It’s hot here in Italy… It’s so hot that I miss my time in November in Finland when I was freezing! This week in XR has been kinda lukewarm, with no huge news happening, but this newsletter is still going to be cool, with some interesting news and a lot of fun links at the end!
Top news of the week
Snap to unveil the specs of Specs in September
Snap announced that it is hosting an event on September 16th at 4:00 pm PT. The event will be the official launch event of the SPECS glasses.
At AWE, Evan Spiegel announced the glasses, their release period, and the price. But he never shared all the details about the glasses, and in the community it became a common joke to say that we didn’t know “the specs of Specs”. Also, no one could even touch the device, and we all found it weird. So now Snap is hosting a new event where the company will probably unveil all the details about the glasses and finally let people try them. I also expect a final release date of the glasses to be announced.
Officially, Snap said that at the event, it will share “the first in-depth look at SPECS, demonstrating how they bring AI assistance, work tools, entertainment, and shared experiences into the world around us, helping people create, connect, learn, and get things done while staying present”. Yeah, it’s the usual corporate PR language that says everything without saying anything. I think my explanation above is better.
I will most probably watch the livestream of the event with much interest. I also can’t wait to hear what the first reviewers will say about this device. And yes, Evan, if you’re reading this article (I’m pretty sure you can’t miss an episode of my newsletter!), invite me to the event and let me try the device!
More info (Snap announces the launch event of Specs)
More info (The registration page of the event)
Other relevant news
The SideQuest founder is going to reboot Altspace
SideQuest CEO Shane Harris announced on Reddit that his team is rebooting Altspace. His idea is to create an application that is modern but also feels like the spiritual successor of Altspace. He wants to re-create a lot of the features of the old Altspace, and for this he also re-hired some people from Altspace, like Christian Boe, the original designer of Altspace robot avatars. And talking about the name, Shane claims to have acquired the rights to use the Altspace name.
Notice that in the past few months, we had another team that was claiming to bring back Altspace with a new platform based on the BasisVR framework. But this team talked about introducing some crypto features inside Altspace, so it never got the sympathy of the VR community on Reddit. The reaction to this new announcement has instead been much better, also because everyone knows SideQuest and its team well.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about this. On one side, I liked Altspace VR too: it felt like a safe space for everyone, a place for adults to meet and have interesting conversations. It was anyway informal and didn’t feel too serious. I was very sad it closed, and it’s refreshing news that someone wants to bring it back to life.
But I also think that what is gone is gone. Every new Altspace VR won’t be like the original one: these multiple attempts to reboot it feel to me like someone trying to revive a dead person by creating an AI-powered clone of him/her. It feels like the original, but it will never be like the original. Whatever new Altspace won’t be like the original Altspace, also because many people who were using Altspace are gone and have found a new house elsewhere.
Plus, I think we should go forward. Our mission to make VR evolve is to look forward, not backwards. Keeping reviving dead platforms is not the solution to make AR/VR more interesting for more people. We should find new use cases.
That said, I wish the best of luck to the team(s) working on a new Altspace.
More info (SideQuest is reviving Altspace — Road To VR)
More info (SideQuest is reviving Altspace — Upload VR)
More info (The Reddit post with the announcement)
Apple glasses may be a fitness device
According to Bloomberg’s usual journalist, Apple is considering fitness as a strong use case for its glasses.
It seems Apple already thought about integrating Apple Fitness+ within the Apple Vision Pro, but considering the weight of the headset, it had to give up on this idea. But glasses could be a great device for fitness, and some smartglasses on the market are already devoted to that use case. Plus, fitness would be something that could move the perception of the glasses away from the “pervert glasses” reputation that they have gained until now.
A new Apple job listing supports the report. The Vision Products Group is looking for a strategic product design leader to help “define the future of health, well-being and fitness experiences across vision products”. So Apple could be serious about that. But of course, until an official release, all of this is just speculation.
The shape of Meta Puffin kinda leaked
The usual data miners found a setup UI for the upcoming Meta headset (codenamed Puffin/Phoenix/Loma) inside the current firmware of the Quest. We now have a few blurred images of the new device that show us that it will be pretty small and lightweight.
To me, this is a completely controlled leak. I mean, what developer would put in the firmware of the current headset some UIs that have a blurred picture of the device? No one. If you are putting a blurred picture, it is because you know someone is going to find it and you just want that person to see a blurred picture. So Meta clearly knew what it was doing when it added this to the firmware of the Quest. It is a good way to keep the hype about the device high. Even if, to be honest, there is not much hype about Puffin, just some interest.
Anyway, controlled or not, this leak shows us a bit of the general shape of the device, and this is nice. I can’t wait to know more at Connect.
News worth a mention
Steam Frame passes the FCC certification
The Steam Frame has just passed the FCC Certification, which is needed before selling an electronic device in the US. According to Road To VR, this means that the launch of the Steam Frame is “imminent”. Which is what we have all said other 1000 times for every news about the Steam Frame. It’s been three months that every week the launch is “imminent” now 😀
Anyway, the list of games that have been selected as “Great on Steam Frame” is getting longer and longer. This also clearly means that the launch of the Steam Frame is imminent.
More info (Steam Frame passed FCC certification)
More info (Great on Steam Frame list)
Meta Reality Labs lost $4.6B in the second quarter
In its latest earnings report, Meta announced that its Reality Labs division has lost $4.62B in the second quarter of 2026. It is a lot of lost money, but still, it’s better than expected: analysts predicted a loss of more than $5B, so we could be relatively happy about this news. I didn’t have it in my bingo card for 2026 to say that losing $4+ billion in just three months is good news, but here we are…
Instagram bans harassment videos
Meta has finally realized that it has to do something to stop people from thinking that Ray-Ban Meta are “pervert glasses”, because this reputation is hurting sales and the usage of the device. So, after having released an update for the glasses that prevents them from working when the safety LED has been tampered with, it has now announced that videos featuring harassment of any kind recorded with Ray-Ban Meta will be banned from Instagram. These are steps in the right direction.
Unseen Reality to launch its Kickstarter campaign
Unseen Reality announced that it will launch a Kickstarter campaign for its very lightweight MR glasses, URXR One, on August 4th. These MR visors got the attention of the community thanks to their very small size (they weigh only 93g and look like sunglasses) and decent resolution and field of view. These glasses are based on the GravityXR reference design that impressed me when I was in China. They are currently proposed as glasses to replace your display. Notice that these are a headset that is as small as glasses, and it is not AR, but screen-through MR.
The expected price is $800, with shipping is targeted for mid-October 2026.
I will predict how this campaign will go: the moment the Kickstarter will start, in less than a day it will collect all the needed money, also because this amount will be relatively small, and absolutely not sufficient to build any hardware. These Kickstarter campaigns for glasses are all marketing stunts: they don’t really need the money; they just want to collect preorders. Then the headset most probably will ship with some delays, because that’s the rule on Kickstarter…
PlayStation VR2 is only $300
Until August 10, in the US, PlayStation VR2 is currently on sale for $300 direct from Sony. It is an insane price for a headset that can be used both with PlayStation and with PC. No other PCVR headset is this cheap. It has insane value for that price, so consider buying it if you need it
RIP HyperDash
The multiplayer shooter HyperDash is shutting down. The devs can’t make it available for people to play in multiplayer after the shutdown, but they were kind enough to release one last update for the game to let people keep it and play it as a single-player game as much as they want. This is a really nice gesture: we need more devs to do this kind of things when they abandon their games.
I am a bit sad because I played a lot of HyperDash when I was reviewing the Vive Focus 3: it was the most entertaining piece of content there…
Some news about content
- Cybercore Protocol, a mixed reality tower defense action game, has been released in Early Access on Quest
- VR action platformer Hyperstacks has been released on SteamVR
More info (Cybercore Protocol)
More info (Hyperstacks)
Other news
Somnium Space released a massive update that makes it an even more interesting social VR platform
Meta releases the XR Operator to let AI coding agents to test the VR applications they build for you
Andrej Karpathy showed on X how AI agents can build very interesting and detailed virtual worlds
News from partners (and friends)
A big discount for Retro 3D!
Parietal Lab has made a fun app that transforms your Quest into those old stereo glasses with blue and red lenses. This way you can use your Quest 3 to enjoy all those old 3D anaglyph pictures that were so popular 30 years ago. It is a fun experiment that I think is worth trying: even Upload VR tried it and found it fun.
And thanks to Parietal Lab, you can enjoy it with a heavy discount! Until August 8th you can get a great price on Retro3D using at checkout the code:
RETRO3D_EA_SKARREDGHOST-2E107A
It’s a great offer…
(PS: If you get the game discounted, write a review to support the developer!)
Learn more (Get Retro 3D on the Quest Store!)
Learn more (Read Upload VR’s review)
Sponsored Area
Do you need the help of an AR/VR expert?
This week, I’ll use the sponsored section of this newsletter to sponsor myself. As you may know, my main job is being a developer and technical architect of AR/VR experiences, and now I also have some cool AI skills. In case for a project you may need some help, either on the technical side or the strategic side, feel free to reach out. I have extensive experience, passion, and attention to deliver something really well-made. Just get in touch and let’s start from there!
Contact me!
Some XR fun
Do you want to hear a joke?
(thanks Rob for sending this to me)
Funny link
She was right, after all
Funny link
If you are a dev, you’ll get this joke
Funny link
VR is not comfortable, period.
Funny link
The Apple community should comply to this
Funny link
This happens when we code manually
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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And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
(Header image by Snap)