Category Archives: Games

Pico’s 2026 Headset To Have 4K Micro-OLED Displays & R1-Style Chip

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Pico’s 2026 headset will have 4K micro-OLED displays and a dedicated R1-style passthrough chip, a ByteDance executive reportedly said.

The Chinese news outlet STAR Market Daily reports that during the 2025 ByteDance Scholarship Award Ceremony, ByteDance Vice President of Technology, Yang Zhenyuan, described key details of Pico’s next-generation headset.

We first heard that ByteDance’s Pico was working on a high-end headset two years ago, when The Information reported that Pico 5 had been canceled in favor of a short-term Pico 4 refresh and a longer-term Apple Vision Pro competitor.

That short-term headset arrived last year as Pico 4 Ultra, while the Vision Pro competitor seems to be what Zhenyuan described.

Pico 5 Has Reportedly Been Canceled
Pico 5 has reportedly been canceled as ByteDance shifts its focus to a further out high-end headset to compete with Apple Vision Pro.
UploadVRDavid Heaney

According to STAR Market Daily, Zhenyuan said that the headset will feature “custom” micro-OLED panels with 4000 pixels per inch (PPI). That would match the pixel density of the 4K micro-OLED panels in Samsung Galaxy XR, Play For Dream MR, and Shiftall MeganeX.

Zhenyuan also reportedly said that the new Pico headset will have a self-developed dedicated chip for passthrough, handling real-time processing of the color cameras and delivering frames in less than 12 milliseconds.

The only headsets we’ve seen yet with a dedicated chip for passthrough are Apple’s Vision Pro series, which feature the company’s R1 chip for this.

The news, if accurate, suggests that Pico is looking to deliver best-in-class passthrough quality, exceeding competitors like Samsung that only use the ISP of the Qualcomm XR2 Gen 2 series chipset.

ByteDance Reportedly Working On Ultralight Pico Headset
ByteDance is working on a lightweight Pico headset with a tethered puck similar to Meta’s ultralight headset, The Information reports.
UploadVRHenry Stockdale

We should note that earlier this year, The Information reported that Pico is working on an ultralight headset resembling a pair of goggles, with a tethered compute puck (similar to Meta’s next headset).

That report also noted that ByteDance was working on an R1 chip equivalent, but it’s unclear whether the 2026 headset Zhenyuan described is the same as the ultralight headset, or whether Pico plans a range of high-end options with different form factors.

We’ll keep a close eye on Pico in 2026 for any signs of a new headset announcement.

Godot Now Supports More XR Features & Builds A Universal OpenXR APK

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Godot now supports Vulkan foveated rendering on Android, Application SpaceWarp, DirectX 12, and OpenXR render models, and can build a universal OpenXR APK.

If you’re unaware, Godot is a free and open-source alternative to Unity and Unreal Engine. It’s technically controlled by the non-profit Godot Foundation, but all development takes place in the open.

Since last year, Meta has been funding a group of Godot veterans to improve the engine’s support for OpenXR and Quest feature extensions, as well as to build high-quality samples and documentation.

Uniquely, Godot is also available standalone on Quest 3 and Quest Pro. To be clear, that means the editor itself runs as a 2D Android app within Horizon OS, including the ability to build APKs on-device.

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OpenXR render models API on Meta Quest 3 in Godot.

Godot 4.5, released in September, brought a number of important new XR features and improvements:

  • You can now use DirectX 12 and OpenXR together on Windows for improved performance.
  • Foveated rendering now works in Vulkan on Android. Previously it only worked in Vulkan on desktop, and was thus limited to OpenGL on Android.
  • Application SpaceWarp is now supported on Meta Quest and Pico headsets.
  • The OpenXR render models extension is now supported, letting the app dynamically load in 3D models of the active tracked controllers from the system. This avoids each application needing to bundle its own 3D models for every possible tracked controller it wants to support, and enables support for future unreleased controllers.

Crucially, Godot 4.5 also delivers support for building a universal OpenXR APK that can, in theory, run on any Android-based standalone headset that supports OpenXR. This rectifies the problem of having to maintain multiple device-specific builds for each headset, the antithesis of the “core promise” of OpenXR.

OpenXR Spatial Entities Extensions Standardize Surfaces, Markers, Anchors & Persistence
The new OpenXR Spatial Entities Extensions standardize surface detection, marker tracking, spatial anchors, and persistence.
UploadVRDavid Heaney

Godot 4.6 is now in public testing, and it’s set to bring even more XR features and improvements, including an upgrade to OpenXR 1.1.

The engine will also add support for the OpenXR spatial entities extensions, released earlier this year. The spatial entities extensions standardize how developers leverage the environment tracking capabilities of headsets and glasses to build experiences that interact with the user’s physical environment, a class of capabilities that until now have been handled by vendor-specific extensions or SDKs.

This includes persistent spatial anchors, plane tracking, and marker tracking.

OpenXR 1.1 Brings Foveated Rendering & More Into The Spec
OpenXR 1.1 brings a foveated rendering extension & more into the core specification. Full details here.
UploadVRDavid Heaney

Godot says it also plans to improve its frame synthesis support, providing runtimes with depth buffers and motion vectors to improve the quality of output of features like Application SpaceWarp.