In the inaugural episode of VR Spotlight, UploadVR spoke with Bit Planet Games CEO Christopher Stockman about the studio’s twelve-year journey in virtual reality, the newly launched Quest 3 remasters of Ultrawings and Ultrawings 2, and his candid perspective on the VR industry in 2026.
VR Spotlight is UploadVR’s live interview series, which streams to YouTube from an in-VR virtual studio and syndicates to podcast platforms to bring audiences firsthand insights from the developers and creators building XR hardware and software every day. For the series premiere, UploadVR’s Mike Johnson sat down with Stockman to discuss how Ultrawings Remastered and Ultrawings 2: Gold Edition came together for Quest 3, the history of Bit Planet Games, his thoughts on PlayStation VR2 and Valve’s Steam Frame, and questions from the live audience.
If you prefer to listen on the go, VR Spotlight is also available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or you can read the full edited transcript of the conversation below.
The Origins of Bit Planet Games and Ultrawings
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
Welcome to the inaugural edition of VR Spotlight. My guest today is Christopher Stockman, the CEO of Bit Planet Games, whom you know best for the Ultrawings series. Chris, thank you for being the first guest on this new series. Before we get into the Ultrawings remasters, for the people who aren’t familiar with your company and your background, could you give a little history of how you came to form Bit Planet and how you got into VR?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
Thank you for having me. I’m super excited. Bit Planet will have been open for 13 years in February. I started it in 2014 before the VR craze happened because I wanted to make indie games. I’ve been making games for a very long time and it [Bit Planet] is not the first company I’ve started. It’s actually the second. I’m best known, for old-school gamers, as the design director on the very first Saints Row. I left and started my first company after that and made some Xbox Live Arcade games and a Wii game using original IP.
So I started the second company and about a year into it, I saw a demo of Job Simulator at Alex Schwartz’s garage and house, and I pivoted and decided that I wanted to do VR stuff. I loved Pilotwings, so Ultrawings was my original brainchild of doing Pilotwings in VR. That was the pitch. I went to Meta, got a little bit of money, and we were off to the races. Here we are 12 years later and still at it.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
That’s incredible. I know Ultrawings launched in 2017, but what year did your team first start working on it full-time?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
This was probably mid-2015. It took about a year and a half to make. We were a tiny team. It launched in 2017 on PC and then, I’ll be honest with you, it did not light the world on fire. In the first month, I think it made around $30,000, which was certainly not enough to support a team.
We were criticized for various things that were accurate, but what happened was we got a little bit of money from Samsung and we ported it to Gear VR. Then we got a little bit of money from Sony and we started the original PlayStation VR version. From there, we just kept signing deals. We got money from Microsoft. It was these smaller deals that kept us afloat. It wasn’t until it came out on Gear VR and then [Oculus] Go and when Oculus put us on the Go box. Samsung heavily promoted it. Oculus heavily promoted and then everything really took off when we ported it to the original Quest.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
And it was a launch title for the original Quest in 2019, right?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
Yeah, and then COVID happened and sales really took off for the first one. Then Ultrawings 2 came out, which was light-years better than the first one in every way imaginable, and that did incredibly well.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
Ultrawings was one of the first flying games in VR that didn’t rely on a gamepad or traditional controller. You were actually hands-on with the throttle and stick, flipping switches to start your ignition and get the propeller going. You didn’t really have a blueprint for that sort of interaction when you built it, and I think people underestimate how long it takes to make something as simple as reaching out your hand and flipping a switch feel natural. How long did it take you to get those mechanics figured out?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
When we first started working on it, we only had a gamepad because the Oculus Touch controllers weren’t available yet. Once we got early access to those, it took maybe three months or less to get something up and running. I wouldn’t say it felt good right away, but it was fairly quick. I will say this, when we first put it in, I’ve said this many times, but I’m really susceptible to motion sickness.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
That is fascinating given the games that you make.
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
I didn’t know this until our first playable build. I couldn’t play it for more than five minutes and then I was out for the rest of the day. Here’s the odd thing though. Motion sickness affects everybody differently, but as soon as we got motion controls working, it cured it for me completely.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
Really? Just the simple fact of being hands-on with the controls tricked your brain? That’s interesting too.
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
Yeah. I could play it then for hours and do crazy things like barrel rolls and somersaults.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
Did your susceptibility to motion sickness encourage you to put both realistic and more constrained arcade flight controls into the first game, or was that always the plan?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
It wasn’t because of me; it was suggested to us at the time, along with the various comfort blinders. At the time, there were huge concerns around motion sickness, whereas nobody really talks about it as much anymore. We didn’t even put arcade settings into the sequel because it would have been impossible to complete the game. You can’t dogfight when you can’t actually do any maneuvers.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
Was bringing dogfighting into Ultrawings 2 always part of the plan, or was it driven by player feedback from the first game?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
That was a natural evolution. It’s funny because we partnered with Meta again on the second game, and they wanted to see a playable demo. The very first thing we built was the ultralight aircraft with the grenade pistol. We had the Hawaii island built and what we demoed was firing on a convoy. And we thought this was crazy. You’d never do that in real life. Grenade pistols don’t even exist! Getting the dogfighting itself right, though, took a long time. It took about a year just to get the AI feeling fun and engaging.
0:00
Ultrawings Remastered trailer
Why 2026 Was the Right Time for the Quest 3 Remasters
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
Moving to the remasters that just launched here in 2026: when Quest 3 first came out in 2023, there were well over a hundred games that received Quest 3 updates, ranging from simple render resolution bumps to higher-resolution textures or more enemies on screen like in The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. That was all several years ago. Now we’re in 2026 with Ultrawings Remastered and Ultrawings 2: Gold Edition. Why was now the right time to put these out?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
Well, we were in the middle of developing another game that we put out last year and diverting attention to anything else wasn’t possible. When that game came out, it just wasn’t very good. I mean it was okay for a certain audience, but the core loop suffered. I basically sold that off and tried to figure out what I wanted to do next. I signed a deal with a company for another game.
While that new project was spinning up, I had a hunch that I could get the PC VR version of the original Ultrawings running on Quest 3 using some tricks up my sleeve. And I didn’t want to just port it without improvements, so I went above and beyond: new skyboxes, new music, new water, ambient life, a photo mode, new achievements, and a collection system mechanic in free flight, just to see if it could be done.
In tandem, I was poking around with Ultrawings 2. I’d been working on this for a while. I love the game, but I always had a problem with the static skyboxes. It just bugged me that I never saw any variety. There were different times of day, but they never changed. So I went off and explored that and wondered what I could do. That’s how both editions materialized.
Sales Ratios, Sequels, and PlayStation VR2
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
We have a question from the audience asking what sales figures were like on Quest compared to PC VR for the first game. You don’t have to give exact figures, but if you can share a rough ratio since you mentioned it didn’t light the world on fire until it launched on Quest.
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
For the first game, the Quest version made seven figures, whereas the PC VR version made low six figures. And Ultrawings 2 has made more than Ultrawings 1, which is actually pretty rare for a sequel on the Quest market.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
A friend of mine actually asked why you didn’t just make Ultrawings 3. My response was that threequels haven’t typically done well in VR. There’s a point of diminishing returns. Just checking review counts and reading the tea leaves, the deeper you get into a franchise, you start having people drop off. There’s a natural attrition.
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
I’m also of the mindset that when you continue a franchise, there has to be a reason to do one. It can’t just be new environments and a couple of new aircraft. There has to be a fundamental reason to come back to it. Ultrawings isn’t about story or characters you know and love and want to see continue. There has to be other reasons you want to come back. The delta between the first and second game was huge because we added combat, a helicopter, and a full open world on Quest 2 that hadn’t been done before, that sort of scale. For a third game, we have to ask ourselves what we can bring to the table that will get people to buy it. That will make it feel like it’s not just a 1.5 or 2.5. That is truly a new product that you want to sink your teeth into.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
I love that because that feels more like a creative decision than “this game did really well, so we should make another one.” Coming from a CEO, that’s really refreshing.
Another viewer in chat asks: “Loved Ultrawings on my original PlayStation VR. Do you think PlayStation VR2 has not been supported properly by Sony?” David Heaney and Kyle Riesenbeck just had a long discussion on The VR Download about PlayStation VR2 winding down as Sony removed it from direct sale on its website. Don’t get yourself in trouble though.
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
This guy knows my history. I’ve gotten in trouble with some of my comments from some hardware manufacturers. I don’t have any allegiance or ties to Sony, so I’ll just say this: I knew pretty early on that Sony was not going to support PlayStation VR2 in any meaningful way when they decided to launch with basically only one exclusive VR game—not counting Gran Turismo 7 since that’s a VR mode. When that launch title came out and they weren’t doing more, and weren’t supporting a lot of developers with deals, I had a feeling that the writing was on the wall. Actions speak way louder than words.
I think it’s a shame because it’s great hardware. I love PlayStation VR2. We ported Ultrawings 2, on our own dime, to PS VR2 because we thought there was a market for it, and we more than tripled or quadrupled our money back, so I have no regrets there. But if you release hardware and you have a plethora of IP to pull from that wouldn’t even take crazy budgets to make, you have to trickle out exclusive content to support that platform. And they didn’t.
I begged them to let us make a Colony Wars game, if you remember Colony Wars on the original PlayStation. I have history making space combat games and cockpit games, which is not that much of a stretch at all, and they didn’t give me the time of day. They were not interested in talking about that at all and I thought they were crazy.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
I will say this. I’ve talked to multiple developers both on and off the record, and you’re not the first person I’ve heard that from. You’re not even the tenth I have heard that from. I’ve heard that quite often.
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
I was very disappointed.
0:00
Ultrawings 2: Gold Edition trailer
Inside Ultrawings Remastered and Ultrawings 2: Gold Edition
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
Let’s get specifically into the remasters, starting with Ultrawings Remastered. Walk me through what is different in the Quest 3 remastered version compared to the original Quest release.
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
I want to talk apples to apples. Let’s talk about the difference between the original Quest version and the Quest 3 version of Ultrawings. The original Quest, the world was not open to the players. We couldn’t do it at the time. We had to remake all of the islands. We had a lot of corners to cut and things to trim. The world was just one island at a time, you had to load one island at a time and then you could spawn to another island and that’s how you progressed in the world. For this, I wanted to see if you could get the whole world in like you could on the PC version. Another thing is the assets. I wanted to use the PC VR assets.
Another thing you could see is shadows and real-time lighting. Having the shadows actually move in the world in real-time and not just be projected shadows like we did in the Quest version. Another thing you’ll see is photo mode and then we added the ability to zoom in. We didn’t have that in the PC version and didn’t have it at all on the Quest version. We couldn’t do that, there’s no way. You’re essentially rendering the world three times.
I wanted to add more life to the world. There’s a cow, there’s dolphins. New achievements for taking pictures basically. The other thing that is not in the trailer and is really kind of an Easter egg is if you take a photo in Free Flight in the ultralight, you have to be in the ultralight because you can grab the tablet unlike the other planes where the tablet is permanently attached to the plane. Every picture you take is saved to your device and not only that, but it adds a little postcard overlay over it showing what island you were at. I just thought that was a neat little thing to do.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
In a relaxed game like that, whereas the second game has dogfighting, but the first is much more relaxed, so it makes sense for the player to think “I want to document this.”
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
It’s cool. It’s really cool. And then you can share the postcards on social media. I don’t know if anyone will do it, but I thought it was really cool. We also added the balloon hunt where balloons spawn in the world and you have to pop them and you get achievements for that.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
Because Ultrawings Remastered is exclusive to Quest 3, the original version is still available on the store for Quest 2 and Quest Pro owners. We recently learned that Meta is winding down Quest 2 and Quest Pro support. When that happens, do you see yourself retiring the original version, or keeping it up?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
I don’t know yet. That’s probably TBD right now. I’m not sure yet what we’ll do.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
Between Ultrawings the original and Ultrawings Remastered, would you say that is a bigger leap than between Ultrawings 2 and the Gold Edition?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
That’s a good question. It is kind of remarkable that we got the PC VR version that was not at all optimized for mobile to actually run on a Quest 3 at essentially what feels like 90 frames per second. It’s pretty remarkable and feels great. It just depends because the gold edition has so many visual things that we did that it almost feels like you want to play through it again because of what the new things bring to the table in terms of immersion and making you feel like you’re in a living, breathing world. They are good for different reasons.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
When I spoke to someone from the now-defunct Polyarc Games, I was told that they hadn’t updated anything in the first Moss game since the original Quest build until the Quest 3 update. They didn’t do an uplift for Quest 2. So I was curious since Ultrawings started with the Gear and the Go in terms of standalone, so were we still working on the base Gear VR build?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
Yeah, this was not from Quest at all. This was literally the PC VR version brought in and I decided to add a bunch of stuff to give people a reason to buy it. It’s a huge delta. There’s a gigantic difference.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
What about the changes between Ultrawings 2 and Ultrawings 2: Gold Edition?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
First, the Gold Edition includes the Kodiak DLC aircraft and all of its associated content right out of the box. The other thing I wanted to put in was a time of day system. Now, I was highly skeptical that this was going to work. I wanted to put in a dynamic cloud system where you could see different cloud types spawn and different weather conditions, which we had in the original second game, but I wanted to see how far we could push it to make it look good. The time of day system I’m especially proud of.
Being able to take off at sunrise and see the sun arc through the sky, watch it change from morning to noon to late afternoon to dusk to night and then to see the moon come out, with different phases, from full moon to an eclipse and back again. To see all that in real-time and see all the lightmaps blend, I’m tooting my own horn and maybe I am biased, but what Quest game has ever done this? It’s performant and it looks stunning. Getting the clouds working, they look pretty darn good and they move, they’re not static. To see the storm system and see the lightning streaking across the sky and hear the thunder and you see the raindrops on your canopy.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
We were talking offline before we started this interview and I told you I was racking my brain when I was playing the Gold Edition and the day/night cycle happened, I totally lost track of time. When that happens in headset, it’s different. I used Ocarina of Time as an example because you’re running across Hyrule Field and it changes from day to night, it doesn’t have that same effect because I’m staring at a monitor. I kept trying to think of an example like that in VR, unlike in Saints and Sinners where there is a scene load and a hard transition between, but I’ve never seen it done seamlessly in VR. When the day cycle changed while I was in free flight, I had to stop and check how long I had been in the headset.
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
The Gold Edition is free to try and I am incredibly biased, I know, but how could you not be impressed by that? I went through probably six iterations of the cloud before I was happy with the look and the same thing with the rain. To see the rain on the canopy slide and the drops refract on the glass on Quest 3! What the hell? They bead and move as raindrops would do naturally on a fast-moving plane.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
Coming from the Gear, that had to be a fist-pump moment when you got it working, given you’ve been doing this for over twelve years.
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
On standalone! This is happening in real-time. The trailer was filmed entirely on Quest without doing anything fancy.
Ultrawings Remastered screenshots
Development Challenges, Pricing, and PC VR Plans
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
A viewer in chat asks what engine and tools you used, and what the biggest development challenges were on the remasters.
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
We use Unity 6, incredibly more performant than the previous versions. Development challenges? The biggest challenge was iteration. The game is largely done, but going back and getting the look and getting something performant was crucial for me. We did release an update a couple of months ago, but it wasn’t performant and people were not happy with it, so we pulled it. We went back to the drawing board and made sure it was extremely performant and having that time of day system that didn’t require some kind of fade or transition sequence or a hard stutter. I’m not saying it’s a hundred percent perfect, but it is damn near close.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
Was this when you updated to the Universal Render Pipeline?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
No, it shipped with URP. We were one of the first games to do it. And iteration really, you should see what the first clouds looked like. They were very abstract looking and they looked weird, they had weird edges. It wasn’t until we started doing a more procedural element to them to make them look wispy. We used to have them morph, meaning the clouds would form in different shapes, but it was way too expensive. Maybe for a platinum version in a later headset.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
For those who don’t know developer terms, when he says expensive, he means computationally. He means performance overhead. Another viewer asks: “One of my favorite VR games is Walkabout Mini Golf, and I love how they bring out new courses to keep the game fresh. Could Ultrawings do something similar with new maps?”
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
Yes and no. The issue is you would have to go to an entirely new location in the world. We actually built Ultrawings 2 with room in the world for about seven additional islands, but adding more into the same seamless world would make it run like a slideshow. Doing it would require a hard load into a separate world, which would feel weird to do one island at a time. So it isn’t in the cards for this title. However, we are hard at work on our next project, and we’re experimenting with something early on that may allow us to expand on Ultrawings 2 in a different way.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
Our producer and games writer, James Tocchio, asks if you encountered any funny bugs during development that made the team laugh.
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
Honestly, no because I mostly find bugs annoying! In the first Saints Row, there was a lot of physics stuff that was entertaining and fun. We put a whole mode in the game based on a bug that we discovered with physics: Insurance Fraud. I can’t think of anything off the top of my head. There was stuff spawning in the world or if you crashed, especially in multiplayer, you could see other people in the crash sequence. That was weird. Spawning outside the map was a common thing.
One other cool thing I want to say about Gold Edition is we added more ambient life into the world, so when you’re flying around, you’ll see boats and cars and stuff like that. We added police cars and ambulances that can spawn. Rarely when one spawns, they can trigger their lights and you’ll see the lights spawn. We have sailboats in the world on the Hawaii Island, they float on the water. We didn’t spend a lot of time on the live system and I wanted to spend more on this. It’s the little tiny details that I’m incredibly proud of.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
A couple of people in chat asked if you are working on a Steam Frame version.
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
I’m working on the PC VR version right now. I’m highly skeptical on a standalone Frame version. I don’t know if there’s value in a standalone Frame version versus just doing a PC VR version and supporting the Frame. I am working on the PC VR version and I’m happy with how it’s going. It’s not a straight port. It’s an enhanced Gold version with real-time shadows, a real wave system. It’s going to require a beefier video card for sure.
I’m trying to go the extra mile on a PC VR version because so many people complain saying it’s just a port of the Quest 2 version. What people don’t realize is the Quest 2 version is a port of the PC VR version. We made two different versions of the game. They have to share assets or we would never be done. It took us four years to make the second game which is a long time for a VR game.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
This came up earlier, and I specifically remember this because I was going to write an article when you announced the Quest 3 update. So I remember seeing the message and then you pulled it back. What went into the decision process behind nixing the Quest 3 update and going with the Gold Edition?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
I thought that the amount of time we had put into it and wanting to improve on multiplayer, which we have and continue to do so and probably going to add a new mode, but I thought we had spent a lot of time and effort on this and wanted to get a return on that investment. Originally it was going to just be a Quest 3 update and we got emails from Quest 3 players saying they could no longer play multiplayer with friends on Quest 2. Later, someone pointed out that we could let original owners switch back to the legacy Quest 2 build via the release channel selector if they wanted cross-play with Quest 2.
So what I did, out of the kindness of my heart, and I really care about our fans, is I just released the Gold Edition as an update to the original version of the game on Quest 3. It does not have the DLC. You have to buy that as you would normally. So it’s a thank you. I don’t want to be accused of being greedy and that I gave something and then pulled it back.
If you buy the original version, you go on the store, go to the release channel dropdown and select Legacy. It will not be getting any updates, to be clear.
Ultrawings 2: Gold Edition screenshots
The State of the VR Industry in 2026
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
To wind things down, I want to talk about the broader VR ecosystem. Since James and I came on full-time in February, we’ve written over 30 articles about studio layoffs and games shutting down. Where does Bit Planet Games stand right now, and how do you view the VR market today compared to when you first got in?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
Well, the market has dramatically changed and I’m mostly talking about the player base. Is it still possible to make a lot of money in VR? Yes, for a certain type of game right now. It needs to be free-to-play, and yes there are outliers before someone says I Am Cat makes a lot of money. Yes, there are outliers. They tend to always be around $14.99, these outliers. I Am Cat is a good VR game and appeals to a wide variety of people. Everyone loves pets and being a cat and doing cat things. I get why it’s super successful, but by and large, if you are not free-to-play, you are buried. You’re not going to make a dent. That’s the market that we’re at right now.
So Steam Frame comes out, and I love that Valve decided to make another headset and support the VR ecosystem, but the reality is where’s the content? PC VR games? Okay, sure but the question begs, where’s the content? It feels like a device trying to be a jack of all trades and master of none. Is it a standalone device? Sure, but it’s also a streaming device. It’s weird, like they compete with each other. Are there people using standalone more than streaming? My hypothesis is that they are not. Valve fans buying that headset are already in the Valve ecosystem and likely have a PC. How many people have a Steam Deck and no PC? My guess is very small. I find that hardware to be value adds and Steam Frame is the same thing. Valve has even stated publicly that they expect more flatscreen games to be played on Steam Frame than VR games. The fact that there’s no exclusive games made for it, again, actions speak louder than words. The VR industry is severely hurting because the market has shifted to free-to-play social games and ones that cater to 14 and 15 year olds. My hope is those kids will age out and want to play more mature content.
As for me, I could go make flatscreen games. I love Ultrawings. It is near and dear to my heart, but the only way to continue it is in VR. I love making VR flight games, and I’m going to keep doing it until I can’t do it anymore. I just really want to make Ultrawings games. That’s all I want to make. Also, right now, in our Discord at discord.gg/bpg, we have discount codes for fans who want to grab the new editions and support what we do. They are limited use, so they’ll expire in March and there’s a limited number of times they can be used. You can get the game for very cheap and you’re supporting us.
Mike Johnson (UploadVR):
One last question I love to ask every developer: when you’re not making games, what are you playing in your spare time to unwind?
Christopher Stockman (Bit Planet Games):
I am one achievement away from platinuming Balatro on the PlayStation 5, and I’m about 4,000 hours in so far. Thank goodness for the PlayStation Portal streaming handheld, because that’s how I can chip away at it before and stay married! I’m trying to get that done before November 19th.
