Category Archives: Games

Quest Gets Disney+ App With Downloads for Offline Viewing, But No 3D Movies Like Vision Pro

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The Disney+ video streaming service is finally available on Quest. While better late than never, it’s actually missing out on a few key features for now.


The News

The Horizon Store finally has it own dedicated Disney+ app, which supports Quest 2, Quest 3 and Quest 3S. The app lets you stream the full catalogue of 2D videos on Quest and also download and replay them when offline.

While most content is served up in 1080p, the app also includes select titles in Dolby Vision 4K HDR on Quest 3/S (streaming only), as well as a limited selection of content from Hulu and ESPN.

There a few caveats though. For now, the app is US-only; Disney says it will rollout international availability in early 2026. What’s more, it’s lacking the ability to stream 3D film, like the Apple Vision Pro app does, which came to the headset in 2024 as a launch day feature.

Disney notes that “all content is only available to stream in 2D on Quest devices at this time,” which does seem to leave some room for hope in the future though.

Notably, on Vision Pro, Disney+ subscribers can stream a variety of recent films, including Avatar: The Way of Water, Avengers Endgame, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Frozen II, Star Wars Episode VII, and Encanto.

My Take

There doesn’t seem to be any real downside to Disney eventually allowing its 3D films on Quest, which could mean it likely comes down to a few scenarios: Apple may have timed exclusive rights to 3D movies from Disney, or maybe the films have been specifically mastered in a Vision Pro-specific format that can’t be streamed directly to Quest. There’s no saying for now.

Either way, Disney has definitely hit the nail on timing by bringing its (mostly) full app to Quest; new Quest users will likely be looking for all of the same apps they might find on a smart TV, which Quest sadly doesn’t really have yet though, giving Disney some more visibility over competing platforms.

For now, Quest users looking to stream from Netflix, Hulu, Max, Paramount+, or Apple TV need to sign in and stream in Quest’s built-in Internet browser. Native XR video streaming apps include Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, PlutoTV, Starz, and YouTube.

The post Quest Gets Disney+ App With Downloads for Offline Viewing, But No 3D Movies Like Vision Pro appeared first on Road to VR.

Ninja Warrior VR Is A Hands-On Recreation With Huge Potential

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Ninja Warrior feels like a fun concept to make the jump into VR, until you consider the practicalities of adapting this experience for the medium. There’s something appealing about translating large-scale obstacle courses into a fitness game of sorts, but these courses featured in the original TV show involve Wipeout-esque feats of acrobatics, strength, and nerve to conquer. Never mind the space necessary to run, jump and dive through them.

Maybe, if you could traverse without using your feet but retaining that sense of athleticism, it could work.

Ninja Warrior VR takes heavy inspiration from titles like Fall Guys in its switch from reality TV to the virtual world, replacing its super-strength competitors with stylized ninja-like characters. The jump also shifts the aesthetics of the experience, and allows the experience to betray your initial expectations in one key aspect, the one thing transforming this into one of the most promising fitness-fueled party titles of 2025. Rather than moving with your feet, you move entirely using your hands.

It seems absurd at first, and certainly it takes some getting used to. While at first you would assume you might run on the spot or use analog sticks to move around each course, everything is controlled using motion controls and your hands. To move forward, you reach your arm forward and physically pull it back toward your chest to pull your character toward wherever you placed it. You can use either hand or both in quick succession to move at speed, but wherever you place that hand, it will remain firmly planted in place until you place down your other hand.

This is the main way you traverse just about every obstacle in the game. Want to jump? Push off from where you are with your hands. You can do this with one or two hands, but you will need to rapidly increase your speed at this task if you want to, say, jump across thin platforms with moving bollards spinning in sequence that will punish you for lurking too long. All against a surprisingly strict time limit that’s longer than the real show, but not exactly friendly either.

The only use of buttons on the controller is the grip button for grabbing onto obstacles like hanging bars, such as the famous obstacle from the series that requires players to hang and jump between two sliding metal bars. This requires you to use all your skills to traverse and is quite challenging to overcome, and we’re still only in round 1!

While you could critique the game under these parameters for being too hard – it’s also similar locomotion to Gorilla Tag or Orion Drift, which isn’t what you’d expect – this arguably works well for Ninja Warrior VR. The reality TV show is a Herculean effort few can successfully beat, and making it too simple risks making it trivial for players when the full game releases.

With the commentators voicing in your ear, there’s still a lot of fun to be had by trying your luck, never mind how amusing it looks from an outsider’s perspective. Provided you’re careful, that is – during my experience, I accidentally punched the demo assistant more than once in the intensity of trying to traverse just this first obstacle course.

To me, though, that’s proof of everything Ninja Warrior VR does well, rather than a negative. You need space to play, and time to get used to moving with your hands. But after overcoming this hurdle you don’t just feel immediately hooked on the thrill of the challenge, you’re resolute and determined to clear these hurdles however possible. It’s tiring, but it’s exciting to overcome a challenge, setting yourself up slowly in just the right spot for a new obstacle, and to overcome it. With a crowd of friends or onlookers, as I had here, the cheers as you overcome that obstacle are both fueling and grin-inducing. It’s a true joy, only possible by the rather bold direction the team has taken to bring this game to life.

Ninja Warrior VR is not a one-to-one physical recreation because that’s not feasible. While its cartoon appearance is unusual at first, it’s through this direction that MyDearest has maintained the spirit of the show and created something that could provide hours of entertainment in good company. That’s from just the first round of the four-round gauntlet that makes up a typical Ninja Warrior match, and the team has promised future updates to keep expanding the game with more levels over time. If the team can maintain that schedule and the degree of fun found in this demo for repeat matches and new stages, this could become a new party game of choice for having a good time with friends in VR.

Ninja Warrior VR is out today on the Meta Quest platform.

Meta “Pauses” Third-Party Horizon OS Headsets

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It seems like the teased Horizon OS headsets from Asus ROG and Lenovo won’t be shipping after all.

In a statement to Road to VR, Meta says it has “paused the program to focus on building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market”.

“We’re committed to this for the long term and will revisit opportunities for 3rd-party device partnerships as the category evolves”, the statement continues.

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The news comes just under 20 months after Meta officially announced that third-party headsets running Quest’s operating system, which it branded Horizon OS, were in the works.

At the time, Meta said Asus was working on a “performance gaming headset” under its ROG brand, while Lenovo was working on “a line of headsets” for “productivity, learning, and entertainment”.

We heard nothing official about the Asus ROG headset after this point, though a rumor back in January suggested that it would have face and eye tracking and use either QD-LCD panels with local dimming or micro-OLED displays.

Meanwhile, around a year ago at Lenovo Tech World 2024, the company confirmed that it was still working on its Horizon OS headset.

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The decision to “pause” the program for third-party Horizon OS headsets may have come alongside the wider cuts to the VR and Horizon Worlds teams at Meta, widely reported by outlets like Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Insider earlier this month.

Shortly after those reports, Meta issued an official statement confirming “shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables”.

Today’s news doesn’t mean the end of Horizon OS headsets, though, just that they won’t be coming from third parties – at least not any time soon.

Meta’s statement mentions building “world-class first-party hardware” for VR, and leaked memos from earlier this month reveal that the company is actively working on at least two Horizon OS products.

Meta Delays Ultralight Headset, Starts Work On Gaming-Focused Quest 4
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According to those memos, Meta plans to launch its rumored ultralight “mixed reality glasses” headset with a tethered compute puck in the first half of 2027, and recently started work on a gaming-focused Quest 4 set to be a “large upgrade” over Quest 3, though at a higher price.

Given this timeline, Quest 3 owners hoping for a direct upgrade within the Horizon OS ecosystem could be waiting another two or three years, meaning Quest 3 would end up being Meta’s all-in-one flagship for four or five years without a direct successor. And when that successor does arrive, it’s set to have a notably higher price.

Quest’s Hand Tracking 2.4 Significantly Improves Fast Motion Mode

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Quest’s Hand Tracking 2.4 update significantly improves the Fast Motion Mode, better handling rapid movements like punching and swinging.

Since launching controller-free hand tracking as a software update for the original Oculus Quest experimentally in late 2019 and publicly in early 2020, Meta has continued to improve the feature, gradually bridging much of the tracking quality difference compared to controllers.

  • Hand Tracking 2.0 in 2022 brought improvements to handling fast movements, occlusion, and touching your hands together.
  • Hand Tracking 2.1 in early 2023 reduced tracking loss and the time to re-acquire hands after loss, as well as improving the accuracy of prediction for fast motion.
  • Hand Tracking 2.2 in mid 2023 reduced the latency of hand tracking, with Meta claiming up to 40% reduction in typical usage and up to 75% during fast movement.
  • Hand Tracking 2.3 last year brought enhanced stability, improved accuracy, and even lower latency.

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Comparison of Fast Motion Mode with 2.3 (left) and 2.4 (right).

Normally, Quest’s hand tracking samples the tracking cameras at 30Hz. Optionally, the developers of apps can enable Fast Motion Mode, which makes the cameras sample at 50Hz or 60Hz, depending on your country’s mains electricity frequency, to sync up with artificial lighting.

The higher sampling rate of Fast Motion Mode improves the tracking of fast motions, with the tradeoff of introducing some jitter that can make hand tracking feel slightly less accurate. Fast Motion Mode also requires brighter room lighting on headsets older than Quest 3S, because the camera exposure is lower, bringing less light, so without IR illuminators this will cause the tracking to degrade more.

Fast Motion Mode also cannot be used alongside simultaneous hands and controllers mode, and can only be combined with inside-out body tracking in VR, not passthrough mixed reality. Further, on Quest Pro, Fast Motion Mode can’t be used alongside eye tracking or face tracking.

Still, these tradeoffs aside, Fast Motion Mode is ideal for fast-paced immersive games, and that’s what Hand Tracking 2.4 is focused on improving.

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Meta says that Hand Tracking 2.4 arrived in Horizon OS v83, which started rolling out last month.

According to Meta, Hands 2.4 brings the following improvements to Fast Motion Mode:

  • Faster Hand Acquisition: “Hands are detected faster when re-entering view. This reduces the ‘hand loss’ feeling during fast movements.“
  • Advanced Motion Upsampling: “Smooths out rapid gestures so motion appears continuous instead of choppy while minimizing motion artifacts.“
  • Optimized Fast Motion Filters: “Helps eliminate perceived latency between hand tracking and controller input during high-energy interactions.“

Again though, keep in mind that Fast Motion Mode is a feature developers need to enable for their apps, so you’ll only see this in games that chose to use it.

You should be able to test it out in Meta’s free demo app from 2023 called Move Fast, which is designed to showcase how hand tracking can be used for immersive fitness games.