This Week in XR Podcast
197 episodes - English - Latest episode: 6 days ago -A pithy take on the week's tech news, followed by interviews with industry guests. Hosted by Forbes Tech Columnist, Professor Charlie Fink, Rony Abovitz, Founder of Magic Leap, and Ted Schilowitz, Futurist at Paramount Global.
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Episodes
This Week In XR April 19th, 2024
April 19, 2024 19:16 - 28 minutes - 53.6 MBThe hosts are all over Meta's release of the new MetaAI with Llama 3, now integrated across all of Meta's brands, and totally free, bringing an exceptional multimodal (does images with short animation) to nearly 4 B users. That's half the planet. Adobe is upgrading its Premiere editing suite, adding Sora for B roll, in-painting (for removing or adding images from shots), and shot extension, which adds frames to the beginning and end of shots. No guest this week, so we filled the last fifteen...
This Week In XR April 12th, 2024 ft. Connell Gauld, CTO of Zappar
April 12, 2024 17:42 - 49 minutes - 91.7 MBAnother episode packed with AI news, in particular an investigative NY Times piece revealing the big tech companies were aware of the copyright issues around vacuuming up the Internet. We also talked about two AI-based startups, Udio, which raised $10M for AI created music, and Spines, which raised $6M for e-book publishing. Our guest is Connell Gauld, CTO of Zappar, which makes the Zap.Works webXR development platform, the $100 Zapbox MR headset, which turns your iPhone into a Vision Pro. C...
This Week In XR April 5th, 2024 ft. Maureen Fan, CEO Baobab Studios
April 05, 2024 21:02 - 53 minutes - 98.6 MBThis Week the hosts are talking about OpenAI's Voice Engine, which can be trained on fifteen second recording, creating profound questions about privacy and security. The guest this week is Maureen Fan, co-founder and CEO of Baobab Studios, which for eight years has been creating original content for VR, the Metaverse, and traditional media. The company's co-founder and Chief Creative Officer is Eric Darnell, director of Dreamworks' Madagascar movies. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don'...
This Week In XR March 29th, 2024 ft. Liz Hyman, President and CEO of the XR Association (XRA)
March 29, 2024 18:47 - 48 minutes - 91.3 MBThe hosts are joined by Liz Hyman, President and Chief Executive Officer of the XR Association (XRA), the trade association promoting the dynamic growth of the XR industry. First up in the news, Amazon doubles down on Anthropic AI as it adds $2.75B to its previous $1.25B investment. OpenAI's text-to-video generator Sora goes to Hollywood, but what will - or can - it really create? Databricks creates a competitive LLM for just $10M. Liz Hyman joins us to talk about the immersive industry asso...
This Week In XR SXSW Special ft. Joanna Popper, former CAA, NBC and HP executive.
March 28, 2024 00:08 - 1 hour - 115 MBThis Week in XR "Dear Tim" episode, an SXSW (South by Southwest) feature session was recorded live in Austin 3/12/24, featuring guest Joanna Popper, former CAA, NBC and HP executive. With the launch of the Meta Quest 3 in November, and the Apple Vision Pro in early February, we now have two competing approaches on spatial computing. The comparison to the iOS - Android mobile duopoly should be lost on no one. Many questions about the future of spatial computing are now up for discussion. Wh...
This Week In XR March 22nd, 2024 ft. Weili Dai, co-founder Marvell Technologies, Silicon Box, and MeetKai
March 22, 2024 22:59 - 48 minutes - 90.1 MBTed and Charlie welcome guest Weili Dai, co-founder Marvell Technologies, Silicon Box, and MeetKai. In the news, Saudi Arabia to invest $40B in AI, Nvidia revealed its new Blackwell AI computer at its GTC Conference, which it calls "AI Woodstock." They also showed off AI for robots. The State of Unreal was the main event at the Game Developers Conference a few dozen miles up the bay in San Francisco. Fortnite paid $320 for user generated content. Apple eyes Google Gemini AI for iPhones. Our ...
This Week In XR March 15th, 2024 ft. Laura Mingail, Advisor, and Matthew Niederhauser, director, SXSW
March 17, 2024 22:09 - 48 minutes - 44.6 MBCharlie and Ted, having recovered from SXSW, are back in their respective man caves, while Rony is on cell, driving through Alabama. Our SXSW panel talk will be posted in three weeks but can be found right now on the SXSW site. After a brief overview of three AI funding stories, we turned our attention back to SXSW, but other topics intruded: the potential of a TikTok ban, social media algorithms, and the ongoing OpenAI copyright mess. Our guests this week are SXSW XR experience Jury Prize W...
This Week In XR March 8th, 2024 ft. Lucas Martell, Creator of Walkabout Mini Golf on Meta Quest
March 09, 2024 01:44 - 31 minutes - 28.6 MBCharlie is solo at SXSW while Ted and Rony are in transit. We'll be posting our Tuesday panel on the future of XR in the age of Apple Vision Pro at the end of next week. Not a big news week. The Sora freakout continues as they drop more tests on the socials. In AI, Haiper emerges from stealth with $13.5 M to take on Runway. Jabali raised $5M to use AI to prompt video games into existence. My guest is Lucas Martell, the Austin-based CEO of Mighty Coconut, producer of the hit VR game "Walkabou...
This Week In XR March 1st, 2024 ft. Hugh Forrest, Co-President & Chief Programming Officer at SXSW
March 01, 2024 20:45 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBCharlie and Ted are without Rony, who is driving across the country. We'll convene at SXSW in Austin to do our show live on stage with Joanna Popper in a session titled "XR in the Age of Vision Pro" on March 12th. In the news, $675M for Figure AI's humanoid robots, powered by ChatGPT, and a new text-to-video tool, Ideogram. Our guests this week are Hugh Forrest, head of programming for SXSW and Blake Kammerdiner, head of XR at SXSW who give us a wide-ranging look at this year's show. To say ...
This Week In XR February 23rd, 2024 ft. Katie Conrad, Professor of English at the University of Kansas
February 23, 2024 23:24 - 42 minutes - 39.1 MBThe hosts are in fine form as they dissect the AI boom, which will have an internet-like impact on the economy, society, and culture as the Internet, and will happen much, much faster. Nvidia's explosive earnings are a bigger news story than the US returning to the moon. That's how big it is. To discuss the complications and opportunity AI represents to higher education, our guest is Katie Conrad, Professor of English at the University of Kansas. She is the author of A Blueprint for an AI Bi...
This Week In XR February 16th, 2024 ft. Susanne Haspinger, COO of Hololight
February 16, 2024 22:06 - 39 minutes - 36.1 MBThis week our guest is Susanne Haspinger, COO of Hololight. Rony's at an AI Medical conference. The big news is OpenAI's reveal of expanded memory for ChatGPT and the tease of the next Dall-E upgrade, a text-to-video app called Sora, which is capable of generating up to a minute of video from a single prompt. Nvidia, now the world's third largest company, introduced Chat RTX for PCs that will search across local files. The legal battles of OpenAI may be breaking in its favor. Susanne, who wa...
This Week In XR February 9th, 2024 ft. Caleb and Shelby Ward of Curious Refuge, Cinematic AI Filmmakers
February 09, 2024 21:02 - 52 minutes - 48.2 MBWe recorded one of our best shows this morning with Cinematic AI Filmmakers Caleb & Shelby Ward. If you have not seen their hilarious Wes Anderson Star Wars trailer you are missing a treat. Meanwhile, the week rewarded us with some big news: Disney puts up $15B for Epic to make their game and entertainment universe, Ted is in love - with his new Apple Vision Pro, Google replaces Bard with Gemini, and deep fakes fool a Hong Kong bank into wiring $25M. Status Pro VR, Polycam 3D, Camb.ai, Atlas...
This Week In XR February 2nd, 2024 ft. Tommy Palm, CEO Resolution Games
February 02, 2024 22:51 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBThis week the hosts are together, live and in-person *for the first time* from the glamorous Sunset Marquis in Los Angeles. It's a propitious day on top of that, of course, as today is 2-2-24, the official launch day of the Apple Vision Pro. In addition, Meta reported a record quarter, a record dividend, a stock buyback, and a successful Christmas season for its Reality Labs division. The stock shot up fifteen percent. This is just twenty-four hours after CEO Zuck was flogged in Washington, ...
This Week In XR January 26th, 2024 ft. David Weinstein, Nvidia’s Head of XR
January 27, 2024 00:27 - 47 minutes - 89.1 MBTed is doing his real job for Viacom today but Rony is with us, while on a ferry in Florida, en route to a secret rendezvous. In the news: Eleven Labs raising $80M for voice cloning, $6.7M for Artisse AI photo app for models and influencers, and the new Rabbit R1 a compact, toy-like $200 handheld AI "Large Action Model" that knows you and your apps. Rony says the price is so low, China must be underwriting it as part of another insidious TikTok-like scheme to steal your data. Our guest is Da...
This Week In XR January 19th, 2024 ft. Shelly Palmer, Professor at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University
January 19, 2024 19:54 - 1 hour - 118 MBJason McDowall of the AR Show podcast sits in the co-host chair as Ted and Rony are traveling. They missed a great show. With Rony absent we take a deep dive into troubles at Magic Leap and how its recent raise of $590M of debt financing from its majority shareholder, Saudi Arabia, is actually bad news. If they didn't get there with the last infusion of half a billion dollars, how do they get to profitability this time around? Our guest is consultant Shelly Palmer of the Palmer Group. He is ...
This Week In XR January 12th, 2024 ft. Faith Popcorn, Futurist
January 12, 2024 20:16 - 59 minutes - 110 MBLive from CES, Charlie and Ted recap the show, the Sphere experience, Xreal's newest AR glasses, the new Sony enterprise XR pass-through HMD, healthtech and, outside the show, layoffs at Unity and Google's AR hardware team. Our guest is the original futurist, author Faith Popcorn, who was at CES on behalf of holographic telepresence company, Proto. She's made some of the biggest calls about the direction of the economy, tech and society, in the past 30 years, including the end of retail. T...
This Week In XR January 5th, 2024 ft. Gary Shapiro, President and CEO at CES
January 05, 2024 20:19 - 59 minutes - 110 MBThis week our guest is Gary Shapiro, CEO of CES, making good on the appearance that last week was handled by the CTA's futurist, Brian Comisky. In the news, more talk about copyrights as the 1924 "Steamboat Willie'' version of Mickey Mouse enters the public domain. XReal says it sold 350K pairs of its Air2 Assisted Reality smartglasses that provide the user a big screen experience on the go using mobile devices, game consoles, tablets and laptops. AI Search engine Perplexity raised $73.6M. T...
This Week In XR December 29th, 2023 ft. Brian Comiskey, Futurist, CES
December 30, 2023 02:02 - 42 minutes - 79 MBToday our guest is, after some confusion, Brian Comisky, Futurist for CTA (which puts on CES). We start the show on a slow holiday news week with a discussion of the NY Times suit against OpenAI, apparently following unsuccessful negotiations. CES is the largest trade show in the world, with 130,000 people already registered. Brian joins us to discuss past hype cycles, future ones, and what to expect in 2024 (AI everywhere). Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, a...
This Week In XR December 22nd, 2023 ft. Sarah Hill, CEO Healium
December 22, 2023 20:32 - 45 minutes - 84.2 MBThis week's guest, Sarah Hill, CEO of Healium (note spelling) was guest #1 on our podcast, in July 2020. We were experimenting with both the format of the show and recording the podcast in VR. It was a relatively slow news week, except Bytedance was booted off Azure Cloud's OpenAI for using it to train its own model, which is strictly verboten. Amidst denials, they were also caught covering it up. Rony has a lot to say about China and the theft of intellectual property, which, ironically is ...
This Week In XR December 15th, 2023 ft. Marcus Segal, founder and CEO of ForeVR
December 15, 2023 21:31 - 50 minutes - 93.8 MBEpic games scored a $92M win over Google for its decidedly anti-competitive app store, but what's really going to hurt is changing the business model of its app store. The EU AI Act puts some rules around transparency and copyright, Mistal AI raises $415M, and Open AI makes a deal with publisher Axel Springer. Tesla introduced a humanoid robot, Optimus Gen-1. What could go wrong? Our guest is founder and CEO of ForeVR, Marcus Segal, who was formerly the COO of Zynga. He has had an extraordin...
This Week In XR December 8th, 2023 ft. John MacInnes, Filmmaker
December 08, 2023 20:10 - 49 minutes - 91.6 MBIn the week's news was a flurry of AI announcements. Musk's Grok AI launches, and it has promise. A real-time connection to the Internet is valuable, even if it comes from Twitter. Meta launches Imagine, a very fast, very simple, text-to-image app, and other AI features. Google unveils a new, powerful LLM, Gemini, which will succeed Bard. Our guest this week is writer-director-producer John MacInnes, who is making a horror film using Unreal Engine for Fortnite (UEFN) with the support of Epic...
This Week In XR December 1st, 2023 ft. Joe Hunting, Director of "We Met in VR"
December 02, 2023 01:46 - 54 minutes - 41.3 MBOur guest this week is Joe Hunting, director of the award-winning HBO documentary, "We Met in VR." The hosts think big about events in tech, from OpenAI to Twitter, to Quantum Computing, IBM and AWS before a recap of the week's news, which includes a $55M financing round for text-to-video Gen AI app Pika Labs, and funding for three companies focused on XR. Joe Hunting's debut feature documentary has drawn attention to VR Chat as a unique platform for filmmaking and performance, and he's form...
This Week In XR November 17th, 2023 ft. Dr. Linda Jacobson, head of marketing for HaptX
November 17, 2023 23:50 - 51 minutes - 95.1 MBThe team is at full strength this week as we welcome Dr. Linda Jacobson, head of marketing for HaptX, the leader in VR gloves for enterprises. Rony kicks off the morning's tech news with an interesting rant about Tik-Tok, which he says is a threat to national security. Character AI is about to raise a billion dollars, mostly to train its characters, CIVIT.AI the free model repository for Stable Diffusion raised $5 M from Andressen, presumably to figure out a business plan, the tech that made...
This Week In XR November 17th, 2023 ft. Linda Jacobson, head of marketing for HaptX
November 17, 2023 23:50 - 51 minutes - 95.1 MBThe team is at full strength this week as we welcome Linda Jacobson, head of marketing for HaptX, the leader in VR gloves for enterprises. Rony kicks off the morning's tech news with an interesting rant about Tik-Tok, which he says is a threat to national security. Character AI is about to raise a billion dollars, mostly to train its characters, CIVIT.AI the free model repository for Stable Diffusion raised $5 M from Andressen, presumably to figure out a business plan, the tech that made Gri...
This Week In XR November 10th, 2023 ft. Michael Beneville, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of AREA15
November 11, 2023 09:40 - 49 minutes - 49.7 MBThis week our guest is Michael Beneville, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of AREA15, an immersive entertainment venue in Las Vegas, anchored by Meow Wolf's Omera Mart. First, Ted and Charlie recap busy news week, starting with Open AI's first Developer Day, and Musk's xAI announces Grok, which will incorporate a real-time newsfeed from Twitter. We have details on the AI Pin launching next week. A new free translation app, Lipdub, does voice cloning and AI-driven lip-syncing of short vi...
This Week In XR November 10th, 2023 ft. Guest Michael Beneville, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of AREA15
November 11, 2023 09:40 - 49 minutes - 49.7 MBThis week our guest is Michael Beneville, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of AREA15, an immersive entertainment venue in Las Vegas, anchored by Meow Wolf's Omera Mart. First, Ted and Charlie recap busy news week, starting with Open AI's first Developer Day, and Musk's xAI announces Grok, which will incorporate a real-time newsfeed from Twitter. We have details on the AI Pin launching next week. A new free translation app, Lipdub, does voice cloning and AI-driven lip-syncing of short vi...
This Week In XR November 3rd 2023 ft. Amy LaMeyer, Managing Director, WXR Fund
November 03, 2023 22:24 - 49 minutes - 91.4 MBThis week we're wondering how exactly the new US AI regulations are going to work, and hoping the EU will be a little more specific. In an international, open-source world, is this even possible? On the heels of a $4B investment from Amazon, Anthropic AI is now taking $2B from Amazon's competitor, Google. Xpanceo is bringing AR contact lenses back. Our guest is Amy LaMeyer, Managing Partner of the Women's XR Fund (WXR Fund). We're talking about their portfolio, the slow pace of XR adoption, ...
This Week In XR October 27th 2023 ft. Albhy Galuten, Executive, Technologist, and Music Producer
October 28, 2023 12:30 - 1 hour - 114 MBThis week the hosts tear into weekly earnings, more changes at Magic Leap, big tech earnings, and Peter Theil's investment in a European drone maker. Our guest is legendary music producer Albhy Galuten. As a music producer he was responsible for over a dozen number one hits. As an executive and technologist, he shepherded Universal Musical into the digital era. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! https...
This Week In XR October 20th, 2023 Special Episode ft. Jake Zim
October 26, 2023 02:44 - 21 minutes - 40.4 MBThis Week in XR Special episode with Jake Zim... Jake Zim – SVP, Virtual Reality, Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPVR) Oversees global virtual reality production and strategy for the motion picture group. Jake has produced a wide variety of interactive projects across a spectrum of distribution channels including location-based, mobile and in-home. Zim has led the development of virtual reality experiences such as the Emmy® nominated Spider-Man: Homecoming VR; Ghostbusters: Dimension; The Em...
This Week In XR October 20th, 2023 ft. Jake Zim, Senior Vice President of VR at Sony Pictures Ent.
October 20, 2023 23:58 - 49 minutes - 92.2 MBCharlie and Rony do the news while Ted is at Sony with SVP Jake Zim, playing their new “Ghostbusters” VR game. In the news this week, Charlie’s hot take on Quest 3, Mojo Vision gets its mojo back, raising another $21.4 M. Universal music sues Anthropic AI. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! https://linktr.ee/thisweekinxr Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This Week In XR October 13th, 2023 ft. Meron Gribetz, Founder and CEO, and Darin Dougherty, Chief Medical Officer of Inner Cosmos
October 13, 2023 21:30 - 1 hour - 115 MBThis week's tech news starts with an unhappy topic, as we explore the impact of the Hamas War, particularly on the Israeli tech sector. Unity CEO John Riccitello exits under a cloud; big layoffs at Qualcomm in San Diego. The bright side includes rave reviews of the Meta Quest 3 and new competitor to Meta's Ray-Ban Stories, Carrera, which uses Amazon's Alexa for smart glasses. Our guest this week is Meron Gribetz, founder and CEO of Inner Cosmos, which uses a brain-computer interface to treat...
This Week In XR October 6th, 2023 ft. Ted and Rony
October 06, 2023 18:54 - 50 minutes - 94.7 MBThis week it's all Ted and Rony, as Charlie and the guest were nixed by travel trouble. Top topic is wearable AI, like Humane's AI pin, which has a micro projector for visual data, projected on a table or your hand. Mr. Beast and Tom Hanks were Deep Faked. The importance of authentication, says Rony, is growing exponentially. Ted shares his impressions of Quest 3. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! They are hosting XR Pioneers on October 11th, Sign up: https://www.zappar.com/xr-pioneers/2...
This Week In XR September 29th, 2023 ft. Banks Boutté and Maxx Burman, KitBash3D
September 29, 2023 21:33 - 50 minutes - 95.2 MBThis week was packed with XR and AI news, starting with the formal introduction of the $500 Meta Quest 3, upgraded audio Ray Ban smart glasses, and AI integrations with Instagram. Also in the news, Amazon's multi-billion dollar investment in Anthropic, the AI startup whose Claude AI is a ChatGPT competitor. Our guests, Banks Boutee and Max Burman, are the co-founders of KitBash3D which makes premium assets for movies and video games like "Terminator" and "The Last of Us." Thank you to our ...
This Week In XR September 22nd, 2023 ft. Michael Freeman, co-founder and CEO, Ocutrx
September 22, 2023 19:22 - 52 minutes - 98.6 MBThis week we're musing about the sad fate of NFTs, the race to build AI co-pilots, Neuralink human trials, and the new Caleb Wood GenAI Star Wars fan scene. Our guest is Michael Freeman, co-founder of Ocutrx, which is launching an AR HMD, the Oculenz, that will help macular degeneration patients see. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! https://linktr.ee/thisweekinxr Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pr...
This Week In XR September 15th, 2023 ft. Anna Belova, founder and CEO of Devar
September 15, 2023 18:48 - 48 minutes - 90.8 MBThe boys are back with Space Aliens, AI in the US Senate, Text to Audio from Stability AI, and the Army resurrects its HoloLens for infantry AR project, IVAS. Our guest is entrepreneur Anna Belova, founder and CEO of Devar. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! https://linktr.ee/thisweekinxr Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This Week In XR September 8th, 2023 ft. Curtis Hickman, Cofounder & Chief Creative Officer of The VOID, Author of "Hyper-Reality: The Art of Designing Impossible Experiences."
September 09, 2023 01:56 - 1 hour - 126 MBNo big financing news but the holiday-shortened week brought up important topics, notably a ruling on an award-winning AI-generated image. There were a couple of juicy hardware rumors: Nintendo/Google and Meta/LG, which leads to a discussion of Meta vs. Apple brand strategy. Say hello to 'Ajax,' Apple's private LLM, which may be the future of Siri. Our guest is Curtis Hickman, Chief Creative Officer of the Void and the author of the new book, "Hyper-Reality: The Art of Designing Impossible E...
This Week In XR September 1st, 2023 ft. Michael Mack, CEO and Owner, Europa Park
September 01, 2023 20:26 - 47 minutes - 89.1 MBThis week we're talking about OpenAI's one billion dollars in revenue, up from a measly 28 million in 2022. They've got plenty of competition, including Tel Aviv-based AI21, which just raised another $155 M to compete with their business offering. We also get into VRChat and Meta Horizon's new mobile apps, and the announcement the Magic Leap One Creators' Edition won't be supported after 2024, whatever that means. Our guest is Michael Mack, CEO and owner of Europa Park, the second-largest th...
This Week In XR August 25th, 2023 ft. Anurupa Ganguly, Founder of Prisms
August 25, 2023 22:19 - 1 hour - 116 MBA slow week at the end of the summer, punctuated by blockbuster earnings from Nvidia, the primary beneficiary of the AI boom, at least for now. Rony thinks they could be a ten trillion dollar company in five years. Our guest is Anurupa Ganguly, the founder of Prisms, a VR learning platform for middle and high school students. She's an MIT-trained engineer who taught in Boston Public Schools where she identified the need, and the opportunity, to transform math and science instruction with VR....
This Week In XR August 18th, 2023 ft. Walter Parkes, Chairman and co-founder Dreamscape VR
August 18, 2023 19:51 - 55 minutes - 102 MBSlow news week gave us a lot of time with our guest, Walter Parkes, academy-award-winning producer and co-founder and Chairman of Dreamscape location-based VR, and Dreamscape Learn, a joint venture with ASU to create immersive learning centers around the world. Walter talks about his movies, the founding of Dreamscape, and its spin-off Dreamscape Learn. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! Hosted on A...
This Week In XR 8-11-23 ft. Inga Petryaevskaya, CEO, ShapesXR
August 11, 2023 18:36 - 46 minutes - 87.8 MBOur guest this week is Inga Petryaevskaya, founder and CEO of ShapesXR, an app that enables you to prototype XR experiences in VR. They just raised an $8.6 round. Also in the news this week, Neuralink scores $280M to continue developing its brain implant, now being distastefully tested on chimps. Leia3D acquires competitor Dimenco, and Immersed going public through a SPAC. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWee...
This Week In XR 8-4-23 ft. Zak Penn, Filmmaker and "Ready Player One" screenwriter
August 05, 2023 15:58 - 1 hour - 127 MBOur guest is "Ready Player One" screenwriter Zak Penn. He is also a prolific filmmaker, earning nerd cred with the doc "Atari, Game Over." In the news this week, Siggraph's 50th kicks off in LA, $50M in funding for Inworld's AI NPCs, Virtuix (omnidirectional VR treadmill) raised $5M, and Hologate, the most successful LBVR company in the world, raised $8M. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! Hosted on...
This Week In XR 7-28-23 ft. Rob Tercek, Author, Vaporized
July 28, 2023 20:43 - 47 minutes - 88.8 MBThis week we're talking about Meta's reported losses on the Metaverse, Sam Altman's Worldcoin, a company that scans your eyes to confirm you're human, like Blade Runner. Our guest is Rob Tercek, author of Vaporized, and social entrepreneur, who is working on a project to create regional tech hubs to foster innovation in 3D technologies in places like Santa Fe, Charleston and Little Rock by bringing together local governments, universities and private industry. Thank you to our sponsor, Zap...
This Week In XR 7-21-23 ft. Dan Olson, YouTube Filmmaker
July 21, 2023 21:53 - 59 minutes - 110 MBThis week the hosts are grappling with text-to-episode GenAI just released by the Simulation (formerly Fable Studio). Dan Olson, creator of the "Folding Ideas" YouTube channel and the film "Follow the Line," a debunking of crypto, which has garnered 11M views. The follow-up, "The Future is a Dead Mall," which takes on the Metaverse, earned 3M views. Olson schools the hosts on these topics, the future of AI, and the tech hype cycle. Dan's new movie tells the story of Meme stocks. Thank you t...
This Week In XR 7-14-23 ft. Shawn Frayne, CEO Looking Glass Factory
July 15, 2023 01:59 - 54 minutes - 100 MBWhat writers and actors fear about AI, Zuck's Threads, Elon's X, and Roblox VR. Guest Shawn Frayne, CEO of Looking Glass Factory, who talks about their 3D displays and their new AI driven holographic characters, Lifeforms. Chatbots made of light. Listener question: "What is XR's killer app?" Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This Week In XR 7-7-23 ft. Ken Bretschneider, CEO Evermore and The Grid, Co-founder, The VOID
July 07, 2023 18:55 - 46 minutes - 86.5 MBThe Zuck - Musk cage match, Threads v Twitter, is on, but it may play out in court. Our guest this week is the legendary Ken Bretschneider, founder of the Evermore and Grid theme parks, and co-founder of The VOID. He gave us a good taste of why he's been so successful at creating unmatched experiences: he thinks big. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more ...
This Week In XR 6-30-23 ft. David Ganek and Joel Newton, City Lights VR
June 30, 2023 20:48 - 50 minutes - 92.8 MBCharlie and Ted celebrate show #150 by talking with Rony about Augmedics' big raise for its X-vision AR wearable that uses a patient's skin as a projection surface. Also, Google kills its AR project "Iris" (again), and Pokemon Go producer Niantic's layoffs. Our guests are David Ganek and Joel Newton, who co-founded City Lights, a VR Studio that finances, produces and distributes VR Experiences like "Spheres." They share details about their newest production "Yosemite," which uses photogramme...
This Week In XR 6 -23-23 ft. Kylan Gibbs, John Gaeta, inWorld.ai
June 23, 2023 20:45 - 44 minutes - 82.3 MBRony is off again but this week we had a great conversation with guests Kylan Gibbs, founder and CPO, and Academy Award Winner John Gaeta, CCO of inWorld.ai, which enables game designers to create independent AI characters who interact with players in a video game. In the news, the Elon-Zuck "cage match," Kobold AI mining raises $200M, Elven Labs $19M, and Second Life turns 20! Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @Th...
This Week In XR 6-16-23 ft. Dr. Simon Taylor, Co-Founder & Chief R&D Officer, and Kirk Ewing, Co-Founder & General Manager of Zapbox
June 16, 2023 18:25 - 48 minutes - 89 MBCharlie and Ted, and everyone else, are still talking about the Apple Vision Pro, even as three AI start-ups land over $450 M between them. One of them is four weeks old! Our guests this week are Dr. Simon Taylor, Co-Founder & Chief R&D Officer, and Kirk Ewing, Co-Founder & General Manager of Zapbox, here to introduce the new $80 AR headset, ZapBox. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! Hosted on Acast...
This Week In XR 6-9-23 ft. Ed Saatchi, founder of Fable Studio
June 10, 2023 03:44 - 56 minutes - 105 MBTed and Rony rip into Apple Vision Pro as they dig into the future of spatial computing. Guest is producer Ed Saatchi, founder of Fable Studio (“Wolves in the Walls”), creator of virtual (AI) beings, and an upcoming movie created exclusively with AI. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This Week In XR 6-2-23 ft. John Riccitiello, Unity CEO and Hugo Swart, VP and GM of Qualcomm.
June 04, 2023 01:32 - 47 minutes - 88.5 MBA brief recap of AWE, the surprise reveal of the Quest 3, and the upcoming launch of the Apple Reality One are the topics this week, followed by on-site interviews from AWE in Santa Clara with Unity CEO John Riccitiello and Hugo Swart, VP and GM of Qualcomm. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.