NVIDIA DLSS adoption continues at rapid pace, with a further 9 titles adding the game-changing, performance-accelerating, AI and Tensor Core-powered GeForce RTX technology. This follows the addition of DLSS to 5 games last month, and the launch of Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition a fortnight ago. This month, DLSS comes to No Man's Sky, AMID EVIL, Aron's Adventure, Everspace 2, Redout: Space Assault, Scavengers, and Wrench. And for the first time, DLSS comes to Virtual Reality headsets in No Man's Sky, Into The Radius, and Wrench.

By enabling NVIDIA DLSS in each, frame rates are greatly accelerated, giving you smoother gameplay and the headroom to enable higher-quality effects and rendering resolutions, and raytracing in AMID EVIL, Redout: Space Assault, and Wrench. For gamers, only GeForce RTX GPUs feature the Tensor Cores that power DLSS, and with DLSS now available in 50 titles and counting, GeForce RTX offers the fastest frame rates in leading triple-A games and indie darlings.

HTC VIVE, the global leader in premium virtual reality (VR), today set a new benchmark for business and consumer VR, bringing 5K resolution and a 120-degree field of view as standard to the two new VR headsets announced today at VIVECON 2021, HTC's global VR conference. VIVE Pro 2 pushes the boundaries of PC VR for incredible gaming, creating, and experiences, while VIVE Focus 3 redefines business VR with a purpose-built All-in-One with no compromises. HTC also announced VIVE Business, its comprehensive range of tools designed to support businesses of any size to get the most out of VR.

"Today's launch marks a major milestone in our strategy to create the very best immersive experiences. We have listened to our customers, from well-known global companies to smaller firms and professional users, and have designed these premium headsets from the ground up to meet the challenges they face, adding a professional range of software, platform and services to make implementation as smooth and effective as possible," said Cher Wang, HTC Chairwoman and CEO. "In line with our mission, we've combined the very latest technology with the needs and aspirations of our customers, enabling them to unleash their imagination to improve people's lives and solve problems for business and society."

Today we're announcing features that will begin rolling out soon in the v28 software update to Oculus Quest headsets. Oculus Air Link is a wireless way to play PC VR games on Quest 2, while new Infinite Office features make getting work done in VR even easier. We're also announcing native 120 Hz support for Quest 2 for an ultra-smooth gameplay experience.

Since launching in 2019 and exiting beta last year, Oculus Link has been a widely used feature across the Quest Platform. With a gaming PC and a compatible USB-C cable, Link has given people access to Rift's impressive content library, including games like Asgard's Wrath, Lone Echo, Stormland, and more. But of course, being tethered to your PC can break immersion and limit your mobility. We know gamers want to use Link without a wire—to experience the full freedom of movement offered by Quest 2 while playing the high-end titles that can only run on a gaming PC. That's why we've been working on a new streaming technology called Oculus Air Link—a completely wireless way to play PC VR content on Quest 2 using WiFi, built on the successful Oculus Link streaming pipeline.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced the latest addition to its 7-series portfolio, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 780G 5G Mobile Platform. Snapdragon 780G is designed to deliver powerful AI performance and brilliant camera capture backed by the Qualcomm Spectra 570 triple ISP and 6th generation Qualcomm AI Engine, allowing users to capture, enhance, and share their favorite moments seamlessly. This platform enables a selection of premium-tier features for the first time in the 7-series, making next generation experiences more broadly accessible.

"Since introducing the Snapdragon 7-series three years ago, more than 350 devices have launched based on 7-series mobile platforms. Today, we are continuing this momentum by introducing the Snapdragon 780G 5G Mobile Platform," said Kedar Kondap, vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "Snapdragon 780G was designed to bring in-demand, premium experiences to more users around the world."

Capcom, the Japanese video game maker, has today announced specification requirements for its upcoming Resident Evil Village PC game, needed to play the game at certain resolutions/graphics presets. Starting with the minimum settings, Capcom is thinking of 1080p 60 FPS gaming. To achieve that you need at least an Intel Core i5-7500 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 processor paired with 8 GB of RAM. The minimum specification also requires a DirectX 12 capable GPU, with 4 GB of VRAM, just like NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 560. The company notes that using this configuration, framerate may drop below 60 FPS during heavy loads. If you want to use raytracing, which is now also present in the game engine, you must switch to at least NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT.

The recommended specification of course requires much beefier hardware compared to the minimum specification. If you want to have a steady 1080p 60 FPS experience without frame drops, Capcom recommends an Intel Core i7 8700 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor, paired with 16 GB of RAM, and a GPU like an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD Radeon RX 5700. However, if you want the raytracing feature you need a better GPU. To achieve a 4K resolution with 60 FPS and raytracing turned on, the GPU needs a bump to at least an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 or AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. You can check out the game requirements in greater detail below.

Sony has officially announced that they are working on a next-generation PlayStation VR headset for the PS5. Sony has only provided limited details of the upcoming headset but they include upgrades to resolution, field of view, tracking, and input. The new headset will also connect to PS5 with a single cord to simplify setup. The new VR controllers will incorporate various improvements from the latest generation DualSense wireless controller along with general ergonomic improvements. While this new PSVR system is still under development and will not launch until at least 2022 Sony has reaffirmed their commitment to the existing PSVR platform confirming the launch of several new titles including After The Fall, Sniper Elite VR, and Humanity. You can read the full release from Sony below.

Facebook Reality Labs Vice President Andrew Bosworth has recently confirmed in a Q&A session that the Oculus Quest 2 is likely to receive 120 Hz refresh rate support via an upcoming software update. The original Oculus Quest shipped with a 72 Hz refresh rate and when the Quest 2 was released with a better screen this refresh rate was kept for compatibility reasons. Facebook has now made 90 Hz the default refresh rate on the Quest 2 after a period of testing and it seems that this could soon be increased to 120 Hz with the main concerns remaining being performance and battery life. Developers would have the option to target 72, 90, or 120 Hz for their games and applications to run at. The 120 Hz refresh rate would be most noticeable when playing desktop VR games via Oculus Link with a computer capable of high-fidelity VR.

Apple has been rumored to be working on a mixed-reality device for some time now, expected to launch in 2022 and target the premium market. We have recently received information from a source with direct knowledge of the device who claims the new headset will feature dual 8K displays, eye tracking, inside out tracking, and swappable headbands. The report details a late-stage prototype device with a sleek curved visor design attached to the head with interchangeable headbands that offer features like spatial audio and extra battery.

The device would not include any traditional controllers instead relying on inputs such as eye movement, and hand gestures, or a physical finger ring device. The headset would include limited augmented reality features such as pass-through video from the over dozen cameras mounted on the device. The report also corroborates previous reports with an estimated price of 3,000 USD launching in 2022 and targeting first-year sales of 250,000 units before releasing a more advanced AR device in 2023.

Apple is reportedly developing an initial VR headset as a precursor to their eventual AR glasses. The upcoming VR headset will be a niche expensive product that may only be distributed through Apple's first-party stores and will cost considerably more than competing products from Oculus, Sony, and HTC. The headset will feature custom Apple silicon more powerful than their current M1 processor and include limited AR abilities. Apple had previously planned to develop a device that would harness the processing power of a user's mobile device but has since switched to a standalone solution which has increased complexity. The Apple VR headset codenamed N301 is currently in a late prototype stage and may be announced sometime in 2022, if this timeline holds then Apple may announce their AR glasses the next year in 2023.

Tundra Labs is a new company working on custom SteamVR positional tracking solutions. The company has recently unveiled its latest product the Tundra Tracker a smaller, cheap Vive Tracker alternative for SteamVR tracking. The open SteamVR tracking system allows any company to create products that are tracked by SteamVR Base Stations and simplifies VR accessory compatibility. The Vive Tracker and Tundra Tracker are both small SteamVR tracking devices worn by the user to more accurately capture movement.

The Tundra Tracker will be "60% smaller, consume about 50% less power, weight 50% less, and have twice the battery life," compared to the Vive Tracker according to Tundra Labs founder Luke Beno. While the product is a clear competitor to the Vive Trackers they will work in tandem meaning Vive Tracker owners can expand their tracking with Tundra Trackers and vice-versa.

Microsoft Flight Simulator was built from the ground up to achieve three key goals: realism, accuracy, and authenticity of flight. Today, we're excited to share that Virtual Reality for Microsoft Flight Simulator is now available on your favorite VR headset for PC, offering simmers the deepest and most immersive virtual flight experience in the new simulator to date.

The flight sim community has been a very active and insightful partner in shaping how the team approached VR, and continues to be a critical partner in our continued development as we make further improvements and add new features to the simulation. Adding VR to Microsoft Flight Simulator was a direct result of community feedback, and we look forward to continued involvement in the future of the franchise with us.

The Wacom VR Pen is a pressure sensitive stylus controller (VR pen), with tracking system, designed for creative professionals. It is perfect for ideating, sketching and drawing in the VR space, and supports the seamless workflow between 2D and 3D (VR). Wacom's 30 years of experience in pen-technology accumulates in this stylus controller, furthering the evolution of the drawing process.

Pimax, a VR hardware manufacturer known for innovative features such as extremely wide field of view and high resolution previously demoed a prototype VR headset at CES 2020 called the Pimax 5K SUPER together with Pimax new flagship headset the Pimax 8K X. Today Pimax is announcing the general availability of the new Pimax 5K SUPER, a refreshed version of the popular Pimax 5K Plus with a wide variety of updates.

The Pimax 5K SUPER features an Industry-leading high refresh rate with a standard 160Hz and even an experimental 180Hz mode along with an updated Modular Audio Strap (MAS) that allows much greater comfort and ease of use. The headset includes the popular Pimax comfort kit face cowling, Pimax nose guard, Pimax ruggedized housing system, and Pimax VR Experience software.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is set to receive VR support later this month after a closed beta took place in October & November. VR Support will be available to all Steam VR compatible headsets, not just the HP Reverb G2 and other Windows Mixed Reality devices as originally stated. Microsoft Flight Simulator is a notoriously hard game to run and the addition of VR will require some fast hardware to run. The closed VR beta featured minimum requirements of an i5-8400/Ryzen 5 1500X, NVIDIA GTX 1080, and 16 GB memory. Microsoft is aware of the high hardware requirements and is working to introduce a series of new performance optimizations for the title.

HTC VIVE, the leader in premium virtual reality (VR), announced today a host of new and enhanced capabilities available now for the VIVE Focus Plus, the all-in-one headset designed with the enterprise in mind. In the biggest update since the headset came to market in 2019, the features rolled out today specifically address the key operational and security concerns of businesses worldwide in deploying VR solutions.

Notably, the support of device management solutions by VMware and MobileIron enables organizations to remotely manage devices, applications and settings, and use existing licenses—or obtain them directly—with no middle-man applications or portals required. Users can also connect to corporate networks remotely using built-in VPN, or stay offline if needed, to comply with security regulations.

South Korean startup bHaptics have recently announced their TactSuit X series haptic vests. The TactSuit X40 and TactSuit x16 are designed to increase VR immersion in supported games. The TactSuit X40 features 40 Eccentric Rotating Mass (ERM) vibration motors across the front and back paired with a 9,800 mAh battery which should enable 18+ hours of playtime. The TactSuit X16 reduces the number of motors to 16 and features a 4,900 mAh battery which should provide 22+ hours of use.

The two suits both feature Bluetooth Low Energy 4.0 and include support for SteamVR and Oculus Quest games however the number of supported titles is very limited. Natively supported games include Onward, Thrill of the Fight, and Sairento VR but can be configured to work with Half-Life: Alyx, Skyrim VR, and Fallout 4 VR using bespoke mod files. The suits can also be used in an audio-based mode for unsupported games and other media which converts audio objects to general haptic rumbles. The TactSuit X40 and TactSuit X16 are now available for pre-order at 500 USD and 300 USD respectively with deliveries expected in December.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed in the company's latest earnings call that their bet on the Oculus purchase and its latest iteration, the Oculus Quest 2, has been developing nicely. The CEO reported that sales of the Oculus Quest 2 hardware have increased fivefold in relation to the original Quest. This is great news for the democratization of VR as whole, and can become the empowerment of a virtuous cycle: more VR users means a higher install base for companies to develop experiences for, and a higher number of high-quality experiences will definitely call more users to the ecosystem. On that note, some VR developers announced that since the Oculus Quest 2 release, they've seen between 800% and 1000% increase in sales.

The Oculus Quest 2 is available for a very palatable $299 - at least considering the historic pricing on VR headsets with the specs and quality this headset affords. Of course, the mandatory Facebook integration may be a hurdle for some users; until Facebook changes their mind on this (which, rest assured, they won't), users who are particularly suspicious of the company's intentions will have to wait for a comparable headset that features no such integration. Another alternative is to resort to other ways - arguably under the "Right to Repair" act - to free themselves from it.

We've recently reported on how the Facebook account requirements that have been built-in into the latest Oculus Quest 2 could render your VR headset an expensive paperweight. The Oculus Quest 2 is one impressive piece of VR material, with the specs - and perhaps more importantly, pricing - to bring a high quality VR experience to the masses, democratizing what will someday - and without a doubt - the premier way in which we interface with the digital world. However, those same Facebook account requirements were standing in the way, for some privacy-conscious users, in actually buying or using the device. Now, jailbroken efforts have been met with success - researchers report that they've been able to strip an Oculus Quest 2 from its Facebook account requirement.

The effort, led by XRSI - a non-profit organization with the goal for promoting privacy and security in the XR space - has announced they have verified a jailbreak method for the Oculus Quest 2. This was done by achieving root access to the device. According to XRSI, there are a number of researchers and hobbyists alike working on these jailbreak procedures for the latest Oculus device, but they've been met with legal quandaries surrounding the Right to Repair (essentially, establishing the ownership of hardware and contained software by users once they acquire a technological device) and whether or not their efforts are covered under it. The efforts were somewhat bolstered by Mozilla WebXR developer Robert Long offering $5,000 to anyone capable of freeing the Quest 2 from Facebook services - an offer later matched by Palmer Luckey, Oculus' departed founder. XSRI is working hard to insert AR/VR headsets into the Right to Repair provision.

A German website, Heise.de, has discovered a bug in HDMI 2.1 chipset that causes black screen issues on specific hardware. On AV chipsets sourced by Panasonic, and used by Denon, Marantz, and Yamaha HDMI 2.1 AV receivers, the chipset experiences a specific issue of a black screen. More specifically, the bug happens once you connect Microsoft's newest console, Xbox Series X, or NVIDIA's Ampere graphics cards. When connecting these sources at resolutions like 4K/120 Hz HDR and 8K/60 Hz HDR to Panasonic HDMI 2.1 chipsets, the black screen happens. This represents a major problem for every manufacturer planning to use the Panasonic HDMI 2.1 chipset in its AV receivers, meaning that the issue has to be addressed. The Audioholics website has reached out to Sound United and Yamaha to see what their responses were, and you can check them out below.

Today, Lenovo announced it has become a reseller of Varjo's human-eye resolution VR and XR headsets. This further deepens the existing collaboration between the two enterprise-class manufacturers and allows customers to easily access a complete solution for their professional virtual and mixed reality workflows. Through the reseller agreement, users can purchase "Certified for Varjo" workstations along with any device available in Varjo's portfolio via Lenovo's distribution channels.

"Many existing VR offerings in the market today are enterprise versions of a consumer designed product," said Mike Leach, solution portfolio lead, Lenovo. "However, Lenovo's professional workstations and Varjo's VR and XR headsets are specifically engineered to perform in the most sophisticated and demanding enterprise use cases. Our ability to offer customers a single point of purchase for certified workstations and VR/XR devices streamlines access to the tools needed for immersive workflows that are changing the way we work today."

Last week we brought you a report on how you could end up with a paperweight of an Oculus Quest 2 VR HMD if your Facebook account linked to the headset is banned. There's another aspect to this mess—voluntary account deletion. What if you decided you no longer need your Facebook account, and for whatever reason (read: privacy), decided to delete your account"? Turns out, that all the Oculus games that you own, will be gone forever, according to CixLiv on Twitter, who took the time to actually read the ToS. Deleting your Facebook account, which is a step beyond deactivating it, is a permanent erasure of your data on Facebook, which means that your Oculus profile gets deleted alongside, along with your digital rights to all the games that you purchased.

We've all been there - we've all looked longingly at someone elses' flashy paperweight - an Escher puzzle, a coffee mug, a smartphone, a badly flashed GPU or even a face mask are all worthy contenders vying for our attention. Facebook, however, has been turning the paperweight game on its head, and in the real world too - some users who bought the most recent Quest 2 headset (which is apparently selling pretty well) are being given the opportunity to adorn their desks with this high-tech, low-key paperweight due to its Facebook-required integration. Essentially, users who have their Facebook accounts banned (or, more specifically, with pending verification) have been met with difficulties in actually using their Quest 2 (which, by all accounts, is a huge step forward for the VR space).

In a recent interview with Chris Pruett, Facebook's Director of Content Ecosystem at Oculus it was revealed that the Oculus Quest 2 launch had been a huge success exceeding the companies expectations. Chris Pruett commented that the Oculus team "really couldn't be happier" with the launch and noted the headset was selling "faster than Quest did" and "maybe a little bit beyond what we expected". VR developers have been echoing these comments with Rec Room noting a 250% larger launch over the original Quest and a 10x increase in sales.

The data from Rec Room also shows that the majority of Oculus Quest 2 purchases are from people trying VR for the first time which is great news for the VR industry in general. Facebook has been able to keep up with the demand for the new headset which has evidently proven to be a great success even with controversy surrounding the Facebook account requirements.

Editor's Note: This is written by Arm vice president and general manager Paul Williamson.

Over the last year, I have been inspired by the innovators who are dreaming up solutions to improve and enrich our daily lives. Tomorrow's mobile applications will be even more imaginative, immersive, and intelligent. To that point, the industry has come such a long way in making this happen. Take app stores for instance - we had the choice of roughly 500 apps when smartphones first began shipping in volume in 2007 and today there are 8.9 million apps available to choose from.

Mobile has transformed from a simple utility to the most powerful, pervasive device we engage with daily, much like Arm-based chips have progressed to more powerful but still energy-efficient SoCs. Although the chip-level innovation has already evolved significantly, more is still required as use cases become more complex, with more AI and ML workloads being processed locally on our devices.

HTC VIVE, the leader in premium virtual reality (VR), today announced an exclusive partnership with PNY Technologies to distribute the new VIVE Pro Secure headset in North America. The new VIVE Pro Secure is designed to meet the specific privacy and security requirements of secure environments that require Authority to Operate (ATO)—such as government agencies and organizations—in addition to education, medical, and financial institutions. This professional-grade VR system provides all the benefits and features of the award-winning VIVE Pro, including top-tier graphics, premium audio, and SteamVR room-scale tracking, with hardware modifications that restrict all radios, cameras, and wireless communication functions for secure performance.

Use-cases for VR in government organizations have multiplied over the years and continue to grow as agencies adapt many of the best practices deployed in the private sector for use in training, data visualization, and manufacturing, among other applications. However, one of the major barriers to any technology adoption for organizations that require ATO is access to hardware that meets specific security and privacy requirements. The new Vive Pro Secure is a first-of-its-kind system offering hardware modifications to ensure optimal performance in the most demanding secure environments.