High-End VR headset faces early bugs, Meta rebrands again, and new anti-cheat software for VR games
Ghosts of Tabor lands on PSVR 2, Meta Quest+ morphs into Horizon+, Ghost Town wins over VR fans, Pimax Crystal Super stumbles out of the gate, and Into The Radius 2 heads to Quest 3 — here’s what mattered in XR this week.
Welcome to another edition of “XR Update,” where we round up the most important extended reality news from the past week, complete with concise summaries. Curious about a particular story? Follow the links in each section for the full deep-dive. As always, we go beyond the headlines with background and commentary alongside the facts.
Happy exploring!
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Content
MIXED Previews & Reviews
The Midnight Walk: Why We Can’t Recommend the VR Version—Yet
The Midnight Walk stands out for its hand-sculpted clay art and stop-motion animation, but the VR adaptation is bogged down by harshly low resolution and muted colors. While the game’s inventive mechanics—like solving puzzles by closing your eyes, made even better with PSVR 2’s eye-tracking—and its rich sound design are highlights, all the subtle details get lost in a haze of pixels. Until Moonhood addresses these technical issues, we have to recommend waiting on the VR version.
Surviving Mars on Meta Quest: What’s Different in VR?
Surviving Mars Pioneer reimagines the hit city-builder as a first-person VR survival game. Instead of the classic isometric view, you step into the boots of a lone Mars colonist, charged with building a self-sustaining base. The laser-pointer controls take some getting used to, but the game nails that Red Planet atmosphere and hooks genre fans with a gameplay loop focused on gathering, mining, and building.
Ghost Town: Four Reasons It’s a Standout VR Experience
Ghost Town has quickly become one of VR’s best narrative games, thanks to its gripping story and cinematic flair. Haunting environments—think fog-shrouded lighthouse islands and eerie halls of oddities—deliver real visual punch, while the game’s quest graphics set a new bar. Forget cheap jump scares; Ghost Town leans on slow-burn psychological horror that creeps into your mind long after you take off the headset.
Game Night: MR Party Fun for Multiple Quest Headsets
Game Night is a mixed reality party game built from the ground up for couch co-op with up to four Quest headsets. Syncing headsets is seamless, and the five frantic mini-games—feeding balloon beets, rescuing fish from sharks, and more—make for a burst of living room chaos. Hand tracking is dialed in so even total VR rookies can jump right in, making this the perfect gateway to local MR multiplayer.
Quest Blockbuster Ghosts of Tabor Shines on Playstation VR 2
Extraction shooter Ghosts of Tabor, already a hit with over a million players and $30 million in Meta Quest sales, has arrived on Playstation VR 2. The port boasts crisp resolution, 90 fps, and leverages PSVR 2’s eye-tracking. Adaptive triggers are coming soon for select weapons, though the game’s signature Quest-style visuals remain intact.
Dream Apartment by VR: How Meta Quest Helped My Home Reno
Meta Quest proves to be a surprisingly practical renovation tool, letting you walk through 3D models in real size using the free Sketchup Viewer. The app lets you explore layouts and design tweaks at a 1:1 scale, making it much easier to judge room flow and features. Importing Sketchup files is simple—no sideloading, just a laptop—streamlining decisions during any home makeover.
XR Hardware: The Latest on VR, AR, and Mixed Reality Headsets
Pimax Crystal Super: High-End Ambitions, Early Technical Hurdles
Pimax has released a public list of known bugs for its newly-shipped Crystal Super headset and says it’s working overtime to patch things up. Issues on the list: imprecise automatic IPD adjustment, oversaturated colors in some VR titles, reduced audio quality (16-bit instead of 24-bit), controller tracking drift, and inside-out tracking hiccups on certain PCs. The company is troubleshooting with affected users directly and points to upcoming Nvidia and AMD GPU driver updates as part of the fix.
XR Market & Industry Moves
Meta Quest+ Becomes Horizon+: What’s in a Name?
Meta has rebranded its VR gaming subscription from Meta Quest+ to Horizon+, keeping pricing and features the same. The move is part of a wider push to reposition Meta’s VR platform, which includes licensing the Horizon OS to hardware partners like Lenovo and Asus. This platform rebranding also puts the spotlight back on Meta’s Horizon Worlds metaverse, a key piece of the company’s long-term strategy to monetize through digital marketplaces and ad space.
Niantic & HTC Launch Global Game Jam for AR/VR Creators
Niantic (with its 8th Wall platform) and HTC (with Viverse) are teaming up to host “Forge the Future,” a worldwide developer competition for innovative AR, VR, and cross-platform game ideas, running May 12 through June 30, 2025. Participants can use Niantic Studio on 8th Wall for free, with a $10,000 grand prize up for grabs. Winners also get invites to the Viverse Creator Program, plus workshops, mentorship, and exclusive industry event access.
Ghosts of Tabor Devs Unveil New Anti-Cheat System for VR
Combat Waffle Studios, the team behind Ghosts of Tabor, has rolled out its own anti-cheat tech—dubbed “Tomahawk”—for standalone VR platforms. In its first week, Tomahawk validated over 10 million play sessions and banned hundreds of cheaters, including some well-known cheat tool creators. Developed by an in-house white-hat hacker, Tomahawk detects firmware bypasses and APK/OBB hacks in real time—especially effective against the 60,000-strong ByteUs VR cheat community.
VR Games & XR Apps: What’s New
Into The Radius 2 Drops This Month for Meta Quest 3
Survival shooter Into The Radius 2 hits Early Access for Meta Quest 3 and 3S on May 21, skipping older Quest headsets. At launch, the Quest version will be missing two areas (Pechorsk Outskirts and Distortion Zones) from the PC VR release, and there won’t be cross-play with PC either. Inspired by “Roadside Picnic,” the game builds on its predecessor’s strengths, adding co-op for up to three players, bigger environments with improved lighting and weather, and ramped-up survival realism.
What do you think of the latest XR developments? Join the conversation on Facebook, Bluesky or X or share your opinion in the comments below. For feedback, topic suggestions, or other ideas, please email us at [email protected].
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