The long-awaited VR mod for Half-Life 2 (2004) is available for free in beta starting today, bringing to the iconic Valve title a near-native level of VR immersion we’ve been waiting for.
Into the Radius is a hardcore single-player survival shooter that you’ve likely already heard about from its time on PC VR headsets via Steam. In case you haven’t, the game serves up a unique mix of heart-racing encounters with deadly entities, a load of environmental traps, and its fair share of plodding tedium—all while paying homage to the suitably Soviet book Roadside Picnic (1972) and later film adaptation Stalker (1979). Although we were hoping for finer visual polish and a cleaner touch to object interaction, it seems the indie studio has done a serviceable job slimming down the 20+ hour game onto the humble Quest 2, cementing it as one of the platform’s leading survival shooters.
While Oculus doesn’t offer much publicly in the way of understanding how well individual games & apps are performing across its Quest 2 storefront, it’s possible to glean some insight by looking at apps relative to each other. Here’s a snapshot of the 20 best rated Oculus Quest games and apps as of September 2022.
One of the big questions on my mind ever since the announcement of Horizon Call of the Mountain for PSVR 2 is whether it would be a short ‘experience’ designed as a simple demo for the headset, or a full blown game. After going hands-on with the title I’m happy to report that it not only aims to deliver a full campaign, but it’s also brimming with insightful VR design.
Sony’s long awaited PSVR 2 isn’t here just yet but after an extensive hands-on with the headset it’s clear it’ll be worth the wait.
Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear franchise and founder of Kojima Productions, definitely isn’t presenting a VR game at this year’s Tokyo Game Show (TGS) like a recent tweet suggests, although it’s clear the studio is taking more interest in the medium.
Rich interactions between the user and the virtual world are a key aspect of what makes VR so compelling, but creating and tuning such interactions is a challenging and time consuming task for developers. Toolsets like UltimateXR can speed up the iteration process for VR interactions, bringing more interactivity and immersion to games and experiences.
As rumored over the past few months, Meta’s upcoming high-end VR headset Project Cambria seems to be named Quest Pro. And an apparent unboxing video has leaked too, which gives us a good look at the company’s next VR headset and controllers.
Varjo, maker of high-end enterprise XR headsets, this week announced it has raised a $40 million Series D investment to continue building its Varjo Reality Cloud software and deliver a “true-to-life industrial metaverse.”
HTC today announced it’s releasing both facial and eye-tracking units for its Vive Focus 3 standalone VR headset.
First Contact Entertainment, the studio behind Firewall Zero Hour (2018), announced it’s bringing the “next evolution” of its hit squad-based shooter to PSVR 2, calling it Firewall Ultra.
Meta has acquired Lofelt, a Berlin-based startup developing advanced haptic technologies for VR and other devices. According to The Wall Street Journal, the acquisition took place earlier this summer, however the deal came to light only just last week.
StrikerVR, longtime maker of haptic VR guns, is launching its most affordable product yet: the Mavrik-Pro. Though still primarily targeting VR attractions, the company says it plans to launch a consumer version of the new gun next year.
Two of the biggest names in XR—headset maker Meta and chip maker Qualcomm—today announced a “multi-year broad strategic agreement” to collaborate on “customized virtual reality chipsets” for future devices.
