The first major update for Google's Android XR on Samsung Galaxy XR is rolling out now.
The update brings a beta release of Google's Persona-like realistic avatar system for video calls, called Likeness, a Travel Mode, and a beta for a built-in PC remote desktop feature for Windows called PC Connect.
Likeness is Google's realistic avatar system for video calls in Android XR, an equivalent to the original non-spatial mode of Apple Vision Pro's Personas.
Your Likeness replaces the video feed that apps would normally get from a phone's selfie camera, providing a virtual equivalent, and should thus work for any video calling platform without developer implementation.
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Unlike with Vision Pro, you scan your face for Likeness by holding up your phone, not the headset itself. From here, the data is transferred to and securely stored on the headset. The Likeness app is currently only available on "select Android device models".
In video calls on Android XR, your Likeness is driven by Galaxy XR's eye tracking and face tracking capabilities in real-time, and the feed shows a virtual representation of your hands when you hold them up too.
Travel Mode
Android XR now has a Travel Mode, which when enabled, makes the positional tracking work properly on moving vehicles, such as planes and trains.
Apple was the first to launch this feature, alongside Vision Pro, and since then Meta, Pico, and Snap have followed.
Without a Travel Mode, the accelerometer and gyroscope in the headset's IMU will interpret the acceleration, orientation changes, and vibrations of the vehicle as your head movement, causing virtual objects and windows to drift off in the opposite direction.
Travel Mode works by having the headset rely more on computer vision from the cameras, typically incurring a small loss in tracking quality.
PC Connect (Beta)
PC Connect (beta) is a feature that lets you connect to and control your Windows PC as a virtual screen in Android XR.
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After installing the streamer app on your PC, you can mirror your entire desktop or one window.
There are already many third-party apps on the Google Play Store that can do this, including Guy Godin's Virtual Desktop, but PC Connect offers a built-in option.
Meta has a partnership with Microsoft for an officially supported Windows 11 remote desktop system, leveraging the operating system's RDP system, with support for virtual extra monitors and multiple aspect ratios. Android XR's PC Connect doesn't seem to have Microsoft's involvement, and seems more basic for now, at least in beta, lacking these more advanced options.
We'll keep a close eye on Google through 2026 for further Android XR updates, such as whether a spatial version of Likeness arrives or advanced virtual monitor options for PC Connect.
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.
The two internal memos were sent earlier this week. They were first reported by Business Insider a few hours ago, and UploadVR can independently confirm their authenticity.
One was sent by VP of Reality Labs Maher Saba to staff, and mentions delaying the ultralight open-periphery headset with a tethered compute puck running Horizon OS that multiple reports, including our own, have suggested that Meta recently hoped to release next year. Various codenames have leaked for candidates for the product, including Puffin, Phoenix, and Loma.
Saba tells staff that the new goal is to release the ultralight device in the first half of 2027.
The headset will be focused on virtual screens and other seated use cases. Names that Meta has internally floated for the product have included "Quest Air", but it's far from certain what it will decide.
His memo also mentions the release of a new "limited edition" wearable device codenamed Malibu 2 in 2026. It's unclear what this will be, but it might be the rumored Prada Meta Glasses.
The other memo comes from the heads of the Metaverse and Horizon OS groups within Reality Labs, Gabriel Aul and Ryan Cairns.
They suggest that the ultralight headset delay will give staff "a lot more breathing room to get the details right".
"There's a lot coming in hot with tight bring-up schedules and big changes to our core UX, and we won't compromise on landing a fully polished and reliable experience", they say.
Aul and Cairns also mention starting work on a next-generation mainline headset, which UploadVR understands would likely carry the name Quest 4.
This headset will focus on immersive gaming, bring a "large upgrade" over Quest 3, and "significantly improve unit economics". That strongly suggests an end to the strategy of subsidizing low-cost devices. Meta wants to slowly transition Reality Labs into a profitable division, and this will be a key part of that plan.
Work on a Quest 4 comes around six months after the cancellation of the previous candidates for a 2026 Quest 4 and Quest 4S line, a decision Meta made alongside prioritizing the release of the ultralight headset.
The new plans suggest the ultralight headset should land in the first half of 2027, with a traditional Quest 4 following at a later date, perhaps in 2028.
The leaked memos come shortly after Meta officially confirmed "shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables". And to be clear, within Meta, Wearables does not include Quest.
That doesn't seem to be stopping the company working on new headsets, but Saba's memo does mention needing to be "focused on making the business sustainable", and not subsidizing Quest 4 seems to be the result of that budget pressure.
He also mentions that teams should not use the ultralight headset delay to "add more features or take on additional work", and instead focus on polishing what they already plan.
Keep in mind that Meta's hardware roadmap is constantly shifting, and the company frequently spins up and cancels headsets before they ship. When a specific product gets close to shipping, we'll bring you any reliable rumors of its imminent arrival. Until then, be ready for anything planned to get canceled or delayed.
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.
Reality Labs, if you're unaware, is the division of Meta behind its Quest headsets, Horizon software, smart glasses, and sEMG wristband, as well as researching future technologies such as Codec Avatars and true AR glasses.
Yesterday, Bloomberg first reported that the division is facing up to 30% budget cuts that would primarily target VR and Horizon Worlds.
Following Bloomberg's report, other mainstream news outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Insider have published their own reports corroborating the general claim, with slightly differing details, and the NYT and BI even received an official prepared statement from Meta, which the company confirmed to UploadVR.
"Within our overall Reality Labs portfolio we are shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables given the momentum there," the statement reads. "We aren't planning any broader changes than that."
Business Insider's report suggests that the cuts will primarily hit Horizon Worlds, and that employees are facing "uncertainty" about whether this will involve layoffs. One likely cut BI's report mentions is the funding for third-party studios to build Horizon Worlds content.
The New York Times report, on the other hand, seems more definitive in stating that these cuts will come via layoffs.
Meta's funding shift from Horizon Worlds and VR to smart glasses comes just over a year after a leaked memo from Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told Reality Labs staff that 2025 will determine whether their projects are "the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure".
In the memo, Bosworth described 2025 as "the most critical year in my 8 years at Reality Labs", and told staff they "need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR". Note that at the time, Meta was using MR to refer to VR too, a nomenclature that it ended earlier this year.
"And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance", Bosworth followed that sentence with.
Since then, Reality Labs saw its highest-ever quarterly revenue in Q4 2024 with the launch of Quest 3S, which was the top-selling console on Amazon US for Christmas. But this momentum did not carry through into 2025 at all.
The first two quarters of 2025 saw Quest sales decline year-over-year, revealing that while Quest 3S was a popular stocking stuffer, it simply is not a successful year-round product. While Q3 saw a rebound, Meta explained that this was due to retailers stocking up on Quest 3S for this year's holiday season.
Next year, our sources suggest that Meta has prioritized shipping an ultralight Horizon OS headset with a tethered compute puck instead of a traditional form factor Quest 4, and the company will be closely tracking how it performs in comparison to Quest 3 and Quest 3S through 2027.
Meanwhile, Meta has continued to push its Horizon Worlds "metaverse" platform with multi-million-dollar creator competitions, especially focused on smartphone-only worlds, as the company hopes to scale the platform from a social VR space to a cross-platform Roblox and Fortnite competitor. But this doesn't seem to have gained much traction.
Meta is set to roll out its Horizon Studio world creation toolset, powered by the Horizon Engine it built to replace Unity in Horizon Worlds, and the company will be closely tracking whether this meaningfully improves engagement.
This relative stagnation in its Quest and Horizon Worlds efforts comes as the company is seeing skyrocketing sales and significant public and investor interest in its smart glasses.
Back in February, in its Q4 2024 earnings call, Meta's partner EssilorLuxottica said that the Ray-Ban Meta glasses had sold 2 million units, and in its Q2 2025 call in July said that sales had more than tripled since last year, performing "exceptionally well".
In its Q2 2025 call in July, the company said that the glasses were performing "exceptionally well" in the market, with sales having more than tripled compared to 2024.
During the February call, the company also announced that its annual production capacity for smart glasses would be increased to 10 million by the end of 2026. And in its Q3 2025 sales call in October, it said that it was accelerating this target to reach the 10 million annual production rate sooner, as smart glasses drove more than a third of its quarterly growth.
This combination of significant success in the smart glasses space and relative failure in growing its VR headset and metaverse platform business is likely the driver of the company's decision to shift some funding to the former, hoping to further establish itself as the leader in the space before rival products from Apple and Google arrive.
Meta is rolling out the ability to link your account to Discord to share what Quest app or Horizon World you're currently in.
At Connect 2025, Meta announced that Discord was coming to Quest in 2026, including the ability to share your status to show friends what you're playing.
The Discord app for Quest is still set for 2026, so isn't here yet. But what is now "rolling out", seemingly ahead of schedule, is the status sharing feature.
You can set it up on the web in the App Connections section of the Meta Accounts Center on the web, or in the mobile app at Accounts Center --> Your information and permissions --> App connections.
If you don't see Discord listed yet, it means it hasn't rolled out to your account yet, so you need to check again at a later date.
Meta says that the rollout is "gradual" in case there are any issues or bugs.
Note that for the app or world you're in to show up you'll need to have your Horizon Active Status set to Online or Joinable, and you can thus hide your current activity by switching to Offline.
Meta Reality Labs' metaverse teams are facing up to 30% budget cuts, Bloomberg reports, higher than the 10% Mark Zuckerberg normally asks for during budget cycles.
Reality Labs, if you're unaware, is the division of Meta behind its Quest headsets, Horizon software, smart glasses, and sEMG wristband, as well as researching future technologies such as Codec Avatars and true AR glasses.
Since Meta started breaking out the financial results of Reality Labs in its earnings calls in Q4 2020, it's been public knowledge that the division spends significantly more than it brings in, resulting in a financial "loss" that has been the fuel for countless clickbait articles each quarter.
But while describing this as a "loss" is technically correct in an accounting sense, much of it would be more accurately described as long-term investment. XR headsets like Quest are still a relatively early technology. Further, as of 2022 more than 50% of Reality Labs spending was on the research and development of AR glasses, and the company has yet to even launch a true AR glasses device.
Still, Meta is a business, and at some point, it wants Reality Labs to be profitable, a goal that will involve spending less, transitioning from a bloated research and development group to a viable business.
In July 2024, The Information reported that Reality Labs was told to cut spending by 20% by 2026. But the first three quarters of 2025 have seen Reality Labs spend roughly the same as it did in 2024.
Bloomberg's new report comes as Meta is planning its budget for next year. According to the report, executives are "considering" a cut "as high as 30%" for the metaverse teams of Reality Labs, with associated layoffs that would arrive as early as January.
Proposed Reality Labs cuts would primarily target VR and Horizon Worlds, according to the report, at a time when Meta is hoping to scale up its smart glasses ambitions.
The company, with its partner EssilorLuxottica, is still selling many of its smart glasses models as fast as it can make them. Simultaneously, it has seen Quest headset sales decline in 2025 compared to 2024, with Quest 3S proving only a hit during the holidays, and underperforming during the rest of the year.
This combination of significant success in the smart glasses space and relative failure in growing its VR headset business is likely the driver of the company's decision to focus cuts on the latter, and it will be paying close attention to the sales of its next headset to decide how to invest through the rest of the decade.
Meta's Wearables Device Access Toolkit, which lets smartphone apps access the camera of its smart glasses, is now available as a public preview.
That means that developers can download it and integrate it into their iOS and Android phone apps, and can test it on their own glasses, but they cannot yet ship it for general public use.
Announced at Connect 2025, Wearables Device Access Toolkit lets phone apps capture a photo or initiate a video stream from the glasses. The app can then store or process the frames it receives. And since Meta smart glasses function as Bluetooth audio devices, developers can combine this visual capability with audio in and out.
Developers could, for example, leverage the SDK to add first-person livestreaming or recording features to their apps. Or they could feed the camera imagery to a third-party multimodal AI model to analyze what you're looking at and answer questions about it.
Hi AI devs!
In case you were wondering how the workflow looks like and what you can do with the Meta Wearables Device Access Toolkit (DAT) right now: The Meta AI app acts as a bridge between your glasses and your app, handling all connections and permissions!
For a video stream, the maximum resolution is 720p and the maximum frame rate is 30 FPS, a limitation related to the use of Bluetooth. And when Bluetooth bandwidth is limited, the resolution and frame rate will be automatically reduced.
Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta HSTN glasses are currently supported, with support for Oakley Meta Vanguard and Meta Ray-Ban Display coming in the near future. But to be clear, support for the latter will only include receiving camera imagery, not displaying anything on the HUD.
Meta provided an early version of the Wearables Device Access Toolkit to a handful of developers several months ago, including Twitch, Microsoft, Logitech Streamlabs, and Disney.
Twitch and Logitech Streamlabs are using the SDK to let you livestream your first-person view on their platforms, just as you already can on Instagram, while Microsoft is using it for its Seeing AI platform that helps blind people navigate and interact with the world around them.
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How 18Birdies is using the toolkit.
One particularly interesting use case comes from 18Birdies. The golf app is experimenting with using Meta Wearables Device Access Toolkit for real-time yardages and club recommendations, helping golfers without requiring them to take their phone out of their pocket.
Another is from Disney's Imagineering team, which explored using the toolkit to give guests a personal AI guide in Disney parks.
Apple's head of user interface design is leaving the company, after almost 20 years, to lead design at Meta Reality Labs.
Alan Dye joined Apple in 2006, and since 2015 had been the VP in charge of the company's software design, including the user interfaces of its operating systems and the design language it encourages developers to follow. He was a key figure in the iOS 7 redesign and watchOS, and led work on the iPhone X swipe interface, AirPods pairing interface, CarPlay, Dynamic Island, visionOS, and Liquid Glass, as well as key Apple apps like the App Store, Safari, Maps, TV, Notes, and FaceTime.
Reality Labs, if you're unaware, is the division of Meta behind its Quest headsets, Horizon software, smart glasses, and sEMG wristband, as well as researching future technologies such as Codec Avatars and AR glasses.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman first reported Dye's move, and a few hours later Mark Zuckerberg confirmed it in a post on Threads, stating that Meta is forming a new top-level "creative studio".
Dye will be joined by Billy Sorrentino, who was one of his deputies at Apple since 2016, and Joshua To, who previously led interface design at Reality Labs.
Here's Mark Zuckerberg's explanation of the new design studio's role at Meta Reality Labs:
"The new studio will bring together design, fashion, and technology to define the next generation of our products and experiences. Our idea is to treat intelligence as a new design material and imagine what becomes possible when it is abundant, capable, and human-centered. We plan to elevate design within Meta, and pull together a talented group with a combination of craft, creative vision, systems thinking, and deep experience building iconic products that bridge hardware and software."
"We're entering a new era where AI glasses and other devices will change how we connect with technology and each other. The potential is enormous, but what matters most is making these experiences feel natural and truly centered around people. With this new studio, we're focused on making every interaction thoughtful, intuitive, and built to serve people."
The claim that Meta plans to "elevate design" is particularly notable, given that the company's Quest headsets have long been criticized for their confusing, scattered, and clunky user interface. Meta started rolling out a design overhaul earlier this year, but it's still experimental, and far from complete.
We also criticized the interface of Meta Ray-Ban Display in our review, pointing out that it takes far too many swipes and taps to accomplish many common tasks.
It will likely take years, or at the very least many months, before the results of Dye's new design team arrive in Meta products. But it could, if all goes well, be a crucial ingredient for Meta's hopes to stave off competition from Apple and Google in the smart glasses and XR headsets market as the technology matures and scales to hundreds of millions of users in coming years.
Announcing his departure from Apple in an Instagram story, Dye quoted Steve Jobs: “I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.”
Quest headsets now have a second exclusive 3D clip from Avatar: Fire and Ash.
It comes just under three months after the first exclusive 3D clip from the movie arrived on Quest headsets just after Meta Connect.
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The short 3D clips are the first results, albeit small, of Meta's exclusive multi-year partnership with James Cameron's new company Lightstorm Vision, which has the goal of "making stereoscopic technology ubiquitous for all visual media by enabling stereoscopic 3D content creation in as seamless a manner as traditional 2D".
The partnership, announced almost exactly one year ago, should help bring significantly more 3D video content to Quest headsets. At the time, Meta said it will bring "world-class 3D entertainment experiences spanning live sports and concerts, feature films, and TV series featuring big-name IP" to Horizon OS.
James Cameron appeared on-stage during the Meta Connect 2025 keynote for around twelve minutes, where he reiterated his views on how VR headsets are the ideal viewing platform for 3D content.
Apple's competing visionOS offers hundreds of 3D movies through Apple TV and Disney+, but Meta's platform currently lacks an equivalent offering.
A Chinese startup with former Apple and Meta engineers built a coprocessor that enables ultralight headsets, and its reference design is the lightest ever shown.
The startup is called GravityXR, and includes engineers who worked on the R1 chip at Apple, the coprocessor present in both Vision Pro headsets to date, as well as others who worked on hardware at Meta, Huawei, and Amazon.
GravityXR's investors include Goertek, the Chinese company that manufactures Meta headsets, as well as ByteDance, the owner of Pico, and VC firms like Sequoia China and Lenovo Capital.
Rear angle of the GravityXR M1 reference design headset.
The chip that GravityXR built is called G-X100. It's a 3 watt TDP chip built on a 5nm process node, has a 10-core DSP, and achieves 200 TOPS for ML inference. Crucially, it has a memory bandwidth of 70 GB/s, letting it handle an array of many cameras and sensors – up to 15 simultaneously. And it can output to dual 4K displays at 120Hz.
G-X100 is designed to be onboard ultralight mixed reality headsets, handling the latency-sensitive image processing and computer vision tasks like camera passthrough, positional tracking, hand tracking, and reprojection, with a claimed 9 milliseconds of photon-to-photon latency.
This allows the general-purpose chipset, such as a Qualcomm Snapdragon, to be moved to a tethered external puck.
And with its TDP of just 3 watts, G-X100 can be passively cooled, eliminating the need for the heavy heatsinks and fans that make up a significant chunk of the weight of standalone headsets today, which aim to cool 10-20 watt chips.
Another angle of the GravityXR M1 reference design headset.
To prove out this approach of using G-X100 to offload the primary chipset, GravityXR built a reference design headset called GravityXR M1. It's a passthrough headset, using pancake lenses, 2.5K micro-OLED displays, four tracking cameras and two passthrough cameras, yet weighs less than 100 grams.
That makes GravityXR M1 the lightest headset ever – lighter than even Bigscreen Beyond 2. Its form factor arguably reaches the point that it might be better described as "mixed reality glasses".
And unlike with see-through birdbath devices like Xreal and Viture, as a passthrough system GravityXR M1 has a field of view of 90 degrees, close to current VR headsets, and it can render fully opaque virtual objects without dimming your view.
The G-X100 chip also supports reverse passthrough, as in Apple Vision Pro's EyeSight feature, but the reference design headset doesn't include this.
To be clear, GravityXR M1 is just a reference design, and no company has yet publicly committed to using G-X100 in a product.
But rumors suggest that both Meta and Pico intend to launch ultralight headsets next year, and both companies are likely to take a similar engineering path to what GravityXR is showing. Just last week, a Pico executive said that the company had developed its own R1-style chip internally, for example, and Meta has a multi-year partnership with Qualcomm to work together closely on XR-specific chip solutions, alongside its own custom chip teams.
It seems that, across the industry, mixed reality headsets are set to significantly shrink from half-kilogram facebricks into sleek glasses-like visors relatively soon. And a split-chip architecture, alongside an open periphery design that sacrifices some field of view, is how that remarkable jump will be possible.
FluxPose wants to be the new 6DoF VR body tracking system of choice, and its Kickstarter campaign has already raised over $2 million.
With Valve itself abandoning its "Lighthouse" SteamVR Tracking system in favor of inside-out computer vision in Steam Frame, the future of VR body tracking is in flux (no pun intended). Computer vision has made setting up VR fast, easy, and portable, all at a lower cost, but cameras on a headset have only a partial view of your body.
Further, like all optical systems, Lighthouse tracking is subject to occlusion. With the standard two base stations, there will be angles at which your tracked objects are blocked. To mitigate this, some enthusiasts add a third or even fourth base station. Lighthouse is also heavily affected by any reflective surfaces in the room, especially mirrors, which cause tracking issues.
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FluxPose in VRChat.
Over the weekend, Spanish startup FluxPose launched a Kickstarter campaign for what it calls "the first affordable, truly portable, occlusion-free tracking solution with absolute positioning".
FluxPose uses electromagnetic tracking, with trackers that sense the magnetic field generated by a base station, and thus is not subject to occlusion at all.
We've seen electromagnetic tracking systems in VR before. Razer Hydra for example, early 6DoF VR controllers often used with the Oculus developer kit headsets, with their small tracking volume and 4-foot cable between each controller and the base station. And in 2013, the company that built the tech behind Hydra launched a Kickstarter for a tracking system called STEM, with many of the same core promises as FluxPose. But in 2018 STEM was canceled, with backers refunded.
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Through-the-lens demo of FluxPose.
A key reason that STEM failed, why Razer Hydra had such a short tether, and the core difference of FluxPose, comes down to the nature of magnetic fields and where you put the base station. With Hydra and STEM it sat on your desk, and because magnetic fields decay with the cube of the distance, beyond a few feet they would deliver jittery and inaccurate poses.
With FluxPose, the base station (which it calls the beacon) is attached to your hip. This effectively creates a portable occlusion-free tracking sphere around your body, with a radius of just over 5 feet, that, according to the startup, can support an "unlimited" number of trackers within it. It's a clever solution to the electromagnetic distance problem, and the beacon also acts as a hip tracker.
As with every VR tracking system, FluxPose also heavily relies on feeding the data from the IMU on the trackers, the tiny chip which contains the accelerometer and gyroscope, into a sensor fusion model.
FluxPose claims a real-use accuracy of less than 5mm, compared to the less than 2mm of SteamVR Lighthouse, with an update rate of between 50Hz and 300Hz depending on the power mode.
FluxPose size comparison with an Xbox controller. The trackers are tiny.
On the Normal power mode, the beacon's battery should last around 12 hours. There's also a Low power mode for "standing, sitting or laying" which should last 24 hours, and a Performance mode for tracking controllers or gloves, in which the beacon should last 6 hours.
The trackers themselves weigh just 15 grams and last for 24 hours, FluxPose claims. That's just one-fifth of the weight of a HTC Vive Tracker. And remarkably, despite that low weight, FluxPose trackers have a tiny monochrome OLED screen for displaying status, as well as a haptic feedback actuator.
FluxPose mounts for Quest 3, Quest Pro, and Pico 4.
You attach one of the trackers to your headset, with a custom adapter mount, while the others strap to the parts of your body you want to track. Mounts are available for Quest 2 and newer, Pico 4 and 4 Ultra, Samsung Galaxy XR, Valve Index, and both Bigscreen Beyond generations. FluxPose says it will have a mount for Steam Frame too.
Because of the headset-attached reference tracker, FluxPose claims its tracking system doesn't require any calibration, and "never" drifts. The tradeoff is adding some weight to your headset.
Both the beacon and trackers charge on the included dock, which also acts as the data dongle, delivering the tracking poses to SteamVR on your PC via USB-C. From a PC's USB port it should recharge everything within 3 hours, while on a PD charger this can drop to 1.5 hours.
On Kickstarter, you can pledge for three kits: Lite, Core, and Pro. Lite is priced at €339 before tax and comes with 3 trackers, Core at €479 with 5 trackers, and Pro at €689 with 8 trackers. Additional addons like straps are available separately.
FluxPose says it has already built 300 devices for early testers, and launched the Kickstarter to advance to scale production. It intends to start shipping the first "early bird" units in August 2026, and for most backers to receive their units in October. After the Kickstarter, prices will increase.
As with all crowdfunding campaigns, we must warn you that a Kickstarter pledge is not a preorder. There is no guarantee you will receive anything at all, and the company has no legal obligation to provide you with a refund if it doesn't deliver.
Considering jumping into VR this Black Friday, or gifting a headset to a friend or relative so they can join you? Here are the best deals available.
Meta Quest Headsets
Meta Quest headsets are the ideal way to get into VR and mixed reality for most people. They are fully standalone, meaning you don't need any external device (other than a phone app to initially set them up), and they can also wirelessly connect to SteamVR on a gaming PC, if you have one, for a higher fidelity experience.
There are currently two headsets in Meta's lineup, the budget Quest 3S and the higher-end Quest 3. Quest 3S is normally $300, while Quest 3 is normally $500.
The excellent Black Friday 2025 deals for Quest 3S offer both a lower price and added perks, making it an ideal holiday gift, while there's only one Quest 3 deal we're aware of, and it only offers a perk.
Still, if you have the funds, we always recommend the proper Quest 3. While Quest 3S reuses the old fresnel lenses from Quest 2, Quest 3 features Meta's advanced pancake lenses which are clearer and sharper over a wider area, have a wider field of view, and have precise separation adjustment, making them suitable for essentially everyone's eyes. These pancake lenses also enable Quest 3 to be thinner, which makes the headset feel slightly less heavy.
Quest 3
Best Buy: $75 Gift Card & 1 Month Of Xbox
Best Buy is offering a $75 gift card and 1 month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with Quest 3 purchases.
You could, for example, use the Best Buy gift card to get a rigid strap and softer facial interface – upgrades which can make the headset feel more comfortable to wear.
Horizon+ includes a Games Catalog with some of Quest's best VR games, including Asgard's Wrath 2, Cubism, Demeo, Dungeons of Eternity, Eleven Table Tennis, Ghosts of Tabor, Job Simulator, Maestro, Onward, Pistol Whip, Red Matter, Synth Riders, The Climb 2, and Walkabout Mini Golf. It also lets subscribers redeem 2 monthly games pre-selected by Meta.
The Costco deal lasts through December 2, the coming Tuesday, so make sure to grab it soon if you want to affordably bring a friend or relative into VR.
Best Buy: $250 With $110 Of Perks
Quest 3S is $250 at Best Buy, and the retailer is offering a $50 Best Buy gift card, 1 month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners VR game.
That's a $50 discount from the headset's regular $300 price, and the three perks together are worth $110. You can find the deal for the 128GB base model of Quest 3S here. A similar offer is available for the 256GB storage model, with a $330 price ($70 off) and the same perks.
You could use the $50 Best Buy gift card to get the Elite Strap to make the headset more comfortable for just $20, for example, while during the 1 month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (normally $30) you can play popular flatscreen games like Call of Duty on a giant virtual screen.
As for The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, it's also normally $30, and it's widely considered to be one of the best VR games of all time due to its physics-based combat system, earning an 'Essential' score in our review.
PlayStation VR2
PlayStation VR2 is $300 at all official retailers until December 19, its lowest price ever.
PlayStation VR2 is not a standalone headset, and it has a cable which needs to be connected to a host device. It connects to the PS5 or PS5 Pro console out of the box, and can alternatively connect to a gaming PC with the sold-separately PC adapter.
This price applies to both the regular SKU and the bundle with Horizon Call of the Mountain, so you should always grab the latter if it's in stock.
At this discounted price, PlayStation VR2 is an ideal option for a PS5 owner heavily invested in the PlayStation ecosystem, or, with the adapter, a PC owner interested in sim racing, flight sim, or other seated games.
The PS VR2 discount is available for another three weeks, so there should be plenty of time to grab one in time for Christmas.
Pico 4 Ultra
Pico 4 Ultra is a Quest 3 competitor from ByteDance, the Chinese tech giant behind TikTok. It isn't sold in North America, so if you're in the US or Canada you can ignore its existence.
For those who are in a region where Pico 4 Ultra is sold, the Black Friday 2025 deal prices it at €400, and comes with 2 VR games and a season pass for Premier League Player.
The headset is normally priced at €600, so this is a massive €200 discount. And the 2 VR games and season pass are worth €100 together, meaning the total extra value here is €300.
Pico 4 Ultra holds up relatively well to Quest 3, but while the Pico Store has a decent chunk of the content available on Quest 3, it still lacks many of the games you'll find on Meta's platform, particularly the blockbusterexclusives.
However, ByteDance has a unique offering which Meta has ruled out making an equivalent of: Pico Motion Trackers. They're lightweight wireless pucks that you can strap to yourself to add various levels of body tracking in supported titles.
For Black Friday get a pair for €70 to strap to your ankles to add leg tracking. Then, you can add the 'Waist Version' for €40 to improve the quality of body tracking and get a true orientation for your waist. And if you want to go even further, you can now get a second €70 pair for your upper leg or forearms, improving leg or arm tracking, for a total of 5 trackers.
Supported titles for Pico Motion Trackers include VRChat (both standalone and via wireless PC VR) and Blade & Sorcery: Nomad.
Best Buy is offering a $75 gift card and 1 month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with Quest 3 purchases for Black Friday.
With this deal, you could, for example, use the Best Buy gift card to get a rigid headstrap and softer facial interface – upgrades which can make the headset feel more comfortable to wear.
During the 1 month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (normally $30) you can play flatscreen games like Call of Duty on a giant virtual screen.
As with all new Meta headset purchases, Quest 3 from Best Buy also comes with 3 months of Horizon+, Meta's VR games subscription which includes a Games Catalog with some of Quest's best VR games, and also lets subscribers redeem 2 monthly games pre-selected by Meta.
We've seen a lot of deals for Quest 3S recently, Meta's cheaper budget headset, with Best Buy for example offering a $250 price with a $50 gift card, the month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and a top-rated VR game. But we still highly recommend choosing the proper Quest 3 if you have the funds.
While Quest 3S can run all the same content as Quest 3, and has the same fundamental capabilities (including the same XR2 Gen 2 chipset and 8GB RAM), it reuses the old fresnel lenses from Quest 2. Quest 3, on the other hand, features Meta's advanced pancake lenses which are clearer and sharper over a wider area, have a wider field of view, and are fully horizontally adjustable, suitable for essentially everyone's eyes. These pancake lenses also enable Quest 3 to be thinner, which makes the headset feel slightly less heavy.
At $500, there's a steep price premium for Quest 3 over Quest 3S, especially with the discounts, so Best Buy's Black Friday deal somewhat softens the financial blow.
Letting people teleport into your home via Horizon Hyperscape feels like magic, though the scans are lower quality than the old cloud-streamed solo system.
If you missed it, last week Meta started rolling out an overhaul of its Horizon Hyperscape technology, letting you share new captures as unlisted Horizon Worlds and invite people to visit them as Meta Avatars.
These Hyperscape worlds are also rendered on-device on Quest 3 and Quest 3S, in contrast to the cloud-streamed approach previously used for Hyperscape. Up to 8 people can be in a single instance, and the system also includes support for mobile users via the Meta Horizon app.
After receiving the update on his Quest 3, UploadVR's Kyle Riesenbeck rescanned the downstairs living, dining, and kitchen area of his home. A few hours later, the Hyperscape world was ready, and so he invited me over to visit.
Appearing as a Meta Avatar, Kyle gave me a guided tour of this huge section of his home, pointing out the details the capture kept, as well as the ones it doesn't quite resolve.
Compared to the previous cloud-rendered solo Hyperscape system, there's a clear drop in quality. For starters, the rendering resolution is lower, with visible pixelation and aliasing for anything far away. As well as this, the Gaussian splat density appears to be lower, blurring some of the finer details captured by the previous implementation of Hyperscape. And despite these regressions, the performance was not always solid, with the frame rate dropping when a large enough section of the scan was in my field of view.
Still, these complaints aside, I still had a strong feeling of being in Kyle's home, and could still see relatively minute details like the place names on the badges and pins that he and his wife had pinned to a board after their travels. Further, it's amazing that this experience is even possible at all on an affordable mobile chipset from 2023, and we're due an XR2 Gen 3 next year that should make the experience a lot sharper and smoother.
If you own a Quest 3 or Quest 3S, or have the Meta Horizon app on your phone, and want to visit Kyle's home too, here's the link: Kyle's Home on Meta Horizon Worlds. Let us know what you think of it!
After visiting Kyle's home, I also scanned the living room and kitchen area of the apartment I live in, and found the resemblance to be remarkable. In fact, visiting it in VR while in my office induced such a strong feeling of presence that I tried to walk through my virtual kitchen, and thus bumped straight into my office wall. As someone who has been using positionally-tracked VR for well over a decade, I thought the days of mistaking the virtual for real like this were far behind me. But I was wrong. And it's a testament to just how realistic Hyperscape scans can feel, especially for places you're familiar with in reality, even in this lower quality on-device version.
Meta says it's still "rolling out" the Hyperscape sharing and social update, and keep in mind that any scans you make before your headset gets it won't be able to be shared or visited. Once you do get the update though, be sure to give it a try, as the ability to scan, share, and co-inhabit realistic reconstructions of real-world spaces with headsets that go on sale for as little as $200 is a truly remarkable technological achievement.
Quest's Horizon OS v83 brings System Positional TimeWarp (SysPTW) and Temporal Dimming as experimental features, as well as improved scene understanding.
A test version of v83 started rolling out to the Horizon OS Public Test Channel (PTC) last month, testing these features and the evolved 'Navigator' system UI, which remains experimental. Now, a month later, a stable build of v83 is rolling out to all supported Quest headsets.
Meta's rollouts happen gradually, so it may take a few days or even weeks for your headset to get the v83 update. Further, Meta rolls out some features separately from the main update itself, so even having the v83 update doesn't guarantee having everything listed here yet.
Read on for a rundown of the key changes Horizon OS v83 brings compared to v81, the previous stable release:
System Positional TimeWarp (SysPTW)
Just before displaying every frame, all major XR operating systems rotationally reproject (warp/skew) it to match the tiny change in orientation of your head since the frame started rendering.
This is done to eliminate the latency you'd otherwise perceive as you pan your head. And when the running app fails to complete rendering a new frame in time for the next display refresh, the previous frame gets rotationally reprojected further instead of just repeating it. This avoids rotational judder, which is sickening in VR.
With Horizon OS v83, Meta has added an experimental setting called System Positional TimeWarp (SysPTW). When enabled, it applies to all apps at all times, extending the system-level reprojection to be positional, not just rotational.
According to Meta, SysPTW "uses real-time scene depth to reduce visual judder and lag when apps drop frames".
"This feature automatically activates when needed and works across all apps, with no impact on regular performance", Meta claims.
Application SpaceWarp (AppSW), the SDK feature developers can enable for their apps to run at half framerate by generating every other frame synthetically, has already had Positional TimeWarp built-in since launching 4 years ago, so AppSW games won't see any changes here.
For apps that don't use AppSW, enabling SysPTW should both reduce positional latency and significantly dampen the positional judder you normally experience when a game drops a frame.
Temporal Dimming
Back in v69, Meta added an experimental option called Content Adaptive Brightness Control (CABC) for Quest 3 headsets, which dynamically dims the backlight of the LCD displays in darker scenes to achieve deeper blacks that are closer to true black than the murky grey typically delivered by LCD.
Now, in v83, Meta has added a second but distinct experimental option called Temporal Dimming for Quest 3 and Quest 3S.
"This feature gradually dims your display brightness during each session, helping reduce eye strain, extend device battery life, and improve display performance—all without noticeable impact on your experience", Meta explains.
A scrolled-down view of the Horizon OS Experimental settings as of v83.
Meanwhile, the description of the setting in Horizon OS reads "Dynamically adjusts screen brightness to further reduce power consumption during idle periods, with minimum impact on user experience".
While CABC is very noticeable, with the screen brightness visibly adjusting, from briefly testing Temporal Dimming, it seems to be a far more subtle effect, with brightness seemingly changing over a greater time period.
We'll keep an eye on whether Meta moves Temporal Dimming out of Experimental in future releases, something it hasn't yet done for CABC. Meta may even make it the default eventually, with the aim of getting the most out of its plain LCD displays.
Improved Scene Understanding
Quest 3 and Quest 3S create a 3D mesh of your room during mixed reality Space Setup. Since launch, Meta's system has been able to infer the positions of your main walls, floor, and ceiling from this 3D mesh, and since v64 it has also generated labeled bounding boxes for doors, windows, beds, tables, sofas, storage (cabinets, shelves, etc.), and screens (TVs and monitors).
Quest developers can access these bounding boxes using Meta's Scene API and use them to automatically place virtual content. For example, they could place a tabletop gameboard on the largest table in the room, replace your windows with portals, or depict your TV in a fully VR game so you don't punch it.
Generic Meta depiction of Scene Understanding.
Now, with Horizon OS v83, Meta says Space Setup will also incorporate "more complex architectural elements like multi-height floors, slanted ceilings, and inner walls".
A significant drawback of Meta's Horizon OS compared to Apple's visionOS and Google's Android XR is that its default web browser isn't available on traditional device platforms. On Samsung Galaxy XR you'll have access to all your Chrome passwords and bookmarks, and on Apple Vision Pro you'll get the same for Safari – but the Horizon OS browser is only available on Quest.
The Horizon OS browser does have LastPass, and Meta is gradually rolling out Bitwarden, NordPass, Proton Pass, and Dashlane to it too, but switching to a supported password manager is a big ask for your VR headset.
Now, with Horizon OS v83, Meta says you can log into "certain websites" via your phone by sending a link to the Meta Horizon smartphone app.
Currently supported websites include "Roblox and Tiktok", Meta says, without disclosing exactly how other web developers can implement this, or whether it's based on a web standard.
Meta now has a trade-in program for its displayless smart glasses in the US.
The company's online store offers credit for trading in either Gen 1 Ray-Ban Meta glasses or recent models of AirPods, Beats, or Galaxy Buds wireless earbuds.
Here's the full list of eligible devices to trade in:
Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 1)
Apple AirPods Pro 2
Apple AirPods 4
Apple AirPods 3
Beats Powerbeats Pro 2
Beats Studio Buds +
Beats Fit Pro
Samsung Galaxy Buds3
Samsung Galaxy Buds3 Pro
Samsung Galaxy Buds3 FE
You can trade one of these devices in when buying any of Meta's smart glasses except for Meta Ray-Ban Display. That means the program applies to the two Ray-Ban Meta generations, Oakley Meta HSTN, and Oakley Meta Vanguard.
Traded-in devices must be "in working condition and include the charging case to properly charge the device", Meta's policy states. After an inspection to verify this, you'll be issued the credit to the payment method you used to buy the glasses.
How much credit you'll get depends on which device you trade in, with Ray-Ban Meta fetching up to $113 depending on the exact variant, while wireless earbuds will get you up to $70.
The Gen 1 Ray-Ban Meta Glasses are currently on sale at $239 in the company's Black Friday sale. But according to Meta's terms, the trade-in program "cannot be combined with other offers, discounts, bundles, or coupons", so it looks like you can't combine the sale and the trade-in.
Pico's 2026 headset will have 4K micro-OLED displays and a dedicated R1-style passthrough chip, a ByteDance executive reportedly said.
The Chinese news outlet STAR Market Daily reports that during the 2025 ByteDance Scholarship Award Ceremony, ByteDance Vice President of Technology, Yang Zhenyuan, described key details of Pico's next-generation headset.
We first heard that ByteDance's Pico was working on a high-end headset 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.
That short-term headset arrived last year as Pico 4 Ultra, while the Vision Pro competitor seems to be what Zhenyuan described.
According to STAR Market Daily, Zhenyuan said that the headset will feature "custom" micro-OLED panels with 4000 pixels per inch (PPI). That would match the pixel density of the 4K micro-OLED panels in Samsung Galaxy XR, Play For Dream MR, and Shiftall MeganeX.
Zhenyuan also reportedly said that the new Pico headset will have a self-developed dedicated chip for passthrough, handling real-time processing of the color cameras and delivering frames in less than 12 milliseconds.
The only headsets we've seen yet with a dedicated secondary chip for passthrough are Apple's Vision Pro series, which feature the company's R1 chip for this. And matching Pico's figure, Apple claims R1 delivers 12 milliseconds of photon-to-photon latency.
The news, if accurate, could suggest that Pico is looking to deliver best-in-class passthrough quality, exceeding competitors like Samsung that only use the ISP of the Qualcomm XR2 Gen 2 series chipset.
We should note that earlier this year, The Information reported that Pico is working on an ultralight headset resembling a pair of goggles, with a tethered compute puck, similar to Meta's next headset.
That report also noted that ByteDance was working on an R1 chip equivalent, but it's unclear whether the 2026 headset Zhenyuan described is the same as the ultralight headset, or whether Pico plans a range of high-end options with different form factors.
We'll keep a close eye on Pico in 2026 for any signs of a new headset announcement. But keep in mind that Pico 4 and Pico 4 Ultra aren't sold in North America, as ByteDance doesn't want to risk any unwanted political scrutiny in the face of a TikTok ban taking effect, so there's a good chance its next headset won't be either.
We could go on all day here, but the TL;DR is that you can get 40% off almost every major title on Quest for the next week. A notable exception is Deadpool VR, which isn't eligible since it only came out last week. You'll still need to fork out $50 for it.
To apply the 40% discount for the eligible titles, just enter the code BFCM25 at checkout.
You can use it as many times as you want, up until 11:59 pm PT on December 2, a week from now.
Meta's WorldGen AI system generates trimesh 3D worlds from text prompts, though the company doesn't think it's ready for Horizon Worlds yet.
Meta first teased that its Horizon Worlds creation tools would get the ability to AI-generate entire 3D worlds back in May, when announcing the related AssetGen 2.0 model. Then, in June, the company revealed that this feature would be called Environment Generation, teased example generations, and said it would launch "very soon".
Environment Generation launched in August, but it was (and remains) only capable of generating a very specific kind of island, a very limited scope compared to the goal of generic world creation.
What Is Horizon Worlds Desktop Editor?
Horizon Worlds Desktop Editor is a flatscreen Windows PC application Meta released in early access in February, alongside deprecating the in-VR creation tools of Horizon Worlds.
The editor offers the ability to import 3D assets, images, and sound files, place them in a 3D landscape, and implement game logic and other functionality using TypeScript, a popular offshoot of JavaScript. These worlds are then immediately playable and multiplayer-capable in Horizon Worlds.
In the US, UK, Canada, EU, Australia, and New Zealand, creators can also AI-generate 3D meshes, textures, skyboxes, sound effects, ambient audio, and TypeScript.
You can download Horizon Worlds Desktop Editor here.
At Connect 2025 in September, Meta teased an overhaul of its Horizon Worlds creation tools, called Horizon Studio, which hasn't yet launched. The tease depicted an AI Assistant capable of generating just about anything a creator wants, including entire worlds, specific assets, custom NPCs, and specific gameplay mechanics, in a matter of seconds or minutes. But it's unclear whether what Meta was showing was notional or representative of real technology it was waiting to deploy.
That brings us to WorldGen, the new AI system Meta published a paper for.
Meta describes it as "a state-of-the-art end-to-end system for generating interactive and navigable 3D worlds from a single text prompt", leveraging a chain of 2D and 3D techniques, rather than being a single model.
"WorldGen is built on a combination of procedural reasoning, diffusion-based 3D generation, and object-aware scene decomposition. The result is geometrically consistent, visually rich, and render-efficient 3D worlds for gaming, simulation, and immersive social environments."
To be clear, this is not producing a Gaussian splat like World Labs' Marble, nor an interactive video stream like Google DeepMind's Genie 3.
Meta's WorldGen creates a layout of traditional trimesh 3D assets, making it fully compatible with traditional game engines and rendering pipelines. And it also includes a navmesh for collision detection and NPC traversal.
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Here's the underlying sequence WorldGen goes through after you input a prompt, according to Meta:
(2) Reconstruction 1. Image-to-3D base model 2. Navmesh-based scene generation 3. Initial scene texture generation
(3) Decomposition 1. Part extraction with accelerated AutoPartGen for scenes 2. Data curation for scene decomposition
(4) Refinement 1. Image enhancement 2. Mesh refinement model 3. Texturing model
So why isn't WorldGen rolling out in Horizon Worlds Desktop Editor, or at least being announced as a launch feature for Horizon Studio?
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Meta says it's not satisfied with the fact that WorldGen currently only produces 50×50 meter spaces, and that it takes a long time to do so. The company says it's working to address both limitations.
It seems like a greatly upgraded future version of WorldGen will be necessary to deliver on the promise of Horizon Studio that Meta teased at Connect, and given the rate of advancement in AI, it's very possible that the company will be able to achieve exactly that sometime in 2026.
AI can bring real-world objects into VR as 3D assets in seconds, with Meta's new SAM 3D Objects model setting a new standard for quality.
It has been possible for years now to generate a 3D model of a real-world object by capturing dozens of images of it from surrounding angles, leveraging traditional photogrammetry techniques. Epic's RealityScan, for example, takes around 15–45 minutes of cloud processing, while Apple offers an on-device Object Capture API for iPhone Pro models that takes around 5 minutes.
But over the past year or so, advanced AI models have emerged that can produce 3D assets from a single image in a matter of seconds. And while they don't offer the same quality of photogrammetry, the quality has steadily improved with each new model release, mirroring the overall rapid advancement of AI.
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EchoTheReality on SideQuest, which uses an old AI model from 2024.
For an example of how this applies to VR, Takahiro “Poly” Horikawa published a Quest app on SideQuest that uses hand tracking to let you frame a specific real-world object and take a photo of it, leveraging Meta's passthrough camera API. This image is then provided to Stability AI's Stable Fast 3D API, based on the TripoSR model, and the result is spawned as a virtual object beside the image capture spot.
TripoSR is now almost two years old, though. And this week, Meta launched SAM 3D Objects, the new state-of-the-art model for generating 3D assets from a single image.
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Meta SAM 3D Objects
You can test out SAM 3D Objects for free in your web browser on the Meta AI Demos page. Just provide it with an image and you'll be able to select which object you want to convert to a 3D model. Seconds later, you'll see a 3D view where you can pan around the object with your mouse or finger.
Meta's site isn't designed for mobile screens, so you'll probably want to use a PC, laptop, tablet, or VR headset. Also note that the model is only designed for inanimate objects, not people or animals.
SAM 3D Objects is open source, available on GitHub and Hugging Face. That means developers should be able to host it on a cloud computing platform that offers GPUs, and use it to provide the experience of that EchoTheReality demo but with higher quality output – essentially pulling an object from reality into VR.
Social VR platforms, for example, could let you conduct show-and-tell for objects in your real room in a matter of seconds. Or decorate your home space with items you crafted in the real world. Meta has no announced plan to add this to Horizon Worlds, but it would seem like a natural future step, complementing the Hyperscape worlds it just launched.
Marble, an AI model from World Labs, can turn a single image into a volumetric scene that you can view in WebXR in a matter of minutes.
World Labs was founded last year by Fei-Fei Li, one of the pioneers of modern AI. She's best known for creating the ImageNet dataset that helped enable the rapid advancement of computer vision in the 2010s, having the insight that the lack of high-quality labeled data was a critical bottleneck.
As with almost all of the remarkable advancements in 3D reconstruction over the past few years, Marble generates Gaussian splats, fitting millions of semitransparent colored blobs (Gaussians) in 3D space so that arbitrary viewpoints can be rendered realistically in real-time. But Marble's variety of supported input types and the speed of its output are unprecedented.
While other splat generation systems like Meta's Horizon Hyperscape and Varjo Teleport require hundreds of input frames and hours of processing, in its simplest mode Marble can generate a splat from a single input image or text prompt in a matter of minutes.
For more advanced outputs, if you pay for the $20/month subscription Marble can take multiple images as input, or a short video, or even a 3D structure, using a tool World Labs calls Chisel.
Chisel lets you lay out a scene with crude 3D shapes, as you would in a game editor, and then use a text prompt to turn it into a detailed volumetric scene.
With the subscription, Marble outputs support interactive editing, expanding, and the ability to combine multiple worlds together. And you can export as a high-quality traditional 3D mesh, though this takes multiple hours of conversion time.
Because of the unique capability set of Marble, World Labs describes it as a "first-in-class generative multimodal world model".
On the Marble web app you can generate your own scenes for free, and view the output in VR via WebXR using the web browser of your headset.
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UploadVR testing Marble with a single image of the Steam Dev Days 2014 VR room.
Trying out Marble on Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro, by turning a single image of the Steam Dev Days 2014 VR room into a volumetric scene, I found the quality to be noticeably inferior to Meta's Hyperscape worlds and Varjo Teleport, more akin to (but notably better than) Niantic Scaniverse. While the details directly brought in from your input image are relatively detailed, the further away you move from this, the more typical Gaussian splat visual artifacts you'll see.
And of course, the elephant in the room here is that details beyond the image frame are hallucinated, so will be very different from what was actually there behind the camera, unless you provide multiple input images.
Still, the limitations aside, the ability to generate volumetric scenes in minutes from a single image or sentence is remarkable, and that you can then edit them with a combination of an editor UI and natural language is even more so.
Further, the ability to then export these scenes as traditional 3D worlds, with geometric steerability via Chisel, seems like it could have huge potential for VR developers to build environments for their interactive apps and games.
You can try out Marble at marble.worldlabs.ai. Note that if you don't pay, any scenes you create will be publicly listed. You'll need the $20/month subscription to create a private scene, alongside unlocking the more advanced creation, editing, and export features.
An Apple Immersive Video documentary about Real Madrid is coming next year, "with a level of access that fans have never experienced before".
If you're an American reading this who doesn't know much about what you call "soccer", here's some context: Real Madrid is one of the most successful football clubs of all time, and has signed some of the best players of all time, including both Ronaldos, Zinedine Zidane, and David Beckham. In the year 2000, FIFA even officially declared Real Madrid "Club of the Century".
Today, Real Madrid and Apple confirmed work on an Apple Immersive Video documentary about the club, captured during last month's Champions League match against Juventus.
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.
Apple says the documentary was filmed using over 30 Blackmagic immersive cameras, and "brings viewers inside the world’s most decorated club, capturing moments from practice to the pitch with a level of access that fans have never experienced before."
In an interview with GQ Spain, Real Madrid's president Florentino Pérez described the documentary as just the beginning of a long-term plan to connect the club's "billion" strong global fanbase to the stadium using technology. He references the "Infinite Bernabéu", an idea he has floated in previous interviews, a goal of one day letting fans all over the world virtually attend Real Madrid home matches using VR.
That strongly suggests that the next step of Real Madrid's plan is to stream live games in Apple Immersive.
The first known live Apple Immersive Video offering will be select LA Lakers NBA games, set to be streamed next year via Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive Live, a special variant of the immersive camera creators are using for prerecorded Apple Immersive Video content.
The announcement came almost nine years after NextVR started streaming weekly NBA games to the Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR headset in 180-degree. In 2020 Apple acquired NextVR, and leveraged its expertise and IP to develop Apple Immersive Video.
You can now turn new Horizon Hyperscape captures into unlisted Horizon Worlds, letting you invite friends to join you in them as Meta Avatars.
Launched at Connect 2025, Meta's Horizon Hyperscape Capture app for Quest 3 and Quest 3S lets you use your headset to scan a real-world environment, such as a room, to create a photorealistic VR replica.
The Hyperscape scanning process requires between 5 and 10 minutes of walking around the scene while wearing the headset, and it's followed by between 1 and 8 hours of processing on Meta's servers, depending on the complexity of the capture.
At launch, Hyperscape was a solo experience, and you couldn't share your captures with others. It was also cloud rendered, requiring a very strong and stable internet connection at all times.
Now, just over two months later, Meta is "rolling out" an overhaul of the technology.
Instead of creating cloud-rendered captures only accessible within the app, Hyperscape now creates a special kind of Horizon Worlds destination, a Hyperscape world. While the initial processing is still done on Meta's servers, Hyperscape worlds are rendered on-device in VR, via the Horizon Engine that also powers Quest's new Immersive Home and Horizon Central.
Once a new Hyperscape world finishes processing, you'll see Invite and Share buttons, with the latter generating a URL that you can send to friends.
People with the link can join the Hyperscape world in VR from a Quest 3 or Quest 3S, or in flatscreen on a smartphone in the Meta Horizon app, and you can reset access to the link at any time, according to Meta.
Generic depiction of the Horizon Hyperscape social update from Meta.
Hyperscape worlds currently support up to 8 people per instance, and Meta says it "hopes" to increase that number in future.
As with all Horizon Worlds, for people joining on smartphones the experience will continue to be cloud-rendered. The on-device rendering is for VR only.
Note that Hyperscapes scanned before the new update cannot be shared, and are only accessible solo in the Horizon Hyperscape Preview app.
UploadVR plans to test the new social Hyperscape experience as soon as we can, and we'll bring you footage and impressions once we do.
The Thrill of the Fight 2 is now out of Early Access with a launch update that adds a singleplayer campaign.
The original The Thrill of the Fight arrived on Steam for the original HTC Vive all the way back in 2016, and is still considered to be one of the best VR games of all time, as well as one of the first to get you breaking a sweat. It was ported to Quest soon after the original Oculus Quest launched, and last saw a major update in 2023.
Compared to the original, the biggest addition in The Thrill of the Fight 2 is multiplayer, which was the only mode available when it entered Early Access on Quest headsets back in November.
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The Thrill of the Fight 2 launch trailer.
The Thrill of the Fight 2 also adds a visible and customizable player body model, as well as a thumbstick locomotion option in addition to the default room-scale movement. It's also a little more game-like, with visible scoring, a departure from the simulation feel of the original.
While the multiplayer-only Early Access release was $10, the full game with a singleplayer campaign too is now $20 for new buyers (existing buyers get the update for free).
You can find Thrill of the Fight 2 on the Meta Horizon Store, with support for Quest 2, Quest Pro, Quest 3, and Quest 3S.
There's no timeline yet for a PC VR release, though there is a flatscreen PC viewer app launching on Steam soon for spectating fights between Quest players.
TCL is showing off a compact 2.5K RGB OLED panel for XR headsets that could be the perfect midpoint between cheap LCD and expensive micro-OLED.
Today, almost every affordable headset uses LCD panels, while premium options use micro-OLED, technically known as OLED-on-silicon (OLEDoS).
LCD is cheap, but has poor contrast, forming a relatively washed-out image that compresses the darkest details into a gray haze in place of deep blacks. Meanwhile micro-OLED offers vibrant colors with rich contrast, and can achieve extremely high resolution without increasing the bulk of headsets, but is incredibly difficult to manufacture and thus very expensive.
Some headsets like Meta Quest Pro, the Pimax Crystal series, and Somnium VR1 use advanced LCD panels with an array of mini backlights to improve contrast compared to regular LCD, and a quantum dot layer to enhance colors, but the result is still a far cry from the self-emissive nature of OLED, where every pixel provides its own light. Further, the extra layers increase thickness, weight, heat, and power draw.
Of course, there is another display technology for headsets between LCD and micro-OLED, one that also offers many of the latter's benefits: regular OLED, also known as OLED on glass.
OLED on glass is what's used in your smartphone, your smartwatch, and perhaps your TV too, if you paid a lot for it. For VR, it was seen as the only game in town between 2014 and 2016, used in the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR.
HTC continued to use OLED in Vive Pro, as did Oculus for the original Quest. But LCD soon offered higher density at lower cost, a killer combination for a market looking to scale up while increasing resolution, and so investment in new custom OLED panels to keep up with the density demands of VR mostly dried up within just a few years.
The only regular OLED VR headset still on the market today is PlayStation VR2. And one key reason that it's the only headset from a major company with new fresnel lenses is that, when it released, there was simply no OLED with high enough density to be compact enough to be suitable for pancake lenses (among other issues, which we'll get to later in the article).
TCL's New OLED
PlayStation VR2's OLED
Size
2.56-inch
~3.4-inch
Resolution
2560×2740
2000×2040
Subpixels
RGB (3/3)
PenTile (2/3)
Refresh Rate
120Hz
120Hz
Density
1512 PPI
>800PPI
That brings us to TCL's new OLED panel, which its China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT) division is showing at the Display Tech-Ecosystem Conference (DTC 2025) this week in China.
The company says it's the highest density RGB OLED-on-glass display in the world, and has the 120Hz refresh rate ideal for VR.
It's almost twice as dense as the OLED in PlayStation VR2, while using a full RGB subpixel arrangement, letting it offer 73% more pixels and 160% more subpixels despite being just over half the size.
Its size makes it ideal for use with pancake lenses, its RGB subpixels mean it shouldn't need a softening diffusion layer, and its resolution is notably higher than the LCDs in Meta Quest 3 and Valve's Steam Frame.
Putting it all together, this means TCL's new OLED panel could power clear and sharp headsets with rich colors, deep contrast, and true blacks, but without the sky-high prices you get with micro-OLED. And this could be key to delivering compelling products that sit somewhere between Meta Quest 3 and Samsung Galaxy XR in the market.
This isn't the first time we've heard about the idea of high-density regular OLED as a way to deliver some of the advantages of micro-OLED but in far more affordable headsets.
Over a year ago, South Korean news outlet The Elec reported that Japan's JDI was pitching Apple a 1500 PPI regular OLED for the rumored "Vision Air" headset, and that Samsung was working on a similar display too.
That's notable because it's almost exactly the same density as TCL's new OLED, and may suggest that TCL too is (or was) pitching the panel to Apple.
For now, TCL isn't saying whether it has any customers for the new OLED panel, but does confirm that it's designed for "XR devices".
Type
Resolution
Quest 3
LCD
2064×2208
Steam Frame
LCD
2160×2160
TCL's New Panel
OLED
2560×2740
Apple Vision Pro
Micro-OLED
3660×3200
Samsung Galaxy XR
Micro-OLED
3552×3840
There are, however, a few major unanswered questions.
The first is whether the panel is bright enough to overcome the inefficiency of pancake lenses, and the fact that they work best with polarized light, which OLED doesn't provide. There are workarounds for this, if the panel layers and lenses are specifically designed to work together. And the brightness of OLED panels has significantly improved in recent years, with the latest iPhones and Apple Watches for example reaching 3000 nits.
The other question is whether the new panel exhibits the same non-uniform fixed-pattern noise we've seen in many regular OLED headsets like PlayStation VR2, the mura, an issue not present in any micro-OLED we've viewed to date. Overcoming this may be the key to reviving regular OLED as a great option for midrange headsets, so we're incredibly curious to find out whether TCL has done so.
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UploadVRDavid Heaney
UploadVRDavid Heaney
