Virtual Reality News: Page 3

Meta's annual Connect event just wrapped up, and the company delivered what we expected, then some. Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the keynote with a major spotlight on AI glasses, unveiling not one, but three distinct smart eyewear products that push the boundaries of what happens when cutting-edge tech meets iconic design. From enhanced Ray-Ban iterations to groundbreaking display technology, Meta Connect 2025 officially began today at 5 p.m. PT, and the announcements are already reshaping how...

Meta Connect 2025 could be the most important showcase yet — the moment AI glasses hype finally meets reality. Meta Connect 2025 kicks off today (September 17) at 5 p.m. PT / 8 p.m. ET / 1 a.m. BST, marking Meta’s biggest annual developer conference. The company traditionally uses this stage to unveil its most ambitious hardware and software. This year puts a sharper focus on how we will interact with digital content, and it is happening at Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

Amazon's upcoming AR glasses face serious headwinds against Meta's growing dominance. The market data is blunt. While Amazon is preparing to launch their 'Jayhawk' AR glasses at an $800 price point for late 2026 or early 2027, Meta is already dominating with 73% of the smart glasses market and shipments growing over 200% year-over-year in the first half of 2025.

As you walk into your kitchen this morning, you point at a simple banana and watch it transform into an intelligent digital assistant, ready to track your nutrition, set cooking timers, or order groceries. You are not experiencing science fiction. You are witnessing the reality that Google Research is making possible through their XR-Objects project.

The extended reality landscape is hitting a pivot point, and Meta Connect 2025 looks like the stage where the next act starts. Scheduled for September 17-18, this year’s developer conference carries unusual weight as Meta stands at the crossroads of mainstream adoption and cutting-edge experimentation. With Reality Labs CTO Andrew Bosworth declaring 2025 "the most critical year" in his eight years at the division, the stakes are obvious. The announcements here could decide whether Meta’s...

The VR landscape in 2025 is buzzing with innovation, and let's be honest, your headset is just the starting point. While Meta Quest 3S starts at $299 and offers mixed-reality features, the real magic shows up when you pair it with the right accessories. From battery packs that double your playtime to controller grips that sharpen your aim, 2025's lineup targets the little pain points you forgot you were tolerating.

Meta just fired a massive shot across the bow in the smart glasses arms race. Honestly, the competition should be terrified. The company's latest lineup, the updated Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2, the new Oakley Meta Vanguard, and the Meta Ray-Ban Display, feels like a quantum leap that resets expectations for wearable AR.

The wearable tech world has been buzzing about Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses, and for good reason. These aren't another gadget chasing fake problems, they cracked how to make smart glasses people actually wear every day. With Meta Connect 2025 happening on September 17, anticipation for what's next is peaking.

Meta's latest smart glasses project is making waves, and for good reason. The company is developing premium AR glasses codenamed "Hypernova," featuring the first integrated display in Meta's smart eyewear lineup. Meta reportedly expects to announce these glasses at Meta Connect on September 17, 2025, with a potential launch as early as this fall. Big stage, big swing.

When thousands of Windows Mixed Reality headsets faced electronic extinction in October 2024, most users assumed their VR investments had become expensive paperweights. Microsoft ended support for the platform that originally launched in 2015 under the name Windows Holographic, leaving users stranded with incompatible hardware on newer Windows versions. Game over, right? But here is where the story takes an unexpected turn. Sometimes the most elegant solutions come from unexpected corners of...

Gaming in mixed reality isn't just about escaping to virtual worlds anymore, it is about transforming the space around you into an interactive playground. After diving deep into the latest Meta Quest 3 experiences, I saw something extraordinary: games that blend digital elements with your physical environment in ways that feel genuinely magical. While Meta Quest still rules and Vision Pro made a splash in early 2024, the Quest 3's mixed reality capabilities paint a clear picture of where gaming...

Virtual reality is no longer a lab curiosity. It is a transformative technology reshaping how we work, play, and interact with digital experiences. PCMag has covered virtual reality since the original Oculus Rift Development Kit launched more than a decade ago, and today’s landscape offers headsets in every shape, size, and price point. The global VR market was worth USD 59.96 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach USD 79.36 billion in 2023, with growth projected at 27.5% annually until 2030....

Snap's latest announcement signals a leap forward in AR glasses, with Snap OS 2 shaping up as the software backbone for consumer Spectacles. This is not an incremental update. It lays the groundwork for what could be the most accessible AR experience yet. With consumer versions planned for 2026 and a promise to cost less than Apple's Vision Pro, Snap is aiming straight at mainstream adoption.

When Mark Zuckerberg takes the stage on September 17 at Meta Connect 2025, he's not just unveiling another incremental tech update. After years of building momentum with the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, Meta is ready to show us the future, and it's arriving sooner than most people think. The smart glasses revolution has been gaining momentum across multiple fronts, with global smart glasses shipments growing 110% year-over-year in the first half of 2025 alone.

The Meta Quest ecosystem is absolutely exploding with incredible gaming experiences right now. If you are diving into VR gaming in 2025, you have picked the perfect time, a moment when Tom's Guide confirms that Batman: Arkham Shadow currently reigns as the best game from Meta's Horizon Store, while ovrdoz notes that virtual reality has finally moved from geeks' garages into homes with powerful, accessible headsets like the Meta Quest 3. What makes the timing especially smart is simple math,...

Reviewed by Julianne Ngirngir

Reviewed by Julianne Ngirngir

Reviewed by Julianne Ngirngir

Reviewed by Julianne Ngirngir

Reviewed by Corey Noles

July's VR gaming scene is heating up with some seriously tempting releases — and after hands-on testing with six of this month's major launches, I can tell you this lineup delivers on its promises. From zombie hordes to puzzle adventures, this month offers something for every type of VR enthusiast, with genuine surprises that justify the wallet damage.

Virtual reality isn't just a futuristic dream anymore — it's a thriving industry on track for massive expansion. According to recent projections, the global VR market is expected to grow by a staggering $339.29 billion between 2025 and 2033, with a compound annual growth rate of 27.3%. That's not just a small bump — it's a sign that VR is cementing itself as a major player in gaming, business, healthcare, and beyond.

Part of the fallout from the canceled Mobile World Congress is that a range of products, ideas, and designs slated for reveal in Barcelona are now being showcased without the framing and context of the massive tech gathering.

HTC is entering the augmented reality market through the back door by giving developers access to the stereo front-facing cameras on the Vive and Vive Pro VR headsets.

Google and Samsung have been leaving Apple in the dust when it comes to virtual reality gear. However, as the market grows and becomes more impossible to ignore within the tech world, Apple may be forced to play catch up. This could account for the new Apple patent that was granted today.

Want proof that user experiences matter? Look no further than the HTC Vive and Omnipudding's particle generator, GPU Cubes VR, which lets you interact with thousands of colorful, cubic particles in a black void. If this was a simulator for your computer only, controlled with a mouse or keyboard, you'd be bored in seconds—but it's just simple, instant fun on the Vive.

Virtual reality, along with its siblings, has the opportunity to profoundly change the way we interact with all things digital. As a visual medium, we often don't think about the impact on audio, but it plays a significant role nevertheless. When it comes to music—and music videos—the possibilities are enormous.

While visiting the Made by Google pop-up shop in New York City this morning, I had a chance to try out the new Daydream View virtual reality headset.

Opioids, or narcotic painkillers, serve as our primary method for alleviating physical distress. They also happen to be a leading cause of death due to their addictive nature. AppliedVR hopes to introduce a safer alternative: virtual reality gaming. They utilize the existing Samsung Gear VR for the hardware, but provides specialized software that offers up a distracting experience that fosters greater pain ignorance.

Mozilla helped get the ball rolling with WebVR, but support for the technology has been notably absent in Google Chrome until recently. Now, the latest Chromium developer build offers limited support.

We're set to see the actual debut of Google Daydream on October 4, and it'll hopefully serve as a significant step up from Cardboard—their current virtual reality smartphone platform. If you want to get an early taste, you can set up a development kit—you just need two phones to do it.

Google's Tilt Brush has proven to be one of the most compelling VR experiences for the HTC Vive, letting you paint with crazy materials like electricity and duct tape. It is clearly an experiment in bringing the joy of imagination to life—or creating some form of virtual LSD—and the app's latest update brings a variety of features that only continue to support that theme.

Cancer is a complicated illness, but the more we understand it, the likelier we are to beat it. The 3D Visualisation Aesthetics Lab at the University of New South Wales took to virtual reality to help improve our odds by allowing scientists to walk through virtual representations of actual cancer cells.

Pong, one of the simplest video games ever created, has managed to evolve in some crazy ways over time, from the original basic 2D version and colorful Breakout sequel, to the PlayStation game with power-ups and 3D graphics, and now Cyberpong VR—a virtual reality game on the HTC Vive—where you act as the paddle instead of just moving it into place with a controller.

People fear virtual reality will isolate us, but the right experience can prove it does the opposite.

Apple's plans for virtual, mixed, and augmented reality have remained a mystery for some time, but now we at least have some idea of what they're thinking about. UploadVR uncovered a patent showing a VR headset design that looks like a thick pair of sunglasses and utilizes an iPhone to provide an experience similar to the Samsung Gear VR.

Leap Motion created gesture control for all sorts of things, including virtual reality, long ago, but developers must build in support for their tracking peripheral to use its full potential. As a result, they've created an "Interaction Engine" for Unity, the primary platform for developing virtual and mixed reality experiences, to try and take gesture interaction to the next level.

We've heard a bit about Google Daydream—the new smartphone-based virtual reality platform that is supposed to provide a markedly better experience than Cardboard—but don't really know what it'll look like. Engadget claims we could find out in just a couple of weeks, since Android Nougat is already out, a necessary component of Daydream.

The Oculus Rift's virtual experiences become a little less immersive when you're barely moving in a chair with a headset on, playing on a gamepad—but you don't have to accept that reality anymore.

The HTC Vive and Valve's SteamVR make for one of the more compelling virtual reality experiences, mixing in real-world motion tracking with the immersive headset. But third-party manufacturers couldn't tap into the Vive's full potential and make creative new peripherals—until now.