It seems the launch of Oculus Quest 2 has been a boon for both Facebook and Quest developers alike, as the company’s latest standalone VR headset has brought the number of apps earning over the $1 million milestone to over 60 games now.
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 February 2021, now including the ‘most popular’ apps based on the number of reviews received in the last month.
Google stopped active development on Tilt Brush late last month, but also made the VR creation suite open source so anyone could get under the hood. We’ve seen a number of clones already, but this is the first port we’ve seen that lets you access directly from a WebXR browser.
Adam Savage’s Tested VR (2019) takes you to the heart of the maker scene, giving you a behind-the-scenes look at the workshops of industry pros. Now the app’s second season is live, which brings eight new episodes to the table where you’ll get to explore workshops from studios such as Animax Designs and Weta Workshop.
In the decade that I’ve spent studying and reporting on VR I’ve had the fortune of experiencing a wide range of VR game design—a craft which is still far from ‘figured out’. And while I have no intention of becoming a game designer by profession, I thought it might be a good learning exercise to try my hand at designing something in VR to better understand the challenges and opportunities therein. And here I’d like to share a bit about what I learned through that process.
Manus, the Netherlands-based startup behind a number of VR gloves, today announced pre-order availability for the company’s first professional-level SteamVR tracker.
Quest 2 has simple built-in video capture capabilities. In this article you’ll see how to use them and, for advanced users, you’ll learn how to increase the quality of the videos captured on Quest 2 and how to transfer videos to your computer.
JVCKenwood announced late last year that it was testing the XR waters with a new headset for enterprise users which boasts a wide field of view (FOV) and 2.5k per-eye resolution. Now the company says the device is headed to enterprise partners starting in late March.
It’s been nearly a year now since we’ve had to stay indoors to stem the tide of the COVID-19 pandemic, and you’d be forgiven if you’ve become a lot less active as a result. There’s no better time than the present though to get up and moving, and we’ve got five awesome VR games that can help you do just that.
Striker VR, maker of high-end haptic VR gun peripherals for the out-of-home market, announced today it has raised a $4 million investment and plans to use the funds to make its first move into the consumer VR space.
It’s been a while since we heard about Studio Gamebit’s upcoming VR action-adventure game Naau: The Lost Eye, which the Turkey-based studio first teased back in September 2019. The studio now says its debut PC VR title is launching into Early Access in late February.
Google Earth VR, which is available today on PC VR, is a breathtaking way to explore our fascinating planet. But one major missing feature is the ability to do so with friends. With Google unfortunately abandoning many of its VR initiatives, it’s unlikely that we’ll see a version of Google Earth VR with multiplayer, let alone Quest support. Luckily, Realworld aims to deliver a multi-user immersive map application to Quest, PC VR, and AR devices.
Last year saw the location-based entertainment industry grind to a halt, however now it seems there may be light at the end of the tunnel for at least one VR arcade startup. HOLOGATE, the Germany-based company creating VR arcade tech, announced it’s betting big this year with the launch of its first large-format facility.
App Lab is a new, official path for developers to distribute their games and apps on Quest without being subject to Oculus’ curation process. But there’s one big catch: App Lab apps aren’t discoverable through the main Quest store, leaving it to developers to figure out how to get their apps in front of users. Luckily there’s already a few third-party resources which make it easy to browse App Lab apps.
Rec Room isn’t just one of the best free social VR apps out there. In the absence of hard sales data, it makes for an excellent watermark for how things are moving in the industry. Now, according to Rec Room’s downloads on Quest 2, the developers estimate that Facebook has potentially sold upwards of three million Quest 2 units in 2020 Q4 alone.
