Enlarge / Horizon VR: Call of the Mountain is one of the few exclusive titles available for next month's PSVR 2 launch.

Those who purchase the PlayStation VR 2, available next month, won't be able to play their existing PSVR library on the new headset . But they will be able to purchase more than 30 titles on the headset's February 22 launch and a total of 37 within a month of that launch, Sony announced today .

The initial PSVR 2 lineup is overwhelmingly a sort of "greatest hits" collection of titles available on existing VR platforms. Almost all of the headset's launch window titles are also available on SteamVR, the Oculus Quest platform, or the original PSVR.

Of the handful of PSVR 2 exclusives, the previously revealed Horizon VR: Call of the Mountain stands out as a first-person adventure in the vein of Half-Life: Alyx . As far as third-party exclusives, Supermassive's The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR is an on-rails VR roller-coaster akin to the similar Until Dawn: Rush of Blood , while Fantavision 202X is a fully 3D take on the infamous, fireworks-filled PS2 launch title (and will also work without a headset).

Enlarge / RIP to a real one. (credit: Sam Machkovech )

The original Oculus Quest will stop receiving new feature updates and lose access to the company's existing social VR features, according to an email sent to many Quest users this week.

While Quest headset owners will still be able to use the device and all available apps, they will no longer be able to "create or join a party," according to the email. Access to Meta's Horizon Home features will also be cut off on March 5, the company wrote. And while Meta will no longer be "delivering new features" to Quest 1 users, the company says it will continue to provide "critical bug fixes and security patches until 2024."

The announcement comes less than four years after the Quest's initial launch as Meta's (then Oculus') first wireless headset with full six-degree-of-freedom head- and hand-tracking. That initial version of the Quest, which launched at $400, was succeeded by the $300 Quest 2 in late 2020 .

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Carmack's VR avatar waving goodbye to Meta.

After nearly ten years , John Carmack's time helping to guide VR hardware efforts at Meta (and at Facebook/Oculus before that) have come to a close. The id Software co-founder and Doom co-creator officially left Meta on Friday night, according to an internal company memo obtained by Insider and confirmed by the New York Times .

Carmack's departure message serves as a scathing indictment of crippling inefficiency at Meta that he said he was "offended by" and which he compared to a GPU with a measly five percent utilization rate. "We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this," he wrote. "I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy."

More personally, Carmack complained that it has been a "struggle" for him to influence Meta's overall direction and that he's "wearied of the fight." Despite his high-ranking "consulting CTO / executive advisor" title, Carmack complained that he is "evidently not persuasive enough" to change Meta's VR efforts for the better.

Enlarge / Honda started using VR in car design in 2017, which came in handy once coronavirus made collaborating in person impossible. (credit: Honda)

After March 2020, every automaker on the planet had to rethink how it leveraged technology. Everything from design and engineering to key partnerships needed to be rethought to keep businesses running. While Honda may not be the automaker you think of as pushing the automotive tech envelope, its long-time presence in Silicon Valley and its forward-thinking made it relatively early to the advanced tech-design game when the pandemic hit.

To that end, Honda has been using virtual reality design systems, and its long-time relationship with Google, to bring better products to Honda customers. We got an exclusive peek inside the VR studio and a brief look at Honda’s new "Google Built-In" experience coming to the 2023 Honda Accord, and perhaps a few hints at what could be coming for Honda owners and drivers alike.

Inside the Honda VR studio and a virtual Honda Prologue EV

Honda has built a completely digital design studio that helps designers and engineers on opposite sides of the world collaborate on future designs, including one of Honda’s first consumer battery-electric vehicles.

Enlarge / An early augmented reality demo by Apple, using a smartphone instead of a headset. (credit: Apple )

Apple's mixed-reality headset is still on track for an unveiling sometime next year, and its future operating system has a new name, according to a report published Thursday.

Bloomberg claims the name of the operating system has changed from the previously leaked "realityOS" to "xrOS." XR stands for extended reality—sometimes also called mixed reality—a commonly used catch-all term for both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), as well as experiences that combine aspects of both.

In reports and leaks to date, Apple's next upcoming headset has been said to be an XR one, not strictly a VR or AR one—though there are also rumors of an AR-focused device that would launch later. The headset is set for a launch sometime next year, though it has been delayed many times before and may be yet again.

Enlarge / Looks comfortable... (credit: Palmer Luckey )

The idea that dying in a video game or simulation could cause your death in real life is a common trope that has appeared in dozens of fictional works in recent decades. Now, though, Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey has made the concept real.

On his personal blog, Luckey writes of a new VR headset he has designed that uses three embedded explosive charges, planted above the forehead, that can "instantly destroy the brain of the user." The lethal explosion is triggered via "a narrow-band photosensor that can detect when the screen flashes red at a specific frequency," Luckey writes, making it easy to set off during a "Game Over" screen.

Enlarge / In-car VR that adapts the content to the car's motion through space is now a thing, thanks to Holoride. (credit: Holoride)

Virtual reality is coming to the passenger seat near you, at least as long as you own an Audi vehicle with the brand's most current operating system, anyway. The Audi spinoff, Holoride , announced this week that it will begin offering the Pioneer Pack for just under $700, which includes an HTC VIVE Flow headset, an 8BitDo Pro 2 Gamepad, and a year-long subscription to the Holoride platform, for those who own a 2023 Audi or newer (with the MIB 3 system). I got a quick taste of the strange in-car VR experience around my neighborhood in Los Angeles and, in spite of a tendency toward motion sickness, managed to play a video game and watch a little bit of Netflix before tapping out.

Like my cohort, who tried the Holoride experience during CES in 2019 , I am not a VR aficionado, though I am fully on board (and regularly use) AR glasses for work; the Nreal AR glasses I use have made a world of difference when I have to bang out 10,000 words in a single day, resulting in a lot less computer fatigue and repetitive motion pain. So, when the engineers from Holoride strapped the HTC Vive Flow headset to my face, it wasn't an unfamiliar sensation, but it was far more visually restrictive than I'm comfortable with, especially in the back seat of a moving vehicle. The team handed me a familiar game controller, and we were off, in spite of my nerves about the possibility of getting ill in mere minutes in the back seat of the BMW X5 that the team was using for demo purposes.

The visuals

When you first strap in, you adjust the eyepieces of the HTC Vive Flow headset the same way you would adjust binocular diopters. I don't wear glasses except when I'm reading or working at the computer but did have a hard time finding a reasonably clear image in the glasses. I don't wear my glasses when I'm wearing the Nreals, but in retrospect, I probably should have used them under the relatively lightweight Holoride headset since the images never really got super clear.

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Even virtual reality's biggest boosters may hesitate at the idea of spending nearly $1,500 for the Meta Quest Pro without trying it first. Fortunately, a retail partnership means that people can try the upcoming Quest Pro at select Best Buy locations during weekend demos.

After checking out one of those demos, though, we came away largely unimpressed with our first experience. Even if the Quest Pro's new features end up justifying its massive price (and more time with a retail unit later this week should help answer that question fully), our retail demo did not put Meta's best foot forward.

Where do I go?

Upon entering Best Buy in Columbia, Maryland, on Sunday, I didn't find any signage suggesting that there was any special VR demo going on inside the store. Instead, I had to search the aisles until I found a lonely Quest display in an unloved back corner of the store, complete with a Quest 2 and Quest Pro under glass. Nearby, a demo staffer leaned on a counter playing with his phone next to a demo unit in a charging stand. When I approached, he said I was the first person all weekend who had expressed any interest in a demo (though one more came to see what it was about while I was in the headset).

Enlarge / The report discusses how Apple's upcoming headset will be different from the Meta Quest Pro pictured here. (credit: Kyle Orland )

A new report in The Information revealed some new tidbits about Apple's upcoming augmented and virtual reality headset.

Among other things, the report details features that differentiate Apple's headset from Meta's just-announced Quest Pro , which is likely to be the biggest competitor to Apple's device.

Matching prior reports, The Information's article says that the headset will look like a pair of ski goggles. It will be made of "mesh fabrics, aluminum, and glass" and it will be thinner and weigh less than the Quest Pro. The Information's sources didn't specify a weight, but the Quest Pro weighs 722 grams.