Ben Lang

The XR landscape has changed significantly over the last five years with the flourishing of standalone headsets and new entrants like Apple and (soon) Google. Despite all of that, the PC VR platform has continued a slow but steady growth. So much has happened in VR in last five years that if you had told …

The next show from friends at VR Games Showcase is here, with more than 30 minutes of trailers and info on upcoming VR games and updates for Quest, PSVR 2, and PC VR. Catch the action right here at 12PM ET. Watch the full VR Games Showcase stream below, starting at 12PM ET (your timezone …

Our series Inside XR Design examines specific examples of great XR design. Today we’re looking at the game Synapse and exploring the concept of embodiment and what makes it important to VR games. Editor’s Note: Now that we’ve rebooted our Inside XR Design series, we’re re-publishing them for those that missed our older entries. You can find …

Meta revealed its Orion prototype last year to show the progress it has made toward compact AR glasses. Today the company talked more about the prototyping process, especially regarding the ‘compute puck’ that offloads much of the heavy processing into a device that goes in the user’s pocket. One of the major reasons that today’s …

China-based Play for Dream, the company building a Vision Pro-like standalone MR headset, says it expects to adopt Android XR as its standalone operating system. The Play for Dream MR headset has been called a “Vision Pro knock-off,” given its close aesthetic similarity to Apple’s headset. But people who have tried it say it’s more …

Meta today announced a $50 million fund to incentivize the creation of new and improved content in Horizon Worlds, the company’s first-party social gaming platform. The move comes as many seasoned studios that build self-contained VR apps for the Quest platform are struggling to sustain themselves due to what Meta says is a shifting demographic …

AWE USA 2025 is set to include speakers from some of the biggest names in the XR industry, including Oculus & Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, along with Jason Rubin—one of the only remaining early Oculus executives—who is presently Meta’s Vice President of Metaverse Experiences. Also on the roster is Vicki Dobbs Beck, the vice president …

A big sale on PSVR 2 pushed the headset’s holiday sales volume on Amazon US higher than might have been expected, selling nearly five times more than last year. PSVR 2’s Black Friday and holiday sale brought a huge 42% discount on the Horizon bundle of the headset, dropping the US price from $550 to …

Meta’s VP of XR, Mark Rabkin, is departing the company after leading its XR efforts for more than four years. Rabkin cites family health issues as the primary driver for his departure. Today Mark Rabkin announced his plan to leave the company in March. In his public announcement he said, “devs and fans [of XR]—I …

So you’re thinking about getting into VR and looking to do it on the cheap. Could a Quest 2 headset be worth buying in 2025? Read on for our no-nonsense recommendation. Let’s make this real easy: If you can find Quest 2 (128GB or more) for less than $100: Buy it Why: Quest 2 is officially …

Google’s announcement of Android XR last month was largely met with excitement, but there was a notable undercurrent of concern about Google’s long-term commitment to the platform. The company has a storied history of launching new products and platforms, only to drop them a few years later—often leaving third-party developers in the lurch. Google has …

Surreal Touch is a Kickstarter-backed third-party motion controller for Vision Pro. The first batch of controllers began shipping in December (right on time), and early impressions are starting to roll out. XR industry veteran Nima Zeighami is the creator of the Vision Pro Owners Club on Twitter, and backer #130 of the Surreal Touch Kickstarter, …

Our series Inside XR Design explores the best of immersive design. Today we’re talking about how to make an incredible VR trailer using just in-game footage. No mixed reality setups, no complicated compositing—just smart planning and a proven playbook. And keep reading, because at the end, I’ll share a checklist of key technical considerations to make your …

The Pimax Dream Air headset represents a new area of focus for the company. While most of its headsets up to this point have been necessarily bulky to achieve their signature large field-of-view, the Dream Air aims to make a headset that’s compact but still feature-rich. One of those features—a headstrap that automatically tightens—would be …

OpenXR is an open standard made to improve compatibility between XR software and XR headsets. Google—one of the biggest tech companies in the world—is adopting the standard right out of the gate, joining other major firms like Meta and Microsoft. Other players (like ByteDance recently) also support the standard, cementing it as not just an …

Although Android XR isn’t properly open-source for the time being, Google hopes the OS will run on multiple partner headsets. While Samsung is said to be the first to launch an Android XR headset, Sony, Lynx, and XREAL are also planning to use the operating system. Meta announced earlier this year that it intends to …

Meta has publicly stated that it wants to be “the Android of XR.” But you know who else wants to be the Android of XR? Android XR, of course. Beyond debates about specs or features, one major factor is likely to determine whether Meta can fend off growing pressure from Google and Apple in the …

Samsung isn’t sharing a lot of details on its newly announced Android XR headset, but it has confirmed two key things that existing VR enthusiasts and developers are sure to be happy about. Samsung’s ‘Project Moohan’ headset will be the first to ship with Android XR next year. And though our hands-on with the headset …

Samsung is the first partner to formally announce a new MR headset based on the newly announced Android XR. The device, codenamed “Project Moohan,” is planned for consumer release in 2025. We went hands on with an early version. Note: Samsung and Google aren’t yet sharing any key details for this headset like resolution, weight, …

Vision Pro is an incredible headset in many ways, but its most obvious weak point (after the pricetag) is comfort. Apple’s obsession with aesthetics made a headset that’s striking for those looking at it, but less comfortable than it could be for those actually using it. Luckily, fixing this flaw is quite simple. Many critiques of …