Location-based VR destination Dreamscape and Sony Pictures Virtual Reality announced they’re launching a new VR experience that puts you and five other friends in the shoes of the Men in Black: First Assignment.
Quill is a brilliant VR drawing and animation app originally born within the now shuttered Oculus Story Studio. The app continued on after the group’s closure, but with seemingly few long term plans for the app, Facebook has decided to spin it out by handing ownership over to its original creator. As part of the transition, Quill’s proprietary file format is being open-sourced.
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 September 2021.
Space Pirate Trainer (2017) on Oculus Quest received a substantial update last week, which brings to the wave-based shooter two new multiplayer modes, one of which basically turns your Quest into a mobile laser tag machine for some 1v1 multiplayer action. Just like the base game, the new additions are well-polished, although the large-format Arena mode comes with a fair bit of friction that may limit these sorts of experiences from taking off before VR headsets are more widespread.
One of VR’s most popular games, Beat Saber, got a multiplayer mode late last year. Unfortunately, Oculus and SteamVR players were separated, which means if your friend had a Quest and you had a Vive, you couldn’t play together. Now, almost a year after multiplayer was initially released, Beat Saber has full cross-play between Quest, Rift, and SteamVR headsets.
Squingle is a psychedelic indie puzzle game that’s available now on PC VR and Quest. It’s also the perfect example of a game that probably wouldn’t be allowed onto Quest’s main ‘curated’ store because it’s difficult to understand at a glance, despite being brilliantly creative and highly optimized to run at 120Hz on Quest 2. Luckily, thanks to App Lab, you can get your hands on the game whether or not it fits Oculus’ vision.
Stadia, Google’s cloud-gaming company, is looking for new hires with a preference for virtual reality development experience.
Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) features PC VR headset support, although it’s notably missing the ability to use VR motion controllers. Now developer Asobo has signaled that VR controller support is finally coming, and is slated to land sometime in mid-November.
ILMxLAB, the immersive entertainment studio from Lucasfilms, is bringing the final installment of its Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge VR game. The in-app paid DLC comes exclusively to Oculus Quest starting today.
Apple is hosting what promises to be its big iPhone 13 event today. While we’re once again holding out hope for that ‘one more thing’ to see if the company reveals anything about its upcoming AR or VR wearables, it seems a supply chain rumor contends that Apple’s alleged VR headset may be gearing up to sport a microOLED display with a pretty high pixel density.
Chinese tech giant Xiaomi unveiled its first pair of smart glasses today, sensibly called Xiaomi Smart Glasses. They aren’t a product you can buy for now, as the company calls the concept device “an engineer’s look into an advanced future.” With the world’s largest smartphone manufacture expressing interest though, it may mean we’ll be hearing a lot more about consumer smart glasses in the years to come.
Facebook’s Horizon Workrooms connects both VR and video chat users together in the same space. Although it’s still in beta, the company says that it’s gearing up to integrate Workrooms with popular video chat platform Zoom.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the idea of a ‘Quest Pro’ headset back in May, saying that it could include sensors for both face and eye tracking. The v32 firmware release for Oculus Quest last month ostensibly confirms that the company is moving forward with the device, as it contains hidden reference to an “Oculus Quest Pro” headset along with text mentioning both eye and face-tracking.
French startup Lynx announced its Lynx R-1 mixed reality headset last year. The standalone headset, which is capable of both VR and pass-through AR, was previously said to launch for business somewhere around the $1,500 price point. Lynx previously said it was pivoting to target both enterprise and consumers however, now adding that the headset will start at $500 when it hits Kickstarter sometime in late September.
I Expect You To Die 2: The Spy and the Liar (2021) launched in late August across all major VR headsets, bringing fans of the original game a fresh taste of spy-flavored puzzles and adventure. Now developers Schell Games say it’s done so well that the sequel has broken past the $1 million revenue milestone only a few days after launch.
