XR = eXtended Reality (everything VR, AR, MR)

🥳 But there’s more:

Tropico VR just launched.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom, a VR interactive movie, is coming to Quest.

Meta will no longer support new apps for Quest 1.

Welcome to XR Gamer Digest #14

Discounts and Tips

🤩 Don’t forget you can get up to 25% discounts when you buy a game from the Meta Quest store. Go here and look for your game (we’re not affiliated with the website, but it’s a great tool).

🔻 Starting April 30, 2024, Meta will no longer support new apps for Quest 1, focusing on critical system updates until August 2024.

XR Games

🐧 "Penguin Paradise," a free multiplayer VR game inspired by Gorilla Tag, has launched on Meta Quest, featuring battle royale and hide and seek modes in an arctic world.

🏝️ Tropico VR just launched on the Quest and it makes life in the Caribbean a lot more interesting.

🪰 "Smalland: Survive The Wilds VR," a survival game set in a world of insects, is coming to Meta Quest this spring. 

🏴‍☠️ "The Pirate Queen" on Quest 3 focuses on exploration and storytelling, with atmospheric set pieces and historical authenticity, despite some gameplay and interaction polish issues.

🧩 "Retropolis dot.Line," a free mixed reality puzzle game for Quest 3, offers a relaxing yet challenging experience with room mapping and 3D puzzles, available on App Lab and also supports Quest 2 and Quest Pro.

🎸 "Metal: Hellsinger VR," is being adapted for VR on Quest, Steam, and PSVR 2 later this year, featuring the full campaign and original soundtrack.

⚔️ "Medieval Dynasty New Settlement," a survival game by Spectral Games, just launched on Quest for $29.99. It offers a mix of sandbox, RPG, simulation, crafting, and exploration mechanics.

🤖 A Reddit user managed to run "Cyberpunk 2077" in VR on the Apple Vision Pro and advises against the effort due to the complex setup and high costs involved.

🥽 You can actually play "Half-Life: Alyx" on Apple Vision Pro using ALVR streaming, but you might not enjoy it because of the latency in hand tracking.

🏛️ "Eye of the Temple" receives a visual upgrade on Quest 3. You get better shadows, frame rates, texture resolutions.

🚀 The "No Man's Sky Orbital" update revamps space stations, introduces ship customization, and brings new gameplay features, available now as a free patch on SteamVR, PSVR 2.

XR Entertainment

👻 "Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom," a VR interactive movie, is coming to Quest, immersing fans in new Gundam series battles set in Universal Century 0096.

🥽 If you watched 3 Body Problem on Netflix, you probably noticed their VR headset. Here’s a really funny review of the device.

🎥 If you love the spatial videos, you’ll probably want to test the Spatialify app for iPhone 15 Pro. It now supports recording 3D 'spatial videos' with HDR at 1080p 60fps or 4K 30fps.

XR News

❤️ We might be over the hump in headset adoption. Quest 3 owners show higher retention rates than previous headset models, attributed to improved hardware, faster app performance, and enhanced user comfort.

🧱 Meta allows only a few whitelisted Quest developers to disable the mixed reality safety boundary.

🏷️ Meta Quest developers can now offer subscription discounts, including introductory pricing and promo codes, to attract and retain subscribers, alongside new tools for tracking customer behavior.

🤏 Quest 3's hand-tracking latency is around 70ms, significantly lower than Vision Pro's 128ms, despite Vision Pro being built entirely around hand-tracking and Quest 3 using it as an alternate input method.

🥽 A University of Cambridge study used VR to test spatial awareness in early Alzheimer's detection, finding navigation impairments in at-risk middle-aged adults, potentially years before other symptoms appear.

⚽️ The Premier League has entered a four-year partnership with VR developer Rezzil, focusing on developing a VR game that lets users experience iconic Premier League moments, with the league also taking an equity stake in Rezzil.

🕶️ Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses will receive an update in April to include multimodal AI, allowing users to ask questions about their surroundings using the glasses' camera for visual input.

🧹 Horizon Workrooms will lose features like the tracked keyboard and shared whiteboard but gain improvements in meeting bookings, window controls, and new VR environments, with changes effective May 30, 2024.

Until next time, enjoy your other reality gaming!

Bobby Voicu