Palmer Luckey Just Showed Off the Future...

[00:00:00]Hey guys, Shimano. I hope you're all doing amazing today. I'm Mystical and I'll be bringing you the latest in AR and VR news. As usual, you have chapters down below to skip to any specific part of this video that you are most interested in. And with that being said, let's get right into it. Okay, so let's kick things off with some news for the PC VR fans out there, as a lot of you guys are very excited for the upcoming Steam Frame. And I have some great news.

[00:00:26]news that is of course leading up to that launch as a brand new Steam VR update has come out and this is one where they have finally completely redesigned the UI. We're talking a proper Steam big picture style interface inside virtual reality. You can actually see your game library. What's new?

[00:00:45]Friend activity, recommended titles, all of it right there inside your headset in a nice new intuitive manner. Brad Lynch over at Sadly as Bradley on X flagged this one and the reaction has been exactly what you'd expect. To see the new UI, you need to opt into both SteamVR beta and the Steam client beta.

[00:01:04]So keep that one in mind if you want to go looking for it. But that's not all.

[00:01:08]SteamVR 2.17.4 also adds a quick access menu, very similar to what you'd get with the Steam Deck. In game Steam features are now accessible from inside virtual reality.

[00:01:20]achievements, guides, notes, all of that. And the VR dashboard now has hover shortcuts for things like exiting and redocking. It's small quality of life stuff, but all of it together seriously adds up. PC VR has certainly been feeling a little bit neglected recently, and with all the comments that I've been getting about people waiting on this redesign, it's so exciting finally seeing the building blocks come into place. Let me know down below if you've already tried this one. Now, this one genuinely caught me a little bit off guard as Palmer Lucky, yes, the founder of Oculus, now running military tech company, was spotted wearing what appeared to be a pair of AR glasses in a photo shared on X. And I mean AR glasses that look like a completely normal pair of Ray-B band aviators. No bulk, no weird clip-on housing, just glasses. The caption on the photo said, "Other AR glasses getting literally frame mogged," which was clearly a dig at Snap's recent Specs AR glasses, which people have been calling too bulky. Road to VR's Ben Lang pushed back a bit, pointing out that compact smart glasses already exist, but they stay compact because they cut corners on the actual AR hardware stack.

[00:02:35]So Lucky responded directly to that skepticism, saying these are, and I'm paraphrasing, the real deal. No shortcuts, wide FOV, fullcolor stereo AR. He also confirmed that Qualcomm, MetaQuest, and Andrew Bosworth, Meta's CTO, are among the deeply invested partners, which ties Anderil's existing military XR project, Eagle-Eye, that's been in development with Meta's backing since 2025. I don't know about you guys, but uh from from one movie series, I I'm starting to see a little trend here about military and high tech, obviously a joke. Now, the big open question is whether this thing is truly standalone or whether it relies on a tethered compute punk. Because at this size, shoving a full AR hardware stack in there without any puck would be genuinely groundbreaking. There is no answer on that one just yet, but this is definitely one we want to be keeping a close eye on. Now, onto another very interesting piece of news that could certainly change the way one company operates. Actually, will probably definitely change the way one company operates. I'm talking about Lynx, the French XR startup behind the Lynx R1 mixed reality headset which has been acquired by Selor Luxotica, the global eyeear giant that also partners with Meta on the Rayban smart glasses. Link's founder and CEO Stan Larok confirmed it in a public email to backers. The deal covers all IP assets and most of the team. Lorac himself is not making the move though. After 8 years building the links, he's heading to Paris-based drone company Parrot instead. Here's the thing that makes this complicated. Essor Luxotica is Meta's glasses company partner. They make the Rayban Meta Oakley Meta and are tied to Meta's entire wearables road map through 2030.

[00:04:31]So, the question everyone is asking is what happens to the Lynx R2? That's Lynx's still unreleased standalone mixed reality headset that would have a direct Quest competitor under SLR Luxotica's ownership. With that meta relationship, it seems pretty unlikely that they would push forward with a Quest rival. This follows a really tough stretch for Lynx.

[00:04:53]Earlier this year, their parent company SL Process entered judicial liquidation after restructuring efforts failed. So, in some ways, the acquisition is a lifeline for the team and the technology. But for people who were genuinely excited about an independent European alternative to Quest, this one is going to sting quite a bit. Now, talking about uh European, apparently there's a very quick but important regulatory update, particularly for European viewers. The European Commission is moving to exempt wearables, including smart glasses, smart watches, and fitness trackers, from the same repairability rules that will soon require user removable batteries in smartphones. Now, this is actually something that's happening for those of you guys that didn't know. In the same way that the EU forced Apple to install the Type-C port, finally, they are also forcing smartphone manufacturers to have removable batteries. What exactly this is going to look like, I'm not entirely certain. And how we will keep our IP ratings and all that good stuff, but overall, I think it's a pretty good change. Batteries are my personal enemy. This phone I absolutely love, and the battery in it is slowly dying, and I I just do not want to replace it because I'm going to lose all the goodies that come with never opening up a phone. If anyone knows how to get around that, perhaps with T7000 or something like that, let me know down in the comments. But yeah, that's just the gist of it. This is being framed as a practical necessity because opening these devices would pose safety risks or is technically unrealistic given how miniaturized everything is. The commission says it's following a broad public consultation and is not giving in to industry pressure. The European Parliament has a two-month window to object before this becomes law, potentially as early as late November or December. And if it passes, it clears the way for companies like Meta, Google, Samsung, and Apple to sell smart glasses and AR glasses in the U without having to redesign their hardware. That said, not everyone is on board. The largest consumer protection group, BEu, has pushed back hard, saying this sets a dangerous precedent and that smart glasses are already raising serious privacy and surveillance concerns, and that the privacy angle is very much live. The European Data Protection Board is currently working on a report into smart glasses that's expected to land this summer, which could lead to further regulatory action.

[00:07:19]So, while the battery exemption is good news for manufacturers, the bigger fight over privacy is very much still ongoing.

[00:07:27]Okay, now let's move on to some leaks and information about Horizon OS from Max. And this one is going to be seriously a little bit frustrating to report on. You'll remember that Meta rolled out app folders or collections as they were originally called as part of Horizon OS v2.4. Well, Luna over on X has flagged that she still doesn't have the feature a month and a half after it showed up in her help and tips app and over 2 and 1/2 months since the initial rollout began. And I also don't have it for those interested. For context, the feature was originally called collections internally before Meta renamed it to just folders, which you can actually still see in the older tutorial screenshots. The rollout is clearly staged to be very slow. If you've got it, great. If you don't, apparently you're not alone. And it seems it's just taking meta a very, very long time to push this one out. Now, let's move on to some genuinely exciting news from Luna's data mines. As Horizon OS 2.6 6 PTC has surfaced the gamepad emulation nux. That's a new user experience flow, something we've spoken about throughout the last few episodes, but this time it's actually peeking out.

[00:08:38]Luna posted a render showing what this looks like in headset, and honestly, it looks really slick. Your controllers displayed as virtual gamepad overlays in the Horizon home environment. This would be a big deal for playing flat screen games via the Quest built-in browser or any future desktop streaming features or any 2D emulators that you might want to sideloadad since right now the controller support for those use cases can be a little bit awkward. There's no confirmed timeline yet, but it's clearly far enough along to have a proper onboarding flow. So hopefully that means it shouldn't be too far out. And hopefully this one isn't staggered in such a way where some people get it and some don't. But as it usually is with Meta, I wouldn't bank on that. Now, a very quick community update on the HSR studio from Nori over at X. It's a fan-made recreation of Meta's Horizon World's scene editor being built independently by Nori. If you haven't heard of this project, it's basically an effort to reverse engineer and recreate the Horizon Scene Studio tool set outside of Meta's ecosystem. Nori posted an update saying they're close to a onetoone match with the actual engine, but some early architectural decisions are now bottlenecking development. So Nori has made the call to rewrite the project from scratch to do it right.

[00:09:58]It's a classic developer dilemma.

[00:10:00]Technical debt versus starting clean, and Nori is choosing the clean slate.

[00:10:05]Honestly, mad respect for that. I personally know a lot of people who would just go ahead and uh continue going and perhaps make a bigger mess of the project than it could have ended up being. I'll leave a link down below.

[00:10:17]It's definitely worth following if you're interested in the Horizon World's worldbuilding tools. Now, some exciting and very good game news as Start Rupture, the openw world base building exploration game from Creepy Jar, the studio behind Green Hell, is being ported to MetaQuest 3 by Enuo Games. If you haven't played Star Rupture on PC, it's launched in early access on Steam in January and has a very positive rating from over 6,600 reviews. So, the base game is clearly doing something right. Its first person open world supports up to four-player co-op with base building and combat. However, there are some very serious concerns here over game optimization. Star Rupture is an Unreal Engine 5 game, and even on PC, some players have reported frame drops on lower-end hardware. Porting a visually demanding openw world. Unreal Engine 5 game to a standalone headset is not a small ask. And Kuvo has done this before with Green Hell VR, and that port did require some compromises. The open world was scaled down. It became more linear. So, the question is, how much of Star Rupture survives this transition intact? That said, there really aren't many games like this in standalone VR.

[00:11:29]No Man's Sky on Steam VR and PSVR 2, but native Quest options for the genre are slim. Also, uh, The Forest VR, fantastic, fantastic. I still to this very day love that one. If Enuo can pull off a quality board, this could genuinely fill a gap. PC VR players also have options via the Universal Unreal Engine VR tool, but no release window has been confirmed yet. I seriously hope that they actually managed to get this one out and out in a performant manner.

[00:11:58]And one more game update in order to close things off here, as I personally think this is actually a rather large update. Hellblit Arena, the 2019 VR hack and/combat game is getting a sandbox mode for both Steam and Meta Quest.

[00:12:12]Plus, mod support is coming to Quest.

[00:12:14]Specifically, developer Deept Type Games has been fairly quiet since porting Arena to Quest in March of 2025, which had people wondering if active development was winding down. Turns out they've been working on their next project, Hellsplit Labyrinth, a dark fantasy rogike set in the same universe, as well as Shoot and Dead, though that one has been pushed to fall after missing its July 1st release date. The sandbox and mod support for arena seem to be a final major content drop before the team fully moves on. Mod support on Quest is always a nice addition. So, if you are a HSplit fan, this is hopefully going to be a very nice sendoff. But with that being said, thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this one. If you did, please do leave a like. If you disliked it, I guess this button works, too. But let me know why down below. If you're not yet part of our community, check out our Discord and our Reddit down below where I want to see you posting your spicy memes. And thank you so so much to all the Patreons supporting this channel in any way, shape, or form. And of course, if you support the channel in any other way, shape, or form as well, I thank you so so much. And as usual, if you want to be notified of future content coming up on the channel, make sure to smack that subscribe button with your forehead, ding my bell, and see you again in the next video. Peace.

[00:13:28]Hey guys, and welcome to another Tech Friday on this channel. And this one is actually going to be a little bit different.