VRSUN

Hot Virtual Reality News

HOTTEST VR NEWS OF THE DAY

Operator XR Secures $3.7M VR Training Contract with Texas Department of Public Safety

From roadtovr

Australian immersive training technology company xReality Group announced its subsidiary Operator XR has secured a contract with the Texas Department of Public Safety (Texas DPS) worth up to AUD $5.71 million (~$3.7 million USD), which will see the rollout of it VR police training system across the state.

According to a press statement, Operator XR’s OP-2 system enables immersive, scenario-based training designed to improve tactical decision-making, de-escalation techniques, multi-officer coordination, and mission planning.

Texas DPS, one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the U.S. serving 30 million residents, is slated to use the system to enhance officer readiness and safety through more frequent and realistic training experiences.

xReality Group CEO Wayne Jones described the deal as a “strategic milestone,” citing Texas DPS’s high profile as a key reference point for further expansion into other state agencies. “This partnership reinforces our U.S. growth strategy and validates the OP-2 platform for large-scale deployment,” Jones said.

The initial portion of the deal, worth AUD $4.3 million ($2.8 million USD), is said to cover delivery of OP-2 hardware and software, along with onboarding and two years of technical support—slated to start in Q2 2026.

The contract includes optional support services for an additional three years, bringing the potential total value to AUD $5.71 million (~$3.7 million USD).

This follows a recent $2.1 million AUD (~$1.4 million USD) ‘Industry Growth Program’ grant by the Australian Government last month to accelerate the AI development roadmap for its Operator XR tactical training platform.

The funding is earmarked to support enhancements such as real-time feedback, automated scenario generation, expanded manufacturing, and global certification over the next 24 months.

Google’s ‘Genie 3’ Interactive Generative Video Model Takes Us One Step Closer to the Holodeck

From roadtovr

DeepMind, Google’s AI research lab, announced the release of Genie 3, a new AI system capable of generating interactive virtual environments in real-time—and bringing us one step closer to the Holodeck.

Google says in a DeepMind update that with a simple text prompt, Genie 3 can create dynamic, navigable scenes that run at 24 frames per second in 720p resolution.

Granted, Genie 3 can be only be used on flatscreen monitors, so there’s no telling when we’ll get something similar for VR headsets. For example, Quest 3’s display has a per-eye resolution of 2,064 × 2,208, clocked at a base refresh rate of 90Hz, putting VR on the far end of the performance fringe (as usual).

It’s undoubtedly prescient look at things to come though. Unlike static or pre-rendered simulations, Google says the model generates each frame on the fly, allowing for quicker user interaction and environmental feedback.

What’s more, these generated worlds can remain visually and physically consistent for several minutes, Google says, with the system retaining a form of short-term memory to reflect past actions.

Genie 3 is also capable of simulating a wide range of scenarios, including natural environments, historical settings, and both fictional and animated worlds. Meanwhile, users can trigger “promptable world events,” where users can insert in-world changes via text commands, like altering the weather or introducing new objects.

Beyond the fun of recreating 1800’s Osaka, or making a jet ski appear in the canals of Amsterdam, Google says Genie 3 will also be a tool for embodied AI training, with potential applications in fields like robotics, gaming, and artificial general intelligence research.

For now, there are a few limitations. Google says Genie 3 currently has a limited “action space” for agents, and struggles with accurately modeling multi-agent interactions in shared environments. By “agents,” the company’s referring to AI systems that operate autonomously within the virtual environments, in a way making decisions, taking actions, and learning from experience.

It also faces challenges with simulating real-world locations with “perfect geographic accuracy”, rendering text clearly, and maintaining long-duration interactions beyond a few minutes.

Still, it’s a pretty amazing leap from the sort of non-interactive videos we’re seeing online now, many of which are pretty difficult to tell from the real deal. Will Smith spaghetti-eating simulations are only going to get more lifelike and, with systems like Genie 3, interactive too.

‘Oasis’ WMR Driver Expected to Later This Month, Bringing New Life to Microsoft’s PC VR Headsets

From roadtovr

Microsoft stopped supporting its WMR platform on Windows 11 last year, essentially putting an end to its first foray into PC VR headsets. However, an unofficial SteamVR driver called ‘Oasis’ aims to bridge the gap when it releases later this month.

According to Oasis creator Matthieu Bucchianeri, the driver’s tentative global release date is August 29th, which he notes is subject to Valve approving release on Steam.

Oasis is slated to bridge Windows Mixed Reality headset support to SteamVR, which would otherwise need Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Portal to function. This, Bucchianeri says in the project’s GitHub, will include support for full 6DoF tracking along with motion controllers.

As for broad GPU support, Oasis is unfortunately restricted to Nvidia GPUs due to the way SteamVR interfaces with the GPU drivers. Bucchianeri has been trying to gain AMD’s permission, although at this point, he says the effort is “dead in the water.”

Bucchianeri says in a Reddit post this essentially comes down to AMD either “ignor[ing] 3rd party usage flag when LiquidVR attempts to open the device [, or offering] a functional EDID override so we can mask off the flag ourselves.”

Last October, the company deprecated the WMR platform with the launch of Windows 11 24H2, essentially killing support for a fleet of partner PC VR headsets, which included devices from Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, HP, and Samsung.

Notably, Bucchianeri worked as a software engineer on Microsoft’s mixed reality division. While he currently leads firmware efforts at the company’s Xbox Gaming Devices Ecosystem, Oasis is a personal project.

Bucchianeri notes it doesn’t breech any prior non-disclosure agreements, leverages SteamVR, and doesn’t borrow any Microsoft intellectual property.

Red Bull’s ‘Touching the Sky’ is an Hour-long Immersive Documentary on Wingsuit Flying and More, Now on Quest

From roadtovr

Red Bull and Jonathan Griffith Productions have released Touching the Sky on Quest, now letting you follow wingsuit base jumpers in the European Alps and a paragliding team across the Himalayas in Pakistan in an hour-long immersive documentary.

Captured using custom-built 3D, 360 cameras, the documentary lets you accompany wingsuit and base jump athletes Fred Fugen and Vincent Cotte, who take you on two wingsuit flights in the Italian Dolomites.

“The biggest challenge was in freefall, to fly with such a camera,” Fugen explains in a Red Bull blog post. “It took a lot of work to collaborate with the drone pilots who were in the helicopter. You had to adapt and synchronise together to do the jumps and freefalls. We didn’t have much training together [beforehand], so combining our skillsets was challenging.”

The documentary also features Aaron Durogati and his partner Matthias Weger as they paraglide across the Pakistani Himalayas, who aimed to get as high and deep in to the highest mountains on the planet.

“Flying in Pakistan is quite extreme because the mountains are huge and take expert technique to manage,” explains Durogati. “The thermal flows are unique to those in the Alps. If something happened there, you’re by yourself, and it’s unlikely that rescue helicopters can come to pick you up. In the Alps, you can almost always count on a rescue.”

You can watch the hour-along documentary for free over on Meta Quest TV, exclusively for Quest 2 and above.

If you’re interested in how it was all recorded, Red Bull has published a thirty-minute behind-the-scenes video, capturing the raw experience of what it takes to document such an amazing feat.

Samsung Confirms ‘Project Moohan’ XR Headset is Still Coming This Year

From roadtovr

Samsung didn’t highlight its upcoming mixed reality headset at Unpacked last month, nor at Google I/O the month prior—but no fear, the South Korean tech giant confirmed its Android XR-based headset is still coming this year.

In a recent earnings call, Samsung says its upcoming XR headset, tentatively named ‘Project Moohan’, is still coming. Small recompense, considering we still don’t know its official name, when the device is launching, or at what price.

“Meanwhile, we are also preparing to introduce next-generation innovative products, including our XR headset and TriFold smartphone this year,” confirmed Daniel Araujo of the company’s ‘MX’ mobile division in the company’s Q2 2025 earnings call.

Samsung Project Moohan | Image courtesy The Verge

That said, Samsung has seemed pretty reticent to put Project Moohan in the spotlight, which has been less than reassuring. While press demos were available at Google I/O, the headset wasn’t heavily featured there, which seems like a missed opportunity to engage with Android developers—the very people who will be building apps for the upcoming Android XR operating system.

What’s more, Project Moohan was essentially also a no-show at Samsung Unpacked in July, it’s annual product event. Then again, so was its TriFold smartphone, which is also slated to arrive sometime this year, suggesting we might get another mini product event between now and the year’s end.

While we don’t know exactly when Project Moohan is launching, or at what price, here’s what we do know:

Project Moohan runs Android XR via a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 + Gen 2. Its Sony-sourced micro‑OLED panels don’t have resolution specs yet, although it’s supposed to include some slimming pancake lenses, automatic interpupillary distance (IPD) adjustment, support for eye and hand-tracking, optional magnetically-attached light shield, and a removable external battery pack. The headset is also slated to support VR motion controllers of some sort, although we haven’t seen them yet.

To learn more, check out our hands-on with Project Moohan from December 2024, which includes everything from comfort, display clarity, and how Android XR looks a lot like Horizon OS combined with VisionOS.

Brilliant Labs Unveils All-day Smart Glasses with Color Display, Pre-orders Launch at $300

From roadtovr

Brilliant Labs unveiled Halo, its next-gen smart glasses that pack in a full-color micro OLED display, bone conduction speakers, and real-time voice-based AI assistant—priced at a surprisingly reasonable $300.

Weighing in at just over 40 grams, Halo builds on the company’s earlier experiments in heads-up displays, including Monocle, a clip-on developer kit released in 2023, and Frame, a slimmer display unit launched a year later.

Halo represents a more consumer-oriented evolution, combining vision correction support, on-device AI, and open-source hardware in a form factor designed for everyday use.

The glasses are powered by a low-power Alif B1 processor with a Cortex-M55 CPU and a neural processing unit (NPU) capable of performing AI tasks directly on the device.

Image courtesy Brilliant Labs

A big feature is the company’s new integrated AI assistant, Noa, which supports real-time chats, promising to not only see what you see, but remember it too for later. And you’re meant to use it all-day, as the company says battery life is rated for up to 14 hours of typical use.

And as you’d imagine, a pair of microphones are onboard so you can talk with Noa, while a low-power optical sensor and six-axis IMU provide input for gesture and tap recognition. Connectivity is handled via Bluetooth 5.3.

Image courtesy Brilliant Labs

That single optical sensor isn’t for taking POV videos or images and posting them on Instagram though, as it’s used just for “AI inference,” Brilliant Labs says. Notably, there’s no familiar capture LED to indicate when it’s recording, like you see on Ray-Ban Meta or Xiaomi AI Glasses—likely because Halo doesn’t natively make video/images accessible to the user.

Noa is slated to be offered in two tiers: a free ‘Basic’ version with memory support and limited usage, and a ‘Plus’ subscription tier that includes full-speed conversational AI. Pricing for the premium tier has not yet been disclosed.

The display optics can be adjusted between +2 to -6 diopters to accommodate users with various levels of vision correction, and prescription lenses will also be available through partner Smart Buy Glasses.

Image courtesy Brilliant Labs

As with Brilliant Labs’ previous projects, Halo is open source. The company has published its design files and source code on GitHub, inviting developers and hardware enthusiasts to experiment with and modify the platform.

Shipping is slated to begin in Q4 2025, with Brilliant Labs noting that shipping is on a “first come, first served” basis. You can pre-order today direct on the Brilliant Labs website, priced at $299.

Check out the specs below:

Brilliant Labs Halo Specs

  • Display: Micro color OLED, adjustable +2 to -6 diopters
  • Audio: 2x bone conduction speakers
  • Processor: Alif B1 with Cortex-M55 CPU and NPU
  • Sensors
    • Low-power optical sensor
    • 2x microphones with audio activity detection
    • 6-axis IMU with tap detection
  • Lenses: Optical-grade with anti-reflective coating
  • Optional: prescription or sunglass lenses
  • Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.3
  • Software
    • Open Source software (available on GitHub)
    • ZephyrOS with Lua scripting
    • Cross-platform mobile companion app
    • Cloud-based AI assistant (Noa)
  • Battery life: Up to 14 hours
  • Fit: Designed for IPD range of 58–72mm
  • Weight: Just over 40 grams

Meta Avatars Get a Major Makeover With New Body Types, Poses & AI-driven Clothing Styles

From roadtovr

Meta is giving its Avatars another big upgrade, offering users finer control over things like face shape, body part sizes, hair, makeup and more.

Avatars are integrated across the gamut of Meta’s platforms, including Horizon Worlds, Home and Workrooms on Quest and mobile, and across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.

Now, users in the US and Canada can choose from dozens of new body types and customizable features, including things like shoulders, hips, and biceps. A new body preview mode is also there, letting users adjust their frame before customizing with outfits.

Notably, the Avatar face editor is also getting a boost, with new parametric controls for customizing things like jawlines, cheek fullness, and facial depth. Additionally, Meta says it’s added 18 standing poses, over 50 new emotes, and dozens of new clothing options tailored to fit all body types.

And to style your avatar, a new AI-powered style tool is launching too, which lets Horizon mobile app users generate new outfit ideas via text prompt or randomization, allowing users to then manually fine tune those creations.

Meta says it’s initially releasing the new avatar system to 13+ users in the US and Canada, noting that it’s rolling out the update gradually, which also means there should be more styles and features added over time.

‘Spotify’ Finally Comes to Quest, Letting You Listen to Music in the Background

From roadtovr

Spotify finally has its own Quest web app, letting you listen to music in the background as you go about your virtual ways.

The new Spotify app for Quest isn’t an app in the traditional sense, but rather a progressive web app (PWA) that essentially opens up its own browser window.

While that means you can’t use Spotify offline, like you might on Android or iOS, it does mean you can bypass the old song and dance of having to open the browser and go to Spotify web manually.

Image courtesy Spotify

It also means you can enjoy all of the same music and podcasts however you like, be it minimized for background play, or maximized so you can watch video podcasts, check out track lyrics, browse artists, and manage your playlists.

And as you’d imagine, the Spotify web app for Quest is free, supporting both free and paid subscriptions. You can find Spotify for Quest over on the Horizon Store, supporting Quest 2 and above.

Meta & Stanford Reveal Ultra-Thin Holographic XR Display the Size of Glasses

From roadtovr

Researchers at Meta Reality Labs and Stanford University have unveiled a new holographic display that could deliver virtual and mixed reality experiences in a form factor the size of standard glasses.

In a paper published in Nature Photonics, Stanford electrical engineering professor Gordon Wetzstein and colleagues from Meta and Stanford outline a prototype device that combines ultra-thin custom waveguide holography with AI-driven algorithms to render highly realistic 3D visuals.

Although based on waveguides, the device’s optics aren’t transparent like you might find on HoloLens 2 or Magic Leap One though—the reason why it’s referred to as a mixed reality display and not augmented reality.

At just 3 millimeters thick, its optical stack integrates a custom-designed waveguide and a Spatial Light Modulator (SLM), which modulates light on a pixel-by-pixel basis to create “full-resolution holographic light field rendering” projected to the eye.

Image courtesy Nature Photonics

Unlike traditional XR headsets that simulate depth using flat stereoscopic images, this system produces true holograms by reconstructing the full light field, resulting in more realistic and naturally viewable 3D visuals.

“Holography offers capabilities we can’t get with any other type of display in a package that is much smaller than anything on the market today,” Wetzstein tells Stanford Report.”

The idea is also to deliver realistic, immersive 3D visuals not only across a wide field-of-view (FOV), but also a wide eyebox—allowing you to move your eye relative to the glasses without losing focus or image quality, or one of the “keys to the realism and immersion of the system,” Wetzstein says.

The reason we haven’t seen digital holographic displays in headsets up until now is due to the “limited space–bandwidth product, or étendue, offered by current spatial light modulators (SLMs),” the team says.

In practice, a small étendue fundamentally limits how large of a field of view and range of possible pupil positions, that is, eyebox, can be achieved simultaneously.

While the field of view is crucial for providing a visually effective and immersive experience, the eyebox size is important to make this technology accessible to a diversity of users, covering a wide range of facial anatomies as well as making the visual experience robust to eye movement and device slippage on the user’s head.

The project is considered the second in an ongoing trilogy. Last year, Wetzstein’s lab introduced the enabling waveguide. This year, they’ve built a functioning prototype. The final stage—a commercial product—may still be years away, but Wetzstein is optimistic.

The team describes it as a “significant step” toward passing what many in the field refer to as a “Visual Turing Test”—essentially the ability to no longer “distinguish between a physical, real thing as seen through the glasses and a digitally created image being projected on the display surface,” Suyeon Choi said, the paper’s lead author.

This follows a recent reveal from researchers at Meta’s Reality Labs featuring ultra-wide field-of-view VR & MR headsets that use novel optics to maintain a compact, goggles-style form factor. In comparison, these include “high-curvature reflective polarizers,” and not waveguides as such.

Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses Revenue Triples, Fueling Meta’s $3.5 Billion Bet on EssilorLuxottica

From roadtovr

EssilorLuxottica released its second quarter earnings report, revealing that Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have tripled in revenue year-over-year.

Released in 2023, Ray-Ban Meta is the companies’ second-gen smart glasses, serving up music, photo/video capture, and Internet searches via Meta AI.

Starting at $300, the smart glasses have done remarkably well for themselves, prompting Meta to not only expand its smart glasses partnership with EssilorLuxottica into 2030, but also reportedly invest $3.5 billion in the French-Italian eyewear conglomerate.

Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, Image courtesy Meta, EssilorLuxottica

Now, EssilorLuxottica says in its recent Q2/H1 2025 earnings that “AI glasses gained further traction in the first half of the year, with Ray-Ban Meta more than tripling in revenue year-over-year.”

Notably, those sales figures don’t appear to include Oakley Meta HTSN, the company’s next generation of smart glasses which launched pre-orders on July 11th, priced at $500 for the debut ‘Limited Edition’ version of the device.

The report doesn’t specify how many units the companies have sold, however in February the company announced it had sold 2 million Ray-Ban smart glasses since release in 2023.

“With a strong first half, including top-line growth and momentum across all regions and businesses, we are keeping pace with our growth targets despite a volatile environment,” said EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri and Deputy CEO Paul du Saillant.

The company reports overall revenue grew by 5.5% to €14 billion (~$16.15 billion) in H1 of 2025, which comes in despite a worsening macroeconomic environment.

EssilorLuxottica cites a few obstacles, including “increased volatility in US customs duties following April 2, 2025 announcement of new reciprocal import tariffs,” and recent devaluation of the US dollar relative to other major world currencies.