The XR Week Peek (2026.06.07): Steam Frame releases this summer, Meta silently releases a facial recognition system, and more!
Hello everyone from Silicon Valley! Today I had a very pleasant meeting with some VR folks here… I had a really nice time, with the exception of the moment when someone took some pineapple and put it on his pizza. I had to wash my eyes with bleach to unsee what I just saw.
Anyway, apart from these moments of blasphemy, things are going well for me in the US, and I can’t wait to see if there will be some juicy news coming from Apple tomorrow at WWDC! I don’t expect an announcement of the glasses, but maybe Tim is going to surprise us…
Top news of the week
Steam Frame and Steam Machine to arrive “this summer”
With a news post on Steam, Valve has announced that Steam Frame and Steam Machine are slated to arrive this summer. It is not clear to me if this statement should be considered as an addition to the previous statement that marked the release date as “first half of 2026”, which would mean the Steam Frame is coming from 21st to the 30th of June; or in substitution, meaning that it is coming between June and September. Most probably, it is the second one, otherwise, they wouldn’t have changed their first stance about the devices being released in the first half of this year.
This delay (caused by the RAM shortages) does not change much for us all, considering that we are used to the fact that Valve takes a lot of time to launch its devices. What is crucial to predict the success of this device is the price, for which we don’t have any info yet.
In the same article, Valve says Steam Frame is primarily meant to play PC games (VR and flat) via wireless streaming. But some games may also feature a Steam Frame Standalone Verified badge, meaning that they can run directly on the headset with good performances.
According to Valve’s guidelines, flatscreen games must run at a minimum of 30 fps at 1,280 x 720 during normal play, whereas standalone VR titles must run at a minimum of 72 fps at 1,728 x 1,728 during normal play. Valve says VR games below 1,440 x 1,440 will appear with an ‘Unsupported’ badge. Notice that these badges just certify the performances, but do not stop players from buying a game. If you want to play Half Life Alyx at 1fps on the Steam Frame and vomit all the dinner in 10 minutes, you still can.
More info (Valve announcing the Steam Frame is coming this summer)
More info (Road To VR reporting the news)
More info (Brad finding some UI screens related to the Steam Frame setup)
Other relevant news
Meta silently deployed facial recognition to Meta AI
A few weeks ago, a report mentioned that Meta intended to release facial recognition to its smart glasses. The company allegedly could exploit the fact that most associations defending privacy are currently distracted by other things (i.e. Trump), and so Meta could face less resistance when releasing such a controversial feature.
Well, it seems that Meta has already taken a first step in this regard: thanks to a Wired investigation, we now know that the facial recognition feature has been secretly deployed to the Meta AI app, ready to be used with smart glasses. Notice that this is not a rumor: the magazine managed to get two independent researchers to confirm it, with one of them also able to use the feature in the app.
The face-recognition feature, which Meta calls internally NameTag, includes three AI models: one that detects people’s face them, one which crops them, and one which encodes them into biometric data. All three already reside on the phones of people who have the Meta AI app installed.
The functionality is currently not activated by default, so no one can use it yet. When probed by the journalists, Meta’s PR department replied by downplaying the news, saying that Meta is just “exploring” this feature and that no release is planned yet. Probably the Meta PR department thinks we are all stupid, because this answer clearly does not make any sense. We are not talking about some leaked strings; here we have a full feature being deployed to an app in production. It is clear that we are just one little step ahead of the official release: if Meta wanted to just experiment, it could have deployed facial recognition on an internal beta branch, not on the app used by all people wearing smartglasses. My guess is that Meta is just waiting for the right moment to turn the feature on without creating much scandal.
It’s clear that Meta wants to release this functionality because it is one of the first use cases people think of when talking about smart glasses. But the problem is that it carries a lot of privacy issues. And Meta is not new to problems related to privacy management. Just this week, a new bug that allows everyone to see the e-mail and phone number of every Instagram user has been found. What could go wrong if Meta managed the biometric data of all of us?
More info (Wired’s report about Meta releasing facial recognition in its Meta AI app)
More info (Mashable reporting the news)
More info (New privacy bug on Instagram)
Apple AR glasses may come in 2029
Ming-Chi Kuo has released one of its usual reports about Apple’s hardware roadmap. According to his forecasts:
- Vision Pro has been canceled
- Apple smart glasses (similar to Ray-Ban Meta) are coming in 2027
- Apple AR glasses are coming in 2029. Actually, it is not clear what devices he mentions here, since he refers to them as “display-equipped AR/XR smart glasses”, which may mean smart glasses with a display or AR glasses.
What I like about his report is that he says, “My timeline of last year was wrong, here you have a new one that is absolutely correct”. But, dear Ming-Chi Kuo, also last year you gave us a timeline and said we should trust it… Now you change it, and you say we should trust it… and next year you will probably change it again and say we should trust it again! I will consider this new timeline as having the “trust me bro” reliability level.
It’s interesting, however, how both Mr. Kuo and Mr. Gurman agree on the fact that Apple disinvested from the Vision Pro and is now mostly focused on smart glasses. This is not very surprising, considering that Tim Cook always said that Apple’s main goal is augmented reality glasses.
News worth a mention
RIP Rec Room
As announced a few weeks ago, on June, 1st, Rec Room definitely shut down. There was a final peak of users who joined the platform to say goodbye. And then, nothing more. It’s a sad moment for all of us. Goodbye, Rec Room.
Valve released Steam Link for VisionOS
Finally, Valve released its Steam Link app for VisionOS. So now Apple Vision Pro users can play Steam games on a big virtual screen inside their headsets. The weird thing is that this app does not work with VR games, but only the flat-screen ones.
A new Pimax drama
Sebastian Ang (MixedRealityTV) just released his review of the Pimax Dream Air SE. In the video, he’s very critical about the device: he says it has potential, but it has been released a bit too early, and so it has huge bugs. For instance, now wearing the device causes serious eye strain unless you put the wrong FOV in the configuration app (yeah, you read it correctly, you have to put the wrong FOV to have the right vision!). This is just… Pimax being Pimax.
(Thanks, Rob, for the tip)
Immersed promoted its headset during the NBA finals
The WTF news of the week is about Immersed. Two people from the company (one may even be the CEO) joined one of the latest NBA finals matches dressed as aliens with the Immersed Visor T-shirts and constantly yelled to the audience to preorder their headset. This is so fucking absurd that it can’t be made up. I don’t even know how to comment on this news…
Supernatural is back
Meta has de facto discontinued the popular fitness VR app Supernatural as part of its cost-cutting in the VR sector. But the original founders of Supernatural (the company Within) are now rebooting the app under the new name of “Supernatural Health”. The app will feature its famous coaches, most of its songs, and a regular stream of new lessons. It is going to go back to the original price of $20/month because a startup needs money to survive. The Meta-owned version of Supernatural will be discontinued on December 3. People who still want to use Supernatural have to manually join the new rebooted app.
I think that this time, Meta did the right thing. Instead of making the app die, as it happened with Echo VR, it let the original creators reboot it. Kudos to it. It’s good that the Supernatural community is having its app again!
Vertigo Studios Amsterdam is shutting down
Vertigo Games is shutting down its Amsterdam studio. This means that the talented team behind successful experiences like Anne Frank House VR and Metro Awakening VR is no more. Vertigo Games is still alive, though, since it has other teams in other cities.
Some news about content
- Time-twisting VR puzzle game UnLoop’s price dropped from $24.99 to $17.99
- CleanSheet Soccer 2, a redesign of the Quest-exclusive CleanSheet Soccer Pro built specifically for PlayStation VR2, launches on Sony’s VR platform on June, 11
- Realms Of Flow’s creators have been interviewed by Upload VR
- VR horror extraction game Inwigo is having a public test this weekend ahead of its release
- Nod Saber is Beat Saber for Meta Ray-Ban Display. It’s called this way because you play it by nodding your head
More info (UnLoop)
More info (CleanSheet Soccer 2)
More info (Realms Of Flow)
More info (Inwigo)
More info (Nod Saber)
Some reviews about content
- Spymaster is another amazing game with original mechanics released by Innerspace
Other news
KRVR, a $15 visionOS app, lets you play any SteamVR game from your PC on Apple Vision Pro with foveated streaming
Two Quest 3 headsets are soon heading to the International Space Station to train astronauts for spacewalks before they exit the hatch for real
Meta hired Jim Shepherd, who had been Snap’s senior director of content partnerships
Rock Paper Reality is offering $100K in development time to build one GalaxyXR concept from idea to prototype
News from partners (and friends)
Discover the capabilities of Patch XR
If you’re looking for a social VR app where to express your creativity, Patch XR can be the right place for you. Especially if you are into music, this is a great place to meet your friends and do jam sessions together. But lately, this very original platform has also expanded beyond music, so it can also be interesting for other types of creative people. Learn more
Join the Worlds In Action Hack
If you will be in LA two days before SIGGRAPH, you should consider joining the Worlds In Action Hack, a big hackathon about XR + AI. During the hackathon, you will build immersive systems powered by:
- World Models
- Spatial AI
- Gaussian Splats
- 3D GenAI pipelines
- Multi-agent environments
- WebXR and cross-platform deployment
- AI-assisted creative workflows
and hope to win prizes like SIGGRAPH tickets, a showcase opportunity for your project at SIGGRAPH, or cash (there are $10,000 available in prizes).
Learn more
Sponsored Area
Play this amazing mini-golf game
Pocket Putt: Mini Golf is a very cute mini-golf mixed-reality game that you play with hand tracking. This is not about realism, but it’s all about simplicity and fun. Try it now on the Meta Quest Store!
Get it on Meta Store
Some XR fun
How the reliable reports about Apple work
Funny link
When you use GitHub Copilot to develop your VR experiences
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
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- Simplex
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- Matias Nassi
And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
(Header image from Brad Lynch)
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