we described how this "just feels wrong", inducing a constant minor feeling of eyestrain when the display is active for more than a few seconds.
The reason that Meta Ray-Ban Display is monocular is that, as Meta's CTO pointed out in the weeks before the device's launch, the components for a binocular device would cost more than twice as much, since it also requires implementing disparity correction. It would also drive up the bulk and weight, harming social acceptability even further than it already is.
But the cost of in-lens waveguides and miniature light engines should decrease with scale, and Meta executives have described the demand for Meta Ray-Ban Display as significantly higher than expected, leading to the delay of the plan to launch the product internationally.
During development, Meta Ray-Ban Display was internally codenamed Hypernova. Last year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported that Meta plans to release a successor, codenamed Hypernova 2, in 2027. Hypernova 2 would include a display in both eyes, he wrote at the time.
This timeline was corroborated by supply-chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who also said Meta would replace the first-generation product with a successor in 2027.
Now, though, The Information's Jyoti Mann reports that Hypernova 2 will launch this year, not in 2027. While the report doesn't go into much detail, Mann describes Meta executives as being "concerned that launching too many devices in quick succession could confuse customers".
Given that Meta plans to launch its ultralight Horizon OS headset in early 2027, and that multiple sources point towards the company aiming to launch its first true AR glasses in the second half of 2027, shipping binocular HUD glasses this year may make for a less confusing release sequence.
Mann's report says Meta has also revived plans to launch a smartwatch, hoping to release that later this year too.
With the binocular HUD glasses, Meta could be hoping to get ahead of Apple's upcoming smart glasses, widely believed to be launching in early 2027. With Apple's first glasses lacking a display at all, Mark Zuckerberg could be hoping to present Meta as the technology leader in the smart glasses space.
Keep in mind that Meta's hardware roadmap is constantly shifting, and the company frequently spins up and cancels headsets and glasses before they ship.
It's possible that Meta no longer plans for Hypernova 2 to be binocular, or that the sources previously suggesting that it would be binocular were mistaken.
Poll posted by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth on Instagram in response to a question.
Last month, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth was asked on Instagram whether decreasing size and weight or adding another display is the company's priority for the next-generation device.
Bosworth didn't give an answer, but instead posted a poll asking the community for their preference. In the poll, he labeled the options as "Binocular (>$ + weight)" and "Design (smaller, <$)". The wording choices there may hint at Meta's thinking, and thus it's just as possible that later this year we see a sleeker, lighter Meta Ray-Ban Display Gen 2 without the anticipated left-lens display.
Apple Vision Pro is officially getting PC VR foveated streaming, and Samsung Galaxy XR now has the feature via Guy Godin's Virtual Desktop.
Before you continue reading, note that foveated streaming is not the same as foveated rendering, though the two techniques can be used alongside each other. As the names suggest, while foveated rendering involves the host device actually rendering the area of each frame you're currently looking at with higher resolution, foveated streaming refers to sending that area to the headset with higher image quality than the rest of the frame.
It's a term you may have heard in the context of Valve's Steam Frame, where it's a fundamental always-on feature of its PC VR streaming offering, delivered via the USB PC wireless adapter by default.
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Valve's depiction of foveated streaming.
Given that the video decoders in headsets have a limited maximum resolution and bitrate, foveated streaming helps prioritize resolution and compression quality where you're currently looking.
Apple Vision Pro: visionOS 26.4
visionOS 26.4 will bring foveated streaming to Apple Vision Pro, enabling higher-quality wireless VR remote rendering from a local or cloud PC.
Unlike the macOS Spatial Rendering introduced in the main visionOS 26 release last year, which is a relatively high-level system that only supports a local Mac as a host, Apple's developer documentation describes the new Foveated Streaming as a low-level host-agnostic framework.
The documentation highlights Nvidia's CloudXR SDK as an example host, while noting that it should also work with local PCs. Apple even has a Windows OpenXR sample available on GitHub, which to our knowledge is the first and only time the company has even mentioned the industry-standard XR API, never mind actually using it.
The lead developer of the visionOS port of the PC VR streaming app ALVR, Max Thomas, tells UploadVR that he's currently looking into adding support for foveated streaming, but that it will likely be "a lot of work".
Because of how the feature works, Apple's foveated streaming might even enable foveated rendering for tools like ALVR.
Normally, visionOS does not provide developers with any information about where the user is looking – Apple says this is in order to preserve privacy. Instead, developers only receive events, such as which element the user was looking at as they performed the pinch gesture. But crucial to foveated streaming working, the API tells the developer the "rough" region of the frame the user is looking at.
This should allow the host to render at higher resolution in this region too, not just stream it in higher resolution. As always, this will require the specific VR game to support foveated rendering, or to support tools that inject foveated rendering.
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Clip from Apple's visionOS foveated streaming sample app.
Interestingly, Apple's documentation also states that visionOS supports displaying both rendered-on-device and remote content simultaneously. The company gives the example of rendering the interior of a car or aircraft on the headset while streaming the highly detailed external world on a powerful cloud PC, which would be preferable from a perceived latency and stability perspective to rendering everything in the cloud.
We'll keep an eye on the visionOS developer community in the coming months, especially the enterprise space, for any interesting uses of Apple's foveated streaming framework in practice.
Samsung Galaxy XR: Virtual Desktop
Meanwhile, Samsung Galaxy XR is getting foveated streaming via Guy Godin's Virtual Desktop, a $25 third-party app available on Google Play.
Virtual Desktop's latest update also brings foveated streaming to Meta Quest Pro and Play For Dream MR, though this is less notable as those headsets could already achieve foveated streaming through Valve's Steam Link.
Virtual Desktop without foveated streaming (left) and with it (right).
The feature should also work on any future eye-tracked headset where Virtual Desktop is available, Guy Godin tells UploadVR.
Here's the full changelog for Virtual Desktop 1.34.16:
• Added Foveated streaming with eye tracked headsets (Quest Pro, PFD & Galaxy XR) • This uses eye tracking to improve the quality of the image where you are looking.
• Improved color gradients and color accuracy with all codecs by using the full RGB color range instead of limited range (for desktop and PCVR)
• Added 96 fps and 100 fps support on Quest 2, 3/3S (only available on Quest v85 PTC)
• Added Gamepad vibration support (also for controllers when emulating gamepad)
• Added adaptive quantization support with AMD GPUs using H.264/H.264+
• Improved initial connection reliability (for real this time)
• Added 21:9 resolutions for virtual monitor on macOS
• Improved thumbstick scroll on macOS and now it respects the natural scrolling option
• Fixed distorted image with some laptop monitor resolutions • Fixed rare black flash issue when playing some PCVR games • Fixed hand joints offsets and interference with other drivers in SteamVR • Fixed compatibility with Roblox anti-cheat • Fixed more issues with AndroidXR invalid controller poses • Fixed button support for some recent UE5 games • Fixed reprojection stutters with some Unity (OVRPlugin) games
Co-op parcel delivery horror game Deadly Delivery adds a new 'Mystery Room', door microphone, and other new mechanics.
We previously reviewed Flat Head Studio's Deadly Delivery, finding it to be a "clever, effective, and genuinely funny VR co-op that nails the feel of physical play in a spooky, comic world." Flat Head has already updated the game with new content several times since its December launch, adding a new Ice Caves location and several quality of life features.
The Mystery Room adds a new room to the Bloodmoon and Ice Cave levels with more doors for players to explore. Some doors now have a microphone where players have to declare themselves before proceeding with the drop-off. A new item called the Door Reuser is available to purchase from the in-game shop as well, allowing players to deliver an extra package to a door.
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The update also includes general bug fixes, an ammo increase for the Roulette Gun, and wider passages in certain areas to allow multiple players to move around easier.
Deadly Delivery is available on Meta Quest and Steam for $9.99.
Apple's smart glasses will have two cameras, one for capture and the other for computer vision, and launch in early 2027, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.
Gurman, who has a strong track record of reporting on Apple products in advance of an official reveal, has been tracking the company's plans to launch a Ray-Ban Meta competitor for well over a year now.
His previous reports described the company's first glasses as lacking a display, having cameras, microphones and speakers, and being powered by a new Apple-designed chipset, based on the highly efficient S-series chips used in Apple Watch. The product would be used for phone calls, music playback, live translations, turn-by-turn directions, and multimodal AI, which Apple calls Visual Intelligence.
His new report explains how Apple plans to distinguish its hardware from Meta's: "build quality and camera technology".
According to Gurman, the device will use "high-end materials" including acrylic elements and have two cameras, one for high-quality image and video capture, and the other for computer vision.
UploadVR's take on that is that a dedicated computer vision sensor could draw significantly less power than a sensor designed for imaging, and thus be sampled continually for advanced use cases like spatially-aware pedestrian navigation. "Turn left just past that red Honda", instead of "In 200 meters, turn left". It might also enable hand gestures without the need for a wristband – though you would need to raise your arm.
Apple is targeting December for mass production of the glasses, Gurman writes, for a launch in early 2027.
Unlike Meta and Google, which are working with established fashionable glasses brands, Apple will be designing its own frames, Gurman claims, with a variety of colors and sizes set to be offered.
His report also claims Apple is working on AirPods with cameras, and a wearable pendant, as part of a suite of AI-focused hardware.
The competition won't be standing still, though. Last year The Information reported that Meta and EssilorLuxottica plan to launch next-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses with a facial recognition feature and the ability to run continuous AI sessions for "hours".
Meanwhile, Google is set to launch its Gemini-powered smart glasses platform this year, partnering with eyewear companies Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, as well as Samsung, to bring it to market.
The industry is set to see a fierce three-way battle between Meta, Apple, and Google to own the software platform on the glasses the companies hope you'll wear all day. Is there room for three players, or will it narrow to a two-horse race over time?
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