I’m back in Italy: I’m happy to eat pasta and lasagna again, but I guess I will miss the baozi (especially the amazing ones I’ve found in Chongqing). I’m a bit tired, but quite all right. Talking about the XR ecosystem, it has not been very exciting this week, but luckily, yesterday, Pico gave us something interesting to talk about…
Top news of the week
(Image by Pico)
Pico teased Project Swan headset and Pico OS 6 operating system
With a premiere video stream on YouTube, Pico unveiled some features of its upcoming headset, codenamed Project Swan, and its accompanying operating system, Pico OS 6. It has not been an official launch, more like an official sneak peek to leave us wanting more.
Let’s start by talking about Project Swan: the headset will feature a dual-chip design, like the Vision Pro: there will be a custom Pico Silicon chip taking all the heavy lifting of tracking and environment understanding, anda “Flagship SoC” (something like a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip) that the apps can use to run. This new SoC chip will be 2x the computational power of a Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, so we can expect it to be an XR2 Gen 3 or something like that.
Thanks to these powerful chips, Project Swan can support two 4K displays, with an average angular resolution of 40 PPD and a peak one of 45 PPD. This high pixel density guarantees readable text for the headset, which is important for productivity use cases.
The new Pico OS 6 is meant to support spatial computing and multitasking, with 2D and 3D apps running at the same time, like on the Vision Pro. Interaction modes are gaze-and-pinch or controllers, depending on the use case. The main menu of the OS is basically the same as the Vision Pro.
Pico has also unveiled new developer tools, aimed not only at traditional XR developers but also at standard developers, so that they can use the tools they already know (e.g. Android Studio and Kotlin) to develop spatial apps.
All in all, Project Swan seems to be a solid enterprise/prosumer clone of the Vision Pro. Price and release date are still unannounced, but the headset should come out in 2026.
Other relevant news
Images captured by smartglasses may be reviewed by humans
An interesting investigative article by the Swedish magazine Svenska Dagbladet unveils thatimages captured with Ray-Ban Meta glasses may be seen by human reviewers in low-wage countries. And these images may include naked people, bank card accounts, and so on: whatever happens in front of the glasses may be sent for review. The article focuses on Meta, but I’m pretty sure this happens for almost all the brands, considering we had similar cases in the past with Alexa, Roomba, and other AI-assisted systems.
The Swedish magazines interviewed some operators working in a dedicated center in Kenya, and they confirmed (under anonymity protection) that they constantly review images and videos coming from the lives of Western people, including private moments and sensitive information. And these media files come from the Ray-Ban Meta glasses. This is all allowed by Meta’s privacy policy that states that “in some cases, Meta will review your interactions with AIs, including the content of your conversations with or messages to AIs, and this review can be automated or manual (human).” The “human review” means, of course, that someone somewhere in the world is looking at what you did and how the glasses performed, to improve the performance of the system.
This is again standard practice, because a human review is necessary to verify that AI is behaving as expected, and to correct its behaviour when this is not happening. But at the same time, this is a huge privacy problem: when you are wearing smartglasses and trigger AI, you don’t expect that someone in Kenya may see your girlfriend who is naked in front of you while you are wearing the glasses.
So, be careful of where you activate your smartglasses…
The8thWall is open-sourcing its WebAR engine
A few months ago, I wrote in this newsletter that The8thWall was shutting down. It was really sad news: what was the best WebXR solution on the market had to be closed. But now we have some unexpected positive news about it: it is going to be open-source.
With an out-of-the-blue post on its blog, The8thWall announced that its famous WebAR engine is going to be made open source. The company has published an MIT-licensed open source version of the engine framework that does not include SLAM. But the core architecture and major AR feature modules, including Face Effects, Image Targets, and Sky Effects, are now all available in the open. SLAM is only available inside closed-source binaries. Over the next few months, other components, like an MCP server, and many samples on how to use the engine, will be released as open source.
This is really great news: thanks to this, the community can keep The8thWall alive. And if a company needs a custom WebAR engine for its purposes, it could start from The8thWall codebase and build the engine upon it, without having to do it from scratch. It’s an unexpected out-of-season Christmas gift for everyone.
(Thanks Lapo for the tip)
The drawing of Meta’s next headset has been found in the firmware
The usual dataminers have found a low-resolution image of the next Meta headset in the Horizon OS firmware. The image is dramatically low-res, but it is clear that it depicts a lightweight, thin headset. Someone tried to extrapolate from it some plausible renderings using AI, and the results look ok, but in my opinion don’t respect how the headset will actually look like. But it is interesting that this image confirms that Meta is probably going to launch a new lightweight headset in the upcoming times.
The headset we are talking about is the Meta Puffin/Loma/Phoenix headset, which should be somewhat similar to the just-announced Pico Project Swan headset. The datamining also confirmed that the headset will support eye tracking, so I bet interactions will be based on gaze+pinch.
More info (Low-res of graphics of new Meta headset)
More info (AI-made depiction of the device)
News worth a mention
(Image by Google)
Google details the UI design for glasses
Google Glimmer is the company’s design language for the interfaces in the coming Gemini glasses (smartglasses and AR glasses). You can not have the same UI of phone apps or even VR apps on XR glasses, because the background is transparent, outdoors there is the sunlight, and currently the FOV is very small. So you have to think about a user interface that occupies a small space, and that is clearly readable. Glimmer is thought exactly for that, and Google gave these useful guidelines for all AR developers to follow.
Canon showcased a very small headset
At the CP+ 2026 show in Japan, Canon showcased a very small tethered headset. The device is incredibly small and lightweight, and is not meant to be worn on the head, but it has a small handle, so that you can take it and keep it close to your face for a short period of time. These are glasses that are made for public demos, so the users passing by don’t have to waste time on a full VR setup, but they can just take the glasses, put them close to their face, enjoy the experience, and then put the glasses down. I think they are very cool.
Create XR experiences with Google Gemini
People with a Gemini Pro subscription and a Galaxy XR headset can now quickly prototype XR experiences using Google Gemini. Using the pre-built XR Blocks Gem, or building your own version, you can give a prompt to the system and have a WebXR experience quickly generated. Currently, it is not ready for production apps, but it is fantastic for quickly prototyping experiences.
Meta may release Air Link 2.0
It seems that Meta may deploy to PTC Air Link 2.0, which is a new, overhauled system to stream PCVR experiences to your Quest. This is fantastic news, because currently, Air Link has many issues. I wonder if the fact that Valve announced such great PCVR streaming has pushed Meta to work on its algorithms, too.
Steam had its Next Fest event
For the past week, Steam held its Next Fest event, where demos of upcoming games were available for free. And among the available games, there were pretty cool VR ones, like the upcoming game about the Ninja Turtles, Birdseed VR, How To God, and many more. I personally think this is a great event, and whenever I can, I use it to try the games I am excited about.
Some news about content
- Top Dogs is the new Immersive Documentary that Apple has released for Vision Pro. It gets you close to dogs of special breeds
- Fixer Undercover, a VR puzzle game where players will infiltrate a prison under the guise of a maintenance worker, is now out for Quest, priced at $15
- Underwater PC VR narrative puzzle game Echoes of Mora will launch on April 29 on Steam
- Evangelion: Cross Reflections will be playable with hand tracking, so it will probably have casual gameplay and a focus on the narration of its story
- Space Control, an absurd and comic VR game inspired by cartoons like Futurama, is going to be released in April
- Made-for-VR racing game Raceclub is available starting today in Early Access via the Meta Horizon Store for $12.99
- Thief Simulator: Heist Crew, the new chapter of the Thief Simulator saga, can be wishlisted now on Meta Quest
- The Midnight Walk, a dark fantasy adventure using clay-sculpted models, gets a new lower price of $29.99 on PC VR and PlayStation VR2.
More info (Top Dogs)
More info (Fixer Undercover)
More info (Echoes Of Mora)
More info (Evangelion: Cross Reflections)
More info (Space Control)
More info (Raceclub)
More info (Thief Simulator VR: Heist Crew)
More info (The Midnight Walk)
Some reviews about content
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City demo on Steam showed a very well-made game
- Sherlock Holmes: The Master Detective is a game very focused on the point-and-click mechanic of finding objects in various rooms. It is pleasant, but being in early access, it still has limitations
- Space Control shows genuine promise. Its interactive design is strong, and its environments are lovingly crafted and richly detailed. But its humour sometimes is a bit cringeworthy
- Retrocade is a beautifully polished rendition of the virtual 1980s arcade VR gamers have dreamed of. But it is available only for the Apple Vision Pro and is currently only in single-player mode
- The Amusement shows a lot of potential as a narrative puzzler, but its implementation of roomscale movement may push players away early in the demo
- Vortex 9 VR is a good porting of the corresponding mobile game
- Fixer Undercover is a worthy addition to any puzzle lover’s library. It is a good game, with puzzles that make you think outside the box, and good humour. But the graphics are not top-notch, and the story is predictable
More info (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City)
More info (Sherlock Holmes: The Master Detective)
More info (Space Control)
More info (Retrocade)
More info (The Amusement)
More info (Vortex 9)
More info (Fixer Undercover)
Other news
An interesting article on Upload VR explains how to use your Quest 3 as a Spatial Computer
Pimax is evaluating collaborations with Luke Ross
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Donate for good
Like last week, also this week in this final paragraph I won’t ask you to donate to my blog, but to the poor people who are facing the consequences of the war. Please donate to the Red Cross to handle the current humanitarian situation in Ukraine. I will leave you the link to do that below.
Let me take a moment before to thank anyway all my Patreon donors for the support they give to me:
- Alex Gonzalez VR
- DeoVR
- GenVR
- Eduardo Siman
- Jonn Fredericks
- Jean-Marc Duyckaerts
- Reynaldo T Zabala
- Richard Penny
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- Nikk Mitchell and the great FXG team
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- Marco “BeyondTheCastle” Arena
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- Mark G
- Simplex
- Gregory F Gorsuch
- Paul Shay
- Matias Nassi
And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
(Header image by Pico)
The post The XR Week Peek (2026.03.03): Pico teases Project Swan headset, The8thWall goes opensource, and more! appeared first on The Ghost Howls.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://skarredghost.com/2026/03/03/pico-project-swan-the8thwall/