HTC announced today that its VIVERSE immersive social platform has reached 1 million monthly-active users, a major milestone. The platform is accessible on flatscreens and VR, so it’s unclear what portion of users are visiting with headsets.

The News

HTC’s Viverse is a user-generated immersive social platform, quite similar to Meta’s Horizon Worlds. It was launched less than a year ago, but the company says the platform has already reached 1 million monthly-active users. While still miles from the likes of Roblox, that’s still a pretty big milestone.

The milestone was helped, no doubt, by the platform’s web-based approach. Viverse worlds can be visited on any device with a compatible browser, including browsers on VR headsets with WebXR support.

The announcement of the 1 million monthly-active user milestone comes alongside the culmination of a Viverse student hackathon, which saw students from some 40 schools submitting experiences powered by Viverse across three categories:

• Immersive Storytelling
  • 1st – The Knight Watcher, University of Houston
  • 2nd – Day X, Royal College of Art
  • 3rd – Mission Miss, Royal College of Art
  • Honorable mention: VR-Story & Dream Maker, National University of Kaohsiung
• Games
  • 1st – Office Crashout, Academy of Art University
  • 2nd – Ditto, Academy of Art University
  • 3rd – Car Repair Simulator, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  • Honorable mention: Axolotl Adventure, University of Houston
• Social Experiences
  • 1st – Nimbus, Royal College of Art
  • 2nd- Restaurant world, University of Cincinnati
  • 3rd – OTR 12th and Vine, University of Cincinnati
  • Honorable mention: Interverse, National University of Kaohsiung

HTC also recently announced that it has teamed up with Open Brush to make it easy for artists to share their immersive artwork. Open Brush is an immersive art tool which allows people to paint and sketch in 3D. Historically, it’s been difficult to share this kind of immersive artwork in a way that’s widely accessible. But a new version of Open Brush now has one-click sharing to Viverse, meaning immersive artwork can easily be viewed on the web across a wide variety of devices (including VR headsets). Here’s one such scene if you want to check it out!

My Take

Similar to issues faced by Horizon Worlds, the cross-device nature of Viverse means creators building for the platform are faced with the challenge of creating interesting content for vastly different modalities (flatscreen, mobile, and VR).

While HTC hasn’t shared the breakdown of flatscreen vs. VR players, a quick look through the platform’s top content shows few experiences that are marked as specifically compatible with VR headsets. That means they’re either sub-par experiences when seen in VR, or outright incompatible.

It’s great seeing the web-based approach working, and HTC’s commitment to maintaining WebXR compatibility, but it doesn’t look like VR makes up a meaningful portion of users on the platform to date. That probably won’t change with the Open Brush integration, but it’s a win-win for both; Viverse gets some cool immersive artwork and Open Brush users get an easy way to share their works.

Google is rolling out a beta version of PC Connect, a free first-party virtual desktop app for Android XR. With the app, users can stream content from their Windows PC. Desktop apps work, of course, but Google says it has also optimized PC Connect for streaming flat games, and ensured that content on the screen works with Gemini.

The News

Google announced PC Connect this week, saying it is rolling out in beta form. It will presumably require the latest version of Android XR (also rolling out this week), as well as a companion app installed on the Windows PC you want to connect to.

Google says PC Connect is optimized to stream desktop apps, with a focus on low latency and high framerate to make flat games streamed from the PC feel responsive.

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With input crossover, you can control the PC Connect virtual desktop with input from the headset, or from the keyboard & mouse (or gamepad) on the host computer. And, Google says, your computer mouse & keyboard extend into Android XR itself, letting you control the whole system from one input device.

In a brief demo I saw of PC Connect, Google showed desktop applications and games running from a nearby laptop. They showed how the system-level Gemini assistant can ‘see’ the streamed apps (just like local apps) which means you can seamlessly use Gemini on anything you stream to the headset.

More impressively, Google showed me Android XR’s new ‘auto-stereo’ feature working on flat games streamed from the laptop. Auto-stereo converts flat content into stereoscopic 3D in real-time, and it works at the system level. That means any window you open on Android XR (including the PC Connect window) can be converted to stereoscopic 3D.

I got to play Stray (2022) streaming from the laptop, using a gamepad. Considering the auto-stereo feature has no data other than the flat frames being provided from the game in real-time, I was quite impressed with how well it was able to add stereo depth to the game’s complex world. And, because auto-stereo is running on the headset itself, it adds no overhead to the game’s rendering on the host device.

However, there were some performance stutters as I played. It’s unclear to me at the moment if this was due to the streaming laptop not rendering the game smoothly, Wi-Fi stability, or the auto-stereo feature not quite keeping up. I look forward to putting both PC Connect and the auto-stereo feature through their paces once I have them on my own headset.

My Take

PC Connect is far from the first virtual desktop streaming application available on XR headsets. In fact, the longstanding Virtual Desktop itself has been available on Android XR since day one.

However, the launch of PC Connect shows that Google is recognizing that virtual desktop streaming is something that Android XR users want. And it’s free (compared to Virtual Desktop’s $25 pricetag), which makes it a good value-add to users who have never used a virtual desktop app and wouldn’t see the need to spend money on one.

At launch, PC Connect can’t stream PC VR content to the headset (an advantage for Virtual Desktop), but Google suggested this may be added to PC Connect in the future.

The combination of PC Connect with the auto-stereo feature is really interesting. If it works well enough across a wide variety of games, stereoscopic 3D feels like a real enhancement to flat PC games, and gives a genuine reason I’d want to play them in the headset rather than on a traditional monitor. Most likely the accuracy of the auto-stereo feature will be hit-or-miss with some games, but there’s reason to believe it will only get better over time as Android XR headsets become more powerful.

One big question that I’m waiting to hear back from Google about is if the PC Connect creates a direct Wi-Fi link between the PC and the headset (like with Vision Pro), or if both devices need to be connected to an intermediary Wi-Fi network. The former is ideal, as a direct wireless connection between the PC and headset is generally more reliable. And importantly, it means you can stream from your laptop to your headset even when Wi-Fi is inaccessible (or not high performance). Working or streaming media on a plane, for instance, is much easier if you don’t need to count on the plane’s saturated Wi-Fi network.

And last but not least, Mac support for PC Connect was not mentioned. I expect it isn’t included at launch, but it wouldn’t be unheard of for Google to add it in the future.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City is coming to Quest, Pico and SteamVR headsets sometime next year, making it the first Turtles game in VR. Ahead of launch, Cortopia Studios gave us a 15-minute demo on Quest to show off just what sort of radical action this co-op beat’em up has in store.

In TMNT: Empire City, you get to tackle the Foot Clan with all four titular Turtles—Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo—which also means getting to grips with with each of their signature weapons: katanta, sai, bo staff and nunchaku.

And just like the cartoons (and live action films), you won’t be actually ganking dudes, but rather knocking them out as you explore deeper into the various levels, be it alone or with up to three other friends.

I can’t say I was expecting much more beyond combat in the game, although there seems to be a fair share of adventure-style objectives too, like solving casual puzzles, exploring levels for specific items, and scavenging craftable bits to bring back to your humble sewer abode, which lets you craft upgrades for each Turtle.

You also have a nifty smart watch that can display your health bars, real-world time, and a map to help you navigate through what promises to be a good smattering of NYC-inspired levels. I saw tunnels (blocked off for me) to China Town, the Lower East Side, and some sort of ‘Port’.

What’s more, the demo does an awesome job of showing off the game’s decidedly ’90s sidescroller roots, making it definitively Turtles to the core: you can jump, kick, dash, and ping around the place at high speed as you take on the dreaded Foot.

While melee isn’t physics-based, there is a block, parry and strike system in place that feels like it needs a little more refinement before I’d consider it super reliable.

You can technically ‘play it by the books’ and engage with enemies like the game wants you to, i.e. by blocking or parrying and then striking them when dazed. Or you can do what I did, and just slice around without a care until dudes fell over.

That said, I’ll need to play a lot more to see how combat actually shakes out, although it has the potential to be a pretty good experience provided more difficult enemies can stop me from cheesing the combat system. As it is, some enemies do have unblockable moves, like the demo’s level boss, which could make combat a lot more tactical than the low level Foot displayed.

It’s hard to tell for now if this is the Turtles VR game of my dreams, since the 15-minute demo is pretty heavy on the tutorialization of each Turtle’s weapon and secondary move, although it seems pretty promising at this point. I want to see more of the story, and also get in with a crew of three other heroes in a half-shell to see how multiplayer will work.

Reservations aside, one thing I can say for sure is it has absolutely nailed the Turtles aesthetic and vibe. Visually, the game has a consistently cool cel shading throughout, making it feel like it’s been ripped out of the comic books. Voice acting is also spot on, and really reminds me of the ’90s cartoons more than the various reboots.

While we don’t know exactly when TMNT: Empire City is set to launch, in the meantime you can wishlist on the Horizon Store for Quest, the Pico Store for Pico 4 and above, and Steam for PC VR headsets.