We're back with another weekly VR news round-up, featuring the biggest XR stories and more.
With VR hardware, a new earnings report confirmed Meta's Reality Labs revenue continues to rebound. Meta also increased the maximum GPU clock speed on Quest 3 and launched Quest v71. Google appears to be preparing the Play Store for Samsung's headset, Snap Spectacles are coming to developers in six EU countries, and Apple Vision Pro will soon be sold in South Korea and the UAE.
Elsewhere, Wolvic Chromium 1.1 added WebXR AR to the open-source XR browser. Safari on visionOS now supports embedded spatial photos and videos, and Steam Link for Quest now supports hand tracking.
With VR gaming, this week saw the release of Triangle Strategy, Underworld Overseer, and Human Fall Flat VR. Gorilla Tag is coming to PlayStation VR2, Ghost Town is a new supernatural puzzle adventure, Myst received its 2.0 update, and many games celebrated Halloween. Other stories focused on Dino Hab, Gargoyle Doyle, Pulsargeist, Songbird, Quest+, Last Stand, Tactical Assault, Behemoth, Vail, Sight Unseen, Arkham Shadow, Mannequin, Bridge Constructor Studio, and Game Room.
We also shared our early impressions of Alien: Rogue Incursion, plus Blade & Sorcery: Nomad following the latter's version 1.0 update. Finally, four years after reaching Steam, Phasmophobia reached PlayStation VR2 in early access and you can check out our review-in-progress.
Finally, we announced that the UploadVR Winter Showcase 2024 is back on December 5th. This time around, we're teaming up with the AIXR Awards being held in Rotterdam, Netherlands to premiere the showcase with their event.
Our full article list is here but elsewhere, here are this week's five VR news stories that we initially missed:
Death Conquers All Is The Latest Asgard's Wrath 2 Event
To celebrate Halloween, Asgard’s Wrath 2 kicked off its latest Cosmic Event in 'Death Conquers All.' With undead forces making their way across the multiverse, you're tasked with destroying the Cursed Urns these undead foes are emerging from. Completing new objectives awards you with both Inpu and Anubis-themed items, and this update also expands localization support.
Strike Rush - Season 2 Is Now Available On Quest
Strike Rush, the 4v4 team-based hero shooter on Quest, recently kicked off Season 2: Unknown Villain with a new update. This introduces two new playable characters, a new "Goblin-type" creature that can accompany players in the arena, the new B-13 Laboratory stage, a new weapon, Team Deathmatch as a game mode, and more.
Red Matter Gets 4K Textures In Visual Upgrade On Quest 3
While we're late to report this, the original Red Matter has received a 'Graphics Update' on Quest 3 and Quest 3S, following last year's enhanced version on PlayStation VR2. That introduces 4K textures with " up to a 16x increase in pixel count," dynamic shadows, anisotropic filtering for texture sharpness, and HD meshes.
Dig VR Is Selling A £500K Collector's Edition With Actual Diggers
Before its upcoming launch in two weeks, DIG VR has launched a hefty "Collector's Edition" reminiscent of Dying Light's Apocalypse Edition in 2015. Costing £500,000 (roughly $646,000 USD), this one-off bundle features two custom-wrapped JCB 100c-2 excavators, two Meta Quest 3 headsets, and two copies of DIG VR.
Doom 3: Resurrection Of Evil Gets Added To Team Beef's VR Mod
Doom 3: Ressurection of Evil #VR will be available on Halloween! 😎
— Team Beef VR Ports. Partner of Flat2VR Studios (@TeamBeefVR) October 30, 2024
Did someone said Gravity Gun?! No this is the patented UAC Plasma Levitator! 😝
Watch out @valvesoftware the UAC has the best Lawyers - you are lucky they are all on Mars and occupied with being ... possessed 😬 pic.twitter.com/s2iNfqItuV
The unofficial Doom 3 VR port from Team Beef now supports 2005's Resurrection of Evil expansion. Released to coincide with Halloween, this new update also introduces enhanced shaders and BFG and ODG3 lighting presets, also promising further quality of life fixes.
Other Updates
After even more VR or XR related news? Here's everything else we've seen.
- xFit: Powered By The World Of Dance is a new fitness game for Quest and Pico.
- Trombone Champ: Unflattened received a new release date trailer.
- NFL Pro Era launched Halloween gear DLC on Quest.
- Thief Simulator VR: Greenview Street released the Spooky House DLC on Quest.
- Phasmophobia has now sold 20 million copies across all platforms.
- Apple reported its fourth quarter results.
- Pico OS launched a new update that adds phone mirroring.
- The latest VRChat update introduces mobile face tracking on Android.
- Batman: Arkham Shadow released hotfix update 1.0.2.
- A new Hide The Corpse update added 30 game achievements.
