In the video embedded below, developer Korejan shows how the Quest Pro can now track their tongue with version 60 of Meta’s OpenXR face tracking extension, as spotted by UploadVR. The feature hasn’t been widely adopted yet, but Korejan has added support in their third-party VRFCT face-tracking module and ALXR PC VR streaming app.
It looks kind of like Rocket League mixed with guns, based on a brief glimpse in a trailer of upcoming additions to Horizon Worlds. Meta says the game will launch on January 1st.
The trailer also shows off Horizon Central, a kind of virtual town square where you can “browse” other Horizon Worlds experiences. And Super Rumble, is getting more quests and rewards on December 20th.
Apple’s upcoming mixed reality headset can play back stereoscopic 3D video shot on iPhone 15 Pro, and CNET’s Scott Stein got to load up some of his own spatial videos on a Vision Pro and watch them:
[My mom] sort of raised her eyebrows a bit, and the way she looked at me in 3D — at a scale close to normal size, with her seeming to make eye contact — made me feel like I was almost there. It made me want to climb through that fuzzy-bordered window and join my family again on the other side.
ByteDance reportedly scrapped it after sales of last year’s Pico 4 “fell far short of ByteDance’s expectations,” according to a report by The Information. The last headset still hasn’t launched in the US, as political heat has stayed on ByteDance and its other well-known project, TikTok.
However, the report also claims Pico engineers are working on a long-term “Swan” concept to develop a high-end headset inspired by Apple’s Vision Pro.
Update v140 allows you to stay “present in the moment” and record yourself in the third person (rolling out now). You can also follow new people by high-fiving them for two seconds, like an iPhone NameDrop in the not real world.
Even with the new high-five, there are new personal boundaries that keep people from feeling like they’re too close to you (adjust in Settings > Safety).
The composer of the intense music game Thumper is now making Thrasher, which like a similarly jaw-dropping musical experience. The game’s Steam listing describes it as “a mind-melting cosmic racer and an essential audiovisual experience,” and I can’t wait to try it out when it launches in 2024.
It’s coming to Quest and SteamVR first, but it will come to flatscreen platforms “sometime after,” according to a press email.
Sony just published an interview on the PlayStation Blog with two of the game’s developers, and it’s packed with details about what you can expect and some ways the development team adapted the game to VR. This was one of my favorite tidbits:
This is also a small detail, but the camera for the first-person perspective is set a little lower than Leon’s actual eye level. If the camera is at the same eye level as Leon – who is quite tall himself – the Ganados (enemy villagers) will appear smaller. The Ganados approach and attack Leon from a low, forward posture, so if you get too close to them, you end up looking down at them which strips away the intensity.
Resident Evil 4’s VR mode launches for PSVR 2 on December 8th.
