Alongside the announcement of the company’s first retail store, Meta has begun redirecting visitors of the longstanding Oculus.com website to its new Meta Store.
Meta announced today plans to open its first ever retail store to give customers a chance to check out the company’s hardware in person. The store will include a dedicated Quest 2 demo area and send participants home with a short mixed reality video to remember their experience.
It appears Ubisoft’s long-awaited Assassin’s Creed VR title has suffered a pretty serious leak, as footage of the game’s starting menu seems to have found its way online along with a few player impressions.
Canon announced its next enterprise XR headset, MREAL X1. The device, which offers passthrough AR, appears to be a modestly upgraded version of the company’s 2021 model, MREAL S1, as it boasts a field of view (FOV) that’s “2.5 times larger.”
Alongside the announcement that Quest 2 is getting upgraded controllerless hand-tracking which improves robustness, Meta revealed that it had given select developers access to the tech ahead of time, some of which used it to directly improve their apps.
Formerly known only as ‘Project 4’, developer Stress Level Zero has officially announced BONELAB, the follow-up to its popular VR action sandbox game BONEWORKS. The game is set to launch on Quest 2 and PC VR this year.
Meta announced at its Quest Gaming Showcase today that Resident Evil 4 (2021), the official VR port which came to Quest 2 last year, is getting a surprise launch of ‘The Mercenaries’ DLC today.
Today during the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase, developer Vertical Robot announced Red Matter 2for Quest 2, the sequel to its 2018 PC VR game which was eventually ported to Quest. Not only does the studio say the gameplay is expanding further into the adventure genre over just puzzling, but it also claims it will deliver the “best graphics on mobile VR to date.”
Veteran developer Schell Games, behind well known VR titles like I Expect You to Die and Until You Fall, announced today it has signed with Meta to deliver three new Quest games in the next two years.
During Meta’s Quest Gaming Showcase today, we finally caught a glimpse of VR’s first official NFL game, NFL PRO ERA, which promises to let you QB for your favorite team as you make your path to the Super Bowl.
Meta today announced “major improvements” coming to Quest 2’s controllerless hand-tracking capability. The ‘re-architected computer vision and machine learning approach’ is said to specifically improve reliability for overlapping or fast moving hands and specific gestures. The SDK and OS update to enable these improved capabilities will begin rolling out today.
Little Cities is an upcoming city creation game for Quest that looks to bring much of the same city simulator flair to VR of prolific series such as Cities: Skylines and Sim City. Originally set to launch on April 21st, now the pint-sized city simulator has been delayed by about a month.
Purple Yonder and nDreams announced the delay of Little Cities, which pushes it to May 12th. Read the full statement below:
Together with Meta, we have decided to move the release of our upcoming VR game, Little Cities, to May 12. We feel that launching in this quieter week will give Little Cities the best chance to make the biggest impact.
These decisions are never easy, and we apologise to everyone who is eagerly awaiting our game. This is purely a scheduling decision; Little Cities is 100% complete. We cannot wait for you to get your hands on Purple Yonder’s charming, cozy city creator on May 12, and the husband-and-wife team is already hard at work on new, free post-launch updates. More info coming soon.
Little Cities is officially coming to Quest and Quest 2 on April 21st.The studio also threw out a new release date trailer which includes a bit more gameplay. In it, we get a look at some newly revealed island types, including volcanic islands which bring the risk of eruptions. This is offset somewhat by geothermal vents which can be used to power cities. We also see desert islands, which feature sandstorms that can be quelled with trees.
Purple Yonder also shows off Archipelagos which it says bring the challenge of building bridges to efficiently connect your different neighborhoods.
“Each island also features its own set of unique buildings that you will unlock as your city grows from a humble settlement to a bustling metropolis. These include a thermal spa and a water park on Volcano islands and an aquarium and a stadium on Tropical islands,” the studio says. Check out the new trailer, linked below.
In it, Purple Yonder says you’ll be able to build cities in the classic fashion, albeit by hand via Touch controllers; start by building simple roads and carefully zone your islands according to residential, commercial or industrial.
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Image courtesy Purple Yonder
Image courtesy Purple Yonder
Image courtesy Purple Yonder
Keep citizens happy by giving them power, water and network connectivity. Making sure there’s adequate fire fighters, police, school, and hospital coverage will keep the population growing.
The game will be playable both seated and in room-scale mode, letting you move around like a veritable Godzilla as you manage your town from above.
Little Cities will be Purple Yonder’s second VR title following the release of Oculus Go zombie shooter Zed Shot (2016). There’s still plenty to learn about Little Cities in the coming months. The studio says it’s slated to arrive on the Quest platform sometime in Spring 2022.
While Oculus doesn’t offer much publicly in the way of understanding how well individual apps are performing across its VR storefronts, it’s possible to glean some insight by looking at apps relative to each other. Here’s a snapshot of the top 20 Oculus Quest games and apps as of April 2022.
There’s a few really great art apps for VR already, like Tilt Brush, Kingspray, and Gravity Sketch, but few focus solely on painting on virtual canvas. Now Painting VR, a painting simulator that lets you mix and use fresh paint while creating on realistic canvases, is officially out of is Early Access period on App Lab, coming to the Meta Quest Store for Quest and Steam for PC VR headsets.
Epic Games announced it’s doubled the amount of cash it raised last year to kick off its metaverse ambitions. Now the company, which owns Unreal Engine and popular battle royale shooter Fornite, says it’s secured $2 billion to further build out its future metaverse platforms.
