With Horizon OS v85 PTC, Quest 3 can turn any surface into a virtual keyboard, and Meta says you can remap the Quest 3S action button.

The Public Test Channel (PTC) is the beta release channel of Quest's Horizon OS. If you opt in, your headset receives a pre-release build of each upcoming version.

Note that there are often features in the eventual stable version not present in the PTC, and occasionally (but rarely) features or changes in the PTC don't make it to the stable version.

Here are 2 key features Meta is testing in Horizon OS v85 PTC:

Surface Keyboard

Text entry is a notorious challenge for XR devices when you're not carrying a Bluetooth keyboard.

Exclusively available as an experimental feature on Quest 3, Surface Keyboard adds a virtual keyboard with a virtual touchpad on top of any surface, such as a table or desk.

To set it up, you place your hands flat on the table where you want the keyboard to be positioned, and a few seconds later it spawns. This is the height calibration step.

Testing Surface Keyboard out, as you can see in the video above, I found it to be remarkably accurate. The ability to rest my hands makes it far preferable to a floating virtual keyboard, and I can type far faster already. It seems to predict the pressure of your fingers against a surface, not just the contact, making it possible.

I was far less impressed with the virtual touchpad. While it works, and is less strenuous than reaching out your arm to point, it often registers false positive inputs when you're not directly looking at it.

Another notable limitation is that Surface Keyboard only shows up in the Horizon OS home space, passthrough or virtual. Meta has an API for developers to use the floating keyboard, and we'll keep an eye out for any signs of a similar API for Surface Keyboard when the feature launches to the stable channel.

Meta Research Turns Any Surface Into A Virtual Keyboard

Meta is researching turning any flat surface into a virtual keyboard, leveraging ambient haptics.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Meta has been researching this technology for at least six years, and executives showed off a well-along prototype in 2023, with Mark Zuckerberg claiming he could reach 100 words per minute. However, that prototype required a tracking marker tag on the table, as could be seen in the clips Meta shared at the time. And the company didn't disclose the error rate of the prototype.

Then, in 2024, researchers from Meta and ETH Zurich said that they had solved the problem of turning any surface into a keyboard, without markers, by combining a neural network that predicts touch events with a language model.

Meta hasn't said whether this research is what led to the shipping feature, but it seems likely to at least be related.

Researchers Say They’ve Solved Turning Any Surface Into A Keyboard

Researchers from Meta and ETH Zurich developed software called TouchInsight, which they say solves turning any surface into a virtual keyboard.

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You can find Surface Keyboard in the Advanced settings on Horizon OS v85 if you have a Quest 3.

It's unclear why the feature isn't (yet) available on Quest 3S.

Remap Quest 3S Action Button

While Quest 3S doesn't currently have the Surface Keyboard feature, it does get its own new exclusive feature in Horizon OS v85 PTC, according to Meta.

Quest 3S has an 'Action Button', which, since the headset launched, has served one function: toggling passthrough. Press it while in a VR game and the game will pause and you'll see the real world. It's essentially a "pause VR, I need to see my surroundings" button.

Now, with v85 PTC, Meta says that Quest 3S owners can remap the Action Button.

Our Quest 3S does not yet have v85 PTC, so we don't yet know what it can be remapped to. If you have a Quest 3S running Horizon OS v85 PTC and have this ability, please let us know in the comments below.

Navigator Set To Be Default & Horizon Feed Removed

If you missed it, earlier this week we reported Meta's announcement that "starting" in Horizon OS v85 stable, the new 'Navigator' UI will become the default, and, separately, the Horizon Feed will be removed.

Quest’s New ‘Navigator’ UI Becoming Default As Horizon Feed To Be Removed

“Starting” in Quest v85, the new ‘Navigator’ UI is becoming the default, and the Horizon Feed will be “gradually” removed from Horizon OS.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

In the PTC build of Horizon v85, at least on my Quest 3, that hasn't happened yet. This is likely another of Meta's very slow "rollouts".

UPDATE February 3: our Quest 3 received a further sub-update adding the Touchpad to the Surface Keyboard feature. This article has been updated to reflect that.

Meta CFO Susan Li says the company still has "optimism in the future of VR", and confirmed that it's still "building future headsets".

Li made the comment during Meta's Q4 2025 earnings call this week, in response to a Deutsche Bank analyst asking whether the Reality Labs division would have a "narrow focus on wearables".

"However, consumer adoption of VR has generally been on a slower growth path than wearables, and we are rebalancing our Reality Labs portfolio to reflect this", Li also said, reiterating what CTO Andrew Bosworth declared in Davos last week.

"So, we are meaningfully reducing our investment in VR and Horizon this year, but we’re growing our investment in wearables to capitalize on the momentum that we’re seeing in our position as a market leader", she continued.

Meta first officially confirmed this shifting spending strategy in December. Then, earlier this month the company shut down three of its acquired VR game studios, conducted significant layoffs at a fourth, canceled the Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel, and announced the shutdown of Horizon Workrooms and its Quest headsets for business offering.

That decision came after 2025 saw Quest headset sales decrease compared to 2024, while Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses sales tripled.

Meta Confirms “Shifting Some” Funding “From Metaverse Toward AI Glasses”

Meta has officially confirmed “shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables”, following reports of an up to 30% budget cut for parts of Reality Labs.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Earlier in the Q4 earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg told investors that the company's reduction in spending would make VR "a profitable ecosystem over the coming years".

The Reality Labs division of Meta, which handles VR, Horizon Worlds, and smart glasses, recorded record spending in Q4, just shy of $7 billion. Given revenue of just under $1 billion, that resulted in a "loss" of around $6 billion.

Reality Labs continues to be heavily focused on research and development, though, and much of this "loss" is actually the spending towards developing true AR glasses, the consumer tech product that companies like Apple, Meta, and Google believe will define the next wave of personal computing.

Zuckerberg told investors to expect Reality Labs losses to finally peak in 2026, with Li stating that it's Meta's "expectation" that the losses will start to decrease in 2027, depending on how the market develops.

Meta Delays Ultralight Headset, Starts Work On Gaming-Focused Quest 4

Meta is delaying its ultralight headset with a tethered puck to the first half of 2027, and, separately, starting work on a gaming-focused Quest 4, leaked memos reveal.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

As to the "headsets", plural, that Susan Li was referring to, leaked internal memos from early December revealed that in addition to the widely reported ultralight headset with a tethered puck, Meta was also now working on a traditional new Quest focused on "immersive gaming".

The memo indicated that the headset, which wouldn't be expected until late 2027 at the very earliest, should bring a "large upgrade" over Quest 3, but no longer be subsidized, carrying a higher price. That tracks with Zuckerberg's reference to VR becoming "profitable" for Meta "over the coming years".

Many in the industry have speculated that this headset may have already been canceled in the wake of Meta's other VR cuts, but Li's reference to "headsets" may suggest it's still in the works. Only time – or yet another leak – will tell.

Lynx-R2, coming "this summer", is set to have the widest field of view of any standalone headset to date.

French startup Lynx repeatedly failed to meet its deadlines for its R1 headset, which it Kickstarted, and while originally envisioned as a $500 competitor to Meta Quest headsets, the price for new orders rose to $850 and then $1300 as the company pivoted to primarily targeting businesses.

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Lynx says its new headset won’t run Android XR, as Google “terminated” its agreement, but will have by far the widest field of view of any standalone.

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Now, Lynx has revealed the key specifications of its next headset, which it first teased in October.

At the time, Lynx founder Stan Larroque told UploadVR that his company has "learned so much with the R1", and will not do a crowdfunding campaign. A month later, Lynx revealed that Google had "terminated" its agreement to use Android XR, such that it will instead run LynxOS, the company's own open-source Android fork.

Similar to Quest 3 and Pico 4 Ultra, Lynx-R2 is a fully standalone headset powered by Qualcomm's XR2 Gen 2 chipset and 16GB RAM, with two color passthrough cameras, four tracking cameras, as well as a depth sensor and IR illuminators.

It has an open periphery design, like Samsung Galaxy XR, with the ability to flip the visor up at any time. And it has its battery in the rear, with a total system weight of 550 grams.

What distinguishes Lynx-R2 from these other standalone headsets is its aspheric pancake lenses, developed in partnership with Israeli startup Hypervision. According to Lynx, R2 achieves a field of view of 126° horizontal and 103° vertical. That would make it one of the widest field of view VR headsets to ship as a product anyone can buy, and by far the widest standalone of any kind.

These remarkable lenses are paired with 2312×2160 LCD displays. And Lynx says it's getting the displays for just $30 each, because its development was paid for by Meta, which according to Lynx, planned to use them in the canceled 2026 Quest 4 candidate.

To achieve a reasonable passthrough image quality over the wide field of view, Lynx is using 3K×3K color cameras, advanced Sony IMX616 sensors capturing 10 megapixels per eye at a 90Hz rate, higher than Apple Vision Pro.

Lynx claims an end-to-end latency of between 12 and 20 milliseconds, compared to the 12 milliseconds of Apple Vision Pro.

It's notable that while other headsets like Quest 3 and Vision Pro have lower camera resolution than display resolution, Lynx-R2 has the opposite.

Further, Lynx says R2 has the slimmest "black line" between passthrough and natural peripheral vision of any passthrough headset, obstructing just 6% of the total field of view of the wearer. This black line is slimmer than even typical smart glasses, the startup claims, and it shared a short through-the-lens video captured by a GoPro with a wide-angle lens.

Meanwhile, the four tracking cameras on the corners of the front enable positional, hand, and controller tracking, while the 0.5 megapixel depth sensor enables 3D room scanning and spatial anchors.

According to the company, Lynx-R2 is designed to be open, modular, and repairable. LynxOS, its Android fork, is open source, and the headset has an open bootloader. Buyers will have raw unrestricted access to the sensors via APIs. Lynx says it will publish IO schematics for developers who want to add additional sensors. And R2 is built with screws instead of glue, with the company planning to sell spare parts like batteries, mainboards, and camera modules to customers.

Lynx-R2 is set to arrive "this summer", priced somewhere between Meta Quest 3 and Samsung Galaxy XR. Unlike with R1, Lynx will not be doing preorders this time. According to Larroque, when it's available to buy, it will be ready to ship immediately.

"Starting" in Horizon OS v85, the new 'Navigator' UI will become the default, and Horizon Feed will be "gradually" removed from the OS.

In a Meta Community Forums post, a 'Community Manager' with the handle h.taylor announced the upcoming changes, set to arrive in the next version of the Horizon OS of Quest headsets:

As announced during Connect, we’ve been testing Navigator and will ramp up the rollout later this year, starting in v85. As Navigator rolls out, we’ll also begin gradually sunsetting the Horizon Feed in VR.

What’s changing

• Navigator will become the default landing experience when users turn on their headset.

• Navigator brings experiences, friends and settings together in one place.

• As part of this shift, we’ll be sunsetting the Horizon Feed in VR.

Horizon OS v83 started rolling out in November, and there's no set date for the arrival of v85.

Navigator Becoming Default

Since the release of Oculus Go almost eight years ago, Meta's standalone VR operating system has seen numerous visual changes, but the general interface architecture remained essentially the same.

You had a floating horizontal menu bar slightly below you, called the Universal Menu, showing the time and your device battery levels and containing shortcuts to key system interfaces, as well as a combination of your most recent and eventually a few of your favorite apps. All 2D interfaces, including system features like the app Library, Quick Settings, and Notifications, opened as 2D windows, treated like any other.

After One Key Change, Meta’s Quest UI Overhaul Has Gone From Bad To Great

The Quest system UI overhaul launched to testers in May, with key improvements but an ugly semi-opaque grey “cloud” background. Now, Meta has gotten rid of it.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Then, in May last year, Meta started a very slow rollout of a full Horizon OS UI overhaul, called 'Navigator', which moves the main system interfaces like Library, Quick Settings, Notifications and Camera into a new large overlay that appears over both immersive and 2D apps.

With Navigator, system interfaces no longer shift around when opening other windows, and it's easier to launch new apps. Navigator's library also allows you to pin up to 10 items, somewhat akin to the Start Menu on Windows.

At launch, Navigator also had a murky gray background with an oval shape. It was seemingly intended to improve contrast. But as well as obscuring your view of what was behind it, be it passthrough or a virtual world, it just didn't look good. So Meta got rid of that and made bringing up Navigator dim the background instead.

With Horizon OS v83 PTC in October, Meta started rolling out an evolved version of Navigator, which it teased at Connect 2025.

The evolved Navigator has a new Worlds tab for Horizon Worlds destinations, and you no longer see worlds in your app Library at all. Speaking of the Library, it now features interleaving offset rows, similar to Apple's visionOS.

The new Navigator also has a new overlay-level People tab with shortcuts to your friends, as well as a You tab that shows your avatar and lets you change your active status.

Finally, the new Navigator lets you easily hide or show all your 2D windows by double pressing the Meta button on the right Touch controller, or for hand tracking, opening your right palm and double tapping your thumb to your index finger.

Horizon Feed Being Removed

Horizon Feed is the default 2D app that launches when you cold boot your Quest headset.

Originally simply called 'Explore', the feed shows you suggested Horizon Worlds destinations, store apps, VR videos, Instagram reels, and online followers, as well as suggested friends to "catch up" with and apps to "jump back in" to.

The Community Forums post tells developers that the version of Horizon Feed inside the headset "is not a high-intent surface, and users often see it without a specific intent to browse or purchase apps".

"Because of that, it historically has not driven strong entitlement conversion, and we don’t expect significant revenue impact for the vast majority of developers", the post reads.

That essentially seems to be Meta admitting that Horizon Feed is something that most Quest owners just close immediately on booting the headset, like an unwanted popup, and wasn't successful at getting people to buy the apps that it suggested.

Meta CTO Explains Layoffs & Strategy Shift: “VR Is Growing Less Quickly Than We Hoped”

In a series of interviews at Davos, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth explained why the company is reducing its investment in VR.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

The coming removal of Horizon Feed from Horizon OS comes as Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth suggested that the company's repeated push to Quest owners to use Horizon Worlds came at "an expense of user experience", vowing to "let VR be what it is, what it does" and "focus a lot more on the third-party content library, the ecosystem that's developed there".

In a series of interviews at Davos, Meta's CTO explained why the company is reducing its investment in VR.

If you somehow missed it: last week Meta shut down three of its acquired VR game studios, conducted significant layoffs at a fourth, canceled the Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel, and announced the shutdown of Horizon Workrooms and its Quest headsets for business offering. These actions came a month after the company officially confirmed "shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables".

Palmer Luckey: Meta Isn’t Abandoning VR, Studio Closures “A Good Thing”

Palmer Luckey thinks Meta closing its VR game studios is “a good thing for the long-term health of the industry”, and that the narrative of it “abandoning” VR is “obviously false”.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth has finally made public statements about the VR layoffs and shutdowns, via a series of interviews.

One of the interviews was with veteran tech reporter Alex Heath. While Heath hasn't yet shared the interview (this is set to happen in the coming days), he has published an article with key quotes wherein Bosworth declares that "VR is growing less quickly than we hoped".

“We’re still continuing to invest heavily in this space, but obviously, VR is growing less quickly than we hoped,” Bosworth apparently told Heath. “And so you want to make sure that your investment is right-sized.”

According to Heath, Bosworth claimed that Meta has seen “really, really positive pickup” in Horizon Worlds on smartphones, and plans to double down on this with continued investment in Horizon on mobile.

“You've got a team that actually has product market fit in a huge market on mobile phones, and they're having to build everything twice. They're building it once for mobile phones, and building again for VR. There's a pretty easy way to increase their velocity: just let them build for mobile. So Horizon is very focused now on mobile — not exclusively, but almost exclusively,” Bosworth is quoted as saying.

Another interview, available in full on YouTube, was conducted by Axios' chief technology correspondent Ina Fried.

In it, Bosworth gave a very similar explanation for Meta's shift in strategy.

"It's like any investment, you're gonna look at how you do over the course of years and you're gonna reinvest in some areas and trim your losses in others.

For us, we're seeing tremendous growth of our metaverse on mobile. You know, Horizon is this thing that started on VR headsets. But obviously there's much more users today on mobile phones. We've been pivoting over the last year to focus on the mobile market and it's going really well, and so you kinda wanna double down on that."

Bosworth also seemed to suggest that Meta's significant investment in the VR side of Horizon Worlds, and repeated pushes to convince Quest headset wearers to use it, came at "an expense of user experience".

"We're gonna let VR be what it is, what it does", Bosworth said. "We're gonna have focus a lot more on the third-party content library, the ecosystem that's developed there."

That seems to suggest that Meta will pull back on pushing Horizon Worlds for VR users and on making its own content, leaving the content ecosystem to third-party developers and letting headset owners choose the content they want.

Palmer Luckey thinks Meta closing its VR game studios is "a good thing for the long-term health of the industry", and that the narrative of it "abandoning" VR is "obviously false".

If you somehow missed it: last week Meta shut down three of its acquired studios – Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard's Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR) – and conducted significant layoffs at a fourth: Camouflaj (Batman: Arkham Shadow).

The closures are part of Meta's wider strategy of, in its own words, "shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables", and the layoffs have affected around 10% of Meta's Reality Labs division, around 1500 people.

Meta Closes Deadpool VR, Asgard’s Wrath & Resident Evil 4 VR Studios

Meta has shut down Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR), UploadVR can confirm.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

This strategy shift has led some in the industry to speculate that Meta is abandoning VR entirely. But Oculus founder Palmer Luckey doesn't agree.

In a post on X, Luckey argued that last week's events were "not a disaster", pointing out that Meta still employs more people working on VR than any other company "by about an order of magnitude".

Further, Luckey explains that "crowding out the rest of the entire ecosystem" by forcing third-party developers to compete with blockbusters like Batman and Deadpool games that cost more to make than they would ever return "doesn't make sense", suggesting that the end of this strategy will be "a good thing for the long-term health of the industry".

He further notes that while some of these titles are received well, others fail, revealing that Rock Band VR, a 2017 Oculus Rift exclusive, sold just 700 copies.

Here's Palmer Luckey's full statement:

"I have an opinion on the Meta layoffs that is contrary with most of the VR industry and much of the media, but strongly held.

This is not a disaster. They still employ the largest team working on VR by about an order of magnitude. Nobody else is even close. The "Meta is abandoning VR" narrative is obviously false, 10% layoffs is basically six months of normal churn concentrated into 60 days, strictly numbers wise.

The majority of the 1,500 jobs cut in Reality Labs (out of 15,000) were roles working on first-party content, internally developed games that competed directly with third party developers. I think this is a good decision, and I thought the same back when I was still at Oculus.

Change always sucks because people lose their jobs in the process, but in a world of limited resources, Meta heavily subsidizing their own (with money, marketing, placement, etc) at the expense of core technical progress and platform stability doesn't make sense. Crowding out the rest of the entire ecosystem, even less so. Every developer big and small, even the hyper-efficient ones, have had an extremely hard time competing with games developed by Meta-owned teams with budgets and teams that spend vastly in excess of earning potential. People will point out that these teams did an awesome job and got awesome reviews from critics and customers alike - yes, and fucked up though it is, that makes the problem even worse!

Some people will say "they should have just funded those developers as external studios rather than acquiring them, then!". Yes, I agree, but hindsight is 20/20. Do you think Oculus expected to only sell 700 copies of Rock Band VR after spending eight figures to make sure it was ready and awesome for Rift CV1 launch, to the point of bundling the guitar adapter with every single headset? Of course not, but sometimes you learn what the world actually wants from you the hard way.

TL;DR, I feel really bad for the people impacted, but this is a good thing thing for the long-term health of the industry, especially the ongoing incentives.

(Nobody at Meta knows I am making this post)"

Palmer Luckey’s Anduril Partners With Meta To Build Military XR Devices

Palmer Luckey’s Anduril is teaming up with Meta to build XR products for US and allied militaries, starting with the EagleEye AR/VR helmet.

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After being fired from Oculus by Facebook in 2017, Luckey founded Anduril, a defense firm that makes and sells drones, loitering munitions, interceptors, cruise missiles, sentry towers, and even unmanned submarines, as well as a software system that integrates them and other assets into a unified view of the battlespace. It was most recently valued at over $30 billion.

In 2024, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth publicly apologized to Luckey, an apology which he also publicly accepted. And last year, Anduril and Meta announced a partnership to build XR products for US and allied militaries, starting with the EagleEye AR/VR helmet.

"The people acting like I am some stooge who will obviously agree with everything Meta does need to read a history book or something, jfc

Oculus had a strong internal mandate to NOT be Nintendo and instead build things that build the ecosystem. Returning to that is good."

In response to the idea that he was "stooge who will obviously agree with everything Meta does", Luckey suggests those under that belief read a history book.