The VR News Megathread

I'll be covering all of the latest VR (Virtual Reality) news here in hopes to spike interest in it on the temp. (Keep in mind the fact that I haven't learned to professionally deliver news quite yet, and please bear with me)

I put this in General Off-Topic because it doesn't seem to really fit anywhere else. It's on several different platforms, so it wouldn't fit in the PC or Console sections. It isn't used for gaming only (couldn't be further from the truth really) and I won’t only be covering the gaming-related VR news, so it didn't quite fit in to the General Gaming forum. If only we had a VR only forum of some sort *cough sorry for being so annoying Shaun cough*

Let's get started- these last few weeks have been eventful to say the least.

PSVR:

First off, Sony has very recently announced a predecessor to PlayStation VR, know simply as PlayStation VR 2. The original PSVR released on October 13, 2016. Back then, PSVR was very sub-par compared to its competitors. Now, VR technology is much more advanced, and at the same time the current industry standards are significantly higher. It's actually surprising to me that PSVR 2 was just announced- it was just last year that the CEO of PlayStation, when asked about a new PSVR, made a statement about how VR is not a priority for the company, because VR "Isn't meaningful to gaming yet." Well, seems to me like something changed their mind. Hopefully VR performance will be much better with the PS5's new hardware.


Oculus Quest 2:

Moving on, the Oculus Quest 2 is now the most used VR headset on Steam, at just above 22.9% of the platform's VR users. It's a bit funny considering the Quest 2 technically even a PCVR headset.

Next, the Oculus Quest 2 will be receiving an experimental 120Hz update this March! It's optional to developers, so some of the games you might want to see in 120FPS may or may not be converted by the people who developed it.

Update V26 has also added a feature to mark your couch in VR via the guardian system. When you mark your couch, a virtual couch appears in that place. This feature is currently limited to only one couch.

A potential Oculus Quest 3, or Oculus Quest Pro has been teased on an Instagram live stream from a Facebook VR employee. We also have news that Oculus has plans for their next headset- Although that's the only information we currently have from them.

The primary Quest software store has extremely high standards that all have to be met for Oculus to even consider taking the app in. The only issue- is that with App Lab, you need to know the exact title of the game you're searching for, because App Lab apps won't show up normally while browsing for new software.

Last but certainly not least, the Oculus Quest has launched the App Lab. which put simply, is a secondary store which allows developers to publish their games more easily.


Valve:

If you're a Valve Index owner living in the UK, you'll want to be extra careful with your headset for now. The UK is currently in a bit of a legal tangle with Valve. As a result, Valve of the UK is not doing headset repairs until it's over. So basically if you live in the UK with an Index, you can't send it in for repairs or utilize your warranty.


A new VR headset by Valve is rumored to be in development. We don't have much information on it at the moment, but it most likely will be a predecessor to the Valve Index.


General:

The Oculus Quest may be getting a competitor in the standalone market. iQIYI, a Chinese media company, has announced their first VR headset, which aims to do everything the Quest 2 does, but better. They stated that their headset actually plans to be a direct attack on the Quest 2, because the Quest 2 actually has no competition in the standalone market. Hopefully this can balance things out in that regard.


A VR accessory company, Manus, has announced their new full body trackers. Full body trackers are, well, trackers you wear to have more parts of your body tracked in VR. It isn't too cheap at $300 a tracker, but it does have some benefits over the current official Valve trackers. Those being that Manus' trackers will be lighter, smaller, they'll come with gloves you can attach the trackers to, and the trackers will charge faster than Valve's trackers.

Recent leaks show that Apple's standalone VR headset will be launching in 2022, at $2,000. That being said, it won't exactly be a common thing consumers own. They also have plans to launch an AR device in 2025, but that's all that is currently known.


Steam has now added official OpenXR support for VR. This means that developers will now be able to create cross-platform VR games, and iron out bugs/provide a more stable predictable experience on several platforms. This is because they can use the same backend (OpenXR) to develop their games on Steam as the Quest 2 for example. In the past, Facebook also never allowed games with even the tiniest trace of SteamVR in its files. But now it's possible to avoid that with the newly-added OpenXR. It can also make porting games quite a bit easier.





That's all there is for my first post. I had to rush this slightly due to a time crunch and because I'm in the middle of moving, but in the future I'll be going more in-depth with the announcements I bring up here. If there's anything you'd like me to cover, DM me privately about it and I'll consider adding it in the next news batch. If you have any VR-related inquiries feel free to ask below

And always remember: Don't use your Quest 2 while you're in the driver's seat!

Written Match 8, 2021~

 

That’s why I made this thread to hopefully get more people interested