The 8th edition of the Venice Immersive 2024 will be kicking off on August 28th, which will be featuring over 28 hours of immersive storytelling and immersive art content across over 70 different projects. This year there area a lot more immersive installations representing over a third out of the total number of on-site projects (18 out of the 52). There's eight mixed reality projects, a couple of projects featuring haptics, and one that prominently featuring AI character interactions. There are also 20 VRChat worlds in the Worlds Gallery along with 3 VRChat worlds in competition with 1 project that's using Resonite social VR platform. I had a chance to catch up with the co-curators Liz Rosenthal and Michel Reilhac again this year to get a sneak peak of the 26 projects in competition as well as 9 of the projects within the Best of Selection (note we talk about 10 Best of experiences, but it was announced just this morning that the Apple Vision Pro experience Adventure was pulled from the festival after attendees who had it booked received a message from Vivaticket saying, "we regret to inform you that the immersive experience Adventure for which you made a reservation has been cancelled" ). We also talk about how there's going to be a private think tank on September 1st looking at LBE distribution challenges and opportunities. Be sure to check out their previous report titled "Think Tank: Immediate Options to Address the Pressing Needs of Immersive Distribution." [EDIT: September 16, 2024 - Here are the links to all of my coverage and interviews from Venice Immersive 2024] #1416: Preview of Venice Immersive 2024 Innovations in Immersive Storytelling & Art Installations with Curators #1417: Kicking Off Venice Immersive Converge with Translating "Riven" Classic Point-and-Click Adventure to Open World VR Puzzler #1418: Award-Winning Animators Experiment with Sandbox Social VR "Garden Alchemy" Research Project #1419: Creating a Four-Sided Pepper's Ghost Pyramid Illusion with "Telos I" Dance Piece #1420: Experimental Documentary "Mammary Mountain" Captures Oral Histories of Breast Cancer Journeys #1421: Interactive Mixed Reality Doc on ADHD "Impulse: Playing With Reality" Takes Home Immersive Achievement Prize at Venice Immersive 2024 #1422: A Simple Silence Wraps Up Craig Quintero's Trilogy Exploring Spatial Transformations & Immersive Encounters #1423: Translating Anime IP into a VR Film with "Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom" #1424: Quill Animation Series "Nightmara" Pushes at the Edges of Immersive Storytelling Innovations and Novelty #1425: Immersive Art Installation "Ceci Est Mon Cœur" Uses the Poetry of Light to Explore Childhood Trauma #1426: Champ De Bataille Uses Cinematic VR to Explore the Horrors and Emotion of World War I #1427: Poetic Environmental Storytelling of "Fragile Home" Elegently Tells the Story of War in Ukraine with Mixed Reality #1428: Exploring the Horrors of Forgotten Refugee's Plight in "Somewhere Unknown In Indochina" #1429: Below Deck Innovations Fuse Theatrical Staging, Mixed Reality, & 360 Video #1430: Immersive Expeditions Prove to be Profitable LBE Business for Emissive's Fabien Barati #1431: Taking a Walk through Art History with "Un Soir Avec Les Impressionnistes, Paris 1874" #1432: Combining Biodata with Open World Mushroom Adventure with "Symbiosis/\dysbiosis: Sentience" #1433: Challenging the Authority of Museums with College Biennale Winner "The Gossips' Chronicles" #1434: Choreographing the Collective VR Viewing Experience into a Public Art Performance with "Free UR Head" #1435: Blending Poetic Animation with Spatial Audio Orchestration with "Earths To Come" #1436: Transforming 2D Art into an Immersive VRChat Journey Complete with Themed Avatars with "Strangeways" #1437: What If…? Director Dave Bushore on Translating Marvel IP into an Emmy-Award Winning Interactive Cinematic Journey

The Night Under Lights Presents: The Seasons at the Moon Pool (replayable VRChat link and video) shown during Raindance Immersive was one of the most immersive music experiences I've ever had in VR so far. It was so awe-inspiring and incredible to see 3 DJ / VJ sets using the SNR Labs particle-screen version of their holographic Apple Global Illumination shader that I covered previously in episode #1413 with Apple_Blossom and A://DDOSS. The real-time immersive lighting effects have to be seen in VR to fully appreciate the awe-inspiring nature of it. You can see a video capture of it below, but if you have PCVR, then I highly, highly recommend checking out the replayable version on VRChat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZJ53W7NYnA VJs are able to input their 2D video livestream into the SNR Labs particle screen shader, which then translates the luminance values into height and enables a sort of volumetric translation. It has a DepthKit-like effect where you can see 3-dimensional shapes and objects with shadows or imagine if you were to push a cube through a sheet of fabric to get a feeling of objects from one-degree of fidelity, which is height from a fixed plane. VJ Silent and VJ namoron were instrumental in helping to develop this shader with SNR Labs, and TehArbitter's Moon Pool location for Night Under Lights was also instrumental in helping to shape the development of it. VJ TehArbitter (aka Arbi) brought together two other VJs and three DJs to present three sets with the theme of the different seasons. The first set was DJ Ladybug + VJ Silent, the second set was DJ Yuna + VJ TehArbitter, and then the final set was DJ Terkoiz + VJ namoron. I had a chance to catch up with half of the performers including VJ Silent and VJ namoron as well as with DJ Ladybug to talk more about the development of this specific project, but also to recount some of the history of the visual effects in the VRChat clubbing scene as well deeper trends of volumetric and holographic visual effects that VJs are exploring in VR. Also whether it merits a new terms as video jockey or visual jockey doesn't always fully encompass the holographic, volumetric, spatial, immersive, or narrative elements that are being explored. Some of the VRChat clubs discussed include: Dimension, Virtual Base event, Shelter, Ghost Club, Concrete, Concrete: Pale Sands, PSHQ, Slyfest, Loner, Kaleidosky, Sanctum, Schism, Deviate, Atlantis, Mochii's Island, Reflections, Redacted, Heist, Light Dimension, Simplicity, & Endless Serenity Also worth noting is that there are three VRChat worlds that are being featured in the Venice Immersive Worlds Gallery that connected to the themes discussed in this episode, and they're also three of the 20 VRChat worlds in the Venice selection that are not and likely will not have a public-facing world that's easily accessible. The NUL Presents˸ The Seasons Replay ＠ moon_pool is not in the Venice Immersive worlds gallery, and does have replayable version. But Silent works at Sanctum, and their billboarded stereoscopic screen in the Reactor is being featured in Venice, and the SNR Labs: Test Facility will be demonstrating the more 3D version of their Holographic shader named Apple Global Illumination, and Silent also mentioned Jerk and May who have the Concrete: Pale Sands, which is also a part of Venice Immersive. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Thrasher is a really compelling VR game with a very satisfying and magical core game mechanic inspired by ribbon dancing. It's the latest VR game from Brian Gibson, who designed the art and music for the VR rhythm game Thumper, as he teamed up with former Harmonix co-worker Mike Mandel via Puddle Studio. Thrasher was also partially inspired by the classic Snake video game, but in this version you're controlling a much more abstract and artistic "space eel" entity with your hands in order to deliberately crash through crystals and avoid obstacles. There's many power-up permutations to extend on this idea, but the main thrust of the game is that it's just super satisfying to manipulate this space eel entity by moving a single hand around either using tracked controllers or hand tracking alone. Thrasher is launching today on the latest Meta Quest platforms as well as on the Apple Vision Pro. Inspired by the lack of input controls on the Apple Vision Pro, they also implemented hand-tracking to the point where you can quickly twirl around your index finger as an input control to the point where it started to feel like this entity was a sort of extension of my body. I played all the way through it first on the Apple Vision Pro with just hand tracking, and then on the Quest 3 with hand-tracked controllers, and I actually preferred the way that the game feels with just hand-tracking, even though it's technically more precise with Quest's 6-DoF controllers. Even though it's technically harder to play within the hand tracking mode, it just feels a bit better, especially if you prefer to play in more of a vibe-out mode than trying to climb up the leaderboards. I was a part of the Raindance Immersive jury that awarded Thrasher with the Best Game award because it has such a novel, unique, and satisfying game feel along with a lot of depth and development as they explore this mechanic to it's logical extreme with different power-ups, obstacles, and an increasingly difficult game progression curve. There's even a very subtle and nuanced combination system for advanced players that is elaborated in more detail on their website with this Thrasher Gameplay Guide, or you can watch this THRASHER: "How to Win" video for more details on how it works. I played through it twice without having access to these supplemental materials, and I wasn't able to fully figure it out. So this system is a bit cryptic and hidden from the perspective of the game design, but you can dig into more details in and experiment more on the first level. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN6qfuSAqaw I had a chance to catch up with Gibson and Mandel last month to talk about their journey and design process in creating Thrasher, and some of their preliminary thoughts on whether they'll release a more relaxed vibe-out or Zen mode. Whether they decide to or not, Thrasher is certainly one of the best games that I've played so far on the Apple Vision Pro, and their ribbon-dance inspired mechanic is something that feels super magical and fun to play around with. It's also a good example to discern some of the phenomenological differences in what the game feels like with controllers (and haptics) a blend of embodied movement with abstracted agency, and with just hand tracking or finger tracking and a bit more visceral embodied experience overall. Also stay tuned for my next episode where I had a chance to chat with Creature label co-founder Doug North Cook talking about helping to produce and represent Laser Dance, Thrasher, and their flagship mixed reality game of Starship Home. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Dirk Van Welden, Studio Lead and Creative Director at I-Illusions, at Meta Connect 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Noah Robinson, Founder and CEO of Innerworld VR, at Meta Connect 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Cloudhead Games CEO & Creative Director Denny Unger at Meta Connect 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Dean Takahashi, Lead Writer at Games Beat and Venture Beat, at Meta Connect 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed VR filmmakers Hugh Hou & Keeley Turner at Meta Connect 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed founder of Rebecker Specialties Matt Hargett at Meta Connect 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Ethereal Engine co-founder and CEO Liam Broza at Meta Connect 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Meta Horizon World Builders JoyReignVR & JDun at Meta Connect 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Meta Horizon World Builder Paige Dansinger at Meta Connect 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed VR YouTubers Jasmine Uniza (VR with Jasmine) & Naysy on their first impressions of the Quest 3 at Meta Connect 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Laser Dance is a mixed reality game by solo XR game developer Thomas van Bouwel, who previously released minimalist puzzle game called Cubism. I had a chance to try out Laser Dance through Raindance Immersive, and it's one of those types of games that I think will really help define some of the key affordances of successful mixed reality games that modulate your existing context enough to transport you into another realm of play where you use your body as a controller. https://twitter.com/tovanbo/status/1806323145000816867 I had a chance to catch up with van Bouwel to unpack more about the mixed reality and hand tracking lessons from Cubism in the first half of our conversation, and then we dive into many of the peculiar considerations of mixed reality game design for Laser Dance covering everything from gameplay that adapts relative to the uniqueness of someone's space, the evolving Presence Platform functionality for mixed reality along with the types of custom programming needed to solve some of the open problems, as well as collaborating with the newly-formed Creature label that is providing additional support for innovative indie-driven, mixed reality and XR games like Laser Dance, Thrasher (more on this experience tomorrow), as well as their flagship mixed reality game of Starship Home. We also cover some of the unique insights from architecture that have also really helped to shape van Bouwel's journey from architectural visualization into the frontiers of leveraging spatial affordances for mixed reality gameplay. The release date for Laser Dance has not been announced yet, but you can wishlist it here. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed CNET writer Scott Stein at Meta Connect about his first impressions of the Quest 3, Rayban Meta Smartglasses, AI, and Meta's strategy as they move into Mixed Reality. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here are links to all all 12 interviews from my series covering Meta Connect 2023 in looking at first impressions of Quest 3 and Rayban Meta Smartglasses, mixed reality trends, AI, Meta Horizon World Builders, WebXR and alternative production pipelines like React Native, Apple Vision Pro buzz, VR filmmaking, unpacking the changes in Unity's fees, and digging into Qualcomm's new chips with the XR2 Gen 2 and AR1 Gen 1. #1306: Kickoff of Meta Connect Series with CNET's Scott Stein Analyzing Meta's XR & AI Announcements #1307: Quest 3 First Impressions with YouTubers Naysy and VR with Jasmine #1308: Meta HorizonWorld Builder Paige Dansinger on Creating Art History Museum Tours #1309: Why JoyReignVR and JDun Chose Meta's Horizon Worlds as their Preferred Social VR Platform #1310: Ethereal Engine as an Open Source, WebXR Pipeline for Apple Vision Pro and Beyond #1311: Bringing React Native to Enterprise XR App Development with Matt Hargett #1312: VR Filmmaking Tips from Hugh Hou & Keeley Turner #1313: Veteran Games Journalist Dean Takahashi on Mixed Reality, AI, Sci-Fi, Unity vs Unreal, and Meta Connect #1314: Cloudhead Games CEO Denny Unger on the Need to Support Indie Devs to Push Limits of VR & Mixed Reality #1315: Latest Research on Innerworld VR Mental Health Peer Support Platform & Cognitive Behavioral Immersion #1316: I-Illusions Premieres Mixed Reality Game "Bam" at Meta Connect & "Space Pirate Trainer" History #1317: Qualcomm's XR2 Gen 2 and AR 1 Gen 1 Announcement by Hugo Swart This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

This is a critics roundtable for Venice Immersive 2023 featuring Pola Weiß, a funding executive for XR and new technologies Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, as well as Alina Mikhaleva who produces virtual events at EngageXR heads up a Creative XR Studio called Less Media Group, Agnese Pietrobon who is a writer at XR Must, storylistener and independent researcher, and myself, Kent Bye of the Voices of VR Podcast. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's a list of all 35 podcasts in this Venice Immersive 2023 series (as well as 4 interviews of projects where I've previously interviewed the creators) #1270: Preview of Venice Immersive 2023 Selection with Co-Curators Liz Rosenthal & Michel Reilhac [SXSW] #1189: "Forager" Volumetric Timelapse of Mushroom Growth Hits a Sweet Spot of Touch, Smell, & Immersive Storytelling [SXSW] #1203: "Body of Mine VR" Uses Full-Body Tracking Embodiment to Explore Gender Dysphoria & Transgender Testimonies [Tribeca] #1243: Origin Story of "Pixel Ripped 1978" with ARVORE and Atari Team + Novel Game-Within-a-Game Mechanics [Tribeca] #1250: Translating 1:1 Experimental Theatre Encounters into 360 Video to Transcend Expectations with Craig Quintero #1272: Kickoff of Venice Immersive 2023 Coverage with Winner “Songs by a Passerby” and Atmospheric Storytelling #1273: Switching First and Third Person POV with “Finally Me” Coming Out Story #1274: “Queer Utopia: Act I Cruising” Explores Queer Identity, Exile, AIDS, & Sex in the 80s #1275: Translating 2D Paintings in Immersive Biography with “Frequency” #1276: Beautiful “Emperor” Explores Aphasia Communication Gaps with Compelling Interactions #1277: A Vocal Landscape is an Intimate Study of Authentic Conversation and Surrealism #1278: Visualizing the Invisible and Pushing Forward the Grammar of Visual Storytelling with “Flow” #1279: “Home” Explores Human Nature Relationship with Visceral Projection Mapped Installation #1280: Interactive Projection Mapped Installation “Populate” Poetically Explores the Human Nature Dialectic #1281: The Many Movie Magic Techniques Behind “David Attenborough’s Conquest of the Skies” #1282: Ethnographic Study of South Korean Studio Apartments with “Oneroom-Babel” #1283: The Exquisite Lighting in Fins’ “Complex 7” VRChat World #1284: Gina Kim’s Environmental Storytelling Innovations with “Comfortless” #1285: PK’s Break Series in VRChat Explores the Intersection of Shaders and Indie Music #1286: Capturing the Horrors of the Ukrainian War in “First Day” with High-Res Environmental Captures #1287: “Letters from Drancy” is an Incredibly Emotional and Powerful Story About the Holocaust #1288: “Tales of the March” Uses Durational Takes in 360 Video to Explore Death Marches #1289: “Sen” Is a Beautifully Transcendent Virtual Japanese Tea Ceremony Exploring Reincarnation #1290: “Floating with Spirits” Explores the Day of the Dead, Indigenous Transmissions, & Elemental Animism #1291: Excellent Redirected Wandering to Discover Indigenous Transmissions in “Origen” #1292: Pioneering the VR Essay with “Shadowtime” Critiquing Sci-Fi Dystopic Aspirations of VR #1293: The Personalized AI-Driven “Tulpamancer” VR Sandpaintings with AI Text to Audio & VR Workflow #1294: Buddy Comedy “Gargoyle Doyle” Pushes at the Edges of Mixed Reality Storytelling #1295: The AR Pop-Up Book Innovations of “Jim Henson’s The Storyteller” & Amazing Shot of Earth in “The Orbit” #1296: “Wallace & Gromit in the Grand Getaway” Translating Big IP Narrative & Animation Rules into VR #1297: Studio Syro’s Groundbreaking Quill Series “Tales from Soda Island” #1298: The Story Behind “Pepitos: the Beak Saga” Quill Piece #1299: Character-Driven Quill Animation Piece “Perennials” Explores Nostalgia and Family Dynamics #1300: Prolific Meta XR Producer Ryan Genji Thomas on VR Storytelling Innovations with Animation #1301: “Gaudi,

I interviewed Remember This Place: 31°20’46’’N 34°46’46’’E director Patricia Echeverria after Venice Immersive 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed The Imaginary Friend director Steye Hallema at Venice Immersive 2023 after passing along a recommendation to watch my Storycon keynote on Presence, Experiential Design, & Immersive Storytelling. We do a deep dive into applying some of these ideas around the different qualities of presence to his project. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Aufwind (Upwind) director Florian Siebert at Venice Immersive 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Gaudi, L’Atelier Du Divin producers Agnes Garaudel and Vincent Guttmann at Venice Immersive 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Meta XR producer Ryan Genji Thomas at Venice Immersive 2023. Check out all of the Quill pieces, narrative apps, and Horizon worlds that Ryan has produced down below and check out more context in the rough transcript below as well. Narrative animation experiencesYearTitleStudio/Creator2019The RemedyDaniel Martin Peixe2020Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 1: The Multiverse BakeryStudio Syro2020The ReservoirMaiden InteractiveRic Carrasquillo2020Cube Farm (ep 1)Two Trick PonyDir. Tory Stanton, Scott McCabe2020Cube Farm (ep 2)Two Trick PonyDir. Tory Stanton, Scott McCabe2020Cube Farm (ep 3)Two Trick PonyDir. Tory Stanton, Scott McCabe2020Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 2: The Neon JungleStudio Syro2020Goodbye Mr. OctopusAtlas V x Studio GepettoDir. Amaury Campion2020The BeastBlue Zoo AnimationDir. Grant Berry, Dave Winn2020Lifetime AchievementParade AnimationDir. Yonatan Tal2020Four StoriesNick Ladd2020Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 3: The Quantum RaceStudio Syro2021Peace of MindBlue Zoo AnimationDir. Ben Steer2021Kteer TayyebSamia Khalaf2021Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 4: The Golden RecordStudio Syro2021RebelsFederico Moreno Breser2021NightMara Ep.1So Meta StudiosDir. Gianpaolo Gonzalez2021_HELLOSamuel Klughertz, Nicolas Capitane2021Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 5: The School TripStudio Syro2021NamooBaobab StudiosDir. Eric Oh2022Lustration Ep.1New CanvasDir. Ryan Griffen2022Lustration Ep.2New CanvasDir. Ryan Griffen2022Lustration Ep.3New CanvasDir. Ryan Griffen2022Lustration Ep.4New CanvasDir. Ryan Griffen2022Mescaform HillEdward Madojemu2022NightMara Ep.2So Meta StudiosDir. Gianpaolo Gonzalez2022Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 6: SilenceStudio Syro2022Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 7: The First IngredientStudio Syro2023ReImagined - Volume I: NyssaVery CavaliereDir. Julie Cavaliere2023ReImagined - Volume II: MahalVery CavaliereDir. Michaela Ternasky Holland NARRATIVE APPSYearTitleCreator(s)2017Dear AngelicaOculus Story StudioDir. Saschka Unseld2017Baba YagaBaobab StudiosDir. Eric Darnell2023Wallace & Gromit in "The Grand Getaway"Atlas V x AardmanDir. Finbar Hawkins, Bram Ttwheam2023(confidential)(confidential) HORIZON WORLDSYearTitle2022Creepy Cabin2022Dead End Drive-In2022Neon Arena2022Shaqtacular Spectacular2023(confidential)2023(confidential)2023(confidential) This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Perennials director Zoe Roellin at Venice Immersive 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Pepitos: the Beak Saga director Ruxandra Popescu at Venice Immersive 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed The First Ingredient: Tales from Soda Island – Ch. 7 director and writer Simone 'Funi' Fougnier , producer Peter Ariet, animator & director Dan-Franke at Venice Immersive 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 1: The Multiverse Bakery Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 2: The Neon Jungle Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 3: The Quantum Race Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 4: The Golden Record Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 5: The School Trip Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 6: Silence Tales from Soda Island - Chapter 7: The First Ingredient This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Madame Kana is a French, transgender woman and VReporter who has been publishing a new documentary about VRChat every 2-3 weeks for the past year on her YouTube channel, and she won the Discovery Award this year at Raindance Immersive 2024 for her short film called New Eden Evergarden; Behind the Magic. She published a 39-minute documentary about last year's Raindance Immersive 2023 edition, and she also recently published a 32-minute documentary about this year's Raindance Immersive 2024 edition, which I highly recommend checking out as she highlights many of the projects that I have been and will be featuring on the Voices of VR podcast series featuring different Raindance Immersive artists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soHDdq0Lbwk I had a chance to catch up with Kana to get more information about her journey into VR, and her motivations for capturing so many different elements of virtual culture including the two Raindance Immersive documentaries from 2023 and 2024, short-form and long-form documentaries about Evergarden, a collection of meaningful moments from Public VRChat instances (Part #1 and Part #2), the Furry scene in VRChat, a vlog about how Joe Hunting's We Met in Virtual Reality film inspired her to make her own documentaries within VRChat, an update on Dust Bunny's VR Dance Academy, trip reports on the Virtual Market, Spookality and other VRChat horror worlds, a profile on VRChat Creator Tonton Demon, and reports on the Japanese scene in VRChat including VR Japan Tours performance group, the Japanese Jazz scene in VRChat, and an interview with Japanese musicians AMOKA. Needless to say, it's an impressive amount of coverage of the frontiers of virtual culture within VRChat over the past year, and certainly played a big part in why the Raindance Immersive curators Mária Rakušanová and Joe Hunting honored her with a Discovery Award. Kana is currently working on a documentary on the transgender community within VRChat as gender expression is a particularly personal interest of hers as VRChat helped her to become more public about her own transgender identity, and she sounds committed to continuing to explore the frontiers of virtual culture and continue to crank out these 10, 20, or 30-minute documentaries. Be sure to follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @Les_Gribouilles for clips and previews of her latest videos and be sure to subscribe to her YouTube channel to follow her latest completed works. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Wallace & Gromit in "The Grand Getaway" co-directors Finbar Hawkins and Bram Ttwheam, and No Ghost Creative Director Lawrence Bennett at Venice Immersive 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: The Seven Ravens + The Orbit director Paul Raphaël at Venice Immersive 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Gargoyle Doyle director Ethan Shaftel at Venice Immersive 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

BabyBonito is an artist, avatar creator and worldbuilder within VRChat who participant different VRChat communities including a creative collective in VR called GlitchesVR, which has a substack that covers the latest in virtual culture. As a classically trained artist Bonito first got into VR through the process of creating her own avatars, which have a distinctive look having a wiggly fish on her head. She also started to shoot documentaries within VR, and actually got an honorable mention from Raindance Immersive 2023 for her short film called The Painters of Virtual Reality, which documents the still life drawing community on VRChat. I wanted to catch up with Bonito as I saw her at a lot of events throughout Raindance Immersive, and I wanted to hear more about her journey into VR, some of the groups and communities she's involved with on VRChat, her thoughts on how the creator economy may change the creative dynamics on the platform, and some of the other pockets of indie artists and creatives who are actively co-creating different aspects of virtual culture. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Ariel Emerald is a VR filmmaker who has had a short film titled Ulterior Motives and music video screen titled Like Crazy at Raindance Immersive for the past two years. Before getting into social VR, she suffered from social anxiety and isolation, and didn't have the resources to pursue a career in film. But getting into virtual reality via VRChat allowed her to overcome social anxiety, discover the virtual clubbing scene, cultivate a friendship network, develop her cinematography and color grading skills, write and direct a range of different fiction and non-fiction pieces shot within VR, and and bring the community of VR filmmakers together with the Filmmakers of VRChat Discord. I had a chance to catch up Ariel to talk about her journey into VR by overcoming social anxiety, and the latest in her pursuit of a career in filmmaking via VR. We also cover some of the history of filmmaking in VR starting with VRChat user hirabiki's VRCLens that had a VRCLens Sample world that first launched on August 25, 2020 and was initially available on Booth, but now is exclusively available on Gumroad. We cover other turning points like Metacosm Studios, Joe Hunting's on “We Met in Virtual Reality" premiere at Sundance on January 21, 2022, VRCon Film Fest 2022 on December 17, 2022, Phia Bunny's The Virtual Reality Show Film Fest on February 25, 2023, the founding of the Filmmakers of VRChat community and Discord soon afterwards, and then a selection of films shot in VR at both Raindance Immersive 2023 and Raindance Immersive 2024. Filmmaking in VR is still in it's very early phases in exploring non-fiction and documentary forms, replicating existing fiction genres, and then eventually pushing forward new genres of storytelling that will be made possible by the affordances of VR, breaking down geographic access to performers around the world, and having thousands and eventually millions of easily accessible virtual film sets on social VR platforms like VRChat. It's very exciting to see where it'll all go. Ariel Emerald's gives me a glimpse of what's possible when all of these virtual and human resources come together within VR to push at these edges of genre, cultivation of moods and feelings with virtual architecture, and explore new possibilities in storytelling. EDIT: August 20, 2024. Here's a director's reel that Ariel just posted. https://twitter.com/ariel_emeraldVR/status/1825985914419454153 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

TFMJonny is a full-time VTuber content creator with more than a million subscribers on YouTube and TikTok, but also does Twtich livestreams, releases music on Spotify, and has a background in acting, voices acting, and improv (more links are here on his Linktree). It's a journey that started with live singing within The Great Pug in VRChat, and then transitioned into livestreaming his performances, and eventually into a long-form and short-form video content on all of the major platforms. He uses VRChat to embody different characters as a VTuber, and engage with people via chat roulette platforms like Omegle in a way that blends the virtual and the physical. He stars in a music video of his song Like Crazy that was featured at Raindance Immersive 2024, and I had a chance to catch up him to learn more about his journey into VR, how he helped to start the Star Collective talent group of live performers in VRChat, and finally his recent focus on community building and how he's leveraging beta access to VRChat's creator economy to experiment with a monitized TFMJonny VRChat group to host meetups with his supporters. We move from the evolution of live performance in VRChat, catching the VTubing waves, while also navigating the ever-shifting landscape of content creation with the focus moving from long-form to short-form content where the revenue models and algorithmic tunings are all still in flux. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Starheart is a Musician, Composer, Filmmaker, and VTuber who has been doing live performances in VR over the past couple of years. She started making music videos on Halloween of 2022, and realized that she needed a persistent avatar. VR had already been creating a safe space for her to anonymously experiment with and discover her identity as a transgender woman, and she debuted her VTubing persona of Starheart on April 18, 2023 with a music video called "Elsewhere." Then three days later she opened for Naku on Phia's The Virtual Reality Show, which opened up opportunities to play at over 40 different music venues over the past year. VR has opened up many new opportunities for Starheart to discover the core essence of her identity and new modes of creative expression as an artist, musician, and filmmaker. Starheart is her name and persona, but it's much more than a character. In fact, she told The Metaculture magazine's K. Guillory last year that "Becoming Starheart has been integral for finding my musical voice, and is the most authentic version of myself as a performer I've ever been." I picked up on this thread to hear more about Starheart's creative journey into VR through her music videos, musical performances, filmmaking explorations and creation of her authentic identity beyond her physical body. Starheart's "I Still Love You" ended up winning the Best Music Video this year at Raindance, and this episode will be kicking off a series of interviews that I'll be doing with Raindance Immersive artists to get a better sense of what's been happening at the frontiers of virtual culture within the social VR platform of VRChat. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Cosm is a front-facing, 180-degree, 87-foot diameter, 8K+ LED dome screen that can seat up to 1500 people. Their first location is opening in Los Angeles this weekend showing UFC 303, which is produced by their Cosm Immersive division (formerly LiveLikeVR) focusing on live sporting events, music, entertainment. They also have a Cosm Studios division that will continue to produce educational content for their network of planetariums, but also developing new forms of immersive art and immersive stories. Cosm Studios has been working with different XR artists over the past number of years in order to translate their work into either full dome planetariums or front-facing dome venues (with a second location opening in the future outside of Dallas, Texas). The Madison Square Garden Sphere opened up in Las Vegas on September 29, 2023 and has a seating capacity of around 18,600 people. Cosm is on a much smaller scale of a venue at 1500 people that allows them to be a bit more experimental with the types of immersive art, immersive stories, and immersive content as well as live sporting events to fill up their venue. Cosm listed a number of their content partnerships in a LinkedIn post from a couple of months ago where they said, "Transforming live sports and entertainment, Cosm LA invites you to experience the biggest and best live sports from ESPN, the National Basketball Association (NBA), Ultimate Fighting Championship, TNT Sports U.S., and NBC Sports in immersive 8K+. In addition to live sports, Cosm LA will showcase music, entertainment such as Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group, and immersive art experiences from our Cosm Studios Creators Nancy Baker Cahill, Chris Holmes, Ricardo Romaneiro, and Guy Reid of PLANETARY COLLECTIVE." I had a chance to catch up with the head of Cosm Studios Neil Carty as well as the Senior Director of Studio Development for Cosm Studios Katy Yudin last year at Tribeca Immersive 2023 in order to get the backstory for how Cosm came about as well as how they've been working with immersive artists and immersive storytellers over the past couple of years to translate their XR projects to work in these different dome formats. You can check out Cosm's upcoming events that includes sporting events and world premieres of immersive content like "O" by Cirque du Soleil on July 11, LIQUIDVERSE: Microcosm & Macrocosm on July 12, Orbital on July 17, and SEEK on July 18. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Ru is a transgender woman who works as a hospice nurse in Ohio, and since 2018 has been involved as an immersive artists, virtual DJ, and event producer holding weekly events in her psychedelic space called Kaleidosky, which is nominated for Best Music Experience for Raindance Immersive 2024. I had a chance to get a tour of her Kaleidosky 3.0 event space where she showed me how the intuitive VJ system works in creating feedback-loop fractal art in a kaleidoscope that's projected onto a sphere serves as a fully immersive skybox with a floating island in the middle that contains plenty of hang out spots, mini games, and a dancefloor. Kaleidosky has an indie art spirit with a lot of avant-garde performances, with many of them being within the trance or psychedelic trance (aka psytrance) genre, but performers are not limited to this genre. There ends up being an experimental vibe, and happened to have a lot more intimate conversations happening and deep listening happening rather than intensive dancing. Ru doesn't even consider Kaleidosky to be a club, but more of an event space for DJs and VJ artists to experiment with their artistic practice. Ru has featured over 300 different performers since opening the first Kaleidosky in December 2022 and holding events on a weekly basis. I had a chance to catch up with Ru to get a lot more context about her story as being one of the most prolific virtual music event producers in the VRChat scene. Be sure to join the Beat Syndicate group in VRChat and follow her on X (formerly Twitter) for more information on upcoming events. Also be sure to also check out these YouTube documentaries about the clubbing scene in VRChat as well as explorations of gender, and the thriving trans community on VRChat. I Went Clubbing in Virtual Reality: Raves of VRChat by Josef Lorenzo on PBS Voices [which features Ru and her Kaleidosky club] Why are there SO many Trans people in VRChat? Gender, Identity, and Self Discovery by The Virtual Reality Show Identity, Gender, and VRChat (Why is everyone in VR an anime girl?) by Straszfilms This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The Troll Project was created by Ruth Diaz, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology and focuses on XR community design, in order to explore the root causes of trolling, but also tackling the issue head on within social VR spaces with some community-driven solutions that she has experimented with. She's recorded a number of ethnographic interviews with existing trolls, former trolls, and community managers to get a better idea behind the root causes that are leading people to troll others online. And she's put her theories into practice when trolls have interrupted her group discussions on different social VR platforms. Diaz has developed a conflict resiliency framework called The D.O.T. Model, which stands for "Deepen. Orient. Transform." The core idea is that there are polarities between the villain archetypes of the troll who fights versus the victim archetype of the target whose response is flight, and then another polarity axis between the vicarious bystander archetype who freezes vs the hero archetype who takes action to fix the situation and become the victor. The D.O.T. framework helps people navigate between these archetypal polarities while dealing with trolls. She writes, "It is designed so we learn how to re-center without using anything on the outside changing to fit our needs. It is a re-orienting “compass” that identifies polarizing relationships patterns, the non-verbals and emotions that accompany these reactive dances, and where one fits in those polarities. Using a catchy visual and simple recipe for each polarity/archetype we embody in negative interactions; it teaches us how to get back to the humanness of heart and reconnect to those around us in a meaningful way. " Diaz was teaching these conflict resiliency methods in public social VR spaces where the group would get trolled, but then they would apply these principles as a group intervention that would actually sometimes result in a transformative experience for the troll. She then started doing ethnographic interviews on different social VR platforms that could potentially lead towards a more formalized community-driven intervention framework for how to deal with trolling. I had a chance to speak with Diaz a couple of weeks ago in order to get more context into some of her ideas about moving beyond the technological solutions of blocking and banning to more holistically address some of the root causes of trolling with more of a community-driven solution. She's presenting today at the Augmented World Expo in a session titled "Resilient XR Environments: Building & Navigating Conflict-Resilient Spaces", and is ultimately hoping that The Troll Project can "contribute to understanding the complex interplay between human behavior, online identity (in 2d and 3d), and social dynamics, facilitating the development of strategies to mitigate negative behaviors and enhance transformative experiences in online communities." Part of a technological solutionism mindset to to expect that technological architectures can solve human problems, but there's limits to the existing technological mitigating strategies and The Troll Project is a welcomed venture into digging deeper into this problem. Trolling is obviously a huge issue that is unlikely to ever be fully eradicated, but Diaz has seen some of the transformative potential of her process by converting trolls into former trolls, and it's worth exploring these types of community-based alternatives to get to the root of the problem. The Troll Project is looking for funding and collaborations to take it to the next level, and so be sure to check out their Join & Contribute section to get more details for how to get involved. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

SoftlySteph's The Friction of a Modulated Soul took home the Best Dance Experience at Raindance Immersive in a groundbreaking performance that tells the "story about the different cages that bind us from our authentic truth." It's a piece that completely blew me away with it's technological innovations, her fluid and emotionally-driven dance, a moving story that takes you on guided journey towards authentic identity, and an excellent curation of music from other VRChat creators. The piece manages to tie together so many different strands of technical innovation, storytelling, and performance, and it was one of my highlights from the entire Raindance Immersive festival this year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAUjJ_ozldM The crux of the innovations within The Friction of a Modulated Soul are from the new holographic shader (aka the "Apple Global Illumination") developed in partnership with SNR Labs' Apple Blossom, A://DDOS, and namoron (covered in great detail in the previous episode #1413) that both plays back recorded holographic objects that are a part of a timed dance performance, but also replicates and mirrors her dance performance at different scales in real-time. There's also real-time lighting effects on the 1.4 million point-cloud pixels that are utterly awe-inspiring, and took lots of black magic shader wizardry pull it all off by encoding and decoding information from video streams (again many of the more technical details are covered in episode #1413). I saw this piece as a live performance during Raindance, but they're also working on a replayable VRChat world that should be ready within the next month or so. SoftlySteph also curated a soundtrack of independent music by VRChat creators with five of the songs specifically composed for this piece. Everything in this piece was designed around story, which takes the audience on a journey from resisting internal disconnections, to achieving authentic connection to self, to then resisting collective pressures to disconnect, and then finally culminating with authentic connection. https://twitter.com/SoftlySteph/status/1807125937819148769 Overall, this was a beautifully-executed piece that is pushing into new forms of dance genre and performance, and was well-deserving of the best dance performance at Raindance Immersive. I had a chance to catch up with SoftlySteph to get a bit more context about how this project came about, her journey into VR via the stage dance and dance performance scene, and then her intentions with architecting this story about authentic self. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Today Niantic's 8th Wall is announcing Niantic Studio, which is "a new visual interface for Niantic 8th Wall developers that offers an entirely new way to build immersive 3D and XR experiences." It's essentially a web-based game engine using three.js that can render WebXR experiences and starts to integrate a few of Niantic's Lightship APIs, but will be launching with more integrated computer vision and geospatial mapping features soon. I had a chance to speak with 8th Wall Founder Erik Murphy-Chutorian at length to get a lot more details, and be sure to tune into the podcast or read more information below to get a lot more context on this announcement that's being made at the Augmented World Expo. You can read more about Niantic Studio in their blog announcement. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

YouTuber Brad Lynch (aka SadlyItsBradley) has completely replaced all of his computer screens with an Apple Vision Pro, even going as far as getting a headless Mac Book Pro that does not even have a screen. He's been using the Apple Vision Pro for around 8 hours a day since launch, and I wanted to get a sense of how he's been using it. It turns out the he is mostly streaming his gaming PC via Moonlight and using social VR apps like VRChat via ALVR to hang out with friends and ambient hang out virtual spaces. He's also using SteamVR overlays to augment his virtual reality experience with Steam apps like XSOverlay, VRHandsFrame, and OVR Advanced Settings. It's feels like a very niche use case of a hardcore VR enthusiast, but one that mixes and mashes realities in a way that might be a sign of things to come. Some of the most compelling apps for Lynch are open source that enable experiences that are being driven by his high-end Windows machine. https://twitter.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1783406980192702842 Lynch has been closely following a lot on VR hardware developments over the last number of years, but the Apple Vision Pro has satisfied most of his desires in what he wants within a high-end spatial computing device. The resolution is high enough and the quality good enough so that he can spend more time exploring different screen replacement use cases, augmented VR experiences via overlays, and productivity use cases of XR. Most PCVR enthusiasts are Windows users, and so Lynch's audience has traditionally focused more on the gaming use cases of VR. As a result they have not been as interested in the Apple Vision Pro due to the lack of high-fidelity input controls. But for Lynch, the basic locomotion gestures made available in ALVR are good enough for him to get around within VRChat without needed to hook up or use any external controllers. Because of the perceived or actual gaps between his ideal spatial computing use cases and his VR gaming audience, then Lynch actually scrapped his formal review video and is considering releasing clips or falling back to Q&A livestreams to field many questions about the trajectory of hardware in the XR industry. Lynch also has been enjoying the mashing up of spatial contexts in XR, mostly via the SteamVR overlays and windows but mentions some experiments of bringing in fully spatial objects. It reminds me of the interview that I did with the PlutoVR founders in 2020 when they were experimenting a lot with the idea of multi-app spatial computing paradigms with WebXR and apps like Aardvark by Joe Ludwig. Apple is slowly building out more and more spatial primitives across all of their operating systems, and are slowly becoming more and more game engine-like as new APIs were announced as a part of their WWDC, where visionOS 2.0 was announced as coming out later this Fall. We talk about some of the quality of life features, but also the role of an integrated ecosystem, and what BigScreen Beyond, Valve, and Meta might do to keep up with how Apple is pushing forward these ideas of multi-app integrations within spatial computing. At the moment Lynch's 8 hours of daily usage is likely an extreme outlier, but the types of ways that he's blending realities together feels like there's something deeper that we'll continue to see moving forward. VR typically involves a complete context shift, while AR tends to bring in modular elements of other contexts to shift your existing context. Lynch is on the bleeding edge of fully immersing himself within these virtual contexts, but modulating his experience with these SteamVR overlays in what could best be described as a sort of AR within VR use case. The visionOS 2.0 Beta release (coming this Fall) allows users to overlay their Mac Virtual Display over immersive environments, but SteamVR Overlays already enable this on PCVR experiences and so Lynch's experiences with overlays in VRChat could definitely be a sign of how Apple might e...

On June 12, 2024, VRChat announced they were laying off 30% of their staff, and they posted a letter to all employees sent from CEO Graham Gaylor that said, "We’re reducing the size of our team by around 30% and saying goodbye to many talented team members in the process. This is the hardest change we’ve had to make at VRChat, and Jesse and I take full responsibility for the decisions that brought us here." VRChat listed the four main reasons for the layoff in that they added too many individual contributors to their development team without a management layer to prioritize efforts, which meant they needed to reduce their headcount to folks who were more directly working on features that would lead to a path of profitability over the next five years. VRChat has taken a long time to launch their creator economy, which is still in closed beta, and their VRChat+ subscription models doesn't offer all that many differentiated features to drive users to join beyond a signal of patronage to support the platform. I wanted to gather some active VRChat community members to talk about the burgeoning creator economy as well as other potential pathways to profitability around streaming avatar streamlining, events, contributor / group subscriptions, and emerging features like increased instance size caps. The VRCSpaces community on X (formerly Twitter) held a Space on the day of the announcement discussing the layoffs, and I invited participants Table, yewnyx, and Miss Stabby as well as qDot who wrote up a really great thread breaking down some of the Silicon Vally startup dynamics. More than anything, I wanted to get their take about what VRChat is getting right, and where the most viable pathways for them might be on their road towards profitability. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Raindance Immersive 2024 opened last weekend in VRChat, and will run for the next four weekends featuring the latest innovations of virtual culture with 77% of experiences happening on social VR platforms and 69% that feature VRChat. I spoke at length with co-curators Mária Rakušanová and Joe Hunting about each of the 36 experiences that span nine different categories with four experiences each including Best Art World, Dance Experience, Game, Live Show, Music Experience, Narrative, Out of Competition experiences as well as the Music Video of VR and Short Film of VR. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ-VmsZ5oAU There are a number of mixed reality games that will be showing on the Apple Vision Pro and Quest 3, as well as the four narrative experiences that will be showing at a physical exhibition at Raindance, but otherwise the other 30 experiences all have some connection to a social VR platform. The best live show and best dance experience categories are new this year, and Hunting is continuing to cultivate the two film categories featuring short films and music videos, all of which were shot within VRChat. I talk with both Rakušanová and Hunting about the shift from June to November, and then dive into each of the nine categories and 36 experiences highlighting the latest trends and innovations by indie XR artists who are primarily working on social VR platforms including VRChat, Resonite, and EngageXR.

Curator Ana Brzezińska announced the Tribeca Immersive 2024 line-up on May 23, 2024 mentioning that "this year we are not presenting any VR/AR experiences," but rather that they're pivoting this year to featuring eight immersive art pieces by six different artists being shown at Mērcer Labs: Museum of Art and Technology, which first opened to the New York City public on January 4th, 2024. Tribeca Immersive opens on June 6th and runs for 12 days until June 17th, and you can get tickets to see it here. Some immersive creators discovered this surprising news by receiving a refund to their submission, which said "As the immersive landscape evolves, our category is taking new shape to explore formats outside of VR/AR this year and our decision is not a reflection of the quality of your work… Because our change in format was a recent shift and changed our consideration of the works, we will be refunding you your submission fee." Tribeca Immersive will be taking over five of the rooms at Mērcer Labs that includes "a two-story high 5-wall LED immersive hall; a 4DSOUND installation space; and two infinity rooms, including one equipped with volumetric technology that makes you feel like you’re watching a space opera." This space opera location is called the Dragon Room, which is described by Mērcer Labs on their Instagram page in the following way, "Volumetric lighting allows visitors to see voxels (volumetric pixels) of light in space. The light source is modeled as a transparent object in a container of volume. The resulting effect is of passing through a hologram. The use of mirrors and advanced technology, unlock the power of three-dimensional visualization to create a cascade of luminescent particles that appear suspended in infinite space. The individual light particles in an architectural format offer virtually endless opportunities for formal reinvention. The volumetric installation powered by @ledpulse, Dragon02 technology, features a unique configuration exclusive to Mercer Labs. This remarkable installation, the largest of its kind, and incorporates more than half a million LED neurons-microchips, meticulously synchronized to create an unparalleled visual experience." I had a chance to sit down with Brzezińska last week to get a bit more context on this pivot as well as on the eight immersive art pieces in the selection that will be spread across three different daily selections repeating four times over the 12-day run. Also be sure to check out her Substack post titled "In The Stillness of Synthetic Light*. Note on Tribeca Immersive 2024" to get even more context for her intentions and motivations for this year's selection where she says, "I believe that before we start seeking hope — which I expect to become a major theme in many upcoming art events — we need space for reflection and respite that allows for a radical suspension of judgment." I unfortunately won't be able to travel to Tribeca to check it out myself due to a family medical situation that's limiting my travel this year, but I'm looking forward to hearing back from folks in the community to hear how it all comes together. There will not be a formal Storyscapes competition this year, and so I will also be interested to see how the Tribeca Immersive selection continues to evolve over time and whether this represents a permanent shift away from immersive stories towards immersive art, or if we'll see an the inclusion of both forms in the future. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

ILM Immersive & Marvel Studios is releasing What If...?: An Immersive Story exclusively on Apple Vision Pro tomorrow, and I had a chance to take an early look and speak with producer and executive producer Shereif Fattouh as well as technical art director Indira Guerrieri about the process of creating this experience. It's mostly an immersive story with light interactions, but you can't actually die and so it's more about immersing yourself into these worlds with first-person embodiment and exploring around 10 different gesture-based interactions in nearly 50 different interactive moments across the 40 to 45-minute experience. There's also some disembodied moments where you're watching 3D movie cinematics on shards of glass floating in the environment, and so they're also really leaning into how good 3D movies look on the Apple Vision Pro within this experience. Overall, it's blending lots of elements together that feels like something new and a new genre of immersive storytelling that's building upon existing IP, and giving new opportunities to engage with these character's stories as well as their worlds. This is also the first Unreal Engine experience releasing on the Apple Vision Pro store, and so Fattouh told me that ILM Immersive has been making private modifications to get things working. There are features like mixed reality passthrough that are not available yet in Unreal Engine 5.4 yet. Agile Lens' Alex Coulombe told me, "The Epic Games XR team is small so I would I err on the side of assuming no major Vision Pro updates coming soon from Epic. To have the current features working it still requires a source build of Unreal Engine 5.4 (the Epic Games Launcher doesn’t work) and current features include fully immersive mode, hand tracking / gesture recognition, forward and deferred rendering." So hopefully we'll get more on this soon from Epic Games, but at least we know it's possible and we'll start to see more Unreal Engine experiences on the Apple Vision Pro soon. Be sure to check out the transcript below for more information, and also don't miss my episode featuring my talk on an Elemental Theory of Presence, Experiential Design, and Immersive Storytelling, as well as my previous 480+ episodes on the topic of immersive storytelling over the past decade including previous coverage on Cycles, Myth: A Frozen Tale, Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, and a conversation with John Gaeta about ILMxLab's The Holo-Cinema from Sundance New Frontier 2016. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is featuring an inaugural Immersive Competition with eight pieces in competition along with six pieces outside of competition. I had a chance to speak with Elie Lavasseur, the Head of Immersive Competition Festival de Cannes, to get a bit more context for how this came about, their curatorial intention, and an overview of the program. I've had a chance to see 5 out of the 8 pieces in competition, and all 6 of the non-competition pieces curated by Atlas V in an exhibition titled "exhibition 'exhibition 'Cinema Beyond the Frame: An Introduction to Virtual Reality'. I'll link my Voices of VR podcast coverage down below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh7XTZNtzGs Immersive Competition for Festival de Cannes: Evolver -- #1104: Tribeca XR: “Evolver” is an Awe-Inspiring Fluid Dynamics Simulation of Human Blood Flow Giving an Embodied Experience of Interbeing Colored -- #1251: From Book to Play to AR Installation, “Colored” Explores the Forgotten Segregation History of Claudette Colvin Maya: The Birth Of A Superhero -- #1244: “Maya: The Birth” Animation Uses Mythic Symbols & Magical Realism to Explore Menstrual Taboos as well as #1379: “Maya: The Birth of a Superhero” Evolves Storytelling Grammar with Magical Realism, Dream Logic, & Interactive Embodiment Traversing The Mist -- #1325 End of Tung-Yen Chou’s Gay Sauna Trilogy with “Traversing the Mist” Human Violins: Prelude (Multi-user Version) En Amour Telos I The Roaming Immersive Selection of Non-competitive works: Notes on Blindness (2016) -- #1068: “Notes on Blindness” VR Experience Receives a Legacy Peabody Award for Interactive Storytelling Battlescar (2018) -- Unpublished interviews coming soon Spheres (2018) -- #617: Journey into a Black Hole with “SPHERES: Songs of Spacetime” Gloomy Eyes (2019) -- Unpublished interview coming soon Missing Pictures: Naomi Kawase (2022) -- #1103: Tribeca XR: Translating Unmade Films into Spatialized VR Story Treatments with “Missing Pictures” Emperor (2023) -- #1276: Beautiful “Emperor” Explores Aphasia Communication Gaps with Compelling Interactions

One of the most common ways to describe the experience of VR is through the lens of presence, and in this episode I'm going to do a deep dive into the existing academic literature of presence in order to more fully contextualize my approach to it. This is my Storycon 2022 keynote where I elaborate on my elemental approach to presence as well as my thoughts on experiential design and immersive storytelling. I use the four archetypal elements to break down presence into four primary components where fire represents active presence, air represents mental and social presence, water represents emotional presence, and earth represents embodied and environmental presence. And I use the lens of quality, context, character, and story to explore the fundamental components of experiential design. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_2_qvIymt4 I started to develop my approach to presence through a number of Voices of VR podcast interviews in the fall and winter of 2016, and I was then introduced to the work of Dustin Chertoff, whose presence work from 2008-2010 draws upon the field of experiential marketing. He similarly boils presence down into the components of Active Presence, Cognitive Presence, Relational Presence, Affective Presence, and Sensory Presence. When I interviewed Chertoff in February 2017, we agreed that our approaches to presence were functionally identical. I then went on to present my preliminary ideas on presence at a Silicon Valley Virtual Reality conference keynote in March 2017, and I've continued to develop these ideas over the past 5-7 years. I gave this Storycon Keynote on May 5, 2022, which happened to be the 8th-year anniversary of the Voices of VR podcast. Now two years later, I'm celebrating my 10-year Voices of VR podcast anniversary in part by airing this talk as well as a few others. I consistently refer folks to it as one of my more fully-formed and rigorous elaborations that I've given of my elemental theory of presence. I not only contextualize it with Chertoff's work, but also with the broader body of academic presence research and it's history. I would often find there were would be different presence theories talking about some of the same concepts, but using different terminology. In this talk, I take an archetypal approach that synthesizes these different frameworks through an archetypal lens. At times it can be a bit laborious reciting an archetypal complex of keywords, and there are definitely sections of this talk that are probably better off read than spoken. So I'd highly recommend also checking out the video version as well as the PDF of the slides, and/or the fully-annotated transcript in the shownotes that includes the embedded slides and linked citations. That all being said, be warned that this is still probably way too dense for an hour-long talk, as it's more like an entire semester's worth of material. It's also probably closer to a Ph.D. defense than a synthesized book or practical handbook that's ready for prime time. As with many other aspects of XR, many theoretical aspects are still developing, emerging, boundaries being pushed, and rules being broken. So it's in that spirit that this is my latest fully-formed iteration of these ideas. This talk also leans more into the theoretical parts, and some of the more practical applications often come within the context of individual interviews where the context is a lot more bounded to a specific situation, experience, or story. Be sure to check out my 30+ hours of coverage from Venice 2023 as an example for how I've put these ideas into practice. It's been through many invited lectures and keynotes around the world where I've been able to develop these ideas by engaging with audiences and interviewing thousands of creators over the past decade. At some point, I'm still hoping to go through a more formal write-up of these ideas to give them even more rigor, and perhaps potentially even go through a more for...

May of 2024 marks the ten-year anniversary of the Voices of VR podcast, and I wanted to air a featured session that I presented at SXSW 2023 called "The Ultimate Potential of VR: Promises and Perils." This is a 45-minute talk that distills down the biggest insights from my 3-hour episode #1000 of the Voices of VR podcast, which aggregated 120 of the best answers to the question of "What is the ultimate potential of VR, and what it might be able to enable?" This talk synthesizes all of the most exciting potentials as well as scariest perils, and provides an annotated roadmap of my coverage over the past decade on the Voices of VR podcast. Back in 2016, I synthesized the first 400 answers to the question of the ultimate potential of VR in order to map out the contextual domains of virtual reality within a Silicon Valley Virtual Reality conference talk. I also use the same contextual mapping within my XR Ethics Manifesto talk in 2019, which a summary can be seen in my Landscape of XR Ethics talk that I featured in the previous episode. I provide a lot more background to this archetypal mapping of contexts in a forthcoming paper titled "Privacy Pitfalls of Contextually-Aware AI: Sensemaking Frameworks for Context and XR Data Qualities" that will hopefully be published sometime in 2024. This Ultimate Potential of VR talk combines both the promises and perils exploring both the benefits and risks of XR through these different contextual domains. I have also added a categories section on my VoicesofVR.com website that uses this same contextual framework as a taxonomy to classify over 1000 episodes. I'm still in the process of tagging my entire backlog, but this talk should provide a good overview to this contextual taxonomy if you want to dive deeper into more episodes across any of the different areas. Again, you can explore these different sections by navigating to the categories section of my website. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-8Z-hWaktY I also just uploaded a new video version of this talk with some updated slides and citations. Because I do rely heavily on about 140 slides throughout this talk, then I do highly recommend either watching the video version, listening along with the PDF of slides, or reading through the show notes afterwards where you'll find a full transcript with all 140 slides embedded throughout the transcript as well as links to over 170 of the footnotes and citations with hyperlinks. The podcast version and write-up will also include the Q&A session that happened after the talk at SXSW. I also wanted to elaborate on one other point about my motivation in putting together this talk. Over the past decade, there's been a persistent cycle where each year there's some journalist or tech pundit who pre-maturely declares the death of virtual reality. Now there have not been very many clear objective metrics to help quantify what's been happening in the broader XR industry to the outside world, which has made it difficult to establish a broad consensus as where the XR industry is at and how it might be evolving. But it's also also fostered an environment where skepticism about XR generally has been able to persist. After conducting over 2000 oral history interviews with XR creators over the past decade, it's given me many insights about the underlying affordances of the XR medium across many different contextual domains, which can be difficult to summarize or even communicate. That's what I hope to do in this talk. I wanted to lay out the evidence for why I believe virtual reality and spatial computing more broadly is a compelling enough medium to persist throughout these cycles of skepticism, and eventually find real utility throughout the full spectrum of the human experience. I actually have no idea when virtual reality may become a mass medium that's completely ubiquitous, but I'm convinced that it will some day in the future based upon some of the underlying principles that I la...

This is a 19-minute talk that I gave at Laval Virtual 2023 that is summarizing the work that I've done on XR Ethics over the past ten years. There's around 60 slides in this talk, and so you may prefer watching the video version over on YouTube for the full multi-modal experience, or this audio-only podcast version includes the Q&A session at the end. And you can also check out the show notes for this episode that has each of the slides embedded within the full transcript along with all of the linked footnotes in case you'd like to dig into the full context of any one of these topics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bab0CM7zK4 There's a lot of ground that I attempt to cover within my 15-20 minute allotted time slot at Laval Virtual 2023, but this should provide a high-level roadmap to how I see the landscape of XR ethics. The landscape of XR ethical considerations is also an ever-expanding area, and so this is far from a complete treatment, but hopefully covers some of the major issues that I've been covering on the Voices of VR podcast over the past decade. This talk at Laval Virtual was on Apr 13, 2023, which was a month after my Featured Session at SXSW on March 12, 2023 about The Ultimate Potential of VR: Promises & Perils. That talk explored both the exalted potentials of XR as well as the more troublesome perils, and this talk was focusing on just the perils. They both use a contextual framework that I elaborate more on within an upcoming paper titled "Privacy Pitfalls of Contextually-Aware AI: Sensemaking Frameworks for Context and XR Data Qualities" that was written for the Existing Law and Extended Reality Symposium at Standford Cyberpolicy Center in January 2023, and will hopefully be published later this year. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in! [1] My name is Kent Bye, and I do the Voices of VR podcast. And today, I'm going to be doing a tour in the landscape of the XR moral dilemmas and ethical considerations. And I'm attempting to cover all of the XR ethical moral dilemmas within the next 15 to 20 minutes [obviously not all of them, but a high-level sampling]. And so it's pretty ambitious. I do have the slides available with lots of footnotes.` I've been doing the Voices of VR podcast since 2014. And so I've recorded over 2,000 interviews and published over 1,200 of them, so just over 2 thirds of them that I've recorded. [2] And in the process of talking to a lot of folks within the XR community, there's naturally been a lot of different ethical and moral dilemmas. And so this is like a broad overview of the landscape of XR ethical and moral dilemmas. And so I'll be diving into each of these, but this is just to give you a bit of a sense of the landscape. [3] And it actually takes me back to Laval Virtual back in 2019, where I was brought out to brainstorm with a group of folks… [4] some of the different ethical and moral dilemmas. And so we have lots of these post-it notes. And so we're struggling with how do we start to organize the whole landscape of all these different ethical and moral dilemmas. [5], [6] And so In SVVR in 2016, I had given a presentation trying to map out the ultimate potentials of virtual reality of all the different domains and industry verticals and potentials. And so I asked people at the end of every podcast, "What's the ultimate potential of VR?" And they'd say, "Well, it's education. It's entertainment. It's being able to connect with friends and family. It's empathy. It's doing stuff for your career." And so this was like a start of a cartography of the different domains of human experience… [7] which ended up being very helpful for starting to map out these ethical and moral dilemmas into all these different domains or contexts. [8] And so at the end of 2019, I did a whole talk on the XR Ethics Manifesto. In 2019, I was doing a lot of talks about privacy…

There was a new holographic shader developed by members of SNR Labs group on VRChat that completely blew me away in how it was used in a couple of performances at Raindance Immersive. It's like a new form of volumetric capture that also has lighting effects, and can be used in translating 2D images into 3D or capturing low-res 3D objects into a sort of hybrid of point-cloud, particle effect, 3D objects. It's called Apple Global Illumination after it's primary author Apple_Blossom, who worked with designing it with A://DDOS along with other collaborating artists including VJ Silent, VJ Namoron, and immersive dancer SoftlySteph. SoftlySteph's Frictions of a Modulated Soul took home the best dance performance at Raindance Immersive (and will be featured more in depth in the next episode), and the Night Under Lights: The Seasons at Moon Pool was one of the more awe-inspiring uses of this shader and was a personal favorite of mine from this year's festival. See the VRChat replay of the Moon Pool here and I'll be covering this in two episodes from now. There's a particle screen variation of the shader that is able to translate 2D VJ screens into more volumetric experiences based upon the luminance value of each pixel, which can be seen in this video below: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rZJ53W7NYnA Then there's a version that can encode 3D objects into a video that is streamed into VRChat, and then decoded into a dynamic hybrid between a particle effect, point cloud representation, and 3D model. And each of the particles are emitting light that are reflected on the surrounding environment and avatars. Here's a clip of SoftlySteph's performance as captured by Madame Kana https://twitter.com/SoftlySteph/status/1807125937819148769 Their SNR Labs Test Facility was also selected to be a part of the Venice Immersive Worlds gallery that opens next week. Here's a video overview: https://twitter.com/SNR_LABS/status/1813989248837595504 I had a chance to sit down with Apple_Blossom and A://DDOS to learn more about how this breakthrough shader was developed, as well as diving a bit into the weeds for the mechanics for how it works. The Apple Global Illumination feels like a real revelation and breakthrough in how it's opening up new avenues for how VJs and dancers will be able to use it for new forms of creative expression and holographic and volumetric effects to be paired with DJ sets across different clubbing venues in VRChat. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The contributing editor and co-founder of fxguide Mike Seymour invited me onto his fxpodcast to share some of my thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro, the ecosystem differences between the Quest and Vision Pro, the potential for different killer apps, and where we see it going in the future. This is a rebroadcast of fxpodast episode #368, but with some additional context about Seymour's work with digital humans as well as the training application that he's developing on the Apple Vision Pro. I still see the Vision Pro primarily as a developer kit, but there are certainly many productivity & screen replacement as well as media consumption use cases. I'm hoping to do some more coverage of the Vision Pro here soon, including airing an interview with Resolution Games' Tommy Palm about their development of the Game Room application produced by Apple. Apple announced yesterday that they'll be announcing some new products on May 7th likely including the Apple Pencil 3 given Tim Cook's X/Twitter post saying "Pencil us in for May 7! ✏️ #AppleEvent, and also "revamped versions of the iPad Pro and Air, according to people familiar with the matter" per Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. I expect more Apple Vision Pro updates and news to be given at WWDC on June 10-14, and a first-look at how the broader XR industry is adopting the Apple Vision Pro at Augmented World Expo (AWE) on June 18-20, which I unfortunately will not be able to attend due to a family medical situation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The OpenXR 1.1 minor release comes out today, which moves some of the more commonly used extensions into core and it also marks a new Khronos Group commitment to a yearly release cycle. It's been nearly five years since the initial release of OpenXR 1.0 on July 29, 2019, and Khronos Group President Neil Trevett tells me that it's been one of the most successful open standards they've ever published, and I had a chance to catch up with Trevett and OpenXR working group chair Alfredo Muniz to talk about the range of conformant XR devices, engines, programs, what's happening with Apple and OpenXR, next steps for where they plan to take the standard in the future, and how you can get more involved either through their OpenXR Discord channel, OpenXR Forums, or OpenXR GitHub Issue Tracker. Also, here's a link to the announcement slides for OpenXR 1.1, which have some really helpful overview information about how broadly OpenXR has been adopted, as well as a sneak peak at some of what is coming soon including "extending hand tracking, enhanced handling of spatial entities, expanded haptics support, controller render models (glTF), increased accessibility, and Metal (Mac OS) support." I posted a thread on X / Twitter that highlights some of these slides from the OpenXR 1.1 announcement page. Here's five previous interviews covering the evolution of OpenXR since 2015: My 2015 interview with Neil Trevett with some preliminary thoughts about an open standard for VR My 2016 interview with Neil Trevett announcing the formation of what would become OpenXR My 2017 GDC conversation with Joe Ludwig marking the announcement of OpenXR. My 2018 GDC conversation with OpenXR working group chair Nick Whiting with a first look at OpenXR. My 2019 SIGGRAPH conversation with Neil Trevett marking the official OpenXR 1.0 release Also see some related topics within my interviews tagged with open standards.

I'm digging into my unpublished interview archives backlog to publish this conversation with Khronos Group President Neil Trevett marking the 1.0 release of OpenXR that happened during SIGGRAPH in July 2019. We talk about the intention of OpenXR as a specification, and I figured that it's worth looking back at the evolution of the specification as it has become quite a prominent open standard within the XR industry. Be sure to also see episodes #1382 that I just published from GDC 2018, #507 from GDC 2017, and #1385 with a current update on OpenXR 1.1.