Augmented World Expo 2026 is underway in Long Beach, CA, and while the show floor is packed with enterprise XR and industrial AR solutions, there is a surprisingly strong lineup of tech that should have gamers paying very close attention. Here are the five AWE 2026 vendors making the biggest waves for the gaming space.
bHaptics TactGlove DK3 – Feel Everything
bHaptics is showing off the next evolution of its TactGlove at AWE 2026, and the DK3 is a serious step forward. The new gloves expand haptic coverage from six to eight points and add palm actuators to eliminate the dead zone that has plagued VR gloves for years. A stronger wrist actuator and a Tactile Illusion algorithm work together to simulate continuous sensation across your entire hand – think feeling fur in your palm or water running from your fingertips. At around $385 and already available for pre-order, these are the most consumer-reachable full-hand haptics we have seen yet, with full Unity and Unreal SDK support baked in.
FreeAim VR Shoes – Walk Anywhere Without Leaving The Room
FreeAim VR is now shipping production-ready VR Shoes built on wearable robotics that let you walk naturally while staying in a small physical space. This is the kind of locomotion solution that makes you forget about thumbstick drift and motion sickness in a single step. The system is designed to integrate with third-party platforms, which means this is not a one-game gimmick – it has real potential across PC VR titles and location-based entertainment arenas alike.
Hololabs Abyss: Vault – Co-op VR Worth Leaving The House For
The studio behind the AR tech in Mario Kart: Koopa’s Challenge is premiering Abyss: Vault at AWE, and it is already an Auggie Award finalist in both Best Game and Best Independent Creator categories. The experience is a 30-minute, 2-6 player free-roam VR adventure aimed at LBE venues, built in partnership with Pico and Synthesis for a coordinated worldwide launch. If you have a VR arcade nearby, keep an eye out for this one.
HADO – AR Dodgeball Is Actually Competitive Now
HADO’s physical esport sounds gimmicky on paper – AR headsets, wrist sensors, 3v3 energy-ball dodgeball on a small court – but watch a match and it clicks immediately. They are actively building toward a U.S. flagship arena, a national league, and school and university circuits. If you have ever wanted an active, spectator-friendly competitive XR sport to follow, HADO is the most developed version of that concept on the planet right now.
Five Squared Web Wide Worlds – The Open Web Metaverse That Doesn’t Suck
Five Squared Interactive is showing an MIT-licensed ecosystem for building and visiting interactive 3D worlds directly in a browser – no app store, no walled garden. Worlds are defined in their VEML markup language, live at a plain URL, and open equally on headsets, phones, and PCs. At their AWE booth, a VR user builds a live world while bystanders join instantly via QR code on their phones. With Minecraft world import and AI-generated worlds from text prompts baked in, this feels like the grassroots metaverse answer that gamers actually asked for.
