Skip to main content

New IMAX theaters may trade in massive screens for this VR headset

With the Rift and Vive already on the market and the PlayStation VR just months away, it’s easy to forget about Starbreeze’s StarVR. However, the company has brokered a new deal with IMAX that could change the way you go to the movies, making it the official headset of IMAX’s new “premium location-based VR” experiences.

“IMAX sees a unique opportunity to combine premium equipment, more robust computing power, and expansive spaces to create a highly differentiated, destination based VR experience that will draw audiences out of their homes,” reads the official announcement. “The new VR experiences will be made available within select multiplexes as well as commercial locations such as shopping centers and tourist destinations.”

Recommended Videos

The announcement makes mention of John Wick VR, which Starbreeze is developing, and this raises an interesting question: will this “destination-based” VR involve setting up real-world obstacles for players. Dangerous as it may sound, nothing would be cooler than recreating the house assault scene from the beginning of John Wick.

Michael Bay, naturally, is “in advanced discussions” to bring his own VR experiences to IMAX and Starbreeze VR, though he stopped short of saying what those might be. A Pain & Gain weightlifting and steroid simulator, perhaps?

By the end of the year, IMAX plans to have six locations for its StarVR attraction, with plans for a larger release based on smaller-scale success. “We are big believers in location-based entertainment VR,” adds Peter Levin of Lionsgate, “and this is a great opportunity to expand the reach of our VR portfolio, including our John Wick episodic VR game and the other forthcoming titles we are working on with Starbreeze.”

If those “other forthcoming titles” include a Payday-style VR heist game, this partnership will be the greatest decision IMAX and Starbreeze ever make.

Gabe Gurwin
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
The Meta Quest just got an awesome new VR accessory
A person uses a Logitech MX Ink to scuplt in 3D with a Meta Quest 3

Logitech has announced its first piece of hardware in the VR space, a stylus that lets you draw and paint in 3D on the Meta Quest 3. The MX Ink Stylus is a familiar-looking sketching tool that works hand in hand with the Quest controller to drastically expand the capabilities of the popular Quest 3 VR headset.

The MX Ink also works with the Quest Pro and Quest 2 and supports several painting and sculpting Quest apps, including Gravity Sketch, PaintingVR, OpenBrush, ShapesXR, GestureVR, Arkio, and Engage XR. If you connect your Quest to a VR-ready PC, you can use the MX Ink Stylus with Adobe’s Substance Modeler and Elucis by Realize Medical.

Read more
The creator of the Oculus Rift is working on a mysterious new VR headset
Oculus Rift CV1

If you don’t recognize the name Oculus, it’s the company that kicked off the modern VR era. Facebook (now Meta) was so impressed by the Oculus Rift developer kit and sudden revival of interest in VR that it acquired the company in 2014. Now Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is back with plans for another VR headset.

While Luckey shared no specific details or even the name of the device, the announcement will no doubt create a buzz in the industry. The X (formerly Twitter) post came as a reply to VR analyst Brad Lynch’s reaction to Luckey’s X post about the ModRetro Chromatic, an upgraded reinterpretation of the wildly popular GameBoy Color handheld console.

Read more
Meta has a bold new strategy for VR
A concept image of someone playing a game in virtual reality.

Talk of the metaverse has waned in recent months, but Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shook things up with an Instagram post that could have a significant impact on the development of the best VR headsets and accelerate the pace of the metaverse.

The big news is that Meta will open-source the mixed-reality operating system it developed for the Quest 3 and earlier Quest VR headsets to expand the ecosystem to new partners.

Read more