Senior Director of Display Systems Research at Meta's Reality Labs Dr. Doug Lanman recently shared an updated VR headset concept that his team are able to actually build right now that can pass the visual turing test.

In the latest meta quest update you find some new features and options like new home environments, the public test channel is coming to quest 3 quest 2, and new quest pro performance upgrades!

I have some questions for the new year and only you can answer them!

Here's the first 5 minutes of what the bat vr which just released on Steam and for Oculus Meta Quest 2

Thanks to an oopsie by VR developer Bit Planet, the makers of the Ultrawings games posted what looks to be a PSVR 2 in the wild in someone’s spine indented leather office chair.  It’s fair to assume this is more than likely a dev kit but it does look very much like the production design we have seen from Sony. It even had two cables still in plastic packaging so Internet sleuthers you tell me is this a dev kit or what we will see in our living rooms? Bit Planet gave the tweet a few hours but then removed it after garnering a few hundred retweets and a lengthy thread. In the thread below their redo tweet with a stock PSVR2 image Bit Planet claims it was fake news but great photoshop. Fake or not this was some good publicity for the VR devs, I just hope they didn’t break any NDA’s they had with sony. 

Speaking of developers, the company with all VR headsets Meta found itself in the hotseat this week with developers as a story came out that some devs are not happy with Meta’s 30% cut in their app store. Especially after Zuckerberg has openly criticized app stores on Andorid and Apple being a quote unique stranglehold as a gatekeeper of what gets on phones” The 30% to the app store cut is standard across steam, google play and the apple app store. Meta defends its share by saying unlike apple and android its easy to download apps through third party stores giving sidequest as an example. Obviously the baked in Meta app store that comes with the headset is going to get the bulk of the players eyes so I’m not sure that’s exactly a fair point. Sidequest is a great third party store and even with its newly released easy install setup you still need to know how to enable dev mode on your headset to access it. Which I'm not sure everyone would want to do. I guess on the bright side 30% is better than the 50% meta is taking from horizon worlds creators…But if you do want to learn how to download the new easy install version of sidequest and access their appstore in your headset I made a tutorial this week, expand the description to find the link.

On the other side of the coin, meta did finally release video recording settings for the quest this week. Well for developers for now at least. If you have made a developer account for your quest you can download the oculus developer hub and sign in. Once your headset is connected you can check out the video settings they made available in the dev hub 2.6 update. Including  4k, 1440p and 1080 60fps widescreen options. And the real winner in my eyes is the bit rate options for higher quality captures and less noise and artifacting. In a helpful touch, when you choose a widescreen mode and single eye view for recording,... inside the headset you are given black bars on the top and bottom to let you know what is and isn’t being captured. Hopefully this will become a feature for all to access in upcoming quest firmware updates but the caveat here is that when you record with high settings it does effect game play performance and I’ve seen frame drops, but hey I’m just glad it’s an option now.  

In VR Game news just a quick reminder for the PCVR gang out there the steam summer sale is blazing hot right now and running until July 7th. So if you haven’t yet go grab half life alyx now for half off and a ton of other great games with big discounts. Personally I picked up the survival game the forest for 5 bucks and I mean payday 2 with its VR mode is 99 cents so yeah. I’ve linked the VR store sale in the description. Also can someone let me know if Rick and Morty’s virtual rickeality is any good? I mean at $5 I know I should just do it but I figured it doesn hurt to ask.

For those of you looking forward to the new Among Us VR adaptation from schell games we got a little update from the games project director Mike traficante in an interview with VR Scout. When asked about the teams plans for future updates he stated, “Right now it’s all about getting the game out. But I mean, we’re close and we already know that we’re going to continue to add stuff to it. I think most of our questions about what we do next—whether it’s a new map or whether it’s more hats or whether it’s, I don’t know, wristwatches or something weird—it’s all going to depend on what we see players doing and asking for and where the community has excitement.” So I guess the good news here is that they are close to finishing up and hopefully we will get a solid release date soon. Mike also revealed a new among us task built for vr in the game where you have to lean over in real life long enough to have your character's face scanned without looking away. Hopefully you won’t get chopped in half while uploading your yellow mug to the spaceship data base.

In some fun news VR dev and youtuber Valem challenged himself to create a VR game fully inside his quest 2 headset in 24 hours. Using horizon workrooms he prepped his idea from scratch and then accessed his computer virtually for coding. He then used shapes XR to design the game world and Virtuoso for the soundtrack. The journey is a wild one culminating in a hang gliding experience you can play yourself. Checkout his channel in the description below and make sure to watch his video where he created the largest VR game using an outdoor athletic track, quest passthrough and a bicycle.  

Sadly this weeks vr news has come to an end but just like that weird guy on the bus, I’ll see you next week.

Sidequest Easy Install: https://youtu.be/0OGATkBy3DM

Steam VR Summer Sale: https://store.steampowered.com/vr

Valem Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ValemVR

Sidequest the app that lets you sideload and download games from applab and other vr developers just made it easier to get those new games onto your quest headset. Here’s how.

If you haven’t used sidequest before you will first need to setup an oculus developer account. Head over to https://developer.oculus.com/ and sign up using your facebook slash Oculus account and then head to https://developer.oculus.com/manage/organizations/create.

Now that you have dev mode ready head over to sidequestvr.com and set up an account you’ll need this here shortly. Next download and install the new sidequest easy installer from the get sidequest link in the top bar on their site and then plug in your quest to your computer. You may need to give the USB connection access inside the headset so click allow if you see this prompt and 

then back on the computer inside the easy sidquest installer app check to for a dot indicator next to headset connected. Once that dot is green you can then click the pink install in your headset button. You’ll get the confetti and now you are good to head back into your headset and under the app library panel go to the top right and choose unknown sources and then sidequest app. 

Memorize this code and head to the link in the message or the sidequest homepage where you are logged in with your account and click your circle icon in the top right then link my sidequest. Enter your unique code and boo ya now you are set up. 

Finally jump back into your headset and you’ll see the window has changed to the sidequest app library where you can search for games and apps that won’t necessarily show up in the regular quest store or are in early development in the app lab like dungeon maker or the contentious gorilla tag. 

You can also now more easily check out some new custom home environments by clicking that little menu burger in the top left then choose custom homes. Find on you like, and click the pink download button. For your first download you’ll see an android app dialogue box to install unknown apps, click settings, move the slider to allow from this source, click back and then finally install.

To view your new custom home click the little oculus home icon up in the top right and the virtual environment page will appear scroll down and find your new home click and now you are in a whole new world. 

Well now I’m here in the holodeck and I’m gonna go to my imaginary happy place byeeee