Virtual Reality

XelerateVR is a treadmill that lets you walk in real life to walk in VR. I guess you are aware of products like Kat VR or Virtuix Omni: this is exactly in the same category. You are harnessed to a machine, and then you can walk on a concave surface to walk in VR. Since the surface is concave and lets your feet slip on it, when you take a step forward with a foot, the inclination makes that foot slowly return back to its initial position at the center of the platform, so that you can keep doing the walking movement by staying still in the same place. On paper, all seems great, but in practice, the truth is that when we walk, we do not have feet slipping on the floor, so on these devices, usually, you have the impression of “walking on ice”. For this reason, some people do not even call these products “treadmills”, but “slipmills”.

XelerateVR is a VR treadmill solution that lets you walk in real life to walk in VR. It is not a product that creates a new category, but it introduces an interesting innovation that is a floor that is very slippery and so it can guarantee you more control on your feet. Walking on it is not fully natural, but it’s enjoyable, and it is also very easy to learn. That’s why I’ve found it to be an interesting device.

Previously released last year on Steam Early Access, Le Mans Ultimate by Studio 397 will reach version 1.0 on July 22. Announced before this year's famous 24-hour race kicks off, this landmark update also introduces two free 2025 cars, the Aston Martin Valkyrie LMH and Mercedes-AMG LMGT3, alongside promised improvements to polish and performance. All 2025 official liveries will be included for free too.

Samsung Unpacked is expected to kick off next month with the usual slate of hardware announcements, which this year could include the company’s latest foldable smartphones, Galaxy Z Flip 7 and Fold 7, and its latest Galaxy Watch 8. Rumors suggest though the company is also looking to put its upcoming XR headset, Project Moohan, in the spotlight too.

Announced during the VR Game Spotlight at AWE USA, Ilysia is switching from a paid game to a free-to-play structure across Quest and Steam with a live launch of the level 11-20 content. Developer Team 21 Studio confirmed new players will be able to access the game's first full region, Lavea, for free, and existing owners can continue playing uninterrupted.

Tune in for the first VR Developer Direct where we deep-dive into three of the most anticipated VR games coming in 2025.

Hear from the developers making Reach, Roboquest VR and Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow on how they're shaping the best of what's to come.

Zombie Army VR is serving up its iconic arcade-style shooting on all major VR headsets. Like the flatscreen games, it’s all about blasting every make and model of Nazi zombie, upgrading some cool WWII-era guns, and experiencing the game’s dark, neon green-drenched universe. While Zombie Army VR tailors its zombie horde action to fit on VR headsets, despite its best efforts, it still feels a little too tied to its flatscreen roots.

Zombie Army VR Details:

Publisher: Rebellion Games
Developer: Rebellion, Xtended Realities
Available On: Quest, SteamVR, PSVR 2
Reviewed On: Quest 3
Release Date: June 12th, 2025
Price: $30

visionOS 26 will bring PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers & Logitech Muse stylus support, much more realistic Personas, spatial Widgets, 90Hz hand tracking, volumetric Spatial Scenes, local SharePlay, and much more. While you might have expected the next version of Vision Pro's operating system to be visionOS 3, Apple has switched to a unified year-based naming system for all of its operating systems. While visionOS 26 will launch later this year, most of its lifecycle will span through 2026.

If Apple brings out their lower cost headset soon and Virtual Desktop is released as well, they will own the high end of VR and MR.

Microsoft pulled the plug on support for its entire WMR platform on Windows 11 last year, putting an official end to the company’s foray into PC VR headsets. Now, an unofficial SteamVR driver hopes to bring it back.

Microsoft deprecated the Mixed Reality Portal app, Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR, and Steam VR Beta when Windows 11 24H2 update rolled out last October, making a fleet of PC VR headsets from Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, HP, and Samsung essentially expensive paperweights.

Granted, if you haven’t updated to Windows 11 24H2, or are still on Windows 10, Microsoft says you’ll be able to play SteamVR content through November 2026 before the plug is pulled for good. Still, that’s a bitter pill to swallow for users of WMR’s most modern headset, HP Reverb G2, which released less than five years ago.

Now, Reddit user ‘mbucchia’ claims an unofficial SteamVR driver is in the works, which aims to bring all WMR headsets back into the fold sometime this Fall.

Launching later this year on all major platforms, Reach is the debut title from nDreams Elevation following the studio's formation in 2022. Revealed during today's Future Games Show - Summer Showcase by industry veteran Shuhei Yoshida, nDreams states that Reach aims for “high agency, cinematic scale, and tactile, full-body immersion.”

I got to play a demo of Deadpool VR before anyone else. A huge thanks to the Meta for inviting me! 🙌

Jumping into Deadpool’s world in VR was everything you'd expect: chaotic, hilarious, and totally over-the-top. I’m sharing some of my gameplay experience.

During my trip to China, one of the most interesting things was visiting the Chinese headquarters of Play For Dream (the company is actually based in Singapore, but has a strong presence in Shanghai). There, I have been able to ask the company some interesting questions about their present and their future. Among these questions, I have of course also asked about their possibility of migrating to Android XR.

Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow is reviving the legendary stealth series on PlayStation VR2, Quest and Steam this year.

First appearing in 1998, the Thief series is being reimagined for PlayStation VR2 by developer Maze Theory (Infinite Inside) and Vertigo Games (Metro Awakening, Arizona Sunshine). Announced during PlayStation's State of Play conference, you play as a thief called Magpie who's been orphaned by the tyrannical Lord Ulysses Northcrest who rules this city.

So what, then, is the primary draw to XR? In some ways it might be better to think of Mixed Reality as a ‘gateway drug’ to VR. We can say one thing fairly confidently here with respect to how consumers interact with current XR tech: true awe generally doesn’t come from spatial widgets, it comes from spatial experiences that draw users into whole new realities which play into deep areas of wish fulfillment. So while our future certainly includes MR based applications, XR’s true ‘killer app’ is spatially aware, adaptive, replacive reality.

Rumors surfaced late last year that Apple was looking to finally add VR motion controllers to Vision Pro, albeit through an unusual collaboration with Sony to support PSVR 2’s Sense Controllers. Now, 9to5Mac reports that the project is still on track, and official news could come as early as next week.

Meta is prioritizing shipping an ultralight Horizon OS headset with a tethered compute puck in 2026, multiple sources tell UploadVR.

The two previously leading candidates for a Quest 4 series, codenamed Pismo Low and Pismo High, have been canceled, these sources suggest, while the next candidate for a traditional form factor Quest most likely wouldn't ship until 2027.

Simultaneously, the company is accelerating its plans for an extremely light open-periphery headset with a tethered compute puck running the same Horizon OS as today's Quest headsets, codenamed Puffin, hoping to launch by the end of 2026. Meta is exploring multiple display system approaches for Puffin, at differing price points, and hasn't yet settled on which it will ship.

VR enthusiasts Luna and Brad Lynch have also publicly posted about Meta's changing headset release plans.

MIXED is discontinuing its reporting. Going forward, MIXED editors Josef and Tomislav will report for Heise Online.

For ten years, MIXED has closely followed daily developments in the VR and AR industry. As the largest German-language source on the topic, MIXED has published over 17,000 articles during this time. Its English counterpart, launched at the end of 2021, has grown to over 5,000 articles.

The conditions faced by small, independent publishers like MIXED have become increasingly challenging. Over the last two years, Google has made significant changes to its search engine, which has made it very difficult for smaller publications like MIXED to maintain visibility and cover their costs. Competition for readers' attention has also intensified, and this will only increase with the impending AI-driven transformation of the internet. Meanwhile, we feel that public interest in VR and AR has not grown strongly enough to counteract this downward trend.

Against this backdrop, it is with a heavy heart that we have decided to cease operations on June 1, 2025.

This video shows the setup, review, and gameplay of the fully tracked UDCAP VR Gloves by Udexreal, which allow you to play all PCVR games and use any headset without traditional controllers.

Eight years after Nibre’s MotherVR mod put basic VR support in Alien: Isolation, a different modder is attempting to complete the job with a full overhaul. Read on for our first impressions of the GRAND-MotherVR Mod.

When shown at E3 in 2014, Creative Assembly's Alien Isolation had a VR mode that could be accessed with early Rift developer kits, much to the delight and horror of enthusiasts. This was exciting because it came at a time when consumer facing virtual reality headsets were not yet available and VR gaming was still a niche contained within a small community of hardcore enthusiasts and software developers.

Now in 2025, the GRAND- MotherVR mod by JayP has been publicly released on the Flat2VR discord server. This mod isn't just an update to the initial foundation laid out by Nibre’s classic, it's more like the complete overhaul many of us had dreamed of seeing all those years ago. JayP's mod has introduced improved motion controller support with 6DOF tracking, along with various other quality-of-life improvements and even a nice graphics update.

GRAND-MotherVR transforms Alien: Isolation into an even more nail biting experience than ever before, capturing the claustrophobic tension of Sevastopol station and adding newfound fidelity.

Brand ambassador and referral programs are everywhere, aiming to drive engagement and sales through influencers and loyal fans alike. But last week, Pimax crossed a line, the company publicly admitted. It was discovered the PC VR headset company was secretly aiming to launch a program that offered rewards for verifiably positive forum posts—an ostensible attempt at astroturfing that quickly unraveled.

It all started with Reddit user ‘Mavgaming1’ last week, who leaked a private conversation initiated by Pimax through its official Discord. The proposition was clear: Pimax was looking for users willing to take part in a new Community Engagement Program, which would allow them to collect points to unlock tiered rewards by posting about the company on social media.

The program, which Pimax confirmed with Road to VR to indeed be genuine before being discontinued following the leak, featured everything from $5 Steam gift cards to hundreds of dollars in discounts off future purchases of Pimax hardware. The top reward tier even offered a $1,000 subsidized trip to the company’s Shanghai headquarters.

The only thing selected participants needed to do was type up a verifiably positive post for Reddit “or any other forums you visit,” submit it to Pimax for approval, post it online, and rack up the points. Below is an excerpt from the posting guidelines given to Mavgaming1 via Discord.

Pimax is a sleazy company.

From tomorrow, PlayStation VR2 will be on sale for $350 for two weeks as part of Sony's Days of Play 2025 sale.

That's a $50 saving from the headset's regular price of $400, which it was cut to in March from its $550 launch price.

The discount will be available on PlayStation Direct, as well as "participating retailers". It will apply to both the regular package and the bundle that includes Horizon Call of the Mountain, which are for some reason the same price, so you should always grab the latter if it's available.

Sony is also offering $50 off the PlayStation 5 Pro console, which upgrades the graphics of around a dozen PS VR2 titles.

Into The Darkness VR offers two distinct ways to play. Story mode puts you through a six-level campaign, blending narrative with action-packed set pieces. If you’re more about experimenting, the sandbox mode drops you into a sprawling environment packed with rooms and props, where you can summon enemies, weapons, and items at will — perfect for testing the game’s physics to your heart’s content.

The team at 9 Lives has locked in May 29, 2025, as the Early Access launch date for PC VR headsets, with pricing set at just under $20.

Play For Dream MR, the high-end Android standalone headset, now has Guy Godin's app Virtual Desktop on its store.

Originally founded in China as YVR in 2020, the headset company renamed itself to Play For Dream and reincorporated in Singapore alongside launching its third headset, called Play For Dream MR, which it started shipping this year.

Play For Dream MR is a high-end standalone headset running the company's own fork of Android, with the kind of specs you might have expected from a Meta Quest Pro 2. Priced at $2000, it features Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset, 4K micro-OLED displays, eye tracking with automatic IPD adjustment, and comes with tracked controllers. It has a 1-hour battery, built into the back of the strap, and thus Play For Dream recommends pairing it with an external battery pack.

The Xreal One and Xreal One Pro glasses connect to a smartphone, game console, PC, or Mac via a USB-C cable. They project content onto a virtual 1080p display that floats in front of you. The Xreal One has a 50-degree field of view, while the Xreal One Pro has a 57-degree field of view. This is equivalent to viewing a 70- or 85-inch TV from two meters away.

The Xreal Eye accessory is designed to change this and add spatial 6DoF tracking to the display glasses, Xreal announced at a launch event in Japan.

The accessory weighs just 1.5 grams and is inserted between the lenses. In addition to 6DoF tracking, Xreal Eye can be used to take photos and videos with up to 12 megapixels. A review will have to show how good these images and the 6DoF tracking are.

Developed by Luminary Creations, Wiped Clean is a crime scene cleaning simulator that asks you to uncover mysteries, one pool of blood or dead body at a time. The twist here is that you aren't just regular cleaners and are instead undercover agents, attempting to infiltrate a sketchy organization called the Syndicate as you investigate a dangerous conspiracy.

Wiped Clean VR will debut on June 1 for Steam, and it's out now on Quest.