Category Archives: VR

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GOLF+ Tests Tracking Your Real Putter Using Logitech’s MX Ink

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GOLF+ is experimenting with tracking your real putter by attaching Logitech’s MX Ink tracked stylus to the top of it.

Logitech’s MX Ink released in September, as the first officially supported third-party tracked controller for an Oculus or Meta headset. It’s priced at $130 alone, or $170 with the MX Inkwell charging dock, and supports Quest 3, Quest 3S, and Quest 2.

Given that MX Ink has 6DoF positional tracking yet weighs less than a third of a Touch Plus controller, and is less bulky, some developers are realizing that it’s an ideal device to attach to physical objects, including GOLF+.



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The startup says that the eventual goal is to bring this feature to GOLF+ for customers, but right now it’s just a prototype, with no timeline for productization.

It’s unclear whether this will be limited to putters or also support full-swing clubs. Logitech MX Ink’s positional tracking may be optimized for precision rather than fast movement. We’ve reached out to GOLF+ to ask about the plans for this.

GOLF+ is $30 on the Meta Horizon Store for Quest headsets. Three courses are included, and 33 paid DLC courses are also offered, or you can access them all for $10/month with GOLF+ Pass.

The game has sold over 1.5 million copies so far, and has a strong subscriber base of regular players.

Most Of Insomniac’s VR Games Have Returned To The Rift Store

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Insomniac Games has relisted three of its titles on Meta’s PC VR store, and The Unspoken should soon follow.

Across 2016 to 2019, you may recall Insomniac Games published four PC VR games. Edge of Nowhere is its debut effort with a third-person action game reminiscent of Uncharted and Lovecraftian Horror. Feral Rites is a third-person brawler where you transform into monsters. The Unspoken delivered magical fantasy multiplayer battles with a solo mode also available. Finally, Stormland is an action-adventure FPS with an explorable open world and two-player co-op.

All four of those games had been delisted, and the issue was recently highlighted by freelance journalist Dominic Tarason. UploadVR didn’t receive a response after contacting Meta about this issue, but Insomniac Games has now confirmed that Edge of Nowhere, Stormland, and Feral Rites are all available once more. As for The Unspoken, the studio advised it’s “actively working” to get that restored, though no timeframe was given.

It’s become something of an annual tradition with Insomniac Games’ PC VR catalogue to see them delisted, going all the way back to 2022 with Stormland and The Unspoken. The four games remained available if you’d already bought them, but while 2022’s delisting only lasted for days, subsequent delistings were substantially longer.

As for why these games were temporarily delisted, that likely comes down to the certification process. All developers using Meta’s platform features must complete an annual recertification process through the developer to continue doing so, with Meta providing a warning 60 days renewal is due. If a studio doesn’t complete the Data Use Checkup, the game is then delisted until that’s been completed. That’s what happened in 2022, so it’s likely the same issue again now.

However, the return of these four games shouldn’t be viewed as a sign that the studio will now bring its PC VR titles to Steam or other platforms. Though Insomniac Games was acquired by Sony back in 2019, Insomniac confirmed that “We don’t have any news to share about bringing these games to [PlayStation VR2] at this time.”

You can find Edge of Nowhere, Feral Rites and Stormland live once more on Meta’s PC VR store, and we’ll update this article once The Unspoken joins them.

Meta To Recommend Using Unity & Unreal’s Built-In OpenXR Support From Next Week

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Meta will recommend that developers use the built-in OpenXR support of Unity and Unreal from next week.

What Is OpenXR?

OpenXR is the open standard API for AR/VR/MR, supported by the vast majority of the industry. The ideal of OpenXR is that developers can build apps that run on any headset, without needing to use vendor-specific core APIs for different hardware.

Almost every headset and runtime supports OpenXR today, except for Apple Vision Pro and PlayStation VR2 on PS5.

Meta is a founding member of OpenXR, and continues to be the biggest contributor to the standard’s development.

The news comes shortly after we reported on developer frustration that Meta’s Unity and Unreal integrations, which are described as using OpenXR, block other PC VR headsets. Developers using these integrations, which Meta had been recommending and promoting, need to implement a separate subsystem to support other PC VR headsets, the problem that OpenXR was supposed to solve.

Meta’s Unity & Unreal “OpenXR” Integrations Block Other PC VR Headsets
Meta’s Unity and Unreal “OpenXR” SDKs block other PC VR headsets, going against the spirit of the standard, and developers aren’t happy about it.
UploadVRDavid Heaney

Now, in a new blog post seemingly in response to these concerns, Meta announced that starting from v74 of its SDKs, releasing next week, “the built-in OpenXR path for all major game engines will be a recommended path for development”.

  • For Unity, the company says that version 1.14 of Unity’s own OpenXR Plugin has “achieved feature and performance parity” with the Oculus XR Plugin. In addition to this, developers will still be able to “utilize Horizon OS-specific features through extensions and the Meta XR Core SDK, and continue optimizing their content to take advantage of all our platform features.”, Meta writes.
  • For Unreal Engine, the situation is somewhat more complicated. Unreal has its own OpenXR support, which Meta’s documentation currently doesn’t mention, and Meta offers its own integration with more Quest-focused features. Separately, Meta maintains its own fork of Unreal, with the source code available to developers, which it to date “strongly recommends”. Meta says it will offer “more details” on its future recommendations for Unreal engine next week, including a “trade-off table” it says it will publish.
  • For Godot, the free and open-source alternative to Unity & Unreal, the path to supporting Quest already leveraged its built-in OpenXR support, which Meta funded Godot veterans to improve, and support for Quest features not yet part of the core OpenXR standard can be activated through the Godot OpenXR Vendors plugin, which enables the specific features of headsets from other companies too.

Meta Funding Godot Veterans To Improve Its Quest & OpenXR Support
Meta is funding a group of Godot veterans to improve the engine’s OpenXR and Quest SDKs support and build high-quality samples and documentation.
UploadVRDavid Heaney

In what appears to be a response to the allegations from some in the industry of Meta intentionally not upholding the spirit of OpenXR, Meta notes that it has “played a major role” in developing, adopting, and advancing the standard since 2016. Here’s the company’s statement from the blog post:

“Since ensuring that our OpenXR runtimes for Meta Quest and PC were 100% OpenXR compliant in 2019, we have pushed to continue advancing OpenXR as a viable cross-device solution. We are continuously creating new XR technologies to enable unique and immersive experiences, exposed as OpenXR extensions. We also build libraries to support these new extensions. As part of our commitment to OpenXR, we contribute these advancements back to the community, allowing other companies to adopt and build upon them.

In fact, Meta has contributed to 33 (~67%) of Khronos and cross-vendor extensions, as well as 61 vendor-specific extensions. Among those vendor-specific extensions, many of them (e.g. SpaceWarp, foveation, passthrough, etc.) are adopted by other OpenXR vendors for the better interoperability with apps that were originally developed for Meta devices. These contributions have been adopted by other vendors who recognize Meta’s dedication to advancing the industry and contributing back to the standard.”

“As early adopters of OpenXR, Meta has contributed significant resources to both expanding the standard and enabling OpenXR support in popular game engines. We remain committed to OpenXR and will continue to invest in the success of OpenXR and our developers.”

VR Design Unpacked: Why ‘Embodiment’ is More Important Than ‘Immersion’

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Our series Inside XR Design examines specific examples of great XR design. Today we’re looking at the game Synapse and exploring the concept of embodiment and what makes it important to VR games.

Editor’s Note: It’s hard to believe a whole year has passed since this piece was first published, but it’s insights are as relevant as ever in 2025! We’re bumping it back up to our front page to continue the discussion around embodiment as a crucial design concept for compelling VR content.

You can find the complete video below, or continue reading for an adapted text version.

Defining Embodiment

Welcome back to another episode of Inside XR design. Today I’m going to talk about Synapse (2023), a PSVR 2 exclusive game from developer nDreams. But specifically we’re gonna to look at the game through the lens of a concept called embodiment.

So what the hell is embodiment and why am I boring you talking about it rather than just talking about all the cool shooting, and explosions, and smart design in the game? Well, it’s going to help us understand why certain design decisions in Synapse are so effective. So stick with me here for just a minute.

Embodiment is a term I use to describe the feeling of being physically present within a VR experience. Like you’re actually standing there in the world that’s around you.

And now your reasonable response is, “but don’t we already use the word immersion for that?”

Well colloquially people certainly do, but I want to make an important distinction between ‘immersion’ and ‘embodiment’.

‘Immersion’, for the purposes of our discussion, is when something has your complete attention. We all agree that a movie can be immersive, right? When the story or action is so engrossing it’s almost like nothing outside of the theater even exists at that moment. But has even the most immersive movie you’ve ever seen made you think you were physically inside the movie? Certainly not.

And that’s where ’embodiment’ comes in. For the sake of specificity, I’m defining immersion as being about attention. On the other hand, embodiment is about your sense of physical presence and how it relates to the world around you.

So I think it’s important to recognize that all VR games get immersion for free. By literally taking over your vision and hearing, for the most part they automatically have your full attention. You are immersed the second you put on a headset.

But some VR games manage to push us one step further. They don’t just have our attention, they make us feel like our whole body has been transported into the virtual world. Like you’d actually feel things in the game if you reached out and touched them.

Ok, so immersion is attention and embodiment is the feeling of actually being there.

And to be clear, embodiment isn’t a binary thing. It’s a spectrum. Some VR games are slightly embodying, while others are very embodying. But what makes the difference?

That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about with Synapse.

Cover You Can Feel

At first glance, Synapse might look like a pretty common VR shooter, but there are several really intentional design decisions that drive a strong sense of embodiment. The first thing I want to talk about is the cover system.

Every VR shooter has cover. You can walk behind a wall and it will block shots for you. But beyond that, the wall doesn’t really physically relate to your actual body because you never actively engage with it. It’s just a stationary object.

But Synapse makes walls and other cover interactive by letting you grab it with your hand and pull your body in and out of cover. This feels really natural and works great for the gameplay.

And because you’re physically moving yourself in relation to the wall—instead of just strafing back and forth with a thumbstick—the wall starts to feel more real. Specifically, it feels more real because when you grab the wall and use it as an anchor from which to move, it’s subconsciously becoming part of your proprioceptive model.

Understanding Proprioception

Let’s take a second here to explain proprioception because it’s a term that comes up a lot when we’re talking about tricking our bodies into thinking we’re somewhere else.

The clearest example I’ve ever seen of proprioception in action is this clip. And listen, I never thought I’d be showing you a cat clip in this series, but here we are. Watch closely as the cat approaches the table… without really thinking about it, it effortlessly moves its ear out of the way just at the right time.

This is proprioception at work. It’s your body’s model of where it is in relation to the things around you. In order for the cat to know exactly when and where to move its ear to avoid the table without even looking at it, it has to have some innate sense of the space its ear occupies and how that relates to the space the table occupies.

In the case of the cover system in Synapse, you intuitively understand that ‘when I grab this wall and move my hand to the right, my body will move to the left’.

So rather than just being a ‘thing that you see’ walls become something more than that. They become relevant to you in a more meaningful way, because you can directly engage with them to influence the position of your body. In doing so, your mind starts to pay more attention to where the walls are in relation to your body. They start to feel more real. And by extension, your own body starts to feel more present in the simulation… you feel more ‘embodied’.

Mags Out

And walls in Synapse can actually be used for more than cover. You can also use them to push magazines into your weapon.

Backing away from embodiment for just a second—this is such a cool design detail. In Inside XR Design #4 I spent a long time talking about the realistic weapon model in Half-Life: Alyx (2020). But Synapse is a run-and-gun game so the developers took a totally different approach and landed on a reloading system that’s fast paced but still engaging.

Instead of making players mess with inventory and chambering, the magazines in this game just pop out and float there. To reload, just slide them back into the weapon. It might seem silly, but it works in the game’s sci-fi context and reduces reloading complexity while maintaining much of the fun and game flow that comes with it.

And now we can see how this pairs so beautifully with the cover game’s cover system.

The game’s cover system takes one of your hands to use. So how can you reload? Pushing your magazine against the wall to reload your gun is the perfect solution to allow players to use both systems at the same time.

But guess what? This isn’t just a really clever design, it’s yet another way that you can engage with the wall—as if it’s actually there in front of you. You need to know if your arm is close enough to the wall if you’re going to use it to reload. So again, your brain starts to incorporate walls and their proximity into your proprioceptive model. You start to truly sense the space between your body and the wall.

So both of these things—being able to use walls to pull yourself in and out of cover, and being able to use walls to push a magazine into your gun—make walls feel more real because you interact with them up close and in a meaningful way.

And here’s the thing. When the world around you starts to feel more real, you start to feel more convinced that you’re actually standing inside of it. That’s embodiment. And let’s remember: virtual worlds are always ‘immersive’ because they necessarily have our full attention. But embodiment goes beyond what we see—it’s about what we feel.

And when it comes to reaching out and touching the world… Synapse takes things to a whole new level with its incredible telekinesis system.

Continue on Page 2: Extend Your Reach »

The post VR Design Unpacked: Why ‘Embodiment’ is More Important Than ‘Immersion’ appeared first on Road to VR.

Meta: Suppliers “Heavily Pursuing” Producing “Wonder Material” Enabling Orion’s Field Of View

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Meta says suppliers across the world are now “heavily pursuing” producing optical-grade silicon carbide, the “wonder material” that made the Orion AR glasses prototype’s relatively wide field of view possible.

The Orion prototype, presented at Meta Connect 2024 back in September, stunned the world by achieving what no other fully-integrated transparent AR device in true glasses form factor ever has: a relatively wide field of view, 70 degrees diagonal. Other AR glasses cap out at around 50 degrees, at most.

To reach this relatively remarkable field of view, Orion uses silicon carbide lenses. The primary bottleneck for the field of view of transparent AR is the refractive index of the lens, and silicon carbide has the highest of any known visibly transparent material, 2.7, compared to 1.8 for glass. As such, Meta describes silicon carbide as a “wonder material” for AR.

Meta’s Prototype AR Glasses Have Remarkable Field Of View
Meta showed off prototype true AR glasses at Connect, codenamed Orion, with a remarkable 70-degree field of view.
UploadVRDavid Heaney

But there’s a problem: producing optical-grade silicon carbide is incredibly complex and expensive, and there is no established commercial-scale supply chain for it. Because of this, Meta admitted at Connect that to sell Orion as a product, it would have to be priced above $10,000.

This is why Meta described Orion as “a time machine that lets us live in the future”, and why it isn’t being made into a product at all.

Instead, Meta is building a separate AR glasses product, codenamed Artemis, that the company revealed to The Verge’s Alex Heath will use glass, the same as Snap Spectacles and earlier AR devices like HoloLens and Magic Leap. This means that Meta’s Artemis, reportedly set to launch in 2027, will not have the signature wide field of view of Orion.

Meta Reportedly Downgrading Key Specs Of AR Glasses
Meta is reportedly downgrading key specs of its in-development AR glasses to achieve a lower cost. Full details here:
UploadVRDavid Heaney

Now, in a new blog post explaining the advantages of silicon carbide waveguides for AR, Meta is suggesting that the overwhelmingly positive reception of Orion from the tech industry has led suppliers across the world to accelerate their plans for producing optical-grade silicon carbide.

“Orion proved that silicon carbide is a viable option for AR glasses,” says Meta Reality Labs’ Director of Research Science Barry Silverstein, “and we’re now seeing interest across the supply chain on three different continents where they’re heavily pursuing this as an opportunity. Silicon carbide will come out on top. It’s just a matter of time in my book.”

“Suppliers are very excited by the new opportunity of manufacturing optical-grade silicon carbide—after all, each waveguide lens represents a large amount of material relative to an electronic chip, and all of their existing capabilities apply to this new space,” adds Silverstein. “Filling your factory is essential, and scaling your factory is the dream. The size of the wafer matters, too: The bigger the wafer, the lower the cost—but the complexity of the process also goes up. That said, we’ve seen suppliers move from four-inch to eight-inch wafers, and some are working on precursors to 12-inch wafers, which would yield exponentially more pairs of AR glasses.”

Meta notes that it’s “still early days”, and Silverstein cautions that there’s “still a lot of work left to be done”, strongly suggesting that the plan to use glass in the first product still hasn’t changed. But the implication seems to be that the company’s timeline for one day eventually releasing AR glasses with silicon carbide lenses, and thus Orion’s field of view, may be narrowing.

Meta Orion AR Glasses Developer Hands-On: Viewing The Future
Experienced VR developer Alex Coulombe was invited to check out the Orion AR glasses prototype at Meta Connect 2024.
UploadVRAlex Coulombe

“The world is awake now,” adds Silverstein. “We’ve successfully shown that silicon carbide can flex across electronics and photonics. It’s a material that could have future applications in quantum computing. And we’re seeing signs that it’s possible to significantly reduce the cost. There’s a lot of work left to be done, but the potential upside here is huge.”

‘Electrician Simulator’ Arrives on All Major VR Headsets This Month, Trailer Here

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Take IT Studio, the developer behind Electrician Simulator (2022), is bringing a VR version of the game to Quest, PSVR 2 and PC VR headsets this month.

Electrician Simulator VR is getting things up to code by letting you go hands-on as a Sparky, tasking you with everything from repairing outlets and switches, laying cables in walls, to connecting electrical appliances.

Take IT Studio says each mission in the VR version was “created from scratch,” which are based on missions introduced in the flatscreen version of the game. You’ll also encounter (sometimes fickle) customers, who can surprise you with extra requirements and also story or two.

In addition to regular missions, Electrician Simulator VR is also slated to include a challenge mode, tasking you with completing three additional tasks on each mission—maybe a little less conventional than you were expecting, and requiring a little more thought in execution.

Electrician Simulator VR is slated to release March 21st, which you can wishlist today across Quest 3/S, PSVR 2, and SteamVR headsets.

The post ‘Electrician Simulator’ Arrives on All Major VR Headsets This Month, Trailer Here appeared first on Road to VR.

Niantic’s Gaussian Splat Scaniverse Is Now An App On The Quest Store

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Niantic’s Scaniverse is now available as an app for Quest 3 and Quest 3S on the Horizon Store, not just WebXR anymore.

The Scaniverse mobile app for iOS/iPadOS and Android lets you scan real world 3D scenes for free, leveraging on-device processing. In December Niantic launched an Into The Scaniverse WebXR site to let you view them, and those created by others around the world, in VR via the Horizon OS web browser on Quest 3 and Quest 3S.

Now, Into The Scaniverse is also available as an app on the Horizon Store, supporting Quest 3 and Quest 3S.

Niantic claims Scaniverse has the world’s largest collection of Gaussian splats, with over 50,000 scenes from 120 countries. The VR interface lets you browse them on a 3D globe interface marking their capture location.



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Scaniverse has been around for three years now, and originally used traditional 3D scanning techniques, leveraging and requiring the LiDAR depth sensor of iPhone Pro and iPad Pro models. Two years ago it was upgraded to work without LiDAR, leveraging advancements in computer vision depth estimation. And last year Scaniverse got its most significant upgrade yet: switching from a traditional 3D stack to Gaussian splatting.

Gaussian splats offer higher fidelity scans, with accurate lighting and reflections. And whereas previous Scaniverse scans only included one specific object, splats include a representation of the background – and this makes them ideal for viewing in VR.

Trying out Into The Scaniverse, I found that the quality of the subjects, the central objects being scanned, is very impressive for on-device scans, while the background is significantly lower detail than what you’d find in Varjo Teleport and Meta’s Horizon Hyperscape Demo. But Varjo Teleport is $30/month, and Horizon Hyperscape is only a demo of six scenes, while Scaniverse is completely free. And while Varjo Teleport scans take between 30 minutes and 24 hours, Scaniverse completes in a matter of single-digit minutes, at least on a high end phone.

You can download the Scaniverse scanning app on the App Store for Apple mobile devices or the Google Play Store for Android mobile devices, and you can view Scaniverse splats on your Quest 3 or Quest 3S at the WebXR site or now with the Horizon Store app.

Samsung’s Headset Could Launch In Q3, With A Very High Price

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Samsung’s headset will launch in Q3, South Korea’s Business Post reports, with a low production scale that suggests a very high price.

So far, Samsung has only officially said that its upcoming headset, which will be the debut of Google’s Android XR platform, will launch sometime this year.

Business Post’s report suggests mass production of the components will begin next month, with an annual production target of 100,000 headsets, with a goal of releasing in the third quarter of this year. That would mean July, August, or September.

A production scale of just 100,000 headsets per year, if accurate, would likely result in Samsung setting a very high price. For comparison, the annual production scale of Apple Vision Pro has been widely reported as less than 500,000 units, and it starts at $3500.

Samsung Headset Reportedly Higher Resolution Than Apple Vision Pro
Samsung’s headset will reportedly feature Sony’s new 4K micro-OLED displays, with higher resolution and wider color gamut than Apple Vision Pro.
UploadVRDavid Heaney

The report comes just two days after another South Korean news outlet, The Elec, reported that the headset will use Sony’s new 1.35-inch 3552×3840 micro-OLED display, with higher resolution and wider color gamut than the one in Apple Vision Pro.

You can read our hands-on impressions of Samsung’s headset from December here, and we’ll keep bringing the latest news and reports of the headset’s specifications, pricing, and launch plans as details emerge.

Rogue Piñatas: VRmageddon Review – A Roguelite Fit For The Whole Family

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With frantic action and a hilarious co-op mode, Rogue Piñatas: VRmageddon is a rogue-lite that’s perfect for players of all ages.

The delightfully absurd premise is clear from the opening scene: after decades of being mercilessly smashed by humans, the piñatas are fighting back. Stuffed with candy and out for revenge, they’re determined to destroy civilization, attacking anything in their path. It’s Candy Crush meets The Walking Dead, as players cobble together ludicrous makeshift weaponry to battle the papier-mâché menace.

The Facts

What is it?: A silly and challenging rogue-lite for up to 4 players
Platforms: Quest and Steam (Reviewed on Quest 3S)
Release Date: Out now
Developer: Nerd Ninjas
Price: $24.99

Sights and Sounds

Rogue Piñatas takes place in a world as colorful as its titular antagonists. The characters, environments, weapons and UI all burst with bright, cheerful energy. Yes, despite the apocalypse, the world of Rogue Piñatas is a pleasant place to be.

I played on a Quest 3S, where it ran smoothly and looked great, and testing the game in co-op mode on my second headset, a Quest 2, revealed no noticeable issues. The game’s crisp visuals and cartoony art direction perfectly complement the game’s tone. Explosions of confetti and vibrant special effects make each battle a spectacle, while the clean UI ensures everything remains readable amid the mayhem.

Audio design is equally excellent. A light and boppy soundtrack plays in the background, and directional audio helps immerse players and communicate critical information—buzzing signals an airborne bumblebee piñata approaching from behind, for example, while an urgent beep warns of a nearby self-destruct piñata. Meaty blunderbuss blasts and satisfying melee impacts add a satisfying weight to combat.



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The Gameplay Loop

Fans of rogue-lite games like Vampire Survivors will feel right at home with Rogue Piñatas.

The journey begins in a humble family garage. Initially, players control Kit Bash, the game’s first playable character, but as they progress, they can unlock six more—each with distinct stats and playstyles. There’s Kit’s pizza-loving dad, his ex-military granny, and punk-rock sister, and every character feels unique. Beyond wildly varied stats for each, their signature starter weapons lead to meaningful gameplay differences. Players can also purchase skill upgrades using in-game currency earned through combat.

After selecting a character and managing upgrades, it’s time for battle. Combat unfolds across six diverse zones, each with a primary objective and optional sub-objectives. Missions range from simple survival challenges to boss battles, equipment activations, and vehicle escort missions.

Each zone has a distinct identity, starting in an overrun suburban neighborhood before expanding into more bizarre locales.

Enemies spawn in relentless waves, and smashing piñatas releases candy—the game’s EXP. The more piñatas you break, the more candy you collect, and the faster you level up. Upon leveling up, a flashy UI presents three random upgrade choices, including active weapon augments, passive buffs, and entirely new weapons. Piñatas may also drop health items and rare power-ups.

As in any good rogue-lite, survival requires a mix of strategy, skill, and quick reflexes. If players meet the mission objectives, they clear the zone and return to the garage to regroup before diving into the next challenge.



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Screenshots taken by UploadVR on Quest 3S.

But How Does It Play?

A rogue-lite lives or dies by its gameplay, and Rogue Piñatas delivers.

Swinging a pizza-peel battle axe or clobbering enemies with a multi-bat (because seven bats are better than one) feels phenomenal. Dual-wielding melee weapons turns combat into a calorie-burning frenzy, with piñatas shattering, ricocheting, and disintegrating in beautifully chaotic fashion.

Switching to ranged weapons slows things down but keeps the intensity high. One hand slashes a ground-based llama piñata while the other fires a precise shot at an airborne enemy, all while candy guts rain down. It’s a ridiculous, delightful spectacle.

Movement is customizable, offering teleportation by default. However, switching to smooth movement significantly improves the experience, especially given the game’s fast-paced nature.

Comfort

The game plays equally well with the player seated or standing.

Movement is user-selectable in the game’s option menu; available as “continuous” and “teleport.”

There’s no vignetting during movement.

The difficulty ramps up pretty quickly, but remains balanced on the whole. Early waves feel manageable, but as the mission progresses, enemy numbers swell, culminating in a frantic, high-stakes climax. By the time players face the zone boss, they’re also fending off swarms of increasingly aggressive piñatas.

Despite its bright candy shell, Rogue Piñatas hides a truly sinister core. The sheer enemy count and relentless pace create plenty of learning moments—let’s just say I lost more than a few missions at the very last second.

Yet frustration never set in. The strong design, satisfying combat, and rewarding progression made every retry feel like a fresh opportunity rather than a setback. I gasped, I growled, but I always smiled, and then jumped right back in for another round.

Screenshots taken by UploadVR on Quest 3S.



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A Multiplayer Fun-Time Multiplier

Beyond its single-player experience, Rogue Piñatas shines in co-op, allowing up to four players to team up.

Joining a lobby is effortless—just walk up to the in-game UI in the garage, click a button, and you’re in.

If Rogue Piñatas is fun solo, it’s fantastic with friends. I played through the first zone with my ten-year-old daughter, and we had a blast. The game’s balanced mechanics transition seamlessly into multiplayer, and battling waves of piñatas while laughing together through the Quest speakers was pure joy.

Reviving downed teammates requires running to their location and staying within proximity until their life meter refills. Take too long, and they’re out for good—adding a light layer of teamwork to the mayhem.

Final Thoughts

Rogue Piñatas: VRmageddon delivers a thrilling, family-friendly rogue-lite that blends over-the-top action with a polished gameplay loop. Its vibrant art style, well-tuned mechanics, and engaging combat ensure endless fun, whether playing solo or in co-op. The variety in characters, weapons, and zones keeps every run fresh, and while the game can be challenging, its charm and humor prevent frustration from setting in.

More importantly, Rogue Piñatas captures the best of VR—physicality, immersion, and pure, unfiltered fun.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.

Quest’s Most Popular Mini Golf Game Gets a Brand New Course of Mythic Proportions

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Mighty Coconut just released a new course for Walkabout Mini Golf (2020), letting you putt-putt your way around the home of the gods: Mount Olympus.

As the game’s latest paid DLC, the Mount Olympus map brings two 18-hole courses (one easy, one hard) intertwined around classical Greek temples. As per usual, there’s also an unlockable putter, a new collection of themed Lost Balls to hunt, and some themed cosmetics too.

It’s more than just togas—or rather, chitons—and fun Greco-Roman hairstyles though. Emma Mercado, Senior 3D Artist at Mighty Coconut, says the game “took a more traditional approach” when imagining the godly realms, giving each major god their own temple, including bits to highlight their legendary lore and mythos.

In an interview with Meta, Mercado says the team created props from the stories about each god, such as the affair between Ares and Aphrodite—and the reaction of her jealous husband Hephaestus, how Alectryon was turned into a rooster for failing as Ares’ bedroom guard, or how Arachne continues to hang around Athena’s loom after besting her at a weaving contest. You’ll also get a sense of Demeter’s grief over losing her daughter Persephone to Hades, shown through the changing seasons at her temple.

You’ll find the Mount Olympus DLC, which is notably Walkabout Mini Golf’s tallest, largest, and densest course to date, on all supported platforms.

Priced at $4, you can buy it now over on the Horizon Store for Quest, PlayStation Store for PSVR 2, Steam for PC VR headsets, Pico Store for Pico headsets, and App Store for the iOS-supported Pocket Edition (flatscreen gameplay).

The post Quest’s Most Popular Mini Golf Game Gets a Brand New Course of Mythic Proportions appeared first on Road to VR.

Pimax Shares Development Updates on Dream Air and Crystal Super Headsets

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Pimax has two PC VR headsets in development: the ultralight Dream Air and the wide field-of-view Crystal Super. The company recently offered an update on the development progress of both headsets, including an update on the shipping timeline of Crystal Super.

Pimax Dream Air Update

Image courtesy Pimax

Pimax Dream Air is the company’s first effort to build an ultralight PC VR headset. First announced in December with a price of $1,900, the headset is undergoing various tweaks as the company completes the prototyping phase and moves toward an expected May release date.

In its latest update on Dream Air, Pimax says it has added speaker pods to the sides of the headset for improved audio.

Image courtesy Pimax

The headset’s tether is also changing from a single cable that runs along the left side of the headset to a split cable that will run along both sides and then combine into one cable behind the user’s head. Pimax says this change will help with the balance of the headset.

Image courtesy Pimax

Pimax is also moving the Dream Air’s USB-C accessory slot to the bottom of the headset to make it more accessible for clip-on accessories like trackers. And the newest iteration of the headset’s design now includes vents for active cooling, as the compact headset and displays will have plenty of heat to dissipate.

The company also says it has an early prototype of the headset’s pancake lenses, and specifies that they have a concave front surface that helps expand the headset’s field-of-view. Between that and slightly canting the lenses and displays, Pimax says it expects the final field of view to be 105° horizontally rather than the originally announced 102°.

Image courtesy Pimax

Field-of-view isn’t the only thing that could increase, however. The company says it’s still choosing between two candidate displays. Both are micro-OLED with identical resolution. But one of the panels (from Sony) has “better optical qualities,” according to the company, but also a higher price tag. If the final version ends up using the Sony panel, Pimax says it could increase the cost of the headset “a tiny bit.”

While it’s nice to see the field-of-view go up, potentially changing already-announced specs and prices with little more than two months before the headset is supposed to ship seems to reinforce longstanding criticism that the company often gets ahead of itself in planning and execution.

Speaking of the headset’s purported May release date, Pimax indicates in this latest update that it expects to have a “proper working demo unit [of Dream Air]” in April, one month before the headset is expected to ship. And in May, the company says it’ll have a “public event” to showcase the headset.

The video concludes with the company saying, “we are fine-tuning the final parts and at the same time also minimizing the risk for delays. The Dream Air is on the way and we’ll be showing it publicly soon.”

Pimax Crystal Super Update

Pimax Crystal Super | Image courtesy Pimax

Crystal Super is the company’s latest large form-factor PC VR headset which aims for a wide field-of-view (130° horizontal) and high resolution (3,840 × 3,840).

Crystal Super was originally announced in April, 2024, with an expected release date of Q4 2024. In the recent update, the company shares its latest projections for the headset’s release date: the end of March for the 50 PPD version and mid-April for the 57 PPD version.

Pimax says that early versions of the Crystal Super are in the hands of ‘beta testers’ who have been providing feedback. Based on that feedback, the company is seemingly regressing the Super’s headstrap design to something closer to its prior headsets: a simple over-the-head strap (instead of a horizontal strap with ratcheting adjustment) and a larger facepad for better weight distribution.

Image courtesy Pimax

The company also addressed newly imposed tariffs that the US has placed on products from China. Pimax says it will eat the cost of the tariffs for any orders placed before they were announced (February 4th). However, the company suggests that the tariffs will increase the cost of its headsets in the future.

The post Pimax Shares Development Updates on Dream Air and Crystal Super Headsets appeared first on Road to VR.

Climb Mount Olympus In Walkabout’s Largest Course

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You can now climb Mount Olympus in Walkabout Mini Golf.

Mount Olympus in Walkabout Mini Golf is the game’s 32nd course, following Viva Las Elvis in January. According to studio head Lucas Martell it is far larger than Walkabout’s previous giant-sized course, 2023’s Temple At Zerzura.

Here’s the official description:

High above the Aegean Sea lies the legendary realm of the gods and goddesses. Here, the Olympians converge to determine the fate of mortals—through an epic miniature golf odyssey. Putt your way through intricate temples, mythical landscapes, and challenging hazards. But beware: your skills will soon be tested by the Olympian Council, who will decide if you’re worthy of victory or destined to face the wrath of the gods!

On the path up Mount Olympus you’ll encounter temples and offerings with icons of the main Greek pantheon including Zeus, Apollo and Artemis. Our tour with Walkabout creator Lucas Martell is also our longest ever, clocking in at 28 minutes of behind-the-scenes details.

Watch it here:

I recently hosted Mighty Coconut senior art director Don Carson for an in-depth discussion about the design process in the game. He notes they aim to “over deliver” with a layered design approach that lasts more than a year seeing teams handing off courses to one another in rotation. The Coconuts, as the employees of the studio are called, number in the dozens today.

Hot on the heels of Elvis producing the highest single sales day in the game’s nearly five-year history, will players again come back to Mount Olympus and continue the trend of grabbing a few more from the store?

You can find Walkabout on all major headsets as well as iOS.