Executive summary
Welcome to your weekly briefing on the metaverse and spatial computing. Here are your snippets to sound smarter in meetings this week:
Top story: Meta announced that Horizon Worlds will shift to a primarily mobile platform, explicitly separating it from the Quest VR ecosystem, as the company rethinks its VR strategy following major losses in its Reality Labs division and recent layoffs and studio closures.
No analysis as the story is self-evident, at least for now. If you want to read more writing, you can peek at why we are all still pushing people into boxes.
This week’s stories: The Louvre Museum and Snap’s Paris AR Studio launched “The Incredible Unknowns of the Louvre” on 18 February 2026, a free AR experience that allows visitors to explore six artworks via smartphones, offering digital reconstructions, animations, and contextual insights to enhance understanding of lesser-known masterpieces.
My Chamomile tea is working overtime this evening.
This week’s stories
Catmosonic launched a free app on the Meta Horizon Store on 19 February 2026 that turned the Quest 3 controller into a sonic stimulation device wrapped in a virtual purring cat, using patent-pending vibration technology and NHS-informed content to deliver health-focused experiences.
Excurio and the Centre des monuments nationaux have launched The Last Stronghold: An Epic Medieval Adventure, a large-scale VR experience debuting in London on 12 March that immerses visitors in 14th-century Carcassonne, allowing them to explore the fortified city, interact with medieval life, and follow a narrative shaped by loyalty, rebellion, and the Inquisition.
Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust is launching a three-month VR pilot on Ruby Ward in Maidstone to transport older women with dementia to immersive destinations such as Venice, Santiago and New York in an effort to reduce stress, anxiety and restlessness.
The Louvre Museum and Snap’s Paris AR Studio launched “The Incredible Unknowns of the Louvre” on 18 February 2026, a free AR experience that allows visitors to explore six artworks via smartphones, offering digital reconstructions, animations, and contextual insights to enhance understanding of lesser-known masterpieces.
Meta announced that Horizon Worlds will shift to a primarily mobile platform, explicitly separating it from the Quest VR ecosystem, as the company rethinks its VR strategy following major losses in its Reality Labs division and recent layoffs and studio closures.
mSurgery provided VR headsets that allowed junior doctors at Hospital Clínico to train in endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), enabling immersive observation of high-risk biliary and pancreatic procedures while overcoming operating theatre capacity limits and maintaining patient safety.
St Mark’s National Bowel Hospital partnered with Revolve Labs to capture stereoscopic footage from a Da Vinci surgical robot and produce an interactive VR training module that allows surgical trainees to explore a robotic pan-proctocolectomy from multiple 3D viewpoints outside the operating theatre.
Spire Murrayfield Hospital Wirral became the first UK hospital to use Pixee’s augmented reality technology in a total knee replacement, enabling real-time visual guidance that enhances surgical precision and supports improved patient outcomes.
Therapists in Gaza City introduced virtual reality headsets in displacement camps to provide injured and traumatised children, including seven-year-old Razan, with short immersive therapy sessions that offered temporary psychological escape amid ongoing conflict and limited medical care.
Note: The Immersive Wire is run by Tom Ffiske, who also works at Accenture. The contents of the newsletter should not be regarded as Accenture’s views.
All spelling mistakes are deliberate, actually.
