On the occasion of the extensive “Sandboxxer” update, I finally took the time to take a closer look at Underdogs. The VR title from One Hamsa transports me to a dark future where only one human city still exists: New Brakka. To get in there, I have to prove myself in illegal mech fights and earn the respect of the street.

In Underdogs, I slip into the role of one of the two brothers who have to flee their homeland. My younger brother King always stands by my side with advice and support. At least when he's not busy hacking my enemies to pieces while I smash opponents in my multi-ton mech named Rilla. The relationship between the brothers is one of the core elements of the story and contributes a lot to the dense atmosphere of the game.

My conclusion on Underdogs is completely positive. The game is a successful mix of sweat-inducing action, roguelike-typical progress and a lot of style. If you've always wanted to take a seat in a mech yourself and really dish it out, there's no way around Underdogs.

With the “Sandboxxer” update, the title has what it takes to be one of the best VR games of the year. The sheer endless possibilities to create your own content and share it with friends promise long-lasting fun. In addition, the new achievements and the open battle mode provide additional motivation. Creative minds and action fans can access it without hesitation — Underdogs is simply a lot of fun and, not the least thanks to the big update, has a lot to offer. Brattas and Sistas, grab your mech and dive into the fray!

Any of our readers who have been following my reports know that Latin America’s EV sales are rising. In some countries, they may not be growing as fast as we would wish; in others, they’re faster than we ever expected; but the trend remains clear regardless.

Latin America’s* market amounts to some 5 million vehicles a year, 70% of which corresponds to only two countries (Brazil and Mexico), with another 20% belonging to four countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru). The remaining 10% is left to another dozen countries or so. (*Minus the Caribbean, which isn’t a big market in any case.)

The region is also known for being highly protectionist, with tariffs to promote local industry, be it by pressure from the US (as is the case of Mexico) or because of a regional interest (as is the case in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru). This means that local production is imperative if the EV revolution is to succeed. So, how are things going on that front?

It should come as no surprise that the two largest markets, and two largest producers, are also the two pioneers in EV production in Latin America: Mexico and Brazil. Together, these two countries account for at least five plants already producing EVs, and at least six coming up with production planned prior to 2027.

Ember Souls takes you into a fantastic world full of adventure and danger. As the last immortal, you must face an ultimate battle against the mysterious Shadow Sultan in this VR hack-and-slash game. This involves not only sword fights, but also parkour, climbing and tricky environmental puzzles. Find out how the demo of the title inspired by Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed plays in this article.

A magnificent palace full of mystery My adventure begins on a boat, slowly drifting towards an island. Even from a distance, I can see magnificent buildings with golden domes that remind me of the architecture in Prince of Persia and immediately catch my attention. I disembark at a jetty, grab a sword and make my way to an imposing palace.

Standing in front of a closed gate, a shimmering blue bird invites me to pet it. In a brief conversation, it tells me how to get over the walls and into the palace. On my way there, I smash barrels and vases and find a useful sign — an incentive to explore my surroundings further.

I’m a big survival game fan. I love punching trees or picking up rocks and sticks to make tools. However, these games often discount the greatest tools humans were ever gifted with: your own two hands. Fortunately, Bootstrap Island makes full use of them.

At Gamescom, I played the latest version of this early access SteamVR game from Maru VR Productions. The studio recently added a simple building mechanic, though you can only make fences and gates right now. There are plans to expand this mechanic while adding features like food spoilage, boots, and new bosses this fall.

Like many survival games, I find myself stranded on a desert island. I love pirates, so I like to think I'm one who got blasted overboard during a ship capture gone awry. Unlike most survival games, rather than gathering resources to build tools, I can use my hands to do everything I want.

If I need to drink, I can smash a coconut against a boulder and rip its rind off if I need to drink. Then I'll bash it into the boulder again to split the coconut in two, drinking the sweet water within by holding it up to my face. I could also poke holes in the top with a knife I found in a locked chest. This method stopped any water from spilling out when it cracked open. I could also eat the flesh, piece-by-piece with my hands, by holding it up to my gob.

Opening the locked chest involves finding a rock to whack it open. Seeing the sparks flying off the metal gave me an idea. I gathered the spent coconut rind and placed some nearby sticks and planks on top of it, then got the rock in one hand, locked chest in another, and created sparks until I had a roaring bonfire going. That’s the beauty of creating intuitive systems like this.

Spin Rhythm XD, Thumper, Pistol Whip, Ragnarock, & Synth Riders. Rhythm and dance games are perfect for VR, offering a truly immersive experience—enjoy great games while supporting Direct Relief!

Over the past couple of months, we've explored some of the most compelling, imaginative, and breathtaking worlds VRChat has to offer, and today we're highlighting the worlds that stood out and left a lasting impression on us.

These picks are our top choices as of the publish date, but we're always eager to hear about more extraordinary worlds and will plan to update this list in the future. If you're a world creator with major updates to an existing world, or you know of any amazing destinations that we should check out next, drop us a line at tips@uploadvr.com.

Of the worlds we've visited from our existing community recommendations, here's our list of the best worlds to explore, not ranked in any particular order.

On September 25 and 26, Meta will unveil new products that will shape the future of the XR industry.

Meta Connect (formerly Oculus Connect) celebrates its 10th anniversary this year and will be the most important Connect since the launch of Quest 2 four years ago, perhaps the most important ever.

Meta Quest 3S: Can it surpass the success of Quest 2?

The stakes are high for Meta. On the VR front, Meta will announce the Meta Quest 3S, a more affordable version of the Quest 3, which is aimed at the mainstream. The device is the successor to the Quest 2, which is expected to have sold over 20 million units by now. The Quest 3S needs to sell at least as many units to be considered a success and grow the industry.

After the failure of the Playstation VR 2 and the lukewarm response to Apple Vision Pro, it's up to Meta to get consumers excited about VR, with mixed reality and exclusive software. Ad

A major VR focus of the conference will be Meta Horizon. We will probably see improved avatars for Horizon Worlds. We should also get a look at new APIs for Horizon OS, the operating system of Meta Quest, such as the spatial app framework. Hopefully, there will also be an update on the planned OEM headsets based on Horizon OS. First look at Meta's AR vision

We also expect major announcements in the AR space. After more than ten years of R&D, Meta will finally unveil a prototype of full-fledged AR glasses. The device, codenamed Orion, will not become a product because it is too expensive to manufacture. For now, the AR glasses are something else entirely: a vision of the future to appease investors, inspire tech enthusiasts, and encourage developers to create the first applications for Meta's upcoming AR platform.

Hopefully, Meta will provide a glimpse into the AR roadmap for the next few years, both in terms of hardware and software. Even if it will be a long time before affordable AR glasses hit the market: It's time for Meta to get real. The hype around AR glasses has been dead for many years, and Meta has a chance to revive it with Orion.

What's already here and affordable are AI-powered smart glasses with useful features. The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses are also part of Meta's AR future and are likely to play an important role at the conference, especially as they have been a surprise success and an ideal form factor for artificial intelligence. Although no new iteration of the glasses is expected this year, Meta is likely to unveil far-reaching new AI features for the smart glasses.

Electric vehicle (EV) registrations surged 18% in July compared to the same month last year, driven by the success of newer models like the Tesla Cybertruck and the Honda Prologue, according to the latest data from S&P Global Mobility. Tesla, the EV market leader, ended a five-month slump with a 1.2% increase in registrations, bolstered by 5,175 deliveries of the highly anticipated Cybertruck launched in November. Other EV pickups combined sold just 5,546 units during the same period.

The surge in registrations reflects the growing appeal of EVs, aided by substantial incentives. For example, according to Motor Intelligence, consumers received $19,703 in discounts on the Kia EV9, $13,015 on the Volkswagen ID.4, and $7,035 on the Honda Prologue. Despite their typically higher retail prices, these factory and government incentives have helped make electric vehicles more competitive with their gasoline and hybrid counterparts.

However, analyst Tom Libby of S&P Global Mobility cautioned that the current sales boom heavily relies on these incentives. “At full MSRP, these EV products would not sell. They are being heavily incentivized to compete with internal combustion vehicles, and if these incentives were pulled, sales would drop dramatically,” Libby said.

Tesla maintained its dominance in the electric vehicle (EV) market, but its Model 3 sedan experienced a significant 31% drop in registrations. This decline was primarily attributed to the base model being ineligible for federal EV tax credits due to stricter battery-sourcing regulations implemented earlier in the year.

Despite Tesla’s dominance, non-Tesla EV registrations surged 38% year-over-year as competitors gained momentum. Hyundai Motor Group, which includes the Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis brands, secured second place with 10,846 EV registrations. General Motors followed in third with 9,767 registrations across its Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, and BrightDrop brands, while Ford Motor Co. ranked fourth with 9,504 registrations.

“This is the second wave of competitor vehicles,” Libby said. “These are very solid and competitive products affecting Tesla’s position.”

Nonetheless, total EV registrations for July reached 118,273, up from 100,620 in the previous year. EVs now represent 8.5% of the overall U.S. light-vehicle market, an increase from 7.6% a year earlier. In the first seven months of 2024, EV registrations grew by 8.7%, capturing a 7.6% market share, compared to 7.2% in the same period last year.

Despite the positive trend, there were signs of weakness in the broader EV market. Rivian, a major player in the EV space, saw a 0.3% decline in combined registrations for its R1S and R1T models in July. Rivian’s R1S crossover, the brand’s top-selling vehicle, saw an 18% drop in registrations as it faced competition from Kia’s EV9, which registered 1,960 units in July, surpassing the R1S.

Amid these challenges, Tesla’s overall growth and the strong performance of new entrants like the Honda Prologue and Kia EV9 suggest that the EV market continues to evolve, with fierce competition ahead as more automakers vie for leadership in this rapidly expanding segment.

In a bit of a leak, we’ve caught word that Hyundai and IVECO Group are aiming to feature a “revolutionary electric commercial vehicle” at the coming IAA 2024 show in Hannover, Germany.

We don’t have details yet, but we’ve got these summary points:

Hyundai Motor Company leverages its global eLCV platform for IVECO-badged ‘eMoovy’ debut in Europe
Hyundai’s advanced EV technology includes proven PE system for ultra-fast charging and smart battery management
Hyundai’s eLCV platform features a low-floor access for increased cargo capacity and improved operator mobility
Hyundai and IVECO partnership aims to accelerate eco-friendly commercial vehicle transition and expand sustainable mobility future across Europe

In March, Hyundai and IVECO noted that they’d be partnering up for commercial vehicle development. They noted that they’d be working on “electric heavy-duty truck solutions, including both battery electric trucks and fuel cell electric trucks,” together. These are targeted for the European market, where regulations on trucking are strengthening.

We’ll have to wait a week or so to find out what this new “revolutionary electric commercial vehicle” is. Stay tuned.

Tesla’s rollout of Full Self-Driving v12.5 has failed so far, and owners want to know what happens next?

In 2016, Elon Musk announced that all future Tesla vehicles would come equipped with the necessary hardware for self-driving capabilities, even specifying “level 5 self-driving,” which implies the ability to operate autonomously under any conditions. However, shortly after, Musk acknowledged that Tesla might require more onboard computing power than initially thought, leading to the introduction of Hardware 3 (HW3).

Musk assured that HW3 would enable full self-driving (FSD) capabilities, promising retrofits for earlier models that had purchased the FSD package. Following this, Tesla introduced Hardware 4 (HW4), a more advanced onboard computer system, but did not offer retrofits for older models with HW3, maintaining that HW3 was sufficient for achieving self-driving through software updates.

Initially, Musk claimed that FSD improvements would first be optimized for HW3, suggesting that HW4 might lag behind by at least six months. However, Tesla reversed this approach with the release of FSD version 12.5, which was first deployed to HW4 vehicles. Musk explained that optimizing the software for the less powerful HW3 would take additional time, hinting at the limitations of HW3 in handling the latest software advancements towards unsupervised self-driving, a capability Tesla promised to HW3 owners since 2016.

This rewrite aims to streamline the narrative, focusing on the evolution of Tesla’s self-driving hardware and software, and the strategic shifts in deployment and optimization of FSD capabilities between HW3 and HW4.

Musk said that it would take ten days to adapt v12.5 to HW3.

In late August, about two weeks after Musk’s “10 days” had passed, we reported that Tesla started to push v12.5 to HW3 vehicles.

Not only was the update to HW3 late, but Tesla also confirmed that it was running a smaller model than on HW4.

On top of all that, now three weeks later, Tesla has yet to push v12.5 to the vast majority of FSD vehicles with HW3. Tesla appears to only have pushed v12.5.1.5 to some Tesla HW3 owners and it is now moving HW4 cars to v12.5.2.

Two of the world's largest automakers are becoming closer friends, we learned this morning. Hyundai Motor Group and General Motors, which together sold 13.5 million cars last year, have decided to try and collaborate in a range of areas in the coming years, including vehicle design, technology development, and even supply chain sourcing.

GM is one of the world's oldest and most established automakers and has a long legacy of clever engineering solutions, albeit one often hamstrung by corporate decision-making.

Meanwhile, GM was just a year from its 60th birthday when HMG got going, and while the Korean automaker was not taken particularly seriously in the US as a budget brand at launch, over the last 15 years its products have been class-leading, especially its electric vehicles.

With the agreement signed, the two companies say they will immediately start looking for opportunities to work together, including jointly developing and producing new passenger and commercial vehicles, new internal combustion engines, and also new electric powertrains, whether those be battery- or hydrogen-powered.

The Postal Service’s new delivery vehicles aren’t going to win a beauty contest. They’re tall and ungainly. The windshields are vast. Their hoods resemble a duck bill. Their bumpers are enormous.

“You can tell that (the designers) didn’t have appearance in mind,” postal worker Avis Stonum said.

Odd appearance aside, the first handful of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles that rolled onto postal routes in August in Athens are getting rave reviews from letter carriers accustomed to cantankerous older vehicles that lack modern safety features and are prone to breaking down — and even catching fire.

Within a few years of the initial rollout, the fleet will have expanded to 60,000, most of them electric models, serving as the Postal Service’s primary delivery truck from Maine to Hawaii.

Once fully deployed, they’ll represent one of the most visible signs of the agency’s 10-year, $40 billion transformation led by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who’s also renovating aging facilities, overhauling the processing and transportation network, and instituting other changes.