News

‘Black Mirror’ to Bring Show’s Tech Dystopia to Life in New Location-based VR Experience

April 2, 2026 From roadtovr

Black Mirror, the hit sci-fi anthology series on Netflix, is getting its own VR experience soon—set to debut at VR destination Infinity Experience in Montreal, Canada next month ahead of wider rollout.

Developed by VR studio Univrse and Banijay Live Studio, THE BLACK MIRROR EXPERIENCE is slated to mash up physical environments with VR headsets, drawing on themes of the award-winning television series.

According a press statement, The Black Mirror Experience creates a scenario that will “force visitors to make [the] same choices” as seen in the show, which explores society’s complex relationship with technology and the moral quandaries often faced by characters.

“Groups are invited to the exclusive opening of Phaethon’s showroom – a tech giant about to unveil its most ambitious creation yet: LifeAgent, a robot designed to simplify your life, understand your desires, and help you become your best self. At first, everything feels seamless. Reassuring. Almost perfect. Until it doesn’t,” the studio explains.

The experience supports up to six players (ages 12+), and will be offered in French, English, and Spanish. It’s slated to launch first at the Infinity Experience location in Montreal on May 21st, however more locations will be announced “soon,” the studio says.

Notably, Infinity Experience operates in seven cities across North America. In Canada: Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, Quebec City, and Mississauga. In the US: Chicago and Atlanta.

Created by Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror returned for its seventh series on Netflix in April 2025, produced by Broke & Bones, with Brooker, Jessica Rhoades, and Annabel Jones as executive producers. Black Mirror is primarily owned by Banijay Entertainment.

Meta Inches Into Health Wearables with New Food Logging Feature for Ray-Ban Smart Glasses

April 1, 2026 From roadtovr

Meta announced it’s pushing an update to Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta smart glasses that’s slated to make nutrition tracking easier by letting Meta AI visually suss out food before you eat it.

The News

Over time, the company says that a user’s food log will inform “increasingly personalized insights that get more useful, helping you make healthier, more informed choices.”

Meta says it will be somewhat of a manual process though, as users need to prompt Meta AI to log their food in addition to inputting specific nutrition goals.

Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) | Image courtesy Meta

While we’re not there yet, Meta says in the future glasses will be able to understand what you’re eating and automatically log your food, which in turn opens up even more personalized nutrition insights since you don’t have to remember to log every meal.

For now though, the company envisions users asking Meta AI questions like “What should I eat to increase my energy?” which will output a suggestion based on your food log and fitness goals.

Meta says the new feature will be available to users aged 18+in the US “soon” across all Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta smart glasses, with its Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses getting the update sometime later this summer.

My Take

Meta doesn’t do health tracking; its smart glasses don’t track your heart rate, steps, activity, sleep (of course not), calories burned, O² levels—nothing.

Granted, they can link with Garmin smart watches which can do those things, although the glasses themselves essentially only act as a sort of audio relay, repeating the info sensed and stored by the Garmin app, meaning Meta can’t really do anything truly useful with the bulk of your health data. Notably, Meta smart glasses don’t tie into Samsung Health or Apple Health either, putting a majority of users’ health data out of Meta’s reach.

Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses & Neural Band | Image courtesy Meta

But it probably won’t always be that way. Meta seems to be leveraging what it can feasibly (and cheaply) do right now without having to cut any expensive licensing deals with dominant players in the smart watch segment.

The company does have a vector to get all of that data one day though. Meta Ray-Ban Display comes with a wrist-worn Neural Band controller that uses surface electromyography (sEMG) which lets users quietly write out messages and manipulate UI. I can imagine a near future where Neural Band has a packet of sensors similar to a smart watch, albeit without the display.

Provided Meta goes that specific route, the company wouldn’t need to integrate with existing health ecosystems at all for its future smart glasses. It will already have everything it needs to close the loop on what you’re eating and how you’re burning it off.

Meta is Releasing 2 New Ray-Ban Smart Glasses for Prescription Wearers, Starting at $500

March 31, 2026 From roadtovr

Meta and eyewear partner EssilorLuxottica announced two new “optical-forward” pairs of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which are said to support nearly all prescriptions.

Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta smart glasses can already be paired with prescription lenses, although the latest pairs of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are coming with new ergonomic features: overextension hinges, interchangeable nose-pads, and optician-adjustable temple tips, things designed to give users a more custom fit.

Ray-Ban Meta ‘BLAYZER’ model | Image courtesy Meta, EssilorLuxottica

In a blog post, Meta announced it’s offering two new frame styles: a rectangular ‘Blayzer Optics’ design available in two sizes (Standard and Large) and a more rounded ‘Scriber Optics’ frame. Both come with a Dark Brown charging carrying case, with pricing starting at $500.

Colors include Matte Black, Transparent Black, and Transparent Dark Olive, although Meta is also releasing seasonal colors, such as Transparent Matte Ice Grey and Transparent Stone Beige.

Ray-Ban Meta ‘Scriber’ model | Image courtesy Meta, EssilorLuxottica

Both new Blayzer and Scriber frames will be available for pre-order in the US starting today from Meta.com and Ray-Ban.com, as well as at optical retailers in the US and and select international markets starting April 14th.

Meta also announced it’s releasing new lens and color options for Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) and Oakley Meta lines. New options include:

Vanguard Black with Prizm Black Lenses
Vanguard White with Prizm Rose Gold Lenses
Vanguard Black with Prizm Transitions® Ember Lenses (arriving later this Spring)
Vanguard Prizm Transitions Cobalt Lenses (arriving later this Spring)
HSTN Black with Prizm Dark Golf Lenses
HSTN Light Curry with Clear to Brown Transitions Lenses

Coming this spring and summer, Meta is also releasing three new limited-time seasonal colors for Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2).

For the Skyler style: Shiny Transparent Peach with Transitions Brown Lenses. For Headliner: Matte Transparent Peach with Transitions Grey Lenses. For Wayfarer: Shiny Transparent Grey with Transitions Sapphire Lenses.

Meta Slated to Launch Two New Ray-Ban Smart Glasses, According to FCC Filing

March 27, 2026 From roadtovr

Meta and EssilorLuxottica appear to be preparing two new Ray-Ban smart glasses for launch, according to US Federal Communication Commission (FCC) filings from earlier this month.

As first reported by Janko Roettgers in his Lowpass newsletter, Meta hardware partner EssilorLuxottica has filed with the FCC two new devices which appear to be the next generation of their Ray-Ban smart glasses.

The FCC filing in question contains the names ‘Ray-Ban Meta Scriber’ and ‘Ray-Ban Meta Blazer’, describing them as “production units”, which could mean launch is fairly close.

Array of Meta smart glasses | Image courtesy Brad Lynch

Typically, FCC filings are one of the last stops before launch, as we saw with the last three hardware generations of Ray-Ban smart glasses, all three of which released less than a month after their respective FCC filings.

The company’s second-gen smart glasses released in 2025 include hardware refreshes of its popular Ray-Ban glasses, as well as Oakley Meta HSTN, Oakley Meta Vanguard, and the $800 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses—the company’s first smart glasses to include a heads-up display.

As Roettgers points out, the new FCC filings are largely devoid of details or images of the devices, however a charging case was mentioned in testing—an accessory provided with all generations of the companies’ smart glasses.

Model numbers for Blazer and Scriber, respectively RW7001 and RW7002, are also new, which suggests we’re dealing with a new hardware generation.

Additionally, the devices were tested using the Wi-Fi 6 U-NII-4 band (5.9 GHz). Notably, the company’s latest smart glasses use Wi-Fi 6E (6 GHz), which does not operate in the 5.9 GHz U-NII-4 band.

This comes amid a significant shift in priorities at Reality Labs, Meta’s XR division. In January, the company laid off at least 10 percent of staff at Reality Labs, as the company has doubled down on AI and smart glasses, and reduced spending on first-party VR content.

Meanwhile, the smart glasses segment has been very successful for the Meta-EssilorLuxottica partnership, with the French-Italian eyewear maker revealing earlier this year that it had sold over seven million smart glasses last year, effectively tripling sales from all prior years in 2025 alone.

Meta Shows Confidence in EMG Input for Wearables by Funding Six External Studies

March 20, 2026 From roadtovr

Meta announced it’s tapped six external teams to receive a research grant in order to advance work on its surface electromyography (sEMG) based wristband controller.

Meta revealed in a blog post it’s launched a research funding initiative focused on improving how users learn and interact with sEMG systems, having chosen six universities out of 70 global submissions.

Each research group is set to receive $150,000 in funding, which includes teams at the University of Central Florida, University of South Florida, University of California, Davis, Newcastle University, University of British Columbia, and Northwestern University.

Meta’s wrist-worn neural interface relies on sEMG, which detects electrical activity in the wrist and hand and translates it into digital commands. As Meta Ray-Ban Display’s main input device, the company hopes to answer a few questions with the studies, namely: how do people learn new sEMG-based controls, and how can onboarding be streamlined?

Wrist-worn XR Controller seen with Orion | Image courtesy Meta

The funded projects explore a range of challenges. Some focus on improving learning methods, such as comparing gamified training with step-by-step instruction, or developing systems that adapt to individual users over time.

Others aim to expand what sEMG can do, like enabling silent speech generation by translating muscle signals into synthesized voice, or increasing the ‘bandwidth’ of communication so users can issue more complex commands without disrupting natural hand movement.

A number of the proposed research topics include assistive applications, such as helping stroke survivors regain muscle control, or improving prosthetic limb operation through co-adaptive systems that learn alongside the user. You can see more about each study here.

This follows the release of Meta Ray-Ban Display last September, the company’s first pair of smart glasses with a built-in display. Priced at $800 and only available in the US for now, the smart glasses make use of the same input scheme first paired with Meta’s Orion AR prototype, which was revealed in late 2024.

This ostensibly shows Meta is pretty confident in the control scheme, viewing it as reliable enough for future (likely AR) devices. We’re looking forward to learning more as the research projects progress. Typically, we see papers either highlighted or released during SIGGRAPH, which is taking place in Los Angeles, California this year on July 19th – 23rd.

XR Startup Lynx Appears to Enter Liquidation Proceedings Ahead of R2 Headset Launch

March 19, 2026 From roadtovr

The company behind Lynx has entered liquidation proceedings ahead of launch of its upcoming Lynx-R2 XR headset, which is targeted at both consumers and enterprise.

According to French court documents, SL Process, the company behind Lynx, has officially entered judicial liquidation following a ruling by the Economic Activities Court of Nanterre, France.

The legal notice was published on the Official Bulletin of Civil and Commercial Advertisements (BODACC), the country’s public bulletin wherein binding legal status changes are published.

Under French insolvency law, judicial liquidation essentially means restructuring efforts have failed and survival is no longer viable, as assets and IP are typically sold off to cover debts.

Lynx R2 | Image courtesy Lynx Mixed Reality

Road to VR initially reached out to Lynx when a similar posting was made last week, however has yet to receive comment. We’ll update when/if leadership responds to our request.

Notably, SL Process is what Lynx founder and CEO Stan Larroque calls in his personal blog a “shell company” which acts as a parent company to Lynx Mixed Reality.

While the exact reasoning behind the filing remains unclear, it may have something to do with Google reportedly pulling its support for Lynx-R2, which was initially supposed to launch running the Android XR operating system.

Lynx-R2 was slated to launch sometime later this year, featuring 126° horizontal FOV with unique aspheric pancake lenses, paired with a Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset, 16GB RAM, and full-color pass-through.

As noted by UploadVR in November though, Lynx revealed that Google “terminated Lynx’s agreement to use Android XR,” something the XR hardware maker called a “surprising turn of events” at the time.

If confirmed, the liquidation of SL Process could effectively mark the end of Lynx as an independent XR hardware maker, capping off one of the few European attempts to bring a standalone XR headsets to market—something Larroque characterized in 2024 as an “excruciating” fundraising environment.

Although the company managed to attract additional funding outside of R-1’s successful Kickstarter campaign from late 2021, which brought in $800,000 in crowd funds, Crunchbase data indicates the French startup only managed to attract $6.8 million in funding to date.

Meta Faces Lawsuit Claiming Ray-Ban Smart Glasses Sent Private Footage to Overseas Reviewers

March 10, 2026 From roadtovr

Meta is facing a class action lawsuit in the US over privacy concerns tied to its Ray-Ban smart glasses. The company is accused of sending private camera footage to a Kenya-based subcontractor for manual review to train its AI models.

Allegations stem from an investigative report from Sweden’s Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten, which is said to have uncovered a subcontractor in Kenya tasked with reviewing and labeling images and videos uploaded from the glasses.

Sources within the subcontractor report seeing videos of everything, from sexual activity, handling of financial information, to a host of other private activities inside homes.

“In some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed. I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording,” a facility worker told Svenska Dagbladet.

These so-called ‘data annotators’ are said to manually process and tag images: “draw boxes around flower pots and traffic signs, follow contours, register pixels and name objects: cars, lamps, people. Every image must be described, labelled and quality assured,” the report maintains.

Following these revelations, a class-action lawsuit (via TechCrunch) was filed in a US federal court accusing Meta of misleading consumers about the product’s privacy protections.

“Meta chose to make privacy the centerpiece of its pervasive marketing campaign while concealing the facts that reveal those promises to be false,” the lawsuit states, further noting that Meta’s own “face anonymization” layer does not work to obscure the private nature of the transmitted videos.

Meta did not offer a comment to TechCrunch on the litigation itself, however, spokesperson Christopher Sgro provided the following statement:

“Ray-Ban Meta glasses help you use AI, hands-free, to answer questions about the world around you. Unless users choose to share media they’ve captured with Meta or others, that media stays on the user’s device. When people share content with Meta AI, we sometimes use contractors to review this data for the purpose of improving people’s experience, as many other companies do. We take steps to filter this data to protect people’s privacy and to help prevent identifying information from being reviewed.”

While many use Meta’s smart glasses as Ai-assisted sunglasses, its Ray-Ban smart glasses line can be specifically fit with a variety of prescription lens types, which allows users to wear them all-day as corrective glasses.

This Company Wants to Refresh Workers by Sticking Them in Tiny Pods With VR Headsets

March 5, 2026 From roadtovr

South Korea-based XR company NP Inc showed off a unique solution to combat employee fatigue at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week, combining a small pod with a VR headset.

The News

NP, developer of the MUA app for Quest, unveiled MUA’H (MUA Home) this past week, a single-person pod unit designed to provide an immediate “digital detox and psychological restoration right in the middle of the corporate workspace,” the company says.

It’s not just a small box with a Quest 3 headset though. NP says Mua Home uses “non-contact sensors” to monitor six vital signs in real-time, including Heart Rate Variability (HRV), heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature.

All of this pairs with a VR headset to deliver a customized XR meditation experience via data fed into NP’s own ‘MIND-C AI’, NP says.

What’s more, the Seoul-based company says its Mua Home platform will also let management identify stress levels and proactively manage employee burnout risks, albeit using anonymized data so a boss can’t essentially spy on their employees individual health or wellbeing concerns.

At MWC this week, NP showed off a prototype version of the VR-pod, which featured carpeted floors, cushions, and sliding privacy door. Check it out in action in this YouTube Short.

My Take

Like many places, burnout is a pretty big deal in Korea. Recent statistics maintain that around 30 percent of young Koreans suffered from burnout over the course of 2024. It’s a multifaceted issue spanning stuff like excessive workload, bad company culture, perceived fairness, etc—but one of the common denominators in almost all modern offices is the open floorplan.

Open floorplan offices are supposed to create better flow, allow coworkers to collaborate more efficiently, and give managers more direct supervision. In practice though, they could even be counterproductive, as they tend to create noisy environments that lack privacy—two things that can reduce productivity and cause constant stress.

Sadly, the question isn’t how companies can reorganize their offices for better mental health outcomes from the start—if that were the case, open floorplan offices would be a thing of the past—but how they can make the largest impact with the smallest investment. That’s where our slightly dystopian cube comes in, which is actually trading on the idea of how small it is, and how simple it is to construct and place in an unused corner.

Granted, NP isn’t the first company to think of ‘mindfulness nooks’. Many companies, including Google, Apple and Nike offer employees quiet rooms for things like mediation, naps, and silent prayer. Enclosed pods however color the issue in a slightly more malignant light. Amazon tried telephone booth-style pods back in 2021, and was widely mocked for essentially creating cheap ‘cry closets’, as the company is know for high burnout rates and some of the most draconian employee performance metrics.

Even in the context of a cramped Korean office, I’d consider these sorts of compact pods essentially a band-aid to a larger problem. To Mua Home’s credit, it at least has the ability to simulate a larger area while focusing on worker health and wellbeing in the process. Still, the optics are objectively terrible, as it conjures up images of stressed workers climbing into what is essentially a capsule hotel for their company-mandated mood correction. It’s all maybe a little too Severance for comfort.

XR Glasses Maker VITURE Raises Another $100M, Marking $200M Raised in Less Than 6 Months

February 26, 2026 From roadtovr

XR glasses company VITURE announced it’s secured an additional $100 million financing round following its $100 million Series B secured in September 2025.

The latest round was led by Legend Capital, a Beijing-based investment arm affiliated with Lenovo. The round also featured a group of strategic investors, including previous investor Bertelsmann Group. According to Crunch Base data, this brings Viture’s overall funding to $221.5 million.

Since its Series B in September, Viture has launched its Luma series and Beast XR glasses, phone/PC-tethered XR glasses that use bird bath-style optics. In December, Viture also partnered with CD Projekt RED to release a limited-edition Cyberpunk 2077 Luma series glasses. Since then, the company has expanded retail presence across North America, including in-store demo placements at Best Buy.

VITURE x Cyberpunk 2077 Luma Cyber XR Glasses | Image courtesy VITURE

This follows recent news that Google-backed competitor XREAL filed a patent lawsuit against Viture in January, claiming that patent-infringing devices have been imported or otherwise sold in the US—including the Viture Pro, Luma Pro, and Luma Ultra—which allegedly infringe one or more claims of Xreal’s foundational patents.

In turn, Viture has labeled Xreal’s actions as “patent-troll-style” behavior, even prompting Viture to take its own infringement proceedings against XREAL in China in addition to separate proceedings to “address false and harmful statements made by XREAL about VITURE and its products,” the company says in a press statement.

“While VITURE did not seek to be drawn into litigation, it will not hesitate to enforce its own rights and pursue all appropriate legal remedies available to it,” the company adds.

Notably, Viture says that if the court rules in its favor, the company may consider injunctive relief restricting the manufacturing and export of all Xreal products utilizing the electrochromic film technology, as well as other corrective measures in accordance with applicable law.

Snap’s Top AR Exec Quits Ahead of Specs Consumer Debut

February 20, 2026 From roadtovr

Scott Myers, Snap’s top executive in charge of Specs, has left the company ahead of the planned release of its consumer AR glasses.

The News

Myers reportedly left his six-year tenure at the company due to a dispute with Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, tech outlet Sources claims, characterizing the dispute as a “blow-up” centered around the company’s strategy.

A Snap spokesperson confirmed Myers’ departure on Reddit, nothing that Specs are still on track for release this year:

“Scott Myers has decided to step down from his role at Snap. We thank him for his contributions and wish him the best in his next chapter. We can’t wait to bring Specs to the world later this year. We remain focused on disciplined execution and long term value creation for our developer partners, community and shareholders.”

Myers came to Snap in 2020 to oversee all aspects of Specs, including hardware, software, product and operations. He previously held senior positions at SpaceX, Apple, and Nokia, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Snap Spectacles (gen 5) | Image courtesy Snap Inc

This comes at a critical moment for Snap. In September 2025, Spiegel noted in an open letter that the company is heading into a make-or-break “crucible moment” in 2026, positioning Specs are an integral part of the company’s future.

“This moment isn’t just about survival. It’s about proving that a different way of building technology, one that deepens friendships and inspires creativity, can succeed in a world that often rewards the opposite,” Spiegel said.

The consumer version of Specs is set to be the company’s sixth generation glasses following the release of its fifth-gen hardware in 2024. As ‘true’ AR glasses (re: not smart glasses like Meta Ray-Ban Display), the device is ostensibly set to frontrun some of Snap’s largest competitors.

My Take

It’s uncertain why Myers left Snap; the company even disputed the “blow-up” narrative with TechCrunch, providing no other reasoning, which makes Myers’ departure an even greater mystery—especially on the eve of the company’s big consumer AR glasses launch.

Speculatively speaking, there is at least one recent sign that could point to trouble brewing in the background. Myer’s departure follows a recent move by the company to form a wholly-owned subsidiary dedicated to Specs.

Snap says the so-called ‘Specs Inc’ subsidiary will primarily allow for “new partnerships and capital flexibility,” including the potential for minority investment. More concretely, Specs Inc also insolates Snap from any potential failure.

Whether that betrays a lack of confidence is unclear, although the top executive who oversaw the release of the fourth and fifth-gen versions—notably the only two with displays and AR capabilities—doesn’t smack of confidence.