Nearly a decade after consumer VR took its first real steps—driven by headsets like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR—the medium has outgrown its novelty phase.

Those early platforms reshaped not just how players experienced games, but how studios thought about presence, interaction, and scale. Today’s VR games and experiences walk along that groundwork—and are also judged against it.

With expectations higher than ever, this year’s standout titles aren’t just impressive in isolation. They’re the ones that meaningfully build on what came before—and that’s what this year’s awards aim to recognize.

Without further ado, here’s Road to VR’s 2025 Game of the Year Awards:

Game of the Year

Ghost Town

Developer: Fireproof Games Available On: PC VR, Quest, PSVR 2 Release Date: April 24, 2025

VRChat: A Home from Home is a film created in VRChat, discussing the positives, communities, events and so much more within it.

Best Meta Quest 3S (128GB) Holiday Sale: Best Buy – $50 discount + $159 in bundled value Deal Includes:

• Quest 3S (128GB) (discounted by $50)
• Best Buy gift card ($75 value)
• Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners game ($30 value)
• 1 month subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate ($30 value) [new subscribers only]
• 3 month subscription to Meta Horizon+ ($24 value) Gives you access to a catalog of great Quest games

Valve’s recently announced Steam Frame is promising a unique twist on VR headsets. On top of being a Quest 3-style standalone headset that can both stream games from a powerful PC and run less demanding games on its own internals, the latter won’t be limited to VR titles – by using SteamOS as its operating system, the Frame can locally run any Steam game in your library, provided it can perform on the hardware.

That’s all fine, especially in how it bypasses classic VR issues like the need for base stations or an expensive desktop. But the smartest thing in VR right now is not the Steam Frame. It isn’t even hardware. It’s a mod. Enter Praydog's UEVR, or Universal Unreal Engine VR: a mod that’s quietly turned hundreds (potentially thousands) of Unreal Engine games into playable, room-scale VR experiences since its release.

The Frame’s ability to locally run your Steam library – enabled by SteamOS, the same operating system as the Steam Deck – might be new, but ultimately it’s still about running flat games in a 2D theatre view, and that’s something that Valve’s own SteamVR platform has been doing for years. UEVR actually changes the games, not just the screen you’re using to display them.

A little over a year and a half ago, Meta made an “industry-altering announcement,” as I called the move in my reporting: the company was rebranding the Quest operating system to ‘Horizon OS’ and announced it was working with select partners to launch third-party VR headsets powered by the operating system.

Meta specifically named Asus and Lenovo as the first partners it was working with to build new Horizon OS headsets. Asus was said to be building an “all-new performance gaming headset,” while Lenovo was purportedly working on “mixed reality devices for productivity, learning, and entertainment.”

“We have paused the program to focus on building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market,” a Meta spokesperson told Road to VR. “We’re committed to this for the long term and will revisit opportunities for 3rd-party device partnerships as the category evolves.”

Los Angeles-based nonprofit Creative Acts is using virtual reality headsets to help prepare for life outside prison walls. Incarcerated men use VR headsets for exercises ranging from experiencing foreign countries to practicing real-world scenarios they’ll face when released, leading to a reported reduction in prison violence.

After reports from outlets like Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Insider suggested that Meta is "considering" a cut "as high as 30%" for its "metaverse" teams, Meta issued an official statement confirming "shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables".

"Within our overall Reality Labs portfolio we are shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables given the momentum there," the official statement read. "We aren't planning any broader changes than that."

Asymmetric VR games are a rare but wonderful treat, especially those which let you play with non-VR friends. The newly released VR Giants not only lets you play with a non-VR friend, but thanks to the ‘Friend Pass’ feature, your friend plays for free with only one copy of the game between the two of you.

VR Giants, an asymmetric co-op VR game first launched on Steam, is now available in Early Access on Quest. The game features two distinct roles: the VR player is Goliath and the non-VR player is David. The pair work together to tackle platforming challenges from two completely different perspectives.

For years, the metaverse has been discussed through the lenses of virtual reality, gaming, crypto-economics, and digital identity. Yet beneath all these layers lies a critical component that rarely makes headlines: the linguistic infrastructure required to make immersive worlds truly global. A metaverse that cannot be understood, accessed, or used by millions of non-English speakers cannot scale — technologically or economically.

While localisation is widely understood in traditional software and web environments, translating the metaverse is an entirely new challenge. The rules are different, the interactions are multidimensional, and the expectations for immersion leave no room for slow, inaccurate, or culturally blind communication.

Inside a makeshift tent in the heart of the besieged Gaza Strip, Israel’s genocidal war, which has destroyed neighbourhoods, schools and hospitals, decimated families and shattered lives for more than two years, no longer exists.

Virtual reality technology is taking Palestinian children struggling with physical and psychological wounds to a world away, where they can feel safe again.

“After I was injured in the head, I try to forget the pain,” Salah Abu Rukba, a Palestinian child taking part in the sessions, told Al Jazeera at the VR Tent in az-Zawayda, central Gaza.

Skyjet VR is a solution for location-based entertainment. The machine is made by a standing station with a cushion for your back and a safety belt that keeps your torso attached to the cushion even when the station is moving. On your two sides, there are two metal handles that you should hold during the whole experience. This has two advantages: one is, of course, safety, and the other is related to realism, because if you had a real jetpack, most probably your hands would be holding something similar, too.

Below your shoes, there is a metallic floor with some hydraulic mechanisms that let it rotate: when the floor rotates a bit, for instance, to simulate you going on a curved path with your jetpack, you rotate with it, for an added realism of the experience.

In front of you, two fans simulate airflow towards you while you are flying.

Google is starting to roll out new photorealistic avatars which they call “Likeness”. Similar to Apple’s Personas, Likeness avatars are generated by scanning a user’s face, then animated it with input from the sensors on a headset. The avatars can be used to represent the user in video call apps, but Google doesn’t yet have a way to have spatial meetings with other Likeness avatars.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40057878

Native VR Citizen Setup Tutorial

Looks like Silvan-CIG got VR into this latest build.

Chachi goes over some user.cfg/console commands to enable it.

When it comes to Valve, we asked them about ideas like "spatial computing" and "mixed reality" being pursued elsewhere. Neither concept is really present in Valve's initial Steam Frame with black and white passthrough, though there's a lot of potential for sensing add-ons through the nose port.

Here's how Valve's Jeremy Selan replied about the focus of their first headset to carry the Steam name:

"As a strong Index user, someone who worked on it and has spent major portions of my adult life working on that and the Vive, when I think about playing VR, I have to make an intentional choice. So I'll be like, you know what? I want to go do VR. So I go to the room that has my PC and has my base stations installed. And I start playing that. But then sometimes, if I'm in another room and I'm like, well, maybe I should just take out my Deck and I start playing those games. And that choice I personally think is one of the highest friction bits remaining."

"Sure you can expect that when you put it on because it's SteamOS you hit the power button and you're fast into your game without the base station setup. Yeah, you can do [that] in any environment, but the ability to put on the headset and to see your Steam catalog in front of you where you can just choose a VR game or choose a non-VR game – it makes me play VR more. And it really reduces the impediment or the friction of even having to think about that distinction."

"We see the lines between VR and non-VR content really being blurred because they should just be games and you should be able to have devices that let you enjoy them. And this is our first stab at that."

Meta is planning to raise prices for its virtual reality devices, executives said in an internal memo seen by Business Insider.

Meta plans to raise prices on its VR devices to ensure long-term sustainability, per an internal memo. Metaverse executives told staffers it will extend the replacement cycle of in-market devices. Meta also aims to deliver high-quality software experiences alongside its virtual reality devices.

Meta is planning to raise prices for its virtual reality devices, executives said in an internal memo seen by Business Insider.

Metaverse leaders Gabriel Aul and Ryan Cairns told employees that the company must "make a shift" in its business model to ensure long-term sustainability. This will include measures such as price increases, accounting for new costs like tariffs, and extending the replacement cycle of its in-market devices, per the memo.

"Our devices will be more premium in price going forward, but we'll have a healthier business to anchor on and free ourselves from feeling existential about any singular device's success," Aul and Cairns wrote in the memo, shared with staff on December 4.

Today at United XR Europe, I’ve just tried the GVS solution from Neural Balance Innovations, and I can say this is the craziest technology I’ve tried in 2025 and one of the best experiences I’ve had in my career in XR.

What the Stimbox does feels like black magic. I’ve always wanted to try GVS, and now that I’ve experienced it, I’m not disappointed at all. This technology can literally take control of your body and make it move as it wants. It is incredibly powerful.

And the most important thing for us XR people is: motion sickness disappears when you are using it in VR. Even more, the device has the potential to give you a more realistic virtual reality: if you’re seeing that you’re going down, and the GVS makes you feel going down, then you really perceive that you are going down with your all body.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City is coming to Quest, Pico and SteamVR headsets sometime next year, making it the first Turtles game in VR. Ahead of launch, Cortopia Studios gave us a 15-minute demo on Quest to show off just what sort of radical action this co-op beat’em up has in store.

In TMNT: Empire City, you get to tackle the Foot Clan with all four titular Turtles—Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo—which also means getting to grips with with each of their signature weapons: katanta, sai, bo staff and nunchaku.

And just like the cartoons (and live action films), you won’t be actually ganking dudes, but rather knocking them out as you explore deeper into the various levels, be it alone or with up to three other friends.

Developed with the creators and featuring cast members from the hit series, The Boys: Trigger Warning introduces an original character who accidentally uncovers a grotesque Vought secret that turns a family outing into carnage. The game presents a more horror-driven experience, which feels somewhat appropriate given the many storylines present within The Boys.

The Boys: Trigger Warning is now available to pre-order at a limited-time promotional price of $23.99 USD on the Meta Quest storefront and to wishlist on the PlayStation Store.

This dude made it possible to have 6DOF, hand tracking and eye tracking in smartphone based VR

Features Group and Event Sharing

You can now share Groups and Events directly to other users or via Pedestals -- just like you can with Emoji, for example!

Sharing Groups and Events will not require VRC+, so go crazy and share all of the cool things that you’re interested in with your pals! Group Discovery

You'll notice on the Groups tab that things look a little different. We've added a new flow to make finding interesting Groups a lot easier!

FYI: This feature is rolling out slowly over time, so you might not see it at first! Mutuals

Speaking of cool new friends... what if you could see who you had a lot of friends in common with in VRChat? Well, now you can!

You will see an added icon above users who you share one (or more!) connections with. You can then click on their profile where you'll see a new button, showing you specifically who you share in common.

You can also see what Groups you share in common with users.

And, because we know you'll ask, you will have the option to disable this via the website -- just in case you would like a bit of privacy regarding who your friends are. FYI: it's under the "Settings" section (the lil gear in the top left).

FYI: This feature is rolling out slowly over time, so you might not see it at first! STEAM AUDIO!!!

IT IS TIME, FRIENDS! THE SITE CAN FINALLY BE SET FREE.

Up until now, VRChat has used ONSP as our audio spatializer. What’s that mean? It’s basically what processes all the sound outputs, making them sound like they are in a 3D space and not just… like… blasted into your ears.

For a long time now, we’ve been testing Steam Audio in a series of betas, as we’ve wanted to move away from ONSP. Why move away? Well, a lot of reasons – some of these are very much under-the-hood. Engineering headaches, bugs that aren’t possible to fix on our end, and limitations and inconsistencies across platforms.

But then there’s other, more exciting stuff: for one, we (personally) think that Steam Audio sounds similar… but better. It’s more flexible. It handles things, like, say a crowded instance, a lot better. It also allows us to tinker and tweak the VRChat experience in many ways that just all come together to make things… well, better.

Additionally, this opens up a lot of potential options for creators in the future. While we aren’t quite opening that can of worms yet, it at least gives us the option.

Finally: if you haven’t been using the open beta, you will probably notice things sound a little different. Or maybe you won’t notice at all. Either is fine – but before coming to a solid conclusion on how you like or dislike it, we’d suggest giving it a week. It turns out sound, and how your brain processes sound, is super complicated!

And just to be clear, Steam Audio is for everyone, on every platform, not just PC users! Steam Audio is just a name! Changes & Fixes

Our Debug UI has received a major overhaul!
    You can now open it from the Quick Menu. Check the bottom of the Settings tab for the "Toggle Debug UI" button.
    It now works in VR and on mobile!
    You no longer need the --enable-debug-gui launch parameter, it will always be enabled. The performance cost which made the parameter necessary previously has been removed.
    The whole thing received a bit of a visual overhaul. For example, it now respects UI themes.
    Added "Local Movement" mode.
        When enabled using the toggle in the bottom left corner, the menu will move with your playspace.
        In VR, this behaves like the personal mirror in "Local" tracking space.
        In Desktop mode, it behaves like a screen-space overlay. Use the TAB key to free your mouse and click on the menu.
Added a new debug overlay: The VRC_UiShape debugger.
    It can be enabled with RShift-Tilde-0, or via the dedicated button in the new debug UI.
    When active, all interactable UI in your world will be highlighted.
    On screen or on your hands (in VR) you will see the hierarchy path of whatever object you are currently pointing at.
    This is gated behind World Debugging, of course.
Added a "Face Mirror Spout Stream" option in the Face Mirror category for PC.
    Enabling this will send the contents of the Face Mirror to Spout, where it can be used by external tools like OBS. Vtubers rejoice!
Moved Explore Avatars out of the Avatars Tab and changed the Avatars Tab design to better match the other pages. FYI: This change is rolling out slowly over time, so you might not see it at first!
The Inventory should handle longer names... better.
Improved cursor jitter when using Forced Camera Near Distance.
    Floating point inaccuracies will still occur, but the near distance setting specifically should have less of an effect on UI usability now.
By default, VRC+ Gift Drops will only affect users that do not have an active subscription. Users will be able to toggle this behavior off, however, if they prefer.
Clarified VRC+ Gift Drop purchase text.
Gift Drop effects are now tied to the "Items" volume slider.
Increased range desktop users heads can visibly rotate up and down.
    This does not affect how much a desktop user can actually rotate their head, just the visible range.
Fixed a bug that caused the World and Group stores to be shuffled every time the menu is opened.
Fixed the /avatar/change OSC end point. It now should allow switching to avatars that are recently used, uploaded by you, or purchased by you. Previously, it only worked with favorited avatars.
String and image download requests triggered via Udon now set their Accept headers to */* and image/* respectively, so the server handling the request can see which kind of content is being requested.
Technical improvements for UI shaders.
Minor UI fixes.
UI themes are now gradually transitioned to when they are hovered over.
VRChat Shop items with VRC+ discounts will now properly display the VRC+ logo next to their discounted prices instead of just text.
Particle systems attached to an avatar can no longer collide with objects on the Pickup, PickupNoEnvironment or Item layers if they also apply a physics force. This resolves an exploit that could render some worlds unplayable.
Items that are still being loaded now display their load progress the same way avatars do.
Fixed an issue where group owners/members with many events between all groups in which they are a member sometimes wouldn't be able to see certain events or link instances to them either.
Fixed VRCObjectSync transforms not respawning in their original location.
Fixed an invisible loading screen after visiting certain worlds.
Fixed the occasional issue where Unicode characters on the Live Now page fail to mask correctly, causing characters to float outside of the bounds of the menu.
Preview images now show correctly in the "Selected Sticker" page.
Fixed missing "Spawned" indicator on items that have been. Well. Spawned.
Platform compatibility indicators now properly show on world cells that appear within the Search Results page.
Archiving an item now immediately updates the Item Wings.
Added additional functionality for some Items.
    You might notice a change with the Campfire / Marshmallow on a Stick.
Minor changes on a few VRC+ related loading screen tips.
Fixed very quiet microphones cutting out in some cases.
Fixed unnecessary Z offset on dialog windows.
    This caused the cursor to appear to float on top of dialogs.
    We also suspect that this caused some occasional incorrect Z-layer artifacting with certain menu graphics.
Improvements to underlying networking code.

Android Mobile

Group gallery images now have maximum size enforced, and will scale down if they are too large.
Fixed an issue that caused the home feed to be blank when leaving a world.
User events notifications on mobile are now shown aligned to the center of the screen.
Mobile apps now sleep like any other system app when not in client focus.
Tapping portals should work once again!
Fixed a bug where changing the avatars visablitiy setting to "Visable" would require multiple taps.
    Functionality to show a fixed number of VP avatars on mobile works correctly now.
Fixed an issue that caused the home feed to be blank after creating a new account.
Fixed an issue that prevented users from creating a new VRChat account with a Google account.
Fixed a UI issue that caused the challenges on the home feed to animate twice.
Localization updates.

Whether you just got your first VR headset and are ready for whatever the VR universe has to throw at you, or you’re an old hand looking to expand their collection of games, we’ve got a great bundle of post-apocalyptic adventures and hellish horrors inspired by UploadVR’s Winter Showcase! Descend deep into literal hell and fight off its most twisted demons in Hellsweeper VR. Survive the battlegrounds of Ghosts of Tabor. Puzzle your way out of the action-packed escape rooms of I Expect You to Die 3: Cog in the Machine. There’s so much more to enjoy in this VR bundle, so grab it while you can and support the digital privacy defenders at Electronic Frontier Foundation with your purchase!

Keys expire. Please redeem keys before December 26th, 2026.

The two internal memos were sent earlier this week. They were first reported by Business Insider a few hours ago, and UploadVR can independently confirm their authenticity.

One was sent by VP of Reality Labs Maher Saba to staff, and mentions delaying the ultralight open-periphery headset with a tethered compute puck running Horizon OS that multiple reports, including our own, have suggested that Meta recently hoped to release next year. Various codenames have leaked for candidates for the product, including Puffin, Phoenix, and Loma.

Saba tells staff that the new goal is to release the ultralight device in the first half of 2027.

Aul and Cairns also mention starting work on a next-generation mainline headset, which UploadVR understands would likely carry the name Quest 4.

This headset will focus on immersive gaming, bring a "large upgrade" over Quest 3, and "significantly improve unit economics". That strongly suggests an end to the strategy of subsidizing low-cost devices. Meta wants to slowly transition Reality Labs into a profitable division, and this will be a key part of that plan.

The new plans suggest the ultralight headset should land in the first half of 2027, with a traditional Quest 4 following at a later date, perhaps in 2028.

Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow does a respectable job of bringing the storied series to VR for the first time, all the while offering up one of the best stealth games currently in the medium. Some stumbling blocks keep it from being the end-all VR stealth game of my dreams, and it’s painful to know how surprisingly close it actually got.

Meta may slash its budget for metaverse projects by up to 30 percent next year, according to a report from Bloomberg. Sources tell the outlet the potential cuts haven’t been finalized, but they would impact the unit that works on Meta’s Quest virtual reality headsets, along with its social platform Horizon Worlds.

Meta, which changed its name from Facebook to align itself with the metaverse, has poured billions into building out its vision for virtual worlds over the past few years. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg has since shifted the company’s focus to developing AI superintelligence with a series of high-profile hires. It most recently added former Apple UI designer Alan Dye to its team, who will oversee the design of “hardware, software and AI integration for its interfaces.”

In a couple of days, I’m starting my trip to the Benelux region to enjoy United XR Europe, which will take place on December 8-10 in Brussels, Belgium. The organizers were so kind to organize for me a preview of five super cool companies that will be there among the 150+ exhibitors, so I could give you a sneak peek of what you can expect from this event. And there are incredible things like a device that literally cancels motion sickness while you are in VR, smart contact lenses, and AR navigation.