XR Developer News - February 2025
After a very quiet January, this month was once again full of XR developer news, as everyone seems to have woken up from their holiday hibernation. As always there are quite a few Meta updates, but plenty about other players as well. The event calendar is also starting to shape up for the year. Hope it is useful!
Meta
There was quite a bit of ruckus this month concerning a shifting focus of Meta's Quest/Horizon ecosystem from premium games for an enthusiast audience to more free-to-play type content for a younger audience, with notable shifts in the platform's economics for XR developers.
Starting with an interesting survey by Henry Stockdale at UploadVR and something of a response by Meta, it was topped off by Meta's announcement of a $50 million fund for Horizon Worlds content and a related competition.
Combined with recent reductions to curation of the Horizon Store - when App Lab was merged in - and choices by Meta to in some places highlight Worlds content at the cost of discoverability of Store content, several 'traditional' VR/XR game studios seem to be struggling, with multiple examples of lay-offs being announced in recent times.
It's really hard to figure out cause and effect in this situation, and while each of Meta's choices undoubtedly has a - for some negative - effect, they likely also reflect a reality of the audience of the platform changing, making those changes probably rational for Meta to make - painful though they may be.
There is one thing I really can't forgive Meta for though. Call it a pet peeve, but I was so happy - after years and years of confusion, mostly thanks to Microsoft's marketing team in the Windows Mixed Reality days - that with the launch of Quest 3 the meaning of the term 'mixed reality' finally seemed to have solidified into referring to video pass-through use of headsets. It just clicked, was clearly distinguished from virtual reality, everyone picked it up instantly, it was understandable and nobody ever had to explain what 'mixed reality' meant again. Life was good.
BUT, for no good reason whatsoever, some foolish marketing team at Meta has now decided that Meta will henceforth use mixed reality to refer to both mixed reality and virtual reality. Whatever led them down that dark path we'll probably never know, but my heart goes out to all of you who have to spend several more years explaining unexplainable terminology because of it.
David Heaney
On a more serious note:
- As part of the big Horizon Worlds announcements, Meta launched significantly improved tooling for creating worlds in the shape of a new Desktop Editor.
- v74 of Horizon OS was released, with a number of improvements such as the ability to save web shortcuts to your library.
- Meta Connect will be on September 17th and 18th.
- Another MR Motif was published, this time about Shared Activities in Mixed Reality.
- Something I missed earlier: some useful video materials when you're submitting an app or game to the Horizon Store.
Other XR hardware, software and news
- Niantic released an update to Niantic Studio which makes it easier to work with its Niantic Map and to build complex experiences consisting of multiple scenes. On the Lightship side of things, it updates to v3.12 which moves the SDK to Unity 6.
Feb 13, 2025 . 3 min read . Announcements
- If you're comfortable working with Niantic Studio, consider sending in a project to Niantic's latest challenge ($11K prize pool, March 31st deadline). If you're interested in either the mapping update or the challenge, check out their latest info session on YouTube.
- Snap released Lens Studio v5.6, including support for dual camera recording and improvements to particle systems. If you're developing for Spectacles though, for now you should stay on v5.4.
- Apple released the first beta of visionOS 2.4, which will bring Apple Intelligence to the device, a companion app and - thank goodness - improvements to Guest User mode.
- Android XR will offer access to the camera feed, similar to Apple's visionOS and Meta's Horizon OS.
- While it has felt like it is on its last legs for a while, PlayStation VR2 is apparently still being worked on at Sony. Recently hand tracking support was added to complement controllers.
- Contrary to PS VR2, Microsoft's HoloLens and other XR ambitions are now really, finally, completely, officially, done for. Microsoft Mesh is still hanging on as part of Teams, but I'd be hesitant to bet on its survival in the long run either.
- Pico updated several of its SDKs.
- Unity released the first v6.1 beta, containing build profiles for Meta Quest and Android XR. As usual, all the XR-related packages (like AR Foundation) have received matching updates as well. It also released a new Mixed Reality Multiplayer Tabletop Template. If you're interested in the VR template instead, Unity has you covered as well, with a three part video series about it.
- As part of a broader push into supporting the Apple ecosystem, Epic detailed some steps forward in supporting visionOS. Unreal Engine 5.5 contains a few really good steps forward.
- Godot held an XR Game Jam in February, which by the time this is published, probably just finished. Keep an eye out for future editions!
- A-Frame v1.7 was released with a few nice updates, such as support for Logitech MX Ink and the latest r173 version of three.js. Also in the world of 3D/XR on the web, v1.3.0 of Wonderland Engine was released and PlayCanvas React was announced.
Mark Lundin
- Vuforia released v11.0, which sounds like a notable step, but the actual changes seem to be about what's hosted in the cloud and what's hosted on premise, plus a related pricing/licensing plan, not any significant new features.
- TikTok Effect House v4.11 was released.
- The Khronos Group keeps working on enriching the glTF ecosystem, allowing it to be used for more complex setups.
kentbye
- Augmented World Expo EU merged with Stereopsia, creating a new event called United XR Europe in Brussels, Belgium on December 10-12.
Upcoming XR events
- March 31, 2025 - Niantic Studio: Real-World Impact Challenge submission deadline.
- April 9-11, 2025 - Laval Virtual in Laval, France.
- April 14, 2025 - Unity's Unite 2025 in Seoul, South Korea.
- May 16, 2025 - XR Creators Connect Day in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Details coming soon. Full day version of the XR meetup in NL which I co-organize. For my Dutch readers: hope to see you there!
- May 20-21, 2025 - Google I/O, perhaps featuring Android XR.
- June 2-5, 2025 - Unreal Fest in Orlando, Florida, USA.
- June 10-12, 2025 - AWE USA in Long Beach, California.
- August 24-26, 2025 - AWE Asia in Singapore. Call for speakers until May 15th.
- September 17-18, 2025 - Meta Connect.
- December 8-10, 2025 - United XR Europe in Brussels, Belgium. A new event resulting from a merger between AWE EU and Stereopsia.
A bit about this newsletter
Each month I try to round up all the interesting developments in the XR developer landscape. New hardware and software releases, events, interesting tooling, etc. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, for instance if I missed anything which definitely should be in this monthly round up next time.
