Today was a stimulating day for me: I participated in the INVELON ITALIA SUMMIT, moderating a round table about the use of XR in culture and tourism, trying demos, meeting new people… and enjoying some free food (the most interesting part of every event)! It has been my first XR event of the year, and I hope I will have many others. I really want to thank Invelon for having invited me to such an interesting initiative!
But now, let me get back to business and tell you about the most interesting XR news of the week.
Top news of the week
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Google adds new features to Galaxy XR and makes it enterprise-ready
This week, we had an interesting piece of news related to Google, Samsung, and Android XR. Google introduced some major updates to Android XR and also fully enabled its enterprise features.
Let’s start with the first part of the news: the updates to Android XR. With an official blog post, Google announced 5 new features coming to Android XR:
- Autospatialization, which automatically transforms apps from 2D to 3D
- More than 100 apps on Android XR that have been built specifically for MR/VR
- Apps can now be pinned to real walls
- You can now see your real hands while interacting with MR elements (like on the Vision Pro)
- You now arrange the 2D apps all around you, and every time you put on the headset, you find them exactly where you left them.
The features from 2 to 5 are nice, but pretty standard to me for a mixed reality headset. What I’ve sincerely found cool is the first one, the auto-spatialization. The headset can now take almost every 2D app or content in the browser, and add to it on the fly depth and parallax. Basically, this means that not only you see 2D content in 3D, but that you can also tilt your head left or right and see the content react accordingly, as if the browser were a window to the real world. On paper, it sounds incredible: first hands-on impressions say that it is nice but still has to improve, instead. For sure, an approach like this one is the future: every YouTube video can feel more real now. I just recommend you not to watch YouTube videos of dirty toilets using this feature…
The second part of the news I want to tell you is that Android Enterprise is coming to Android XR. Android Enterprise is the Google-led initiative providing built-in, secure management features for Android devices in the workplace. Enabling it, Google and Samsung are enabling organizations to deploy solutions for immersive training and collaboration at scale. Google is also collaborating with leading EMM partners including ArborXR, ManageXR, Microsoft Intune, Omnissa Workspace ONE, Samsung Knox Manage, SOTI, and more, to make Android XR devices workplace-ready.
Even more: Google is committing to releasing regular software updates, including security patches, to Android XR for up to five years. This is very important: companies will never implement in their productive processes a device that can be discontinued tomorrow, and we all know that Google has a reputation for putting its products in the graveyard. Now companies can trust that they can use Android XR because it will have at least 5 years of lifespan. This is fantastic news for all of us who work in the B2B XR space.
More info (5 Updates to Android XR)
More info (Artur Sychov’s impressions on autospatialization)
More info (Android Enterprise coming to Android XR)
More info (Road To VR’s report on this news)
Other relevant news
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(Image by Meta)
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Meta announces Meta Muse Spark
As it was teased by Andrew Bosworth a few weeks ago, Meta has released the first AI model produced by its SuperIntelligence Labs team: Meta Muse Spark.
Muse Spark is the first model of the Muse Series: Meta plans to start small and then release increasingly bigger and more complex models as soon as the previous smaller version has been validated. This initial model is small and fast by design, yet capable enough to reason through complex questions in science, math, and health. And the next generation is already in development on top of its foundation.
Meta AI has already been updated to use Meta Muse Spark and now features an agentic workflow, with multiple agents that can be spawned to fulfill your requests. This new model is multimodal and can also understand pictures: in one of the examples provided by the company, you can, for instance, feed it a picture of a dish, and it can try to infer its ingredients and its calories.
If you remember well, this feature of calorie understanding is exactly the one that has just been announced for Ray-Ban Meta glasses. And this is because this model is meant to power all the applications that are powered by Meta, like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, but also AI glasses. Meta explicitly mentions AI glasses multiple times in its article, and this means it truly believes in this technology… at least for now.
Muse Spark is directly powered by all the posts shared by people in Meta’s social networks, so, for instance, when you look for good places where to eat in a new city you are visiting, the AI can provide you with some posts about good places to eat written by locals of that city and shared by them on social media.
Meta Muse Spark will be available in private preview via API to select partners, and Meta hopes to open-source future versions of the model, as it did in the past with LLAMA.
Meta now offers quick development of WebXR experiences using AI
In one of my latest newsletters, I told you about Google offering the possibility of quickly prototyping WebXR experiences using AI. This week, Meta announced something similar, and it is actually pretty cool.
Meta just announced an agentic workflow for IWSDK (Immersive Web SDK), its SDK to build WebXR experiences easily. This workflow fully integrates with the most popular AI-assisted development tools like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot, and it lets you build WebXR experiences on the fly by just telling the system what you want. This means that you can just say what you want to achieve using natural language, and the WebXR experience will be fully built for you!
This is already amazing, but Meta added one thing that truly surprised me: automatic testing. Thanks to MCP integration, the AI agents are offered tools for testing that allow them to move and interact in the XR experience. This means that the agents can connect to the WebXR experience running in the browser, test that it actually does what you have requested, and fix it automatically in case there are errors. This is incredibly cool.
Of course, since AI development is not perfect yet, this is mostly indicated for prototyping rather than for product development. But it is already something super useful, for instance, to provide your customers a concept of what you plan to build for them by building it quickly and sharing it by just sending them one simple link.
More info (Tweet about the agentic WebXR development)
More info (Blog post about the agentic WebXR development)
Apple is testing four different designs for its glasses
According to the usual Marc Gurman, Apple is testing four different designs for the upcoming Apple Glasses:
- A large rectangular frame, reminiscent of Ray-Ban Wayfarers
- A slimmer rectangular design, similar to the glasses worn by Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook
- Larger oval or circular frames
- A smaller, more refined oval or circular option
Apple is exploring a range of finishes, including black, ocean blue, and light brown. Gurman also says the front cameras on the glasses will be arranged in an oval pattern, surrounded by indicator lights. This is another design point that will separate Apple’s product from its rivals.
For the rest, Gurman has reiterated what he already shared about the glasses: Apple is aiming at using premium materials like acetate, instead of glass, to give them a premium touch. The glasses will be audio only, like the Ray-Ban Meta, and are meant to be connected to a phone.
The release date is still poised for 2027, but they may already be announced this year.
News worth a mention
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Me trying the spectacle glasses
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Snap announces a strategic partnership with Qualcomm
Specs, the subsidiary of Snap working on the Spectacles glasses, has announced a multi-year strategic agreement to make sure that the next generations of Spectacles glasses will be powered by Qualcomm chipsets. To be honest, it is not a big surprise, given that Qualcomm already powers most AR glasses, but it is still a good thing to know about.
More info (Specs partners with Qualcomm — Road To VR)
More info (Specs partners with Qualcomm — Official blog post)
Unity and Meta partner on XR development
The past week was the week of the multi-year agreements. Unity and Meta announced a strategic partnership agreement, too: Unity will keep developing tools to make sure that developers will be able to use the Unity game engine to build content for Meta headsets. This is not a big surprise either, given that we were all already using Unity to develop for the Quest, but hey, it’s still good to hear that these two big companies are committed to XR development.
Niantic Spatial announces Scaniverse and VPS 2.0
The past week, Niantic Spatial has announced two new products, or better two updates to existing products:
- Scaniverse: An integrated web and mobile platform that captures 3D spaces, supporting multiple devices, to generate visual positioning maps, meshes, and Gaussian splats. It also supports very large environments;
- VPS 2.0: Precise visual positioning that now works at a global scale — no prior scanning required. In places mapped with Scaniverse, VPS delivers near centimeter-accurate 6DoF localization — full position and orientation. Everywhere else, it corrects GPS errors and dropouts to provide improved, reliable positioning and heading, especially in GPS-degraded environments.
Meta XR Audio SDK gets frozen
The Meta XR Audio SDK is seeing version 85.0 as its last version, because Meta put it in “feature freeze” mode. It is interesting to see that the budget cuts are also impacting the VR developer tools.
Meta releases the Navigator UI to everyone, with much disappointment from almost everyone
Meta is now rolling out the new Navigator UI to all Quest users. And the reactions of the community have been pretty negative: I have tried it myself, and I found it to have a much worse experience than the previous UI, which was not good either. I really don’t know how Meta can fuck up with the Quest UI so much every time. Probably, as someone suggested to me on X, this interface feels bad because it has been designed for the upcoming “Puffin” headset. The new UI looks like that of the Vision Pro, and the new device should be a Vision Pro clone, so this may make sense.
More info (Meta releases the Navigator UI)
More info (Negative reactions on Reddit / 1)
More info (Negative reactions on Reddit / 2)
Some news about content
- Travelers’ creature companions can be raised and trained to compete in arena-style battles in the new Xeno Arena update of No Man’s Sky
- The Project Hail Mary tie-in VR game is coming to major mixed reality and VR platforms in late 2026. No further details have been provided
- COVR is a Tactical VR milsim from XReal Games, the Zero Caliber developer. It can now be wishlisted on Quest
- VMX seems a fun acrobatic biking game… but also a game able to trigger a lot of motion sickness!
- The new NBA App on Vision Pro now lets you enter into a live 3D reconstruction of the game that is happening
- Puzzling Places has finally been ported to Steam and SteamVR!
More info (No Man’s Sky)
More info (Project Hail Mary)
More info (COVR)
More info (VMX)
More info (NBA)
More info (Puzzling Places)
Some reviews about content
- Tammuz: Blood And Sand is a nice puzzle game focused on one single element. Its problem is that, besides this single puzzle machine, there is not much more
- Star Trek: Infection succeeds as both a survival horror game and a Star Trek experience. It especially excels in fostering a very tense feeling the whole time
- Skytail is nice, but it feels a bit dated: its graphics are not the best, and the genre is very reminiscent of the early days’ wave shooters
- Wrath: Aeon of Ruin VR — Brutal Edition tries to replicate boomer shooters in VR, and it partially succeeds in this effort
- Darts VR2: Bullseye feels like an addictive darts game
- Plasmaborne is another VR roguelike game. It still needs several patches to be a good game, though
More info (Tammuz: Blood And Sand)
More info (Star Trek: Infection)
More info (Skytail)
More info (Wrath: Aeon of Ruin VR — Brutal Edition)
More info (Darts VR2: Bullseye)
More info (Plasmaborne)
Other news
Valve Steam Link is now available for the Vision Pro, but not for VR games
Google Gemini can now also use 3D simulations to answer your questions
An interesting article on Upload VR investigates where the Horizon Worlds communities are moving their content to
Jigsaw Night and VR Villa have demoed the mixed reality game to many new users coming from the traditional jigsaw communities
News from partners (and friends)
Atelier Daruma partners with Matts Digital over large-scale location-based VR experiences
Atelier Daruma is a French studio whose main product is the Large Field Theater. It is a modular, lightweight infrastructure that allows hundreds of participants to inhabit the same virtual world simultaneously, in any space, without heavy setup or dedicated infrastructure. Basically, it lets you create large-scale location-based VR experiences, where many people walk inside the same physical space, and enjoy at the same time a VR experience, maybe about education.
Atelier Daruma has announced this week a partnership with MATTS DIGITAL to support the international rollout of the Large Field Theater. After years of R&D, experimentation, and real-world testing, the platform is now entering its commercial phase. Thanks to Matts Digital, finally, Atelier Daruma has distribution capabilities to deploy this vision internationally: across cultural venues, entertainment spaces, and brand experiences.
Good luck to them for the launch and distribution of this super cool product!
Discover FM DUO camera!
Meet the FM DUO, a VR camera that is capable of filming up to 12K @30fps, and 8K @60fps. With built-in RTMP live streaming and 5G connectivity, the FM·DUO will immerse your viewers in real time! The FM·DUO features 2 full-frame CMOS sensors, with 6000 x 6000 pixels each. This allows for high-resolution zooming capabilities. Not only can you narrow in on one subject, but you can also focus on singular details of the subject’s facial expressions, clothing textures, and a multitude of other small details, enabling a much more immersive experience of VR video.
Visit Product Website
Some XR fun
Don’t text and horse while in VR!
Funny link
Donate for good
Like last week, also this week in this final paragraph I won’t ask you to donate to my blog, but to the poor people who are facing the consequences of the war. Please donate to the Red Cross to handle the current humanitarian situation in Ukraine. I will leave you the link to do that below.
Let me take a moment before to thank anyway all my Patreon donors for the support they give to me:
- Alex Gonzalez VR
- DeoVR
- GenVR
- Eduardo Siman
- Jonn Fredericks
- Jean-Marc Duyckaerts
- Reynaldo T Zabala
- Richard Penny
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- Simplex
- Gregory F Gorsuch
- Paul Shay
- Matias Nassi
And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
(Header image by Meta)
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