UPDATE 2/9: Added an important known issue for Dev Drive users. Please see the known issues below.
Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26052 to the Canary
Windows MR and HP Reverb VR headsets to lose all functionality in Windows 11 24H2, so don’t update if you use those headsets.
I find it despicable that support for working hardware can be just abandoned after only a few years, and at least a basic driver should be released (ideally open source) if not the full WMR package, which few cared about anyway.
I’m hoping that Monado takes off at least as I only used Windows begrudgingly anyway.
This is why I don’t use any ‘features’ that these types of companies push. Core functionality only. Everything else is them screwing around until they get bored or can’t make enough profit then they dump shit and expect you to be happy and follow their next little shit project.
You’re being down voted because Apple supporting old hardware is the only thing that Apple is good about. Would have done well in almost any other thread.
I dunno, with that TPM 2.0 requirements some still perfectly capable computers won’t be able to run Windows in 2025, at least not one that is kept up-to-date. That’s gonna generate some e-waste in many companies who can’t switch to Linux on a whim.
Eh, can probably get around that in command line. But still, most people don’t know that, so they’ll assume their shit is outdated, and… back to e-waste
The thing businesses want the most is support, and with Windows 10 being EOL in 2025 and Windows 11 requiring a TPM 2.0 to be officially supported, if they encounter a large-scale issue and they’re running an unsupported configuration they’ll get a tough luck response from Microsoft Support.
I am more than a little surprised. Like I get Microsoft is not overly into VR or MR and even their AR headset has stagnated, but to drop support for products people bought in part because Microsoft backed it, then to just drop it is burning customer confidence and trust. Foolish move.
Its a classic company move tbh. Make something, develop it further, hope it catches on and if it doesnt kill it off because maintaining it costs money.
Its a classic and understandable move. Microsoft has done it a few times tbh. Zune, windows phone, webtv, silverlight, … :')
I agree, but no one is really expecting VR/MR/AR/Spatial Computing to be making money right now. It is about investing in the future of immersive tech.
I’m still not sold on the whole spatial computing taking off anyway. I don’t actually see what problem it solves. If you look at the Apple headset (I forget when it’s actually called) It does not really use the virtual nature very much. It’s all about putting 2D displays in the air it’s not really making use of the fact that it’s an artificial interface.
We’re a long way off from iron man type shit, but yeah this is the path to getting there. It’ll probably take decades but hopefully we can iron out the kinks and inconveniences to not so much “solve” problems vs normal screens, but elevate our ease of access and capabilities.
It’s just software at this point so hopefully Apple can update it. And hopefully other manufacturers will come up with similar products because I don’t want Apple controlling in the market. Otherwise there won’t be a market.
You are not wrong, but if you want to be in a position to rise with Immersive tech you have to put the time in now to develop and refine it. Getting out of immersive computing right now is like getting out of AI until right now saying it needs to be more mature first. By the time it is more mature, the market players will have been established. I think Apple has really set the Immersive Computing benchmark based on overviews like this one. Immersive computing is very compelling when done right. https://www.youtube.com/live/xsFuHCTfaZw?si=A9XjgQfKpYJORbJ0
Im not seeing the immersive tech go anywhere any time soon. Microsoft tried it, google tried it, a shit ton of other small businesses tried it. Its not going to go where these businesses live. Id like to be proven wrong but it feel like its just not. We miss the kill app and if it existed with current tech, it wouldve been made already.
I think its best to lay current MR/AR/spacial computing to rest and wait a few years like what happened with 3d/vr in the past 40 years :)
I’d imagine apple has more power to give vr/ar cultural relevance than Google or MS. Apple fans are in their own extremely expensive league, and I’m sure there will be premium VR apps developed now. Even the quest 3 seems to be starting to get better software now, come to think of it.
So if they had made more specs/revisions for a tech that already didn’t sell particularly well?
Even stuff like the Valve Index (and HTC Vive before it?) never got a significant marketshare. And WMR, like steam machines before it, would have split that between the three or four manufacturers who followed the spec.
The facebook quest 2 seems to be doing well but that also pushes hard on the closed ecosystem side of things (you CAN use it on PC but it is clearly marketed as standalone). Maybe if MS had done that but… again, if it was just “put more money in” then they would have done it during the past few years of “spend it or lose it” because of inflation.
I loved my HP Reverb G2 (best seated VR ever). I am not at all surprised to see MS fully kill it considering that “the killer apps” have largely been the same for the better part of a decade. The market is stagnant and we are going to need apple’s dream of everyone wearing AR goggles 24/7 to come to fruition for there to really be much of a market going forward.
Plugging in to use a Windows Mixed Reality headset will not work starting with his[sic] build. Windows Mixed Reality is no longer available to users as Windows Mixed Reality has been announced as deprecated. This includes the Mixed Reality Portal app, and Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR and Steam VR Beta. Existing Windows Mixed Reality devices will continue to work with Steam through November 2026, if users remain on their current released version of Windows 11 (version 23H2) and do not upgrade to this year’s annual feature update for Windows 11 (version 24H2). This deprecation does not impact HoloLens.
No separate driver download at all. It sounds like it will stop working in 2026, even if you don’t update.
Existing Windows Mixed Reality devices will continue to work with Steam through November 2026, if users remain on their current released version of Windows 11 (version 23H2) and do not upgrade to this year’s annual feature update for Windows 11 (version 24H2).
Tldr: fuck you, if you want to use your hardware, bend over and spread your cheeks cuz your OS is gonna be raw digging the security vulns we’ll be releasing over the next 2 years.
It honestly feels good to be on windows 10 LTSC IOT. None of this nonsense bloat installed and you get exactly the security updates you need sparsed out.
I dread the moment I actually have to migrate to Windows 11 but at least this version of Windows 10 I can use like, another 9 years lol.
Agreed, although I believe features like WMR don’t work with LTSC without additional effort, so something to be aware of for those with VR headsets looking to migrate.
The problem is those headsets flat out stop working in newer Windows releases. I’d actually prefer if WMR was just a driver + SteamVR/OpenXR shim, but you need the whole thing to use it.
Having Aphantasia doesn’t mean that a person has no imagination, he just has no inner eye, no way to see the imagination in his mind.
I know that because I have lots of imagination but have Aphantasia.
World building for roleplay and stories is where I am really good, as long as I don’t have to do anything with a visual component like drawing
There are different forms of aphantasia. I have to try really hard to visualize something in my mind and often have to go into excruciating details to have a clear visualization. Something like TTRPG is unplayable for me because either I drag the entire party into mostly useless details (and we spend at least half an hour in one room) or I play like I have literally no senses. I could just be a talking head in someone’s bag.
Yeah it is, like most stuff with the brain, a spectrum from low to high Aphantasia.
I can’t visualize anything in my mind, I can describe what I know or what I make up but that’s it a list of information or details, when it comes to world building highly imaginative details and information, but I have no clue how it really looks like.
That’s why I love AI art generators, I can input all my imaginary details into the prompt and it then emulates my missing inner eye. Something I never could on my own, how should I draw something when I have only words to describe it?
For me AI Art tools are a godsend, a pacemaker for my inner eye so to speak.
I have one of these, but only use it for SteamVR. Does this mean I can’t update either?
AFAIK, the drivers come from Windows.
Edit:
From the article:
Existing Windows Mixed Reality devices will continue to work with Steam through November 2026, if users remain on their current released version of Windows 11 (version 23H2) and do not upgrade to this year’s annual feature update for Windows 11 (version 24H2). This deprecation does not impact HoloLens.
Well fuck. This headset is the only reason I keep a Windows PC around at all.
Microsoft is like Alphabet - why would you adopt anything they make? It’s going to be abandoned with no support long before the devices are worn out, to include desktop and laptop PCs.
Former G2 owner here, I felt really scummy selling mine for cheap a year after launch. That purchase was such a fiasco, the damn thing never worked quite right.
“Monado” has no specific meaning and is just a name.
As a Xenoblade fan, I call BS.
But I do expect we’ll see more open source VR solutions and support as adoption increases. They’re still in that phase of expensive luxury goods in most cases - PSVR costs more than a PS5 and also requires one to work, Index is $1000, and I don’t even know where the Apple headset got its pricing.
Most of these also want to lock down their VR as a platform, instead of being ubiquitous hardware like a monitor, and I think lack of standardization is gonna hurt them in the long run by narrowing their audience.
Most of these also want to lock down their VR as a platform, instead of being ubiquitous hardware like a monitor, and I think lack of standardization is gonna hurt them in the long run by narrowing their audience.
This. This is what I believe is holding back this tech more than anything else. Even pricing. Just make the hardware and let people play with it however they want, just like they could when PCs first became a thing.
So, this is kind of funny, because when you think “cyberpunk” “high tech, low life”, there always was/is the question of how this tech abundance but also poverty can coexist. Surely it takes a lot of money to build all this?
It’s waste. That’s the answer. It’s the repurposed, discarded corporate trash that didn’t meet the quarterly goal. It’s all starting to make sense you guys!! In new and terrifying ways!
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This is why I don’t use any ‘features’ that these types of companies push. Core functionality only. Everything else is them screwing around until they get bored or can’t make enough profit then they dump shit and expect you to be happy and follow their next little shit project.
Windows creates so much e-waste.
Not nearly as much as Apple
You’re being down voted because Apple supporting old hardware is the only thing that Apple is good about. Would have done well in almost any other thread.
I dunno, with that TPM 2.0 requirements some still perfectly capable computers won’t be able to run Windows in 2025, at least not one that is kept up-to-date. That’s gonna generate some e-waste in many companies who can’t switch to Linux on a whim.
Eh, can probably get around that in command line. But still, most people don’t know that, so they’ll assume their shit is outdated, and… back to e-waste
The thing businesses want the most is support, and with Windows 10 being EOL in 2025 and Windows 11 requiring a TPM 2.0 to be officially supported, if they encounter a large-scale issue and they’re running an unsupported configuration they’ll get a tough luck response from Microsoft Support.
I am more than a little surprised. Like I get Microsoft is not overly into VR or MR and even their AR headset has stagnated, but to drop support for products people bought in part because Microsoft backed it, then to just drop it is burning customer confidence and trust. Foolish move.
Windows phone/mobile vibe
Its a classic company move tbh. Make something, develop it further, hope it catches on and if it doesnt kill it off because maintaining it costs money.
Its a classic and understandable move. Microsoft has done it a few times tbh. Zune, windows phone, webtv, silverlight, … :')
I agree, but no one is really expecting VR/MR/AR/Spatial Computing to be making money right now. It is about investing in the future of immersive tech.
I’m still not sold on the whole spatial computing taking off anyway. I don’t actually see what problem it solves. If you look at the Apple headset (I forget when it’s actually called) It does not really use the virtual nature very much. It’s all about putting 2D displays in the air it’s not really making use of the fact that it’s an artificial interface.
I was expecting some Iron Man level applications.
We’re a long way off from iron man type shit, but yeah this is the path to getting there. It’ll probably take decades but hopefully we can iron out the kinks and inconveniences to not so much “solve” problems vs normal screens, but elevate our ease of access and capabilities.
It’s just software at this point so hopefully Apple can update it. And hopefully other manufacturers will come up with similar products because I don’t want Apple controlling in the market. Otherwise there won’t be a market.
You are not wrong, but if you want to be in a position to rise with Immersive tech you have to put the time in now to develop and refine it. Getting out of immersive computing right now is like getting out of AI until right now saying it needs to be more mature first. By the time it is more mature, the market players will have been established. I think Apple has really set the Immersive Computing benchmark based on overviews like this one. Immersive computing is very compelling when done right. https://www.youtube.com/live/xsFuHCTfaZw?si=A9XjgQfKpYJORbJ0
Im not seeing the immersive tech go anywhere any time soon. Microsoft tried it, google tried it, a shit ton of other small businesses tried it. Its not going to go where these businesses live. Id like to be proven wrong but it feel like its just not. We miss the kill app and if it existed with current tech, it wouldve been made already.
I think its best to lay current MR/AR/spacial computing to rest and wait a few years like what happened with 3d/vr in the past 40 years :)
I’d imagine apple has more power to give vr/ar cultural relevance than Google or MS. Apple fans are in their own extremely expensive league, and I’m sure there will be premium VR apps developed now. Even the quest 3 seems to be starting to get better software now, come to think of it.
understandable from a business point of view? sure
Understandable from a customer point of view? get bent
If enough people bought a WMR for that to matter then it wouldn’t be getting shitcanned.
agreed, but if MS innovated and pushed the tech forward more they could have gained a bigger audience by now.
So if they had made more specs/revisions for a tech that already didn’t sell particularly well?
Even stuff like the Valve Index (and HTC Vive before it?) never got a significant marketshare. And WMR, like steam machines before it, would have split that between the three or four manufacturers who followed the spec.
The facebook quest 2 seems to be doing well but that also pushes hard on the closed ecosystem side of things (you CAN use it on PC but it is clearly marketed as standalone). Maybe if MS had done that but… again, if it was just “put more money in” then they would have done it during the past few years of “spend it or lose it” because of inflation.
I loved my HP Reverb G2 (best seated VR ever). I am not at all surprised to see MS fully kill it considering that “the killer apps” have largely been the same for the better part of a decade. The market is stagnant and we are going to need apple’s dream of everyone wearing AR goggles 24/7 to come to fruition for there to really be much of a market going forward.
No separate driver download at all. It sounds like it will stop working in 2026, even if you don’t update.
Tldr: fuck you, if you want to use your hardware, bend over and spread your cheeks cuz your OS is gonna be raw digging the security vulns we’ll be releasing over the next 2 years.
Thanks, can we also kill off copilot before it arrives uninvited?
It honestly feels good to be on windows 10 LTSC IOT. None of this nonsense bloat installed and you get exactly the security updates you need sparsed out.
I dread the moment I actually have to migrate to Windows 11 but at least this version of Windows 10 I can use like, another 9 years lol.
Agreed, although I believe features like WMR don’t work with LTSC without additional effort, so something to be aware of for those with VR headsets looking to migrate.
That is fair, but personally I felt WMR is a niche feature and those with VRs can game using Steam or other vr application alternatives.
I understand that there are people that wanna use this so I get its stupid they’re pulling away a feature that you actually need.
The problem is those headsets flat out stop working in newer Windows releases. I’d actually prefer if WMR was just a driver + SteamVR/OpenXR shim, but you need the whole thing to use it.
Update: No longer friends with AR/VR. Now Copilot/ChatGPT (OpenAI) is best friend.
I can see this meme in my head
It’s like you have AR built in! (is called imagination)
Not everyone has it built in.
Aphantasia
Having Aphantasia doesn’t mean that a person has no imagination, he just has no inner eye, no way to see the imagination in his mind.
I know that because I have lots of imagination but have Aphantasia. World building for roleplay and stories is where I am really good, as long as I don’t have to do anything with a visual component like drawing
There are different forms of aphantasia. I have to try really hard to visualize something in my mind and often have to go into excruciating details to have a clear visualization. Something like TTRPG is unplayable for me because either I drag the entire party into mostly useless details (and we spend at least half an hour in one room) or I play like I have literally no senses. I could just be a talking head in someone’s bag.
In my case I’m pretty close to “no imagination”.
Yeah it is, like most stuff with the brain, a spectrum from low to high Aphantasia.
I can’t visualize anything in my mind, I can describe what I know or what I make up but that’s it a list of information or details, when it comes to world building highly imaginative details and information, but I have no clue how it really looks like. That’s why I love AI art generators, I can input all my imaginary details into the prompt and it then emulates my missing inner eye. Something I never could on my own, how should I draw something when I have only words to describe it? For me AI Art tools are a godsend, a pacemaker for my inner eye so to speak.
Then we elect those people to positions of high office
I have one of these, but only use it for SteamVR. Does this mean I can’t update either?
AFAIK, the drivers come from Windows.
Edit:
From the article:
Well fuck. This headset is the only reason I keep a Windows PC around at all.
Well there’s always LTSC.
Microsoft is like Alphabet - why would you adopt anything they make? It’s going to be abandoned with no support long before the devices are worn out, to include desktop and laptop PCs.
As a reverb G2 owner, my rage knows no bounds. Can’t even sell the thing in good conscience.
Former G2 owner here, I felt really scummy selling mine for cheap a year after launch. That purchase was such a fiasco, the damn thing never worked quite right.
As a Xenoblade fan, I call BS.
But I do expect we’ll see more open source VR solutions and support as adoption increases. They’re still in that phase of expensive luxury goods in most cases - PSVR costs more than a PS5 and also requires one to work, Index is $1000, and I don’t even know where the Apple headset got its pricing.
Most of these also want to lock down their VR as a platform, instead of being ubiquitous hardware like a monitor, and I think lack of standardization is gonna hurt them in the long run by narrowing their audience.
This. This is what I believe is holding back this tech more than anything else. Even pricing. Just make the hardware and let people play with it however they want, just like they could when PCs first became a thing.
I’m hoping the rumoured Deckard is actually a thing, as that will likely be the closest thing to an open source headset.
What a bunch of jokers!
Linux could teach 'em a thing or three
If you don’t support the hardware in the first place you don’t have to continue supporting it!
Guy tapping forehead meme
So, this is kind of funny, because when you think “cyberpunk” “high tech, low life”, there always was/is the question of how this tech abundance but also poverty can coexist. Surely it takes a lot of money to build all this?
It’s waste. That’s the answer. It’s the repurposed, discarded corporate trash that didn’t meet the quarterly goal. It’s all starting to make sense you guys!! In new and terrifying ways!