This Week in VR: Disney+ Turns On 3D for Quest, Google Prices Its Glasses at $395, and H3VR2 Ships on Quest First

Most weeks the games carry this column. This week it was a movie screen.

Disney switched on 3D for Quest, two companies put certification stamps on a pair of Meta glasses you cannot buy until spring, and a leaked screenshot suggested Meta might fold 3D films into a subscription. Google, in the middle of all that, finally said what its own glasses cost. The games showed up too, H3VR2 among them, along with three free PC VR mods, two of them for shooters I have real history with. Busy week.

Disney+ turns on 3D for Quest 3 and 3S

"Starting today, Disney+ offers an even more immersive way to watch fan-favorite movies on Meta Quest," Disney's post on Tuesday begins. It works on Quest 3 and Quest 3S with the Disney+ subscription you already pay for. Disney gives no title count. Meta's blog does: more than 60 films in 3D, in select countries it does not list, plus viewing rooms on Tatooine, in Avengers Tower and on the Monsters, Inc. scare floor. Disney's fine print says 3D, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos vary by region and plan, so check yours before you build a Saturday around it.

I have worn a Vision Pro, and Disney+ had 3D films and those same kinds of rooms on that headset the week it launched in February 2024. Quest owners waited almost three years for the same files. Still, this is the one piece of this week's movie news that does something for a headset already sitting on your shelf.

The rest of it is aimed at spring. On Sunday a dataminer posted a screen labeled "Meta VR Plus" with 3D films "included in your subscription," and Alex covered it with every hedge it needed, because Meta has confirmed nothing. On Tuesday IMAX put out its own release making Meta VR Glasses its first certified VR device, with an IMAX app due when the glasses go on sale. And Pixelworks, which booked $378,000 in revenue last quarter, announced that Meta's VR devices will be certified for films graded with its TrueCut Motion platform. Sam read that one closely today. Two certifications for a $1,299.99 device that goes on sale in spring, and a leak about a subscription Meta has not announced. The Disney update is the one you can use tonight.

Google puts a price on its glasses

$395. That is the starting price for Google's first Intelligent Eyewear in a Warby Parker frame, and Alex had the whole sheet on Thursday: Gentle Monster's frames run $449 to $489, preorders are open now, and both collections go on general sale December 10. Jordan had the December month back on Monday, off a Gentle Monster film teaser, before Google or Samsung would say it.

Read the compatibility list before you preorder. The companion app supports Pixel 7 and later, Galaxy S and Z phones, and iPhones with 6GB of RAM. That is the list. Only US and South Korean Google accounts work, and only for people 18 and up. So the first glasses on Google's Android XR platform will pair with an iPhone and not with a OnePlus. I have never worn a headset or a pair of display glasses out in public. If I were going to start, $395 is the first price that would make me think about it.

H3VR2, and a week of free heists and spinoffs

H3VR2 came out on Quest on Thursday at $39.99, with the PC build not due until the second half of 2027. The first reviews like it. Road to VR called it "VR's smartest, most hardcore roguelike." UploadVR, which also recommends it, put its caveat in the headline: "Some Sense Of Humor Required." If you have spent any time around the first game, you already know which camp you are in.

Fast Travel Games says every future PAYDAY: Aces High heist will be free, starting with Coup De Grâce on December 14, though the game also launched with five $2.99 items in its store. I have put a lot of hours into PAYDAY 2 on a flat screen, a game that sold a long list of heists as paid DLC, so a free-heists pledge from this series reads like a real change of policy to me. The other side of that coin came from Superbright, which turned In Death: Unchained's free wave mode into an $11.99 standalone app called Siege of Heaven. The mode stays free inside the old game. The studio's reason, per Nina, is that almost nobody on Quest knew it was there.

Both moves make more sense next to the number Sam pulled out of Meta's developer blog: from January to September, in-app purchases passed premium app sales as the Meta Store's biggest source of revenue, the first time that has happened. Free content and a store tab is where the money on Quest is now.

Also out Thursday: Project Hail Mary: Journey Among the Stars, the mixed reality piece built on Andy Weir's novel. UploadVR's review was titled "A Squandered Star," which tells you most of it. And Somnium Space has a Steam page again for a December return, five years after Valve's crypto rules pushed it off, minus its tip jar.

Three free PC VR mods

I grew up on Half-Life mods. Team Fortress Classic, then Counter-Strike back when it was still a mod. So a week with three serious PC VR mods in it is my kind of week, and one of them is for a game I have loved since October 2005.

That one is TheFreeMike's F.E.A.R. VR, which hit its 24th release in seven weeks, with slow motion on a wrist meter and the slide kick on a stick flick. Talemann's Dead Space VR moved Isaac's health bar from his spine to your forearm and put out three builds in three days. I played the 2008 original, and that forearm idea is the right call. Nina covered the third, RippeR37's Metro Exodus VR, whose first public beta runs the main campaign with manual reloads and your gear on your body.

All three are free and all three need your own copy of the game. Each of those pieces has numbered install steps and links the mod's own release page. Dead Space's installer is unsigned, so read that part before you run it.

Frame, Pico and Apple

Valve's SteamOS 0.5.8 beta for Steam Frame lets streamed PC VR games show your room through OpenXR's alpha blend mode, with X-Plane 12 as Valve's own example. Pico Space Pro has a reported December 2 launch from a Chinese outlet, which Pico has not confirmed, and its US reseller pulled a $2,899 listing at Pico's request. Pico called off its September launch event nine days before it was due, so until the date comes from Pico itself, on a page Pico controls, I am treating December 2 as a well-sourced rumor and nothing more.

Apple held a five-hour-plus immersive media session for Vision Pro creators on Wednesday, and its own host asked the question everybody has been asking. "Apple is committed to this platform," came the answer. Jordan's piece today is about the part with dates attached: third-party tools that finish Apple's live broadcast chain in early 2027. Nobody on stage talked about the next headset.

Around the industry

Skydance Games confirmed layoffs on Monday, about a month after its parent closed the Warner Bros. Discovery merger. There is no company headcount. TheWrap put it at at least 25, citing a LinkedIn post by a Paramount Games lead engineer, and a Skydance spokesperson said the company had "made the difficult decision to scale down some of our projects," without naming one. Skydance Interactive made The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners and Behemoth, and as of Friday no report says whether the VR team was part of it. Until somebody names a game, I am not going to guess.

Next week

Sega shows House of the Dead: Reawakened at IAAPA in Orlando on Tuesday, November 17. PAYDAY's first big patch is dated for the 19th. Black Friday deals are already live: 9to5Google found a Best Buy Quest 3S doorbuster at $297.49 for the 128GB model, with a $50 Best Buy gift card and Golf+ thrown in. And Meta's deadline to answer the two senators' questions about its camera glasses is the 25th.

Then December gets crowded. Pico on the 2nd if the report holds, Google's glasses on the 10th, PAYDAY's free heist on the 14th. The movie screen got the headlines this week. The calendar says the games and the glasses take them back.