I hope you are doing great. I’m doing ok, and in the past few days I’ve published two quite interesting posts: a review of the Pimax Dream Air written by the amazing Rob Cole; and an interview with four Chinese XR companies to discover more about the Chinese XR ecosystem. The last post has been made in collaboration with VR AR World, in anticipation of the VR AR Expo China I will attend in Shanghai in May. If you’re doing XR and you live in Southern China, let me know; hopefully we can meet in a few weeks!
That said, it is time to start speaking about the most relevant pieces of XR news of the week!
Top news of the week
Meta increased the price of Meta Quest
We were all kind of afraid this could happen… and in fact it happened: Meta has just raised a bit the price of Quest headsets.
You can all imagine the reasons: because of AI, the price of memory chips has skyrocketed, so all the devices with an internal memory are becoming more expensive. Considering that Meta is already selling these devices at a very low price (probably at cost) and that at the moment Meta is a bit disinvesting in VR,it is clear it can’t afford to lose so much money on every sold VR headset. The solution has so been to make them a bit more expensive. As someone made me notice, what is happening is kind of ironic: Meta is one of the companies spending billions in data centers and AI, so it is itself part of the problem that lead to this price spike.
The new price of the Quest headsets is as follows:
- Quest 3S (128 GB): $350
- Quest 3S (256 GB): $450
- Quest 3 (512 GB): $600
This means a $50 price change for Quest 3S and $100 for Quest 3. It is not a huge increase, but what we have noticed all over these years is that the adoption of VR is always inversely proportional to its price. So even a small price bump is going to decrease the sales of VR headsets.
I honestly don’t think this is going to change much in the current moment of the VR market, but it is still another negative piece of news in a moment we already had enough…
More info (Meta Quest price increase — Road To VR)
More info (Meta Quest price increase — Upload VR)
Other relevant news
Huawei launched its AI smartglasses
Huawei glasses have just been officially launched in China. They are the usual AI glasses featuring a front camera (12MP), an AI assistant (Xiaoyi), and speakers. The advertised use cases are also very similar to the ones of the competition: shooting photos and videos, answering phone calls, listening to music, interacting with an AI assistant, having live translations, etc…
Anyway, they feature a couple of interesting improvements over the market leader, i.e., Ray-Ban Meta:
- The battery lasts for 9 hours of continuous music playback, which is much more than the 5h of the Meta glasses
- Notwithstanding the battery capacity, the weight is still lighter than the Meta counterpart: 47g. Most probably, the use of titanium alloy in the frames is helping keep them very lightweight
The design doesn’t even feel that bad. For sure, Ray-Ban is able to produce more beautiful glasses, but in the promotional pictures, these look quite good, too.
The price is in line with other smartglasses: 2,499 yuan (about $367). It is unknown if these will ever be shipped outside of China. In any case, it is good to see Huawei launching some XR glasses.
More info (Huawei AI glasses — Gizmodo)
More info (Huawei AI glasses — Huawei Central)
More info (Huawei AI glasses — TechNode)
Apple has nominated its next CEO
Starting from September 2026, Apple will have a new CEO: John Ternus, currently senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors. The period from this announcement to the actual installation will serve as a transition between the current CEO and the next one.
It will be interesting to see how Apple’s XR strategy will change under the new CEO. Currently, Apple has a mixed reality headset, is preparing to launch smartglasses, and has the mission of building augmented reality glasses. For sure, there won’t be immediate changes, but the new CEO may decide to invest more or less in these new technologies in the upcoming years, affecting the whole ecosystem.
I guess we’ll see. In the meantime, good luck to the new CEO.
News worth a mention
Bigscreen reveals new halo strap design
Bigscreen has revealed a major redesign to Bigscreen Beyond 2’s long-promised halo headstrap mount, which the company says will begin shipping out starting in June. The mount can currently be preordered for $180.
Blackmagic announces a camera for live immersive broadcasts
Blackmagic Design unveiled its new VR camera, the URSA Cine Immersive 100G, which is targeting live immersive video production (especially for Apple Vision Pro). The camera features 8K×8K RGBW sensors, which guarantee a high-resolution video, with a 100G Ethernet interface, which is fundamental to livestream this huge quantity of data. Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive 100G is slated to arrive in Q3 2026, priced at $26,495.
I find this piece of news particularly interesting, because thanks to devices like this one, we will be able to have immersive livestreams of sports events that we can enjoy inside our VR headsets.
Inducing smell with ultrasound is now possible
This is probably the craziest piece of news of the week. A research team was able to manufacture a device that you can put on the forehead, and it sends ultrasound waves towards your olfactory bulb to make you feel certain smells, like rotten fruit (ok, maybe not the best one), burnt wood (this is a bit better), or fresh air (ok, this one entices me). It is super-interesting because current approaches to smell emulation require liquid cartridges, which kinda work, but bring many problems like refilling, or that their use is assimilated to e-cigarettes in some countries.
This approach would bypass all the problems of liquid cartridges, but it is still in its very early stages, so we don’t know if this may ever become a product.
NVIDIA keeps quietly working on XR
NVIDIA, probably the hottest company of the moment, keeps working on XR solutions without much fanfare, but being very practical and effective. It is good to see such an important company being committed to the technology we love so much.
This week, I received a couple of news items from them, coming from the recent GTC. One is that NVIDIA CloudXR, their solution for cloud rendering, is now compatible with JavaScript. This means that now the headsets that should get the cloud-rendered experience don’t have to install a dedicated thin client anymore, but can just go to a website to enjoy the streamed experience.
The other solution is XR AI: “NVIDIA XR AI is a platform that connects XR devices — such as lightweight AR/AI glasses or head-mounted displays — to your organization’s full computational power, enabling spatially aware, intelligent agents to operate seamlessly across cloud, data center, workstation, and edge deployments. By integrating your XR infrastructure with NVIDIA GPU resources, NVIDIA XR AI unlocks real-time AI that empowers developers to create agents that perceive, understand, and act within complex enterprise environments”. Translating from Corporate language to normal one, XR AI offers a framework so that employees in your company can use smartglasses which are connected to AI agents that belong to your company.
More info (CloudXR.js)
More info (XR AI)
Another Pimax drama
You can’t call it a month in XR if there hasn’t been at least one drama involving Pimax. The latest one has been about the modular nature of the Pimax Crystal Super: the headset features a swappable visual engine, so that you can have different visual modes on the same device. But the not-so-fun thing is that they chose a connector to connect every visual engine to the headset that has just been discontinued. So now there is a new connector, and the previously made modules do not work with new headsets and viceversa… which makes the modularity kinda useless. Pimax has made its best to remedy this problem (like it is saving stocks of old modules for people having the old headsets), but the community is angry at it anyway. Again.
More info (Pimax and the connector issue — Road To VR)
More info (Pimax and the connector issue — Reddit)
Quest adds a visual indicator for recording
Finally, Meta has solved one of the biggest problems for us VR content creators. It added an optional visual indicator that shows you what portion of the screen you are recording when in VR. The times of guessing what you were recording and then re-watching the video and noticing your content was all off-center are finally over.
Sock Puppet Superstar is the game of the moment
The most viral game of the moment is Sock Puppet Superstar, a silly game vaguely resembling Trombone Champ, in which you have to sing using a sock puppet that you move using your hand. The idea is cool, and the promotional videos are super fun, so the teaser is getting a lot of attention.
I love it, but I also want to see the final game before telling if this can actually be a great game or not: one thing is a fun short video, and another is a game that should entertain you for many hours. It’s interesting, for instance, to read how Andrew Eiche from Owlchemy Labs commented on it that they tried doing sock puppets, too, but the gesture to make them speak is the same that activates the system menu on Quest, and this may be an issue.
Anyway, I can’t wait to see the full game!
More info (Sock Puppet Superstar — X)
More info (Sock Puppet Superstar — UploadVR)
More info (Sock Puppet Superstar — Andrew Eiche’s comment)
Some news about content
- Spatial Desk for Vision Pro, an app that reinvents your desk as a spatial computing workspace, is available for pre-order with official release on May, 8th
- DIRECTV has appeared on the Quest store, in preparation for a Spring release. It will be one of the first major traditional TV services to offer a native experience on Quest
- Full support for PSVR is probably coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator this week
- Psychological horror game Evil Inside is coming to VR on May 7th, priced at $14.99
- FlatOut 4: Total Insanity VR has been postponed to May 7th
- Squingle Arcade, a faster-paced evolution of Squingle, is now available for public playtest until April 26th
- Portal 2: Community Edition is out now on Steam as an open beta. It features an experimental VR mode!
More info (Spatial Desk)
More info (DIRECTV)
More info (Microsoft Flight Simulator)
More info (Evil Inside)
More info (FlatOut 4: Total Insanity VR)
More info (Squingle Arcade)
More info (Portal 2 Community Edition)
Some reviews about content
- TaVRn’s Takedown — Naheulbeuk is an enjoyable brawling game with good graphics and good combat mechanics. Its boss fights are a bit meh, though
- Exoshock may be one of the most exciting shooters in Virtual Reality. It has very strong foundations
- LucentVR is a chilling experience featuring very high-quality environments on Quest
- Space Control is an ok experience that never fully delivers on the story, on the comedy, and also on the interactions
- The Amusement is a terrific VR narrative adventure centered on roomscale interactions and an intimate family story
- Just One Man is an immersive VR hack-and-slash with a simple but challenging combat system
- The New York City episode of Elevated just provides a lot of views from the City, but it fails to deliver the true spirit of New York
More info (TaVRn’s Takedown — Naheulbeuk)
More info (Exoshock)
More info (Lucent VR)
More info (Space Control)
More info (The Amusement)
More info (Just One Man)
More info (Elevated)
Other news
Snap lays off 1,000 employees. Specs doesn’t seem to be affected
Monkeys were able to navigate a virtual world using only their brainwaves in a research study
Niantic made ImagineAR patents to be invalidated. This prevents everyone wanting to make GPS-based AR from having to pay for using this concept
A redditor is working to make green-screen segmentation work on Quest
This is a truly PHYSICAL spatial computing interface
News from partners (and friends)
ClipKit is a video editor for Quest
If you are a content creator for VR, ClipKit may interest you. It is a small utility that lets you do simple editing of videos (e.g., cutting some clips) directly on your Quest. You can, for instance, record a short gameplay video on your Quest, then use ClipKit to cut a small part of it and share it as a YouTube short via the Quest browser. You can so edit and share your VR clips without leaving your headset. Very handy!
Learn more
Braintrance is a platform to share 3D scenes
Braintrance.net just got a $5 fundraise with the pitch of a platform to share 3D content that is reconstructed from various sources, like 360 cameras or smartglasses. It seems these recorded elements or spaces are reconstructed as Gaussian Splats and shared on the platform, where they can be enjoyed from devices like mobile phones.
Learn more
Sponsored Area
Discover FM DUO camera!
Meet the FM DUO, a VR camera that is capable of filming up to 12K @30fps, and 8K @60fps. With built-in RTMP live streaming and 5G connectivity, the FM·DUO will immerse your viewers in real time! The FM·DUO features 2 full-frame CMOS sensors, with 6000 x 6000 pixels each. This allows for high-resolution zooming capabilities. Not only can you narrow in on one subject, but you can also focus on singular details of the subject’s facial expressions, clothing textures, and a multitude of other small details, enabling a much more immersive experience of VR video.
Visit Product Website
Some XR fun
Before shipping any VR game, check how many points it makes on this bingo card…
Funny link
The reality of marketing your VR indie game on Reddit
Funny link
This is the way to do vibecoding without wasting your Claude Code tokens… (and it also prepares you for your future work at frying fries…)
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:
- Alex Gonzalez VR
- DeoVR
- GenVR
- Eduardo Siman
- Jonn Fredericks
- Jean-Marc Duyckaerts
- Reynaldo T Zabala
- Richard Penny
- Terry xR. Schussler
- Ilias Kapouranis
- Paolo Leoncini
- Immersive.international
- Nikk Mitchell and the great FXG team
- Jake Rubin
- Alexis Huille
- Raghu Bathina
- Chris Koomen
- Cognitive3D
- Wisear (Yacine Achiakh)
- Masterpiece X
- Dimo Pepelyashev
- Carol Dalrymple
- Keith Bradner
- Jennifer Granger
- Jason Moore
- Steve Biggs
- Julio Cesar Bolivar
- Jan Schroeder
- Kai Curtis
- Francesco Strada
- Sikaar Keita
- Ramin Assadollahi
- Juan Sotelo
- Andrew Sheldon
- Chris Madsen
- Horacio Torrendell
- Andrew Deutsch
- Fabien Benetou
- Tatiana Kartashova
- Marco “BeyondTheCastle” Arena
- Eloi Gerard
- Adam Boyd
- Jeremy Dalton
- Joel Ward
- Alex P
- Lynn Eades
- Donald P
- Casie Lane
- Catherine Henry
- Qcreator
- Ristband (Anne McKinnon & Roman Rappak)
- Stephen Robnett
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- Christopher Boyd
- Don Williams
- Giuseppe Pippi
- Mark Frederiksen
- Ken Lin
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- Ixn91
- Chris Madsen
- Sb
- Boule Petanque
- Pieter Siekerman
- Enrico Poli
- Vooiage Technologies
- Caroline
- Liam James O’Malley
- Hillary Charnas
- Wil Stevens
- Francesco Salizzoni
- Alan Smithson
- Steve R
- Brentwahn
- Michael Gaebler
- Tiago Silva
- Matt Cool
- Mark G
- Simplex
- Gregory F Gorsuch
- Paul Shay
- Matias Nassi
And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
(Header image by BigScreen)