The XR Week Peek (2025.03.25): Bigscreen Beyond 2 is a hit, new reports on Valve Deckard, and more!
This newsletter is coming out a bit late and with a little less commentary than usual because I’m overwhelmed by work at the end of this March. This is good in some ways, but less good in others. I hope you’ll enjoy this article: I think I have a good collection of interesting news, crazy things, and fun stuff, as usual!
Top news of the week
BigScreen launches Beyond 2, and it’s already a hit
Bigscreen announced its new headset, the Bigscreen Beyond 2, which is an iteration over the previous model. The shape is very similar to the first edition, but it has some interesting improvements.
First of all, the lenses are new, and they guarantee edge-to-edge clarity, fewer glares, and an increased FOV up to 116 degrees diagonal. There is now also mechanical IPD adjustment, which will finally let the users adjust the fit of the headset to their eyes. Surprisingly, it weighs even less than before, and now it is only as heavy as 107g. It also comes in three colors: black, transparent, and orange.
Some things didn’t change, though: the displays are unluckily always the same, which is a bit disappointing. The tracking is always SteamVR-dependent. And all the accessories that were working with the Beyond 1 are compatible with the Beyond 2, which is great for those who want to do an upgrade.
There is also a surprise: beyond (pun intended) the Bigscreen Beyond 2, there is also a model called Bigscreen Beyond 2e, which features eye-tracking. Eye tracking is great to have a more human-looking avatar if you are into VRChat. In the future, Beyond 2e will also feature foveated rendering.
The first hands-on reviews are positive and they praise the very low weight of the device and its improved visuals (especially the fewer glares than before).
The headsets are priced at $1,019 (Beyond 2) and $1,219 (Beyond 2e), although Bigscreen is discounting that for previous owners of the original Beyond, bringing them to $849 and $1049 respectively.
As soon as it was announced, the Bigscreen Beyond became a massive hit. In 25 minutes, the Beyond 2 had already surpassed the sales the Beyond 1 had on its whole launch day. And on its launch day, the Beyond 2 had as many sales as the Beyond 1 in six months. This shows that if you are a team that has proven to be reliable and you can ship good products, the community recognizes this and buys what you produce. Kudos to the Bigscreen team for this!
More info (Bigscreen launches Beyond 2 headset — Road To VR)
More info (Bigscreen launches Beyond 2 headset — Upload VR)
More info (Beyond 2 sold in 25 minutes what Beyond 1 did in one day)
More info (Beyond 2 sold in 1 day what Beyond 1 did in 6 months)
More info (Hands-on Bigscreen Beyond 2)
Other relevant news
Details about a Deckard POC device surface from Steam data
Our favorite Valve Deckard fanboy Brad Lynch, and his team of dataminers have found references to various iterations of Valve Deckard inside Steam Data. The names of the devices are POC-A, POC-C, Mini-D, POC-E, POC-F, EV1, and EV2. The fact that we went from POC (proof of concept) to EV (engineering validation) means that the product is evolving from the prototype stage to the productization stage, and this is a great sign.
Lynch & Co. managed to find the specs of the POC-F. Deckard POC-F used two 2160×2160 LCD panels with 120Hz refresh rate, had four world-facing tracking cameras and two internal eye tracking cameras, and was powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. These specs are not bad, if we consider that the resolution is more or less in line with Quest 3 and that the GPU is 25% faster than the one of Quest 3.
Does this mean that we now know the specifications of Valve Deckard? Not at all. We don’t know the date of the POC-F, so we can speculate that in the EV1 and EV2 stages, the headset has evolved to even better specifications. But this data is good to have a glimpse into the work that Valve is doing in designing, prototyping, and internally evolving its future VR headset.
Meta claims its Store is working well
At GDC, Meta’s Chris Pruett shared some interesting data about the Meta Horizon Store, which was the subject of much criticism in the last weeks.
According to Pruett, the usage per month of Quest headsets increased by 30% in 2024 compared to the year before. $2B has been spent in total on the Quest Store, and in 2024, the spending has actually increased by 12% compared to 2023. Quest 3S brought a lot of new young people into the Quest ecosystem, and this led to a dramatic shift in the market preferences, with now free-to-play titles accounting for 70% of the time spent on Quest. According to Pruett, this is the reason why some paid titles saw an inflection of sales. But he claimed that the majority of revenue still comes from paid titles.
He also defended the choices Meta made in the past. He said that from internal tests and A/B tests, Meta verified that opening up the Store led to only a 1% difference in spending, because VR enthusiasts already come to the Store knowing what they want to buy. And heavily promoting Horizon Worlds in the phone app only decreases sending by 3% at most. He reiterated that neither of these changes leads to a reduction in overall spending, with in fact increased of 12% in 2024.
Pruett also added that it is not true that Meta is disinvesting in games: 200 games supported by Meta are currently in “active production”. 21 games are currently supported by the Oculus Publishing Ignition initative. Both Chris Pruett and Andrew Bosworth, anyway, said that the type of content that Meta is funding is different from before, with more attention now to social aspects or to the enjoyment of media like movies and concerts. It’s a pity they didn’t have the same ideas when we were looking for support for our XR concert platforms… cough cough
While I appreciate that Pruett shared with us this interesting data, and I’m glad that Meta is still investing in our space, I have to honestly say that I’m a bit disappointed by Meta’s attitude lately. We developers complained about a problem, about the Horizon Store not working properly to support our business, and Meta, instead of acknowledging the problem and trying to solve it, is everywhere talking about the fact that the problem does not exist and that all that we are seeing is a shift in demographics. But this is not true: when Upload VR published a detailed article about game studios complaining about the Horizon Store, some of them claimed to have had a loss of 50–80% of sales after the overhaul of the Store itself. You can not justify an 80% loss just by the fact that there are more kids. Plus, we are happy that the overall spending on Quest is up 12%, but what about the single titles? Studios to survive must make money themselves, not see how much the platform makes in total. If now there are 10x titles that are visible on the store, even if the whole spending is up, the money is spread across more games, so more individual titles are starving. And in the end, we are all aware that Meta is pushing hard for developers to go free-to-play now, and it keeps underlining that now 70% of the time, people play free titles on Quest. But if you’ve read carefully above, Meta acknowledged at GDC that paid titles still account for the majority of Store revenues. If the games people play 30% of the time still make more money than the ones played 70% of the time, it means that F2P games still don’t monetize well. So I wonder why as a developer, I should make a F2P game.
In the end, on one side, I agree with Meta that we should accept that the VR ecosystem is changing and we developers have to adapt to the new dynamics if we want to survive. But on the other side, I still think that Meta should improve its Store to support more us developers.
More info (Meta talks about its store)
More info (Meta is still investing in gaming)
PCVR is still growing
An interesting analysis by Road To VR shows that the PC VR market is growing.
PCVR is often disregarded as a legacy technology and for sure, its numbers are inferior to Quest ones, but it is still a viable market for some game studios. Analyzing the data on Steam, at first sight, it seems that the number of PCVR people is shrinking because the percentage of people having a VR headset on Steam has decreased over time. But if we account for the fact that the number of people on Steam has grown over the years, we can estimate that the number of people using PCVR has actually steadily grown.
Do you want an estimate of the total number of PCVR people? Well, looking at the chart, it is a bit above 3 million people, with 70% of them using a Meta headset.
PCVR is not dead.
News worth a mention
Snap introduces geolocation features for its Spectacles glasses
Snap announced that now developers can start building Lenses, i.e. apps for its Spectacles glasses, integrating data from GPS, GNSS, compass heading, and custom locations. To showcase the new features Snap has collaborated with some partners and released lenses about navigation and about setting up the path for walking courses using AR. Geo-location data also helped Niantic bring multiplayer to Peridot Beyond, its AR pet simulator exclusively for Spectacles.
Last week’s update has been pretty rich, and besides geolocation, it has also brought AR keyboard for hand-tracked text input, leaderboards, improved hand tracking, and more. It’s good to see Snap keeping improving its platform and making it make steps towards the AR we dream of.
More info (Snap Spectacles updated features — Road To VR)
More info (Snap Spectacles updated features — Upload VR)
NVIDIA GTC was mostly about AI and robots
NVIDIA GTC has been a very successful event, but it has not been very interesting for us, XR enthusiasts. With gaming (and XR) not being NVIDIA’s main business anymore, the event focused mostly on artificial intelligence and robotics. The only glimpse of something XR-related has been the cloud streaming of some complex 3D model to Apple Vision Pro via Omniverse. Below I’m linking you a few links about GTC, so if you are interested in tech in general and not only in XR, you can have a read of them.
More info (Jensen Huang Introduces Blue: NVIDIA & Disney Research’s AI Robot)
More info (NVIDIA unveils Blackwell Ultra chip dedicated to AI reasoning)
More info (The four most important pieces of news from GTC)
More info (An editorial about NVIDIA GTC)
More info (NVIDIA updated its digital model of the Earth and this may help weather forecasts)
More info (NVIDIA opensources some algorithms for gaussian splatting)
More info (Streaming to Apple Vision Pro via NVIDIA Omniverse)
Meta Quest introduces an avatar selfie camera
In the upcoming v76 of the Quest runtime, Meta is going to introduce a virtual selfie camera. When an application requests the “selfie camera” of the Android operating system, Meta will provide a fake camera stream showing the face of the avatar of the user. This is an approach similar to what Apple is doing on Vision Pro and Google has already teased for Android XR. As usual, competition is good to bring new features.
Dataminers also found references to a totally overhauled UI coming in future versions of the Quest runtime: since every time Quest changes UI, it is always a disaster, I’m afraid to see how it will be.
More info (Quest Selfie Camera — Upload VR)
More info (Quest Selfie Camera — Road To VR)
LG closes its XR division
LG has now confirmed it’s closed its XR product division. The company “decided to delay the commercialization plan and focus on R&D”. This does not come as a surprise after the failed partnership with Meta about building some sort of Meta Quest Pro 2. In fact, when I was at LG’s booth at CES, there was no mention of XR, either.
VR headsets are now used to measure inflation
Both Virtual Reality headsets and yoga mats have made their way into the basket of goods and services used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to calculate inflation in the UK. This is great news, because it means the ONS considers VR headsets as something standard people may buy, like a kinda common element for the UK population.
(Thanks Rob Cole for the tip)
There are new contributions to Quest Camera Access
After the release of camera access for Quest 3, the community has started making great things with it. Some people made tutorials (like this post of mine that explains how to get started with it), some others made great experiments with it (like the “reliving the memories” prototype by Lucas Martinic), others made some code contributions (e.g. an integration with OpenCV so that you can track Aruco markers from the Quest). There is even a demo that reconstructs the 3D object of the items you look at with your headset. I suggest you have a look at all the links below and discover how many cool things people have already done with this technology.
More info (List of contributions to Camera Kit by Roberto Coviello)
More info (Streaming the camera stream via WebRTC)
More info (Lucas Martinic’s demo about reliving your memories)
More info (A GitHub repositiory with facilities for camera access, like a system to access both cameras at the same time in Unity)
More info (3D object reconstruction with Quest 3)
Strolll targets neurological disorders with AR
I’ve just discovered a company called Strolll that helps patients affected by neurological disorders (e.g. Parkinson) using AR glasses like HoloLens. The results seem pretty cool (you can see them in the video on their website), that’s why the company just raised £10.4m. It’s always amazing when XR is used for the good and well-being of people.
More info (Stroll raised £10.4M)
More info (Official website)
Some news about content
- BattleGroupVR2 is coming to Quest and SteamVR headsets soon, promising to be a “bigger, better sequel” than the previous game (BattleGroupVR)
- Eggy is a mixed reality pet simulator that lets you take care of your very own pet dragon. It is launching on April, 17
- Mil-sim Shooter Onward gets to version 2.0 with the “biggest update ever” coming this week. Most of the graphics have been overhauled, and there are new weapons and maps, too
- Alex And The Jets lets you have mixed reality dogfights with cute cartoonish airplanes in your living room. The game is coming in April
- Balls to the Wall merges match 3 puzzle mechanics with a mixed reality shooter, and it’s out now on Quest
- Viper Vice is an upcoming Quest game that feels like an indie version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas VR. The game should come in early access in a few months
- Electrician Simulator VR sends you on a series of serious and silly commissions as an electrician. It is coming to Quest, PS VR2, and Steam soon
- Elsewhere Electric is a co-op puzzle game coming to Quest and PC VR, where one player explores the world in VR while the other guides him/her from the mobile phone
- Table Troopers is a mixed reality multiplayer game inspired by Worms, and it’s coming to Quest later this year. Worms triggers so many memories in me, so I’m very curious about this game
- Slender: The Arrival will be released on May 13 for Steam, PS VR2, and Quest
- Verse VR is an immersive exploration game mixing art and meditation, and it’s coming soon to Quest and PC VR
- Inspired by Star Fox and Ikaruga, The Phoenix Gene is a new third-person narrative on-rails shooter coming to Quest this spring
- The team behind ENGAGE is bringing its Titanic VR experience, previously available only on PC VR and PlayStation VR, to Quest 3 and Quest 3S next month
- Soapbox lets you have bands and comedy acts in your room in mixed reality.
More info (BattleGroupVR2)
More info (Eggy)
More info (Onward 2 — Road To VR)
More info (Onward 2 — Upload VR)
More info (Alex And The Jets)
More info (Balls To The Wall)
More info (Viper Vice)
More info (Electrician Simulator VR)
More info (Elsewhere Electric)
More info (Table Troopers)
More info (Slender: The Arrival VR)
More info (Verse VR)
More info (The Phoenix Gene)
More info (The Titanic VR Experience)
More info (SoapBox)
Some reviews about content
- Upload VR had a preview of the upcoming Hitman World Of Assassination in VR, and the game seems pretty good. IO Interactive also had an interview with the journalists and stated that it really wanted to provide a good Hitman experience after the problems with the past editions.
Other news
Varjo is going to require a $2500 annual subscription to use advanced mixed reality features with the Varjo XR-4
Learn more (Subscription for Varjo XR-4 — Road To VR)
Learn more (Subscription for Varjo XR-4 — Upload VR)
Meta AI arrives in Europe (but not on Ray-Ban Meta, yet)
Apple performed an internal restructuring and separated the VisionOS division from the Apple Vision Pro hardware team
Roblox launches 3D creation tools powered by generative AI
QR Codes visible only under IR light may be a way to provide links to webpages without cluttering your images
(Thanks Ivan Aguilar for the tip)
News from partners (and friends)
Discover Hiverlab
Hiverlab just launched a cool related to Gaussian Splats. Let me paste here its press release so that you can discover it:
Hiverlab, a leader in Spatial Intelligence, today announced a groundbreaking enhancement to its SpatialWork Ai powered Digital Twin platform with the launch of the Gaussian Splatting Digital Twin Runtime Editor. This innovative solution redefines digital twin creation by combining a cutting-edge multi-splat technique with real-time IoT data integration, enabling users to overlay sensor information directly onto digital twin environments at the point of import.
Utilizing a proprietary process that generates highly detailed three-dimensional representations from photographic inputs — without relying on traditional polygon-based modeling — the new runtime editor accelerates asset creation while significantly reducing reliance on expensive, time-intensive scanning processes. The ability to edit and seamlessly stitch multiple splats together sets a new industry benchmark for producing cohesive, large-scale digital environments.
A critical differentiator in this release is the integration of a Visual Positioning System (VPS) powered by the Immersal SDK.
Some XR fun
From Virtual Boy to Bigscreen Beyond 2
Funny link
The most immersive VR setup ever.
Funny link
Donate for good
Like last week, also this week in this final paragraph I won’t ask you to donate to my blog, but to the poor people who are facing the consequences of the war. Please donate to the Red Cross to handle the current humanitarian situation in Ukraine. I will leave you the link to do that below.
Let me take a moment before to thank anyway all my Patreon donors for the support they give to me:
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And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
(Header image by Bigscreen)
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