Voices of VR
667 episodes - English - Latest episode: 13 days ago - ★★★★★ - 158 ratingsDesigning for Virtual Reality. Oral history podcast featuring the pioneering artists, storytellers, and technologists driving the resurgence of virtual & augmented reality. Learn about the patterns of immersive storytelling, experiential design, ethical frameworks, & the ultimate potential of XR.
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Episodes
#1190: Targo Stories’ Immersive Documentary Spatial Innovations with “Behind the Dish” & “JFK Memento”
April 03, 2023 06:57 - 48 minutes - 33.6 MBTargo Stories continues to innovate with novel spatial storytelling techniques in both of the projects that were submitted and selected to SXSW. The Behind the Dish series uses micro lenses to give a uniquely fresh and giant look at food being produced by female chefs. And then JFK: Memento is experimenting will all types of translations of spatial footage from 2D into 3D, that's then juxtaposed within a volumetric representation. It steps you through the Kennedy assassination, and gives you ...
#1189: “Forager” Volumetric Timelapse of Mushroom Growth Hits a Sweet Spot of Touch, Smell, & Immersive Storytelling
April 03, 2023 06:45 - 48 minutes - 33.7 MBForager is a short immersive story that shows the four stages of development of a mushroom through a groundbreaking volumetric timelapse that takes place within a game engine. They had to innovate on automating their photogrammetry timelapse pipeline both in the capturing and rendering side, and they ultimately decided to go with a voxel-based approach for representing and optimizing these volumetric timelapse processes. I had a chance to chat with Winslow-Porter, co-creator, producer, and c...
#1188: Emotionally Evocative, Virtual Eye Gazing with Ukrainians in Bombed Out Buildings in “Fresh Memories: The Look”
April 03, 2023 06:31 - 47 minutes - 32.7 MBFresh Memories: The Look is a 360-video about the war in Ukraine that takes the deceptively simple idea of having Ukrainian citizens gaze into a 360-degree camera within the context of a bombed out home, workplace, or school that's juxtaposed against an audio design of that space when it would be at it's most flourishing moment. The experience of straightforward concept is extremely powerful, emotional, and evocative idea. The use of a traditional Ukrainian folk song at the end was specifica...
#1187: “MLK: Now is the Time” Brilliantly Translates Dr. King’s Speech into Embodied Interactions & Spatial Metaphors
April 03, 2023 06:08 - 1 hour - 47.4 MBMLK: Now is the Time was originally released on the Meta Quest platform on January 12, 2023, and was selected to show at SXSW as a part of the 2023 XR Experience Spotlight. It’s master class of immersive storytelling and a brilliant use of the affordances of VR to create an interactive, embodied, and immersive experience of some of the lesser known and discussed parts of Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963. This is the second part of a series on MLK with...
#1186: Chinese Ecosystem for Immersive Stories, VAST Platform, & Neo-Wulin Immersive Music Experience
April 03, 2023 05:35 - 28 minutes - 19.9 MBI had a chance to catch up with Eddie Lou, who is the Founder of Sandman Studios and Director of Sandbox Immersive Festival that's based in China. I get an update as to what's happening with the Chinese ecosystem for immersive stories, how he's bring Western stories to China within a location-based entertainment context, his plans for bringing back the Sandbox Immersive Festival as a physical exhibition with international presence, their work on a social VR platform based on Unreal Engine cal...
#1185: HTC’s Enterprise VR Strategy + Debate about the Future of AI
April 03, 2023 05:16 - 1 hour - 52.2 MBI speak with HTC’s Alvin Wang Graylin, who is the President of HTC China & Global VP of Corporate Development at HTC about HTC’s investment strategy and what’s happening in the enterprise XR space. We talk about how hardware subsidies have distorted the overall XR hardware ecosystem, and how Meta has largely skipped over the enterprise market in favor of the consumer market while HTC continues to find compelling use cases across training, medical XR, architecture, and spatial design. We also ...
#1184: “Battle for Your Brain” Author Nita Farahany on Establishing Cognitive Liberty as a Human Right for Limits on Neurotechnologies & XR
March 09, 2023 18:52 - 1 hour - 48.9 MBNita Farahany argues that we need to establish a new human right of Cognitive Liberty in order to address the threats of Neurotech like VR, AR, BCIs, & non-invasive neural interfaces in her new book Battle for the Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology (releasing on March 14th). Cognitive Liberty is a umbrella term that includes a complex of other human rights including mental privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination, but clearly defining this nove...
#1183: From Kant to an Organic View of Reality: Scaffolding a Process-Relational Paradigm Shift with Whitehead Scholar Matt Segall
March 09, 2023 17:42 - 1 hour - 68.9 MBVirtual Reality represents a paradigm shift for how I’ve come to understand the nature of reality, and there’s a corresponding paradigm shift in philosophy in the move from substance metaphysics to process-relational metaphysics that I’ve previously explored with Alfred North Whitehead scholar Matt Segall, in a discussion about 13 process-relational philosophers with Grant Maxwell, and in a talk that I gave on Process Philosophy & VR to The Virginia Philosophy Reality Lab. I invited Segall ba...
#1182: Recreating Philosophical Moral Dilemmas in VR, the Gamer’s Dilemma, & Virtual Ethics
March 09, 2023 17:10 - 1 hour - 70.9 MBAndrew Kissel has been recreating moral dilemmas like the Trolley Problem in VR at his Virginia Philosophy Reality Lab at Old Dominion University. I had a chance to talk about his work in moral philosophy around catalyzed by Morgan Luck’s paper “The gamer’s dilemma: An analysis of the arguments for the moral distinction between virtual murder and virtual paedophilia” that tries to define the ethical threshold between different types of virtual wrongdoing. We may have an intuition for why virt...
#1181: VR Renaissance in Moral Psychology, Perspectival Thought Experiments in Philosophy, & Bounds of Empathy
March 09, 2023 16:25 - 1 hour - 47 MBMoral philosopher Erick J. Ramirez writes that we "we are now in the beginning stages of a methodological VR renaissance in moral psychology" in his book "The Ethics of Virtual and Augmented Worlds: Building Worlds." He argues that our imagination is too limited for perspectival thought experiments like the trolley problem where we're asked to put ourselves into a specific situation and make a prediction for what action we'd take. He's been experimenting with VR at the intersection of experim...
#1180: Anti-Trust & Privacy Watchdog Jason Kint Reflects on Ad Ecosystems & XR
March 08, 2023 07:04 - 1 hour - 45.4 MBPresident Joe Biden wrote an Wall Street Journal op-ed on January 11, 2023 calling for “serious federal protections for Americans’ privacy.” Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint tweeted out that “I’ll sit down with anyone to explain why privacy integrated with antitrust is the critical issue of our time” and I took him up on his offer. Kint serves as a sort of industry watchdog for surveillance capitalism companies like Google and Facebook/Meta digging through anti-trust court transcripts, dep...
#1179: Discussion of XRSI’s Privacy Framework 1.0 from 2020
March 08, 2023 06:23 - 1 hour - 45.6 MBOn September 8, 2020, the XR Safety Initiative launched their XR Privacy Framework 1.0 which is a set of self-directed, privacy guidelines aimed to empower “individuals and organizations with a common language and a practical tool that is flexible enough to address diverse privacy needs and is understood by technical and non-technical audiences.” It is “inspired by the NIST privacy framework’s approach” with the five functions of “Identify, Govern, Control, Communicate, and Protect” while the...
#1178: How the EU’s Metaverse Initiative May Bring XR Privacy Amendments for the AI Act, GDPR, or Digital Markets Act
March 08, 2023 02:15 - 1 hour - 43.3 MBThere’s an upcoming Virtual World Initiative (aka the Metaverse Initiative) at the European Commission on May 31st, and I had a chance to get Florence G’sell’s thoughts on it. She’s a law professor in France teaching at the University of Lorraine and leads the Digital, Governance and Sovereignty Chair at Sciences Po. If anything, she believes that this initiative might highlight some gaps in the many relatively new regulations that span from the AI Act, Digital Services Act, Digital Markets A...
#1177: How the EU’s AI Act Could Impact Biometric Data Definitions & XR Privacy
March 07, 2023 21:42 - 59 minutes - 41.3 MBThe European Union’s AI Act is pending legislation that is classifying different AI applications across different tiers of risk, and there are a number of ways that this legislation could shape the future of how the Metaverse unfolds, especially as there could be XR privacy implications depending upon how biometric data may be redefined and what types of inferences could be made by this data. I talk with Daniel Leufer of Access Now about the human rights approach for regulating AI application...
#1176: XR Privacy Landscape & Data Flows with Future of Privacy Forum’s Jameson Spivack
March 07, 2023 21:12 - 54 minutes - 38 MBI interview Jameson Spivack, who is a senior policy analyst at the Future of Privacy Forum leading their work on Immersive [XR] Technologies of VR/AR/MR, neurotech, BCIs, biometrics, ad practices, and regulatory frameworks. We talk about how there are gaps in existing privacy frameworks here in the United States, and the work that he’s doing to help educate consumers, and technology companies of the current policy debates. The Future of Privacy Forum isn’t advocating for any specific legislat...
#1175: Highlights of Existing Law & Extended Reality Symposium at Stanford Law’s Cyberpolicy Center with Organizer Brittan Heller
March 07, 2023 20:45 - 51 minutes - 35.4 MBThere was an Existing Law and Extended Reality: A Research Symposium held at Stanford Law School on Friday, January 6th, 2023, that brought together legal scholars, industry experts, civil society researchers, and academics to look at how immersive technologies and virtual worlds may bring about new interpretations of existing laws or the need to write new laws that better cover harms from the “Metaverse.” I had a chance to talk with organizer Brittan Heller, who has previously been featured ...
#1174: Palmer Luckey on Past, Present, & Future of XR: DK1, Valve Fallout, Why He Got Fired, & XR Projects at Anduril Industries
February 24, 2023 17:02 - 1 hour - 58.8 MBI had a chance to talk with Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey about the past, present, & future of XR where he reveals to me that his defense contracting company Anduril has more people employed working on VR than Oculus did when it was bought out by Facebook. Anduril is working on creating immersive virtual reality user interfaces, custom VR headsets, and some cutting-edge perception augmentation beyond sight. We cover what he's working on now in VR now, where he sees XR and human augmentation go...
#1173: Echo VR Reflections from 2019 by Sonya Haskins + My Thoughts of Echo VR Shut Down Announcement
February 17, 2023 22:09 - 32 minutes - 22.4 MBI dig into my interview backlog archive from April 2019 at F8 (a month before the Quest launch) to publish this conversation with Sonya Haskins, who shares her journey into VR through eSports and the Echo VR community. Haskins is a writer who published a couple of guest editorials on UploadVR starting in 2017 about how VR changed her perspective on gaming, and then a recent piece titled "Echo VR’s Loss Reverberates In Reality" reacting to the shut down announcement on the previous day. On Jan...
#1172: “Metaversed: See Beyond the Hype” Book Interview with Luis Bravo Martins and Samantha G. Wolfe
February 07, 2023 20:57 - 1 hour - 45.6 MBThere's a new book about the future potentials of challenges of the Metaverse called "Metaversed: See Beyond the Hype" by Luis Bravo Martins (CMO Kit AR) and Samantha G. Wolfe (Founder of PitchFWD) that is releasing today, February 7th, 2023. It's an ambitious look at the broad spectrum of technologies behind the Metaverse that's split up into five chapters with the first three chapters laying out the technological innovations driving a 3D and immersive Internet, with the fourth chapter layin...
#1171: XR Association Updates on XR for All Foundation DEI Effort, Tech Policy, & Accessibility
February 02, 2023 22:27 - 53 minutes - 37.2 MBOn November 1st, 2022 the XR Association (XRA) trade association for VR, AR, and Mixed Reality companies announced the formation of the XR for All Foundation at XRA’s Limitless Future Conference. The press release says, “The XR for All Foundation’s main priority will be supporting the development of a diverse and equitable workforce for the immersive technology industry through broad-based research and impactful partnerships for generations to come.” I had a chance to speak with XRA President...
#1170: Niantic’s Lightship AR Developer Kit Enables Third-Party Devs to Build the Real-World Metaverse
January 30, 2023 23:56 - 53 minutes - 36.6 MBNiantic's Lightship Augmented Reality Developer Kit celebrated it's one-year anniversary in November 2022, and I had a chance to catch up Caitlin Lacey, a senior director of AR platform marketing at Niantic to talk about the evolution of the Lightship ARDK. Their Virtual Positioning System has the ability to "determine a user’s position and orientation with centimeter-level accuracy", and their free Unity SDK enable's third-party AR developers to build site-specific apps using the same system...
#1169: IDFA DocLab Founder Caspar Sonnen Reflects on 2022 Program, Industry Trends, and Distribution Challenges
December 22, 2022 11:22 - 49 minutes - 34.5 MBIn my final interview from IDFA DocLab 2022, I had a chance to catch up with DocLab founder Caspar Sonnen to reflect on the 2022 program and the ecological points made by the piece Okawari, to comment on the "Nervous System" in this phase of the global pandemic, to share his insights for why immersive documentarians are on the bleeding edge of innovation, and to elaborate on various distribution challenges with the type of immersive stories being shown at DocLab 2022. We also cover the many...
#1168: “The Anticipation of Rain” Combines Open Brush Landscape VR Painting of a Monsoon with Custom Scents
December 22, 2022 10:57 - 24 minutes - 17.1 MBAfter suffering a paralyzing viral infection, XR Director Naima Karim started to notice the natural world around her in a more visceral way, She “experienced the monsoon even more intensely than usual: the initial gusts of wind, the rapidly darkening sky, the oppressive humidity and finally the downpour of rain, which washes everything clean and leaves behind a fresh scent.” A painter by trade, she took up virtual reality painting with Open Brush, and created a romantic and poetic sim tribute...
#1167: Countering the Bystander Effect of Drug-Induced Sexual Assaults with Interactive Narrative “Missing 10 Hours VR”
December 22, 2022 10:23 - 48 minutes - 33.5 MBMissing 10 Hours VR is an interactive immersive narrative designed to counter the bystander effect by recreating different social dynamics and peer pressure as your virtual friend attempts to spike a woman’s drink with a date rape drug GHB and then isolate her by the end of the night. Here’s a description of the piece: In this interactive VR piece, the viewer is led on a night out by Greg, a big-headed guy with bad intentions. He spikes 22-year-old Mara’s drink with the drug GHB, and she gra...
#1166: Sarah Wolozin’s Journey to Directing the MIT Open Documentary Lab
December 22, 2022 09:57 - 52 minutes - 36.4 MBSarah Wolozin is the director of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, and I had a chance to catch up with her at the IDFA DocLab 2022 in order to record her journey from being a storytelling to working at MIT’s Open DocLab. Here’s the mission statement of the Open DocLab: “Drawing on MIT’s legacy of media innovation and its deep commitment to open and accessible information, the MIT Open Documentary Lab brings storytellers, technologists, and scholars together to explore new documentary forms with a...
#1165: XR Installation “Ikhet (Sound Pyramid)” Combines Immersive Sound, Visceral Haptics, & Diffracted Kaleidoscopic Visuals
December 22, 2022 09:26 - 27 minutes - 19.5 MBIkhet (Sound Pyramid) is a 14-channel spatial audio installation that included ButtKicker Haptics, LED tubes with diffractive glasses giving a ghostly, analog Holographic effect, experimental field recordings, and a harsh electronic music track that reflected the artist Ali Santana’s strained emotions throughout the pandemic. I had a chance to chat with Santana to unpack his journey and process in creating this piece. Here’s his description of his immersive installation, which details more of...
#1164: Live XR Sketch Comedy “Bag of Worms” Blends Realities for Surrealist Humor Reflecting on Virtual Violence
December 22, 2022 08:51 - 54 minutes - 38 MBBag of Worms is a live XR sketch comedy performance developed by Matt Romein in collaboration with Peter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey that showed as a part of the ONX + DocLab MoCap Stage at IDFA DocLab 2022. It’s difficult to fully describe the surreal quality of Bag of Worms, but their synopsis does a pretty good job of summarizing the key points, “Wearing motion capture suits, Bag of Worms uses technology to create a new kind of hybrid performance, with the performers constructing and man...
#1163: Live XR Performance Experiments with ONX Studios and DocLab Motion Capture Stage at IDFA 2022
December 22, 2022 08:28 - 1 hour - 44 MBThe ONX + DocLab MoCap Stage at IDFA DocLab 2022 featured a number of experimental XR performances using a high-end OptiTrack – Motion Capture System within a theatrical stage with a screen that was projecting the virtual representations. Each of these projects are exploring how to blend aspects of the virtual and physical in the context of a live performance. I had a chance to get the backstory and more details on all of the featured projects from Matthew Niederhauser and John Fitzgerald, wh...
#1162: Talk on Motion Capture in Immersive Stories + Panel at IDFA DocLab: “Capturing Reality in Motion”
December 22, 2022 08:06 - 56 minutes - 39 MBI was invited to give a keynote at the Capturing Reality in Motion session as a part of the ONX + DocLab MoCap Stage. I gave a 20-minute talk reflecting on how some of the different projects on the film festival circuit have been using motion capture technology either in the display, production, and live performance of their piece. [Video of this talk is coming soon]. There was also a 5-minute introduction to this session by Sandra Rodriguez (Creative Director & MIT Open DocLab Fellow), but u...
#1161: The Many Immersive Documentary Innovations of “In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats:” Winner of IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction
December 22, 2022 07:39 - 1 hour - 51.9 MBIn Pursuit of Repetitive Beats is a landmark immersive documentary that seamlessly integrates so many different immersive storytelling techniques and XR modalities earning it the IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction. You’re transported back into the 1989 Underground Acid Rave Scene in Coventry and West Midlands where you go on an epic journey retracing the convoluted steps to avoid detection by the police in order to make it to a warehouse of dancing bodies. Director Darren Emerson fro...
#1160: Interview with MIT Co-Creation Studio’s Book Authors of “Collective Wisdom: Co-Creating Media with Equity and Justice”
December 22, 2022 04:02 - 1 hour - 54.2 MBThe book Collective Wisdom: Co-creating Media for Equity and Justice by the MIT Co-Creation Studio founder Kat Cizek & MIT Open DocLab founder William Uricchio was the named as the recommended book of 2022 by IDFA. They held a launch party during DocLab as well as a couple of different sessions, and I had a chance to catch up with Cizek and Uricchio in Amsterdam on the day of the launch party to get an overview of what they’re covering in their book. This definition of Co-Creation that they ...
#1159: “With These Hands” VR Installation Explores Sexual Violence Stories with New Models of Consent for Audience & Production
December 22, 2022 03:20 - 52 minutes - 36.4 MBWith These Hands is a VR installation that “shares challenging, complex and under discussed stories of sexual assault and recovery. It explores the role of listening in the recovery of both survivors and those responsible for sexual harm.” It was produced by Tessa Ratuszynska in collaboration with Survivors Leading Essential Education & Change (SLEEC), which is a “survivor-run organization that changes systems, supports survivors and dismantles the roots of male violence.” The primary mode th...
#1158: Searching for Post-Colonial Identity in an Experimental Oral Knowledge & Multi-Media Project “Ghana Airways”
December 22, 2022 02:48 - 48 minutes - 33.7 MBGhana Airways by Hakeem Adam was shown at IDFA DocLab 2022 as an experimental, non-linear audio installation with accompanying visuals, but it is also available online on Bandcamp as a linear, one-hour, 3-part audio series. The piece is Adam’s search for his post-colonial Ghanaian identity, and he’s interested in exploring unique modes of sound design to capture what he refers to as “oral knowledge.” There was a lot that I did not quite understand when I first listened to this piece, and I g...
#1157: Capturing the Digital Culture of a Virtual Help Desk for the Elderly in “New Update Available – Version 2.1”
December 22, 2022 02:21 - 27 minutes - 19.5 MBNew Update Available - Version 2.1 is a VR installation piece that blends contemporary audio documentary recordings of computer help sessions for the elderly, but then recreates these characters in VR within a speculative future where elders gather together within a virtual space in Metaverse with avatars in all in order to get their weekly computer questions answered. It's a unique approach of capturing a segment of digital culture that asks the user to reflect upon a time in the future wh...
1156: Winner of IDFA DocLab Digital Storytelling Award “He Fucked the Girl Out of Me” Explores Trauma in 2D Retro Game Walking Simulator
December 22, 2022 02:10 - 59 minutes - 40.9 MBTaylor McCue’s He Fucked the Girl Out of Me (play for free on itch.io) won the IDFA DocLab Digital Storytelling Award at DocLab 2022. It is a deeply personal story and powerful exploration of shame and trauma that uses a unique blend of retro 2D Game Boy aesthetics, graphic novel, narrative game walking simulator, with structural inspirations from Bagenzo’s Madotsuki’s Closet, which a fan fiction game of Yume Nikki. I found it to be a deeply moving piece and unlike any other interactive narr...
#1155: Polymorf’s Multi-Sensory “Symbiosis” Explores Speculative Futures Inspired by Philosopher Donna Haraway
December 22, 2022 01:48 - 51 minutes - 35.8 MBPolymorf's Symbiosis is a multi-sensory VR experience that uses soft-body haptics, a bespoke, microdose smell dispersal system, and different tastes. The piece debuted at IDFA DocLab 2021 (see my previous interview here), and it has a sold out run in Portland, Oregon from November 12 to February 12 at the Portland Art Museum's Center for an Untold Tomorrow (PAM CUT). There are 6 different characters that you can embody in this "speculative fabulation" inspired by the last chapter of Donna Ha...
#1154: Visualizing Melting Glaciers in 360 Video Story in “Once a Glacier” + Mixing Motion Capture Dance and Indigenous Poetry
December 22, 2022 01:35 - 36 minutes - 25.7 MBOnce a Glacier is a 360 video that visualizes the before and after a glacier melts over the course of a single human life time. Director Jiabao then expanded this piece as a part of a live motion capture dance performance that showed at The ONX + DocLab MoCap Stage at IDFA 2022. I interviewed her at IDFA to talk about the evolution of this project, working with indigenous poet Joan Naviyuk Kane, recording sounds of a melting glacier, and how she wanted to juxtapose geological time with the ti...
#1153: Imagining the Future of a 15-year old in 30 years in “Horizon” One-on-One Immersive Theater Piece
December 12, 2022 23:53 - 56 minutes - 38.9 MBHorizon is a one-on-one immersive theater piece where an audience member is asked a series of questions by a 15-year old to imagine their future 30 years from now in 2052. It ends up being a world building exercise where the audience has to create an imaginal future for the next generation, but it also works as a broader metaphor for the intergenerational legacy that will be inheriting by future generations. I found it to be both very challenging and confronting to translate my thoughts abou...
#1152: Provoking Deeper Questions about the Ecological Sustainability of XR Tech with “Okawari VR”
December 12, 2022 22:31 - 1 hour - 51.6 MBThis episode kicks off my 18-episode coverage from International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA) DocLab, which features the latest innovations of immersive storytelling from the documentary community. Okawari VR is an immersive experience exploring overconsumption, and asks some deeper questions about the ecological sustainability of XR technology. The co-directors of Landia Egal (Tiny Planets) and Amaury La Burthe (Novelab) are challenging the inevitability of technology evolution...
#1151: Shooting an Immersive Doc the War on Ukraine’s Culture with NowHere Media
December 01, 2022 20:22 - 51 minutes - 35.7 MBYou Destroy. We Create: The War on Ukraine’s Culture is a 360-video documentary by NowHere Media & Meta’s VR for Good that was released on Meta Quest TV on November 30th. Shot over the course of 2 weeks and a distance of 4000 kilometers by co-directors Gayatri Parameswaran and Felix Gaedtke (producers of Home After War and Kusunda), this piece documents the story of how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegally targeting cultural heritage sites and shows how artists and museums are reacting t...
#1150: Innerworld VR: Scaling Peer-to-Peer Counseling & Mental Health Interventions in Social VR
November 10, 2022 17:50 - 1 hour - 43.1 MBNoah Robinson’s Inner World launches today on the Quest Store after slowly cultivating an engaged peer-to-peer counseling community that is providing affordable mental health interventions across multiple social VR and 2D platforms on Mac, PC & iOS. Robinson is getting his Ph.D. in clinical psychology, and Inner World is a research project studying how the effects of what he calls “Cognitive Behavioral Immersion,” which is an adaptation of Aaron T. Beck’s Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Model. R...
#1149: Adding Interactivity to glTF via Node Graph-Based Extension as a Step Towards an Open Metaverse
November 09, 2022 22:29 - 58 minutes - 40.6 MBThe Khronos Group published a blog announcement on November 3rd titled, “Deliver Interactive Experiences with glTF: A Node Graph-Based Approach,” which is adding an interactive extension called KHR_Behaviors to glTF (the *.jpg format for 3D objects). This adds interactive capabilities to glTF objects that are similar to Unreal Engines Blueprint system, Unity’s Visual Scripting Language, and NVIDIA Omniverse’s Omnigraph systems. I had a chance to sit down with Threekit’s Ben Houston, who has ...
#1148: Golf+ VR: Making Golf More Accessible & Partnering with Top Golfers & Sports Stars
November 04, 2022 22:11 - 1 hour - 63.1 MBThe seeds of Golf+ VR started with founder Ryan Engle creating an iOS ARKit app to help read the golf putting green topology to give a suggested path to help improve his puts, but the lack of demand caused a pivot into moving into a professional putting simulator in partnership with Top Golf with Pro Putt by Top Golf, a rebrand to Golf+, and most recently a funding round that including Rory McIlroy (the current #1 ranked golfer in the world), Jordan Spieth, Tom Brady, Steph Curry, Mike Trout ...
#1147: Thirteen Philosophers on the Problem of Opposites: Grant Maxwell’s Integration & Difference Book & Archetypal Approaches to Character
October 27, 2022 10:57 - 2 hours - 103 MBGrant Maxwell’s book Integration and Difference: Constructing a Mythical Dialectic looks at the problem of the opposites through the lens of 13 philosophers who mostly fit within a constructivist stream of pragmatist, speculative, or process thought. This Voices of VR podcast episode is a 2.5-hour, philosophical deep dive providing an overview of each of these thinkers and how their ideas fit into the broader context of experiential design, perception, embodied experience, consciousness, and ...
#1146: Brad Lynch’s Journey as a VR Hardware Analyst: Valve Deckard, Speculative Patent Research, & Hardware Leaks
October 18, 2022 07:07 - 1 hour - 43.2 MBBrad Lynch has described his SadlyItsBradly YouTube channel as a speculation and prediction channel focusing on the next generation VR hardware, and it has been providing some of the most insightful and detailed VR hardware analysis in the XR industry. Lynch has been fusing together patent research, sources from the supply chain and wider XR industry, expert interviews, data mining techniques of import records and decompiled software updates to discover clues about future hardware, and in som...
#1145: Wrap-up of Meta Connect with 4 Immersive Journalists: Meta Quest Pro Impressions & Meta Reality Labs Research Demos
October 16, 2022 21:31 - 1 hour - 64.3 MBMeta Connect happened this past week on October 11th where Meta announced the Meta Quest Pro, and also released quite a lot of interesting information about their future strategies. I participated in a panel discussion with 3 other immersive journalists covering this space on the No Proscenium podcast episode #363 hosted by Noah Nelson (@noahjnelson) along with CNET’s Scott Stein (@jetscott), and LA Times games & themed entertainment journalist Todd Martens (@toddmartens). This Voices of VR e...
#1144: Venice Immersive Panel on The Art of Reviewing Immersive Art and Entertainment
October 11, 2022 12:29 - 1 hour - 60.5 MBThis is the 26th & last episode of my Venice Immersive 2022 coverage, and I wanted to end with this discussion amongst film and immersive critics about the various challenges for reviewing and critiquing immersive art and entertainment. This is a continuation of two previous conversations that I also participated in during Venice Immersive 2019 (I hope to air the recordings of those here soon), and the major conclusion back then was that the challenges of the limited distribution of immersive...
#1143: VRChat World Builder Fins and his 3 Experiences in Venice Immersive 2022: “Treasure Heist,” “Magic Heist,” and “District Roboto”
October 11, 2022 10:41 - 1 hour - 48.6 MBVRChat world builder Fins had 3 experiences in Venice Immersive 2022 with one in competition (Treasure Heist), and two in the Worlds Gallery (Magic Heist and District Roboto). Fins comes from an illustration and concept artist background, and so he’s been able to be quite prolific in make a variety of different types of worlds with each one doing different types of experimentations with including narrative. He said that he was able to put together Treasure Heist within just a couple of months...
#1142: Scene-by-Scene Breakdown of “Kindred” Exploring Themes of LGBTQ+ Identity and Family
October 11, 2022 10:12 - 42 minutes - 29.7 MBKindred is a short and sweet experience that explores issues of non-binary, gender-questioning, and LGBTQ+ identities in the context of family. It’s an animated piece that manages to be both general and universal in it’s themes, but you learn at the end some of the more very specific ways in which it may be unique to the protagonists. We also talk about the character designs, and how the abstracted animation representations are able to withhold some information that allows for certain informa...
#1141: Venice Immersive VRChat Worlds Gallery Producer Mike Salmon on Curating the Frontiers of DIY World Building
October 11, 2022 09:47 - 56 minutes - 39.1 MBMike Salmon is the producer of the VRChat Worlds Gallery at Venice Immersive, which means that the scouts out potential worlds, helps track down potential events to feature, and coordinates all of the physical and virtual docents who helping to actually run all of the various world hops. The VRChat world gallery had over 30 different worlds that were featured on a variety of different world hops throughout the day, but there were also five different VRChat worlds that were in competition. Two...