Maestro adds two notable songs from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean films, joined by other epic sailing songs in the latest DLC.
At the heart of the All Aboard! update are two iconic tracks from Pirates of the Caribbean, including Hans Zimmer and Klaus Badelt’s instantly recognizable theme, “He’s a Pirate,” and Zimmer’s “Jack Sparrow.” These rousing pieces are joined by a selection of sea-inspired music, including the shanty “Wellerman,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Shipwreck,” and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony (Overture).
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As with earlier Maestro add-ons, such as the Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and Fantasia themed updates previously covered here, the new DLC brings more than just music. All Aboard! adds a new environment to perform in (which includes a kraken and ghost ship) plus new buccaneer-themed costumes for the orchestra. Players can get into the swashbuckling spirit, too, with new accessories and cosmetic items, including a Kraken’s Foot baton and The Cap’n gloves.
Our 2024 review of Maestro praised the game’s bold use of hand tracking on Quest, and called the experience a “breath of fresh air” compared to other VR rhythm games. That’s since arrived across almost every major VR platform, and it’s one of the few games that currently supports PlayStation VR2 hand-tracking.
Maestro and the new All Aboard! add-on are available now in the Meta Horizon Store and Steam, while the Pico and PS VR2 release will follow “in the coming days.”
Dawn of Jets gets multiplayer support for the VR aerial combat game, and it’s now left early access on Quest.
We initially covered eV Interactive’s Dawn of Jets following its early access launch. Featuring ten different aircraft with the promise of more to come, this gives you a fully interactive cockpit with the stick, throttle, weapons systems, and more as you go dogfighting across the skies. Now, it’s received online multiplayer alongside its full release.
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Multiplayer footage
Detailed further in a recent update post, Dawn of Jets’ new multiplayer mode supports up to seven other friends in free-flight, deathmatch, and team-based matches. eV Interactive states more modes and missions are coming “in the future,” though a specific release window wasn’t mentioned for these.
Multiplayer joins three previously available gameplay modes in Dawn of Jets. These include a Career mode with dozens of missions, alongside different Challenges where you compete for the top of the leaderboards across combat, race, and aviation scenarios. Finally, Flight mode lets you explore this world at a more leisurely pace.
Dawn of Jets is available now on the Meta Quest platform.
visionOS 26.2 brings official support for using Apple Vision Pro in cars and buses via improved tracking in Travel Mode.
Apple Vision Pro was the first headset to deliver a Travel Mode, meaning a toggle that makes its positional tracking system work while in a moving vehicle, when it launched in early 2024.
Since then, over the years, Meta, Pico, Snap, and Google have followed with their own implementations of Travel Mode for their headsets.
At launch, Apple’s Travel Mode was specifically designed for airplanes. With visionOS 2 last year, it was updated to officially support trains. And now with visionOS 26.2, released last week, Apple Vision Pro officially supports cars and buses too.
I say “officially” because the feature did already work in these scenarios. When picking up Apple Vision Pro in New York at launch, I used its Travel Mode in the back of an Uber. It worked, with some minor jitter.
I’ll be sure to try Apple Vision Pro’s Travel Mode again next time I’m in a long distance Uber, Waymo, or bus, as I’m curious to see how much improvement the official support brings.
The update arrived on the same week that Google announced and started rolling out a Travel Mode for Android XR on Galaxy XR, which officially only supports planes.
Meta has “paused” its initiative to bring third-party Horizon OS headsets to the market. The company says it has shifted focus to “building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market.”
The News
A little over a year and a half ago, Meta made an “industry-altering announcement,” as I called the move in my reporting: the company was rebranding the Quest operating system to ‘Horizon OS’ and announced it was working with select partners to launch third-party VR headsets powered by the operating system.
Image courtesy Meta
Meta specifically named Asus and Lenovo as the first partners it was working with to build new Horizon OS headsets. Asus was said to be building an “all-new performance gaming headset,” while Lenovo was purportedly working on “mixed reality devices for productivity, learning, and entertainment.”
But as we’ve now learned, neither headset is likely to see the light of day. Meta say it has frozen the third-party Horizon OS headset program.
“We have paused the program to focus on building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market,” a Meta spokesperson told Road to VR. “We’re committed to this for the long term and will revisit opportunities for 3rd-party device partnerships as the category evolves.”
My Take
The news comes amid a shifting of priorities for Reality Labs (Meta’s AI and XR division). Seemingly aware that it needs to up its game on the ease-of-use and polish of its wearables, Meta recently announced that a long-time Apple design lead joined the company in an effort to “elevate design within Meta, and pull together a talented group with a combination of craft, creative vision, systems thinking, and deep experience building iconic products that bridge hardware and software.”
Further, the company is now reportedly “focused on making the [Reality Labs] business sustainable and taking extra time to deliver our experiences with higher quality.” Which has reportedly led to the decision to delay a forthcoming Vision Pro competitor into 2027, and possibly raising prices on future gaming headsets.
But Meta isn’t making these changes out of nowhere. The introduction of Vision Pro and now Android XR are creating new competition which Meta is responding to. Android XR, in particular, could have been a major foil in the Horizon OS third-party headset program.
Meta previously stated it wanted to be the ‘Android of XR’, an ‘open’ alternative to Apple’s approach with VisionOS. Opening up Horizon OS to new hardware partners was part of that play. But this was well before Android XR was actually announced. Now it’s becoming clear that the platform best positioned to be the ‘Android of XR’ is… well… Android XR itself. Without the backstop of app stores with millions of widely used apps (as VisionOS and Android XR have), Meta has found itself at a major disadvantage.
That’s not to say Horizon OS doesn’t have its own upsides. It clearly has the biggest and best library of immersive experiences on any standalone headset. But that may not have the same strategic value as the entire Google Play or App Store catalogs.
From the outset there’s also been another wrinkle in the third-party Horizon OS strategy: pricing. It’s well known that Meta sells its headsets at cost or perhaps even lower (hoping to make back the money on the software side), allowing it to outcompete practically any other headset maker on price. If you’re Asus or Lenovo, and your profit only stands to come from the hardware, how can you compete against the platform holder itself which is selling its own super low cost headsets?
If I were Asus or Lenovo, Android XR looks like a more welcome home for a third-party headset. Not only does it have the backing of the Google Play store and all the apps that come with it, but unlike Meta, Google is not (yet) competing with its own hardware partners.
GORN 2 received a new “dungeon brawler” mode in its winter-themed update on Quest, PC VR, and PlayStation VR2.
Now live on all platforms, GORN 2 is the comically over-the-top arena brawler where you battle the five sons of the God of the Afterlife after reaching your untimely demise. While the main campaign puts you into a series of arena fights as you defeat muscular gladiators, publisher Devolver Digital announced it’s now received a dungeon crawler mode.
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Appropriately known as the ‘Dungeon Brawler‘ update, this also comes with various winter-themed additions like icy floors, new dungeon hazards, and the ability to freeze enemies. New weapons include hockey sticks, icicle swords, ice arrows, pitchforks and more, while developer Cortopia also introduced a jump button to leap over enemies.
New story content is also promised and this dungeon crawler mode features 25 unique rooms, with the studio confirming player and weapon modifiers can be found as you progress. Additional missions are also available for unlocking the dungeon crawler weapons.
This joins a growing list of seasonally themed updates that GORN 2 has received. October’s ‘Fight of the Living Dead‘ update celebrated Halloween by letting you fight the undead, also adding a crossbow, scythe, and a Resurrection Spire. That was followed last month by ‘Shanksgiving‘ with its timed-exclusive ‘Turkey Hunt’ game mode.
Meta has rolled out a new update to Quest that aims to drastically improve hand-tracking performance and reliability.
The News
The v83 update, which is rolling out now to Horizon OS, is said to increase reliability of hand-tracking in a number of cases, including during fast movements, when used for locomotion, and throwing virtual objects.
In the so-called ‘Hands 2.4’ implementation, the update makes high-speed interactions feel “more responsive and believable,” Meta says in a recent developer blog post, noting that fast twitch movements have historically challenged hand-tracking, especially in rhythm and fitness apps.
The Interaction SDK also sees major enhancements, Meta says. New hand-first locomotion samples, such as improved teleportation gestures, natural climbing, and physics-based movement, are also included so developers can use them without having to build their own systems from scratch.
Notably, developers now have more customizable throwing interactions, also including new sample scenes demonstrating styles like darts, bowling, frisbee throws, and ball sports.
Developers looking for more information can check out the documentation for both the Unity and Unreal game engines.
My Take
True to Meta’s word, v83 seems to be a big improvement to hand-tracking on Quest. I kind of wonder why it all matters though. To me, the supposition largely seems to be this: we know how to use our hands, so logically the most immersive way of interacting in VR should be the same. Right?
I honestly don’t think so, at least not for now. While I’d agree there is no perfect input scheme in VR (short of a direct neural link), controllers still offer the best input experience in a majority of cases.
Image courtesy Meta
Granted, I admire Meta for ratcheting down yet further on its optical hand-tracking tech, which is streets ahead of what we saw when the company rolled out hand-tracking on Quest in 2019. But even now in v83, it can only approximate some of the controller’s functionality.
Yes, I can pinch and grab, or hold my thumb and index finger to open a system menu, and also twiddle my virtual fingers about—the last of which promises a level of input granularity that not many XR games can really make use of. Maybe now I can punch a little more accurately, and teleport around a little more reliably. Still, I’d much rather just grab a controller and get the job done 100 percent of the time.
DrakkenRidge gets a free expansion tomorrow on Quest 3 and 3S, adding a new island, new enemies, and more.
Launched in September, DrakkenRidge is a retro-themed VR fantasy adventure that we favorably compared to old-school RuneScape in our impressions. As a Novice of the Mage Order, you’re tasked with policing magic use across this land while exploring dungeons and solving puzzles. Now, it’s receiving the Maruk’s Hammer expansion as a free update.
While the main game sees you exploring five unique islands across the DrakkenRidge archipelago, Maruk’s Hammer introduces a distant Dwarven Island that’s home to a mythical Forge. With the island under siege from mysterious invaders and an ancient threat, you must fend off this threat to help the Dwarves defend their home and save the Forge.
This occurs over a multistep main quest, with four new side quests also available. You can find two new weapons, such as the talking ‘Void Whisper’ sword that’s possessed by an ancient evil. New elemental arrows can also be crafted, while new enemies in this expansion include a new Dragon, a Frost Howl, Battlemages, and Corrupted Paladins.
It’s the biggest update DrakkenRidge has received since its September launch, and Garage Collective previously released fourseparate updates. Patch 1.3 added a new distance grab ability and the option to summon weapons by grabbing from over your shoulder, while last month’s Inventory Update delivered a new inventory layout and auto-sorting ability.
DrakkenRidge is out now on Quest 3/3S, while the Maruk’s Hammer expansion goes live tomorrow at 10am PT.
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