virtual reality headset

Apple on Thursday announced its upcoming lineup of immersive video content for the Vision Pro. The list includes behind-the-scenes footage of the 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend, an immersive performance by…

Apple Vision Pro debuts immersive content featuring NBA players, The Weeknd and more

The mixed reality operating system that powers Meta Quest headsets can officially be used by third-party device makers, the company announced on Monday. Three major tech players — Asus, Lenovo…

Meta opens Quest OS to third-party headset makers, taps Lenovo and Xbox as partners

Even with its hefty price tag, the Apple Vision Pro is still a killer device. Startups should pay attention.

Apple’s AR headset is a game-changer for startups

Say hello to the second worst kept secret in VR. Meta today gave the world the first (official) glimpse of its latest headset, the Quest 3. The mixed reality hardware…

Meta’s $499 Quest 3 headset arrives this fall

A year after Facebook transformed to Meta at the event, the company is hosting its second Connect conference on October 11 this year. Prior to the Meta rebranding, the company…

Meta is hosting its Connect conference on October 11

LA-born startup TRIPP doesn’t want the metaverse to be a mere “shopping mall for virtual consumers,” its founder Nanea Reeves told TechCrunch. Instead, Reeves’ company is envisioning a metaverse experience…

Why more funding equates more peace of mind for TRIPP and its users

Niantic, the augmented reality platform that’s developing games like Pokémon GO, raised $300 million from Coatue, valuing the company at $9 billion. The San Fransisco-based startup, which initially spun out…

Niantic raises $300M at a $9B valuation to build the ‘real-world metaverse’

It was way back in 2017 that the company that became Ultraleap (Ultrahaptics) demonstrated at TechCrunch Disrupt a technology that pioneered ultrasound to replicate the sense of touch. The impressive…

Ultraleap’s mid-air haptics tempts Tencent to join its $82M Series D fundraising
AI

Is China building the metaverse?

A heated debate is going on about the race between the United States and China to dominate in AI. But perhaps the more strategic question is whether China is building…

Is China building the metaverse?

TikTok parent company ByteDance seems to be looking to one-up Facebook anywhere it can. After taking over the mantle of most-downloaded social media app in the world with TikTok, ByteDance…

TikTok owner ByteDance buys a top virtual reality hardware startup

As an increasing number of startups sell investors on mobile apps that help consumers prioritize well-being and mindfulness, other startups are looking for a more immersive take that allows users…

Psychedelic VR meditation startup Tripp raises $11 million Series A

Like practically everyone else in the mobile world, the cancellation of MWC on extremely short notice left HTC in the lurch. While the company has moved much of its efforts…

HTC debuts ‘Project Proton’ concept Vive headset

Varjo‘s VR headset was the best VR headset I had ever demoed; its dual display design with a micro-OLED sweet spot enabled insanely high-resolution views without requiring a supercomputer to…

Varjo’s XR-1 puts your eyes on the outside of its high-end VR headset

After a dozen years of riding high, the iPhone is showing signs of weakness in a struggling smartphone market where Apple is still managing to be the biggest loser. Here’s…

Week-in-Review: The iPhone fades and SpaceX confirms an explosion

Valve is throwing a little bit of a “screw you” to Oculus this morning, announcing the specs of their high-end VR headset the Valve Index, just before Facebook CEO Mark…

Valve Index pre-orders launch tomorrow for a blistering $999

Facebook has bet a lot on its VR dream. The industry has become the butt of a few jokes in the past couple of years as hype has deflated, but…

Review: Oculus Quest could be the Nintendo Switch of VR

More than three years after Facebook released one of the biggest gambles in its existence, a virtual reality headset it paid billions to launch as its own, the company has…

Review: Facebook’s Oculus Rift S is barely an upgrade

Facebook’s new VR headsets, the Oculus Rift S and Quest, are both now live for pre-orders today at $399 and will ship May 21. Oculus released the original Rift just…

Oculus Quest and Rift S ship May 21, pre-orders go live today

The Oculus Rift S is a bit of an odd one. Three years after the Rift’s initial launch, Oculus has released a product that feels like a lateral move rather…

Hands-on with the Oculus Rift S: the ‘S’ stands for Subpar

After years of high-profile onstage announcements, Oculus has decided to quietly deliver the successor to its flagship Rift virtual reality headset, confirming most bits of our October report with the…

The Oculus Rift S is real and arrives in spring for $399

It’s telling that HTC opted to set up shop in Hall 7 at MWC. Rather than holding court alongside the Samsungs and Huaweis of the world, the company mingled among…

Taking HTC’s Vive Focus standalone headset for a spin

HTC has had a little bit of a rough ride these past few years. After betting the farm on VR, the company has had to make some substantial business strategy…

HTC revamps standalone VR headset to keep pace with Oculus while it looks to big business

Before Oculus kickstarted a lot of the fervor around consumer headsets, the VR headsets that were being built for enterprise rigs were multi-thousands-dollar rigs that still sucked. As Oculus and…

This is the best VR headset I’ve ever demoed

Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey isn’t in the VR hardware business these days since getting canned by Facebook (he’s focused on smart border security at his new company Anduril), but he…

Oculus co-founder shipping free Rift repair kits to users with VR headset audio issue

In an operating room in rural Idaho, doctors prep a patient for surgery. They make a tiny, thumb-sized incision into the patient and insert a small robot while across the…

Bill Gates-backed Vicarious Surgical adds a virtual reality twist to robots in the operating room

After we broke the news in November that Oculus’s former CEO had left the company partially due to disagreements on the company’s PC hardware direction, including the cancellation of a…

References to next-gen Oculus ‘Rift S’ headset reportedly found in internal code

FlixBus, the low-cost tech-forward bus service out of Europe that launched in the U.S. this year, has added a VR experience to some long-distance routes to and from Las Vegas.…

FlixBus is testing VR on certain routes to Las Vegas

As HTC gears up for a stateside launch of their Vive Focus standalone headset, the company announced a number of changes that they’re bringing to the device currently available in…

HTC adds some bells and whistles to the Vive Focus ahead of Western rollout

As the augmented reality industry slowly matures and those within it look to realize the path to ubiquity they have been preaching, it turns out they’re showing more appreciation for…

RealWear raises $17M as it looks to take a simpler approach to enterprise AR headgear

The number of VR headsets out there may not be reaching the stratospheric estimates that were first predicted, but they’re still growing, at least. According to a report from Canalys,…

Virtual reality headset unit sales are slowly improving