vr – Page 2 – Tech News

Meta’s metaverse layoffs apparently include some of its VR studios

Meta is laying off about 10 percent of its Reality Labs metaverse division, and the cuts include closing down some of its VR gaming studios. In a statement about the broader Reality Labs layoffs, Clayton said that “We said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward Wearables. This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year.”
https://www.theverge.com/news/861420/meta-reality-labs-layoffs-vr-studios-twisted-pixel-sanzaru-armature

No one knows what to call these things

It turns out “smart glasses” is out as a term. The term “AI glasses” is in. Kind of. Actually, it seems no one’s fully on the same page. Regardless of definitions, one thing is becoming clear: there’s a fundamental shift happening here.
https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/841536/smart-glasses-ai-glasses-xr-ar-headsets-terminology-wearables

Meta eyes big cuts to its metaverse budget in the AI era

According to Bloomberg News, Meta is considering slashing its metaverse spending by as much as 30% in 2026 — although no plans are final yet — after meetings at Zuckerberg’s Hawaii compound laid out a slimmer future for its namesake ambitions. For three years, the company tried to brute-force another new reality into existence: new name, new stock ticker, new keynote vocabulary about “presence” and “embodied internet.”
https://qz.com/meta-metaverse-cuts-mark-zuckerberg-reality-labs

Meta’s Hyperscape is ready to turn your real living room into a VR hangout

Meta’s impressive, photorealistic digital replicas of real places built using its “Hyperscape” capture tech, which uses the cameras on a Quest 3 or Quest 3S VR headset to scan a room, have so far been solitary spaces. But beginning this week, Meta is rolling out the ability to share links that will let other people visit Hyperscape rooms with you in a Quest 3 or 3S VR headset or via the Meta Horizon mobile app.
https://www.theverge.com/news/825705/meta-hyperscape-social-links-capture-scan-metaverse

The Steam Frame is a surprising new twist on VR

The new headset is called the Steam Frame, and it’s trying to do several things at once. It’s a standalone VR headset with a smartphone-caliber Arm chip inside that lets you play flat-screen Windows games locally off the onboard storage or a microSD card. But the Frame’s arguably bigger trick is that it can stream games directly to the headset, bypassing your unreliable home Wi-Fi by using a short-range, high-bandwidth wireless dongle that plugs into your gaming PC. And its new controllers are packed with all the buttons and inputs you need for both flat-screen games and VR games.
https://www.theverge.com/games/816118/valve-steam-frame-vr-headset-streaming-arm-steamos-hands-on

Steam Machine: Valve rivals Xbox and PlayStation with new console

Valve, the company behind PC gaming platform Steam, has revealed a new console to rival Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation. In an unusual move, Valve has also announced further hardware – its Steam Frame virtual reality (VR) headset. The device is entirely wireless – and it described it as a "streaming-first" device – but it is also itself a PC running SteamOS.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd679n9lnx5o

VR Headsets Are Better Than Ever and No One Seems to Care

If mixed reality and virtual reality are still a big thing, you wouldn’t know it based on Meta’s Connect conference last week. There were no big Quest announcements (outside of maybe Hyperscape), no new Quest headset, and it felt like the only time Meta (traditionally the loudest and proudest purveyor of XR out there) really tackled XR and VR was through a surprise, and slightly out of place, fireside chat with… Avatar director, James Cameron.
https://gizmodo.com/vr-headsets-are-better-than-ever-and-no-one-seems-to-care-2000663098