Podcasts about vr chat

This week, I talk about my final thoughts on Sanctum 2 and Ed-0: Zombie Uprising, give a little postmortem on my Nintendo video, and talk the new VR Chat webcam support and Copilot for Xbox.Opening Music from Sanctum 2Scar-Lead Salvation WebsiteVRChat Webcam SupportXbox Copilot ProgramSangokushi Taisen WebsiteMillion Arthur GP Usage Announced

HTC has launched Viverse platform that is aiming to become the YouTube of 3D Content. It's a platform that hosts 3D content and worlds built on PlayCanvas as well as many other open source technologies like WebXR, WebGPU, and VRM. It is sort of like a mix between VRChat with social worlds, 3D web crypto-based metaverse worlds, but also with some more enterprise embedding features as well. It's exciting to see this shift towards building out the open and interoperable metaverse, but in the context of this hybrid walled garden context that is built using open web technology stacks. It is also a hybrid in another way in that it is mostly consumer-facing but also has enterprise use cases like privately embedding of 3D content. I interviewed HTC's Andranik Aslanyan about the new VIVERSE platform, how they recruited over a hundred XR and WebXR developers to seed the content, and how VIVERSE fits into their overall strategy. I get some clarifications on the Android XR non-exclusive IP acquisition, and how VIVERSE fits into where HTC will be heading now that we're coming up on 10 years the HTC Vive was announced on March 1, 2014. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

We're honored to have Obsidian Games' Carrie Patel, Game Director for Avowed, return on the eve of their game launch to share our early thoughts and answer our most pressing questions! We're also joined by special guests DansGaming and Gothalion to chat about the recent Playstation State of Play, Skibidi toilet horror stories, ending the debate on Overwatch 2 vs Marvel Rivals and much more! 0:00 - Intro1:50 - Carrie Patel is back!4:15 - Launching games5:50 - Game reviews10:00 - Writing with established lore21:45 - Garrus25:50 - Tips & Tricks28:00 - Build variety33:40 - Level design45:50 - Why the drastic change from Pillars of Eternity to Avowed?48:10 - Will this lead to Pillars of Eternity 3?49:00 - Dodger's questions51:00 - Mod support?58:55 - Our time with Avowed1:05:20 - Kingdom Come Deliverance 21:19:00 - Art Director of Half-Life 2 - Viktor Antanov passed away1:19:50 - Borderlands 41:24:10 - Skibidi Toilet1:27:00 - Saros 1:29:30 - Tides of Annihilation1:31:25 - Lies of P: Overture1:39:25 - Monster Hunter World has sold a lot recently1:46:10 - Overwatch 2 vs Marvel Rivals1:55:40 - Elden Ring Nightreign2:07:00 - Love and Deepspace2:14:00 - Warframe2:19:40 - Destiny 22:22:40 - Civilization VII2:24:10 - VRChat gooning2:32:20 - Goth is making a game2:35:10 - BREAKING: Rainbow Six Siege X2:39:50 - Path of Exile 22:42:20 - No Man's Sky2:44:00 - ShoutoutsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're finally blessed with the presence of Dodger this week to chat about how getting old is super weird, another pitch for Tub Grub, being on LSF, League of Legends spreading, Monster Hunting and more! We also get the lowdown on Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, indie darlings, retro games and a very extended look into VRChat. 0:00 - Intro1:00 - The times are changing6:00 - LSF10:00 - Tub grub15:30 - Indie games24:40 - PSN down for 20 hours27:00 - Civilization VII32:00 - Sworn47:10 - GTA6 still on track to release in 202548:00 - Borderlands52:00 - The Switch 54:00 - Avowed58:20 - Battlefield Labs1:09:20 - Monster Hunter Wilds approaching1:17:00 - The League virus1:23:00 - Riot removes F2P features1:34:00 - Kingdom Come Deliverance 21:59:20 - Ender Magnolia2:08:20 - Is This Game Trying to Kill Me?2:10:00 - Pitching Dodger games2:17:10 - Urban Myth Dissolution Center2:23:30 - VRChat2:39:00 - CD-Rom-a-thon2:47:00 - ShoutoutsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Keywords: haunt industry, bad reviews, haunt actors, ghost stories, VRChat, haunt experiences, customer feedback, haunt humor, paranormal stories, haunt business Summary: In this episode of Haunt After Hours, host Heather and her guests dive into the chaotic and entertaining world of the haunt industry. They share humorous boo stories, discuss the unique side hustles of haunt actors, and explore the challenges of handling bad reviews. The conversation also touches on the experiences of scaring audiences and the importance of customer feedback in the haunt business. With a mix of laughter and insightful discussions, the episode highlights the fun and chaos behind the scenes in the haunt industry. Takeaways: Handling bad reviews is crucial for business growth. Humor plays a significant role in the haunt industry. Haunt actors often have unique side hustles outside of scaring. Customer feedback can help improve haunt experiences. It's important to engage with customers to understand their experiences. Negative reviews can stem from personal issues, not just business failures. The haunt industry thrives on creativity and innovation. Building a strong community among haunt actors enhances the experience. Scaring audiences is both an art and a science. Maintaining a positive atmosphere can mitigate the impact of bad reviews. Sound Bites: "If it works, don't replace it." "This is why you make labels." "You can't be doing that." Chapters: 00:00 Setting the Scene: Behind the Podcast 00:16Boo Stories: Humorous Tales from the Haunt Industry 09:55Virtual Reality and Haunting: A New Frontier 15:32Navigating the Digital Landscape: Finding Blue Tora 22:05Creating Scares: The Thrill of Haunting 31:47The Business of Haunting: Costs and Challenges 43:30The Importance of Feedback: Learning from Reviews 52:19Paranormal Insights: Transplants and Memories 01:00:57Personal Encounters with the Paranormal 01:06:57Psychic Experiences and Their Impact 01:16:15Devil Dog: A Horror Movie Review

  https://podawful.com/posts/2518    MERSH WEEK BEGINS. Mersh's big trip to Vegas was another big bust. And I'm not talking about his tatas. In the run-up to his Las Vegas vacation, the Henchmen raided his VR Chat again, Mersh talked about Nick Rekieta's new gay tattoo, and PODAWFUL gets an endorsement on Nightwave. We aren't just polluting his mind, we are polluting his stream with PODAWFUL. While he begs for rent money, we live rent free inside his bald head. PLUS: Uncivil Law has been eating too much spaghetti, Matt Jarbo tries dunking on Jesse, Aaron Imholte is giving us the run-around again, and Ruphio Pheonix is now an illegal immigrant.   VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/live/Ewuq1S-wakM    Buy A Shirt: http://podawful.shop    PODAWFUL is an anti-podcast hosted by Jesse P-S

  https://podawful.com/posts/2518    MERSH WEEK BEGINS. Mersh's big trip to Vegas was another big bust. And I'm not talking about his tatas. In the run-up to his Las Vegas vacation, the Henchmen raided his VR Chat again, Mersh talked about Nick Rekieta's new gay tattoo, and PODAWFUL gets an endorsement on Nightwave. We aren't just polluting his mind, we are polluting his stream with PODAWFUL. While he begs for rent money, we live rent free inside his bald head. PLUS: Uncivil Law has been eating too much spaghetti, Matt Jarbo tries dunking on Jesse, Aaron Imholte is giving us the run-around again, and Ruphio Pheonix is now an illegal immigrant.   VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/live/Ewuq1S-wakM    Buy A Shirt: http://podawful.shop    PODAWFUL is an anti-podcast hosted by Jesse P-S

*Explicit content* We took our BDSM test and talk our results, different kinks in the bedroom, and how lot of that is in VR Chat! Follow Rose on discord https://discord.gg/4u7URjra6u. Follow Yuki on discord https://discord.gg/tTJugsCt2m Want to follow the podcast on social media? check us out https://linktr.ee/ScreamingChuyShow?utm_source=linktree_profile_share<sid=70bc589f-3f81-4217-b0b6-07d80a7abe7a Check out our sponsor DUBBY energy at dubby.gg. For 10% off use promo code SCREAMINGCHUYSH at check out!

Chandra Janakiraman is the chief product officer, executive vice president, and a board member at VRChat. Previously, he was a product leader at Meta, where he led Facebook's social experience interfaces and Reality Labs' growth; served as CPO at Headspace, where he helped relaunch the platform, driving a 4x subscriber boost; and was a GM at Zynga, delivering massive hit games that reached hundreds of millions. In our conversation, Chandra shares:• His playbook for developing a product strategy• The difference between “small s” and “big S” strategy• How to run strategy sprints• Who should be involved in strategy work• Common pitfalls in strategy development• The role of AI in future strategy development• More—Brought to you by:• Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments• Airtable ProductCentral—Launch to new heights with a unified system for product development• OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/an-operators-guide-to-product-strategy-chandra-janakiraman—Where to find Chandra Janakiraman:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chandramohanj/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Chandra's background(04:47) The importance of strategy(12:40) Defining product strategy(15:42) Developing a winning strategy: an overview(18:51) The preparation phase(30:46) The strategy sprint process(45:51) The design sprint (51:19) Document writing(57:39) Rolling out your strategy(01:01:28) Resourcing and roadmapping(01:04:42) Strategy lessons from Zynga(01:11:34) Strategy lessons from Meta(01:15:55) Big S strategy(01:26:58) AI in strategy formulation(01:38:12) Final thoughts and lightning round—Referenced:• Headspace: https://www.headspace.com/• Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/good-strategy-bad-strategy-richard• 5 essential questions to craft a winning strategy | Roger Martin (author, advisor, speaker): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-strategy-roger-martin• VRChat: https://hello.vrchat.com/• Andrew Chen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pmandrewchen/• Template: Working Backwards PR FAQ: https://www.workingbackwards.com/resources/working-backwards-pr-faq• How LinkedIn became interesting: The inside story | Tomer Cohen (CPO at LinkedIn): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-linkedin-became-interesting-tomer-cohen• Making time for what matters | Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky (authors of Sprint and Make Time, co-founders of Character Capital): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/making-time-for-what-matters-jake• Identify your bullseye customer in one day | Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at Google Ventures): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/finding-your-bullseye-customer-michael-margolis• Chandra's flow chart: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SLmQ0oRFadzJnNM3MJetnLUvB18U4W4GXU4KtJ2ujEQ/edit?tab=t.0• Chandra's strategy template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iNeYUaMnpicvkpVZO-gj9cCxLeHfWN0xtGm_QoxgemE/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.5d3jz6v86yrs• Zynga: https://www.zynga.com/• David Foster Wallace's quote about water: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/97082-there-are-these-two-young-fish-swimming-along-and-they• Oculus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus• Elon Musk's quote: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wf8TadbGYok• Concept car: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_car• Acquired podcast: The Mark Zuckerberg interview: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/the-mark-zuckerberg-interview• Armand Ruiz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/armand-ruiz/• What is a multi-armed bandit? Full explanation: https://amplitude.com/explore/experiment/multi-armed-bandit• IF on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/IF-John-Krasinski/dp/B0CW19SCVW• Dune: Part 2 on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/dune-part-two/umc.cmc.363aycnv6vy9qgekvew6fveb9• Dune Prophecy on Max: https://www.max.com/shows/dune-prophecy-2024/57660b16-a32a-476f-89da-3302ac379e91• Capybara Go on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/ph/app/capybara-go/id6596787726• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/• Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Lost-Interview/dp/B01IJD1BES—Recommended books:• The Art of War: https://www.amazon.com/Art-War-Sun-Tzu/dp/1599869772• Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors: https://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Strategy-Techniques-Industries-Competitors/dp/0684841487/• Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-Bad-Difference-Matters/dp/0307886239/• Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works: https://www.amazon.com/Playing-Win-Strategy-Really-Works/dp/142218739X• Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Time-Focus-Matters-Every/dp/0525572422• Sprint: https://www.amazon.com/SPRINT-Jake-Zeratsky-Knapp/dp/0593076117• Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination: https://www.amazon.com/Walt-Disney-Triumph-American-Imagination/dp/0679757473• Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration: https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Expanded-Overcoming-Inspiration/dp/0593594649/• The Ten Faces of Innovation: Strategies for Heightening Creativity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385512074—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

VR filmmakers Joe Hunting and Max Willson are premiering their short documentary film The Reality of Hope at the Sundance film festival this week (online tickets are still available here from Jan 30 to Feb 2 and it'll also be available later this year on Documentary+). Hunting's previous film We Met in Virtual Reality also premiered at Sundance in 2022 and got picked up by HBO, and he's continuing to document very human stories that are rooted within the context of virtual culture. The Reality of Hope is shot both in VRChat and physical reality as it tells the beautiful and inspiring story of Photographotter traveling across the world to donate a kidney to his friend Hiyu, who he met within the furry community in VR. Hiyu is a world builder and avatar creator who has been a part of the team that has created some truly spectacular worlds as a part of the Furality conference (See the full list of worlds listed down below). Facing kidney failure, Hiyu turned to social media asking for help seeking a donor, which caught Photographotter's attention who then privately reached out. Photographotter documented the ups and downs of his inner journey in a VTuber video blog series, and The Reality of Hope fills in a lot of the gaps for the broader Furality community, the worlds that Hiyu has built, and the nuances of their friendship in hospitals of Stockholm, Sweden as the organ donor process requires a three-month commitment. The Reality of Hope is a beautifully-told story that shows the power of VR to forge deep and meaningful connections that proved to be literally life-saving. VRChat Worlds featured in The Reality of Hope Furality Aqua: The Oceans of Luma by Furality Sylva: Treehouse Village at Night by Furality Luma: Crystal Forest by Furality Sylva: Lahaina Springs by Furality Umbra: Village of Umbra by Furality (video) Furality˸ F․Y․N․N․'s Gym by Furality VR Yoga by Castiel先生 Exoplanet Journey by Niko* Tanuki Tunesǃ - タヌキトゥーンズ by Juno Tanuki Photographotters House V2 - by Photographotter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVMSZ30_FMY This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Follow us on BlueSky! https://bsky.app/profile/gigaboots.com Game of the Year Part 3: https://youtu.be/5kJ3Hac2A18 Become a podlord or normal patron today! http://www.patreon.com/GBPodcasts RSS Feed: https://gbpods.podbean.com/ Kris' BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/kriswolfheart.bsky.social Dr. Aggro's BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/draggro.bsky.social Bob's BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/gigabob.bsky.social GB Main Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/gigaboots GB Fan Discord: https://discord.gg/XAGcxBk #PS6 #HorizonMMO #TedPrice   tags: gigaboots,Dragon Age Veilguard,Sony,Playstation,games as a service,concord,fairgame$,fairgames,fair games,insomniac,AVGN 8 bit,Angry Video Game Nerd 8 bit,fuga melodies of steel 3,captain blood,silent hill f,vampire the masquerade 2,NEOGAF,PS6 Leaks,Sega online account,Super Technos World,River city,kunio kun,VRChat,KeplerL2,PS6,Playstation 6,Earthblade,Dragon Age the veilguard,unknown 9 awakening,Guilty Gear Strive Dual Rulers,Discotek,Phantom Blade 0

Mersh can't even catch a break in VR Chat. In his wildest fantasies, where he could be anything on Earth or beyond, he instead chooses to be a virtual cat smoking cigarettes and hanging out at McDonald's while being ignored by children. The past two months of Nightwave Radio have been nothing but Mersh fighting with his internet, and "trolling" kids in VR Chat by pretending to be Dr. Disrespect. Then the PODAWFUL Henchmen showed up... Now Mersh is spiraling out harder than ever before, revealing his own address live on air, and revealing maybe the darkest secret a man could ever keep. PLUS: Aaron Imholte covers the Ethan Ralph episode on Steel Toe, and Dick Masterson admits the Juju costume is real. https://podawful.com/posts/2511  Get the 4+ HOUR LONG POD AWFTER SHOW where we send the Henchmen in to DDOS Mersh live, only in the PIZZA FUND: https://podawful.com/posts/2512  VIDEO: https://youtube.com/live/TizGWHRNFFE  Buy A Shirt: http://podawful.shop  PODAWFUL is an anti-podcast hosted by Jesse P-S

Mersh can't even catch a break in VR Chat. In his wildest fantasies, where he could be anything on Earth or beyond, he instead chooses to be a virtual cat smoking cigarettes and hanging out at McDonald's while being ignored by children. The past two months of Nightwave Radio have been nothing but Mersh fighting with his internet, and "trolling" kids in VR Chat by pretending to be Dr. Disrespect. Then the PODAWFUL Henchmen showed up... Now Mersh is spiraling out harder than ever before, revealing his own address live on air, and revealing maybe the darkest secret a man could ever keep. PLUS: Aaron Imholte covers the Ethan Ralph episode on Steel Toe, and Dick Masterson admits the Juju costume is real. https://podawful.com/posts/2511  Get the 4+ HOUR LONG POD AWFTER SHOW where we send the Henchmen in to DDOS Mersh live, only in the PIZZA FUND: https://podawful.com/posts/2512  VIDEO: https://youtube.com/live/TizGWHRNFFE  Buy A Shirt: http://podawful.shop  PODAWFUL is an anti-podcast hosted by Jesse P-S

I interviewed director Queer.Space about Dollhouse for Queer Imaginaries that showed at IDFA DocLab 2024. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed producer Dan Tucker at IDFA DocLab 2024 about the lessons learned from touring In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats across 20 different venues over the past couple of years. See the transcript down below for more context on our conversation." See more context in the rough transcript below. This is the last episode from my series of interviews from IDFA DocLab 2024. You can see all of the interviews in the list below: #1492: IDFA DocLab Curators Preview 2024 Slate of AI & XR Immersive Documentaries #1493: "About a Hero" IDFA Opening Night Doc Blends Realities, Written by AI Trained on Werner Herzog Corpus #1495: Getting Roasted by Unfiltered "AI & Me" Photobooth Installation #1496: Using GenAI to Recreate Erased Family Photos with "Burn From Absence" 4-Channel Video #1497: Experimental VR Doc "Rapture II: Portal" Blends Hypnotic Audio with Spatial Scan of War-Abandoned Home #1498: Immersive Installation Frames Provocative "Töngö Sondi" Animation on Langauge, Censorship, & Identity #1499: From Interactive Biohacking Lecture to Speakeasy with "Drinking Brecht: An Automated Laboratory Performance" #1500: Sharing Indigenous Knowledge with AR on 360 Video and Embodied Rituals in "Ancestral Secrets VR" #1501: Roaming as Resistance: "Entropic Fields of Displacement" wins DocLab Digital Storytelling Award #1502: Candid Audio Clips Juxtaposed with Poetic GenAI Video in "Sincerely Victor Pike" #1503: "The Liminal" Spatial Audio Installation Blends Audio Doc with Specualtive Arab Futurism #1504: Open World, GenAI Podcast "Drift" Reflects on Climate Change from 500 Years in the Future #1505: Immersive Journalist Features Volumetric Sexual Harrassment Testimonies in "Walking Alone, Text You When I'm Home" #1506: Going on a Virtual Date in "ROAMance" that Generates Novel Encounters with Defamiliarization #1507: From Selfies to Virtual Offspring, "Ancestors" Turns Strangers into Family and Intergenerational Speculative Futures #1508: Virtual Architecture Vibes Part 1: "Limbotopia" VR & Dome at Film Gate Interactive #1509: Virtual Architecture Vibes Part 2: "Limbophobia" VR & Dome at IDFA DocLab #1510: Poetic VR Exploration of Iranian Protest Blindings in "Speechless Witness of a Wandering Tree" #1511: Cultivating Virtual LGBTQIA+ Safe Spaces in VRChat with "Dollhouse for Queer Imaginaries" #1512: DocLab Immersive Non-Fiction Winner "Me, A Depiction" Performance Installation Confronts Objectifying Gaze #1513: From Daily News to GenAI Irish Sean-nós Songs in "You Can Sing Me on My Way" Audio Installation #1514: Creating GenAI Flower Ecosystem with "Future Botanica" AR App #1515: VR Researcher Julia Scott-Stevenson on Embodiment in Story & Why Docs are Perfect to Explore AI #1516: Myriam Achard on Phi Studio's Expansion into LBE Distribution & the Fusion of Immersive Art at Phi Contemporary #1517: LBE Lessons Learned from 20-Venue Tour of "In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats" with Producer Dan Tucker This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Well, Danny* has been on our minds lately, somewhat due to working this past Venice Film Festival Immersive as a World Hop tour guide and the cacophony and fun chaos around being an Immersive Tour Guide. Our pal, Manglebird, is the programmer in chief for the Venice Immersive World Hops, primarily on the social VR platform VRChat. VRC allows artists, creatives and Devs to create and publish worlds and experiences to the VRChat global community. From DJ-driven club scenes, deep, immersive, otherworldly environments, and extra-terrestrial realms to physics-breaking realities! You name it; it can likely be found on VRChat. So it is also likely no coincidence that Manglebird's primary avatar is the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland....just a bit demented, looking like they've spent too much tea time with the Mad Hatter. ;) VRChat psychedelia - also known as Shaders, VFX are wild, like taking psychedelics without the nausea and hangover. Anywho, Nanotopia here playing with Euclidean rhythms, sub-harmonics and the lovely Shakmat Dual Dagger filter with the System80 Jove filter. Here is our stab at some form of Psy. Enjoy! *Danny and the Camberwell Carrot from Withnail & I :) released October 18, 2023 on Bandcamp

Ian Hamilton and David Heaney discuss PlayStation VR2 hand tracking, adult groups in VRChat, Quest 3S on Steam, and more.

Ian Hamilton and Don Hopper discuss Halo: Combat Evolved getting a full VR Mod, VRChat adding age verification, Figmin XR's ability to be used in colocation between an Apple Vision Pro and Quest 3 & much more.

Ian Hamilton and Don Hopper discuss a full 8-hour VRChat game, the Pirates Jolly Roger game and a game which lets you trap your friends in mixed reality.

Well not as much going on as the full book we got last time but as I'm writing this in the future where I've read part three I can now tell that this is the eye of the highstorm. We talk about: Bee Labs, Wrong Side Of The Road, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Satisfactory, Depressing Plastics, Brandon Knows About Gay People, Luke Supports Women's Wrongs, Molly Called Up Brandon, Jasna Murders, Sigzil Homophobia, Rock's Family, Teft Is Fucked, Lopan Gets Sticky, Moash Did Nothing Wrong (Citation Needed), Joker-fied, VR Chat, The Herald's Deal, Dalinar At The Club, Missing The Second Kid, Meeting Odium, Soulcast Too Close To The Second Sun,

I interviewed Venice Immersive Worlds Gallery Producer Mike Salmon at Venice Immersive 2024 about this year's selection of 20 VRChat worlds as well as his process of scouting promising leads and trends of world building, music, art, and immersive storytelling.. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Strangeways co-director Adam Lieber, developers Dale P Deacon and Alex Bossman, as well as avatar creator Egbert Harm Westra at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. Here's their artist's statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbu54ULcUC0 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Uncanny Alley: A New Day co-directors Rick Treweek and Stephen Butchko along with Ferryman Collective's Deirdre V. Lyons and Christopher Lane Davis at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Project: Lost Worlds director Fins at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Ian Hamilton and Don Hopper discuss Airspace Defender's take on Missile Command focused around hand tracking, our top 10 picks from our first odyssey across VRChat's vast universe, and a dive deep into the challenging task of realizing digital pets in AR & VR.

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

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." 17 out of the 20 VRChat worlds in the Worlds Gallery are already currently publicly available, and the three that are not are Concrete: Pale Sands, SNR Labs Test Facility, and Sanctum (though this one will be available after the festival run). Each of these are featuring some volumetric and holographic shaders that VJs are using in the VRChat clubbing scene, which I covered extensively in my previous three episodes, particularly in #1415 talking with two VRChat VJs and a DJ about the evolution of volumetric effects in music shows. But also check out #1413 where I talk with the SNR Labs team and in #1414 about how dancer SoftlySteph used the holographic shader tech that's demonstrated in the SNR Labs Test Facility experience. Below is a cheat sheet of the Venice Immersive 2024 experiences ordered by length. Note that the Free UR Head is actually closer to 55 minutes, and that Adventure is no longer in the Best of Selection. Also included is a copy of the map for where the experiences are located with some quality of life improvements that I made so that the text is all horizontal and a bit easier to read. I also have a version of the Venice Immersive experience map with the length of the experience embedded to make it easier for when you may be in standby mode. Here are links to the Best of Experiences that are publicly available: Museum Alive Immersive With David Attenborough [Apple Vision Pro], Nightmara: Episode 3, The 7th Guest VR, Riven, Astra, 40 Dias Sem O Sol (40 Days Without The Sun), & What If…? - An Immersive Story [Apple Vision Pro]. And here's the links to the VRChat worlds that are featured in the Venice Immersive Worlds Gallery. 17 of the 20 are currently publicly available. Sanctum should be available once the festival starts, and there aren't currently plans or availability dates for replayable versions of Concrete: Pale Sands or SNR Labs: Test Facility as of the publication of this episode. The official Venice Immersive Hub in VRChat will be launching on August 28th with in-world portals to each of these worlds. 1 MormoVerse˸ Under the pillow 2.1 Finishing Touch - Art Studio ＆ Gallery 2.2 VRC Museum 2.3 Phatta 3 Liminal Dreams˸ The Poolrooms 4 Endless Residents Super Ultra Deluxe Edition 5 Magnetize 6.1 Magic AI-Art˸ Dimensions 6.2 Exoplanet Journey 7 SUKU 8.1 Chromatic Frequency 8.2 Sanctum 8.3 Overview Effect Experience 9.1 Smew Brushǃ 9.2 ․⁄ complication 9.

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

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

Shadow Canyon: A Puppeteer's Tale is a unique blend of VRChat Worldbuilding by nprowler, immersive dance performances by students of the VR Dance Academy founded by Dust Bunny, and then improv actors and immersive theatre staging led by Mycana. Overall, it was such a unique blend of different disciplines that the curators of Raindance Immersive awarded it with a special prize reserved for projects that embody the indie spirit of Raindance. The project started when nprowler and Dust Bunny saw some shadow effects in VRChat that inspired them to experiment with creating shadow dances with both sheet materials hanging from a line as well as onto the walls of a walking simulator VRChat world called Horse Canyon that premiered last year's Venice Immersive. Dust Bunny brought in her students from the VR Dance Academy, and then collaborated with theatre director and digital storyteller Mycana to figure out a narrative. The story primarily is motivating a sort of guided tour to different locations on the map that feature different dances that were inspired by different Tarot cards. The main protagonist is watching each of these dances while another Mystic sidekick character helps interpret the meaning leading to breakthroughs of creative inspiration. For me the strongest part of the piece were the awe-inspiring dance scenes with beautiful shadow effects and getting a chance to explore this latest iteration of nprowler's vast world of nature-inspired spatial architectures. To get a sense of some of the journey that you're taken on, then be sure to watch the section of Madame Kana's Raindance Immersive 2024 documentary featuring clips from Shadow Canyon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soHDdq0Lbwk&t=256s I had a chance to catch up with Dust Bunny, nprowler, and Mycana to unpack their unique creative collaboration and how they fused each of their strengths to put together a very unique and awe-inspiring piece that's at the intersection of immersive dance, the vastness of walking simulator world building, immersive theatre, improv, and immersive storytelling. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Ian Hamilton and Don Hopper discuss Ready At Dawn's closure, the top downloaded games in VR last week and much more from UploadVR.com in this pre-recorded episode.

FlowersRite (花之祭P) is a music producer, 3D artist, cosplayer, and VRChat world builder who won the Best Music Experience at Raindance Immersive 2024 with her experience called Children of the Seed. Within a couple of days of discovering VR in 2019, she had bought a PC, HTC Vive, and Vive Trackers to do full-body tracking, and has slowly been transitioning into becoming a professional 3D artist. She has published 11 VRChat worlds since August 2019, including The Great Inventor Escape, which was featured in the Worlds Gallery at Venice Immersive 2022. She was building the world for Children of the Seed at the same time as she was composing the music in a creative process where the VRChat world building directly feed into the creation of the lore and backstory that directly inspired the development of the music. The end result is a majestic performance space and auditorium that's suspended in a dark forest that the audience has to move up in vertical space through a series of ramps and stairs to get it. The audience sits in a semi-circle while she stands on a island-like stage in the middle performing as a DJ / VJ controlling a series of in-world effects like rain as well as circles of light and organic shapes that slowly transition each of the movements that are demarcated with their name in a floating text overlay. I had a chance to catch up with FlowersRite to get more context about her journey into VR, some of the different VRChat worlds she's created over the past 5 years, and how her world building creative process influenced the development of The Children of the Seed. At this point, she hasn't uploaded a replayable version of her musical performance in VRChat yet, but you can listen to her music in this 2D music video of Children of the Seed that has a completely different art style and experience than what was shown in VRChat during Raindance Immersive 2024. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Ian Hamilton and Don Hopper discuss Zero Caliber 2 launching on Quest, Magnetize and other worlds explored inside VRChat, Bomber Drone turning Quest 3 owners into mixed reality pilots, Flat2VR and more.

The VRChat world Suku took home the Best Art World prize at Raindance Immersive 2024, and it's by Durk van der Meer who is a freelance digital artist, character artist, and VR world builder based in Curaçao. Suku blends together elements of Caribbean culture and geography with Dutch colonial architecture combined with a sort of psychedelic Studio Ghibli twist that gives the overall experience a sense of surrealism and magical realism. https://twitter.com/DurkatWork/status/1805274104460722464 I had a chance to catch up with van der Meer to speak about his 3D artist pipelines and workflows primarily focused on Gravity Sketch, but we also cover some of his other tools like Google Blocks and Adobe Substance 3D Modeler (formerly known as Oculus Medium). We also talk about focusing all of his creative artistic side projects into the process of VRChat world building within Unity as a vast open world that also leverages the World Creator Professional plug-in. I also had a chance to go on a guided tour of the world with van der Meer where he added a lot of additional context for his creative process, some stories and myths about the history of Curaçao, but also other elements of the darker side of Dutch colonial history by featuring a slave house and plantation house that was transformed into an immersive art installation. There's also other elements of the Caribbean culture of Curaçao that van der Meer integrates that he himself started to wonder if it bordered on a form of cultural appropriation. His intention was to explore his own creative imagination, and he did not intend this world to be in any way educational or a historically accurate elaboration of the darker side of these colonial histories. He considered adding some additional context to the world, but ultimately decided to not add any other additional information about any of the symbols or architecture featured within the piece. Many of these aspects only came up within the context of the guided tour, which was part of the Raindance Immersive exhibition. But the allusions by van der Meer to the dark colonial history of Curaçao was definitely a part of the experience that stuck with me, and we have a chance to dig into a little bit at the end of our conversation, and I dug into a few additional references at the end of the podcast as I was wrapping everything up. Kirby Ferguson's Everything is a Remix YouTube series is probably one of the more compelling counter argument to worries about cultural appropriation as he argues that the core of remixing is "to copy, transform, and combine existing materials to produce something new." Ferguson argues that all art and cultural production is ultimately borrowing from a wide range of different sources from different cultures, and that nothing is actually truly original. Legally fair use in copyright law dictates four different factors measuring fair use that including "the purpose and character of your use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and the effect of the use upon the potential market." That's the legal side of the argument, but concerns around cultural appropriation are more ethical and moral rather than strictly legal. I dug into some references on cultural appropriation from Google Scholar, which pointed me to this 2006 article titled "From Cultural Exchange to Transculturation: A Review and Reconceptualization of Cultural Appropriation" by Richard Rogers, which has over 700 citations. Rogers defines cultural appropriation pretty broadly by saying that it's the "use of one culture's symbols, artifacts, genres, rituals, or technologies by members of another culture—regardless of intent, ethics, function, or outcome." He goes on to define four different categories that include exchange, dominance, exploitation, and transculturation across a spectrum from reciprocal exchange all the way to transnational corporations commodifying cultural art...

K. Guillory (aka Aemeth) has been writing The Metaculture online magazine since August 13, 2021 with over 70 articles covering the latest trends in arts and culture on social VR platforms such as VRChat. She focuses primarily on the live music and performance scenes, but also has been tracking the historical evolution of the underground clubbing scene in VRChat, virtual fashion, as well as many other artistic trends from painting in VR to film in VR to VTubers. In fact, I mention some of her intrepid work in my own interviews with Starheart on VTubing and BabyBonito on painting within VR as her previous interviews on these topics and coverage on these trends came up they were continuing to evolve and be featured at the Raindance Immersive festival in 2023 and 2024. Guillory has been ahead of the curve in terms of tracking some of these trends of virtual culture before they get picked up and highlighted by other curators and virtual cultural critics and essayists. Guillory was inspired to start The Metaculture magazine from a conversation that I had with her on July 24, 2021 at Nanotopia's Mycelia exhibition in VRChat as a part of the AMAZE festival. She was sharing with me all sorts of insider tips on the underground dancing and clubbing scene with VRChat, and so I suggested to her that she find a way to archive, document, and publicly share more of this oral history knowledge as most of the information about the nuances of these hidden corners of the VRChat cultural scene were scattered across disparate Discord servers, ephemeral Twitter announcements, as well as insider community knowledge from knowing someone who knew someone about it all. Starting in 2021 and 2022 there started to be more and more YouTubers creating documentaries about VRChat's underground clubbing scene trend with Straszfilms' The Virtual Underground: An Introduction to VRChat's Rave Scene published May 5, 2021. Then Phia's The EXPLOSIVE Rise of VRChat Clubbing published her take on it on her The Virtual Reality Show channel on Mar 12, 2022. Then I actually conducted this interview with Guillory featured here on March 25, 2022 right as the zeitgeist about the clubbing scene started to explode. I knew she was tracking it very closely, and I wanted to get a bit of an insider's perspective on it all. Then a few weeks after I recorded my chat with Guillory, PBS Voices published their I Went Clubbing in Virtual Reality: Raves of VRChat on Apr 6, 2022, and then Guillory/Aemeth was featured as a subject matter expert on Resident Advisors' piece The music, venues and creators driving virtual reality clubbing that was featured on Sep 28, 2022. You might able to detect some of the parallels of how she tells me the story in this interview as well as some of the points that she also makes within the Resident Advisor video. The Origin Story of VRChat In the process of producing this episode, I came across this documentary by YouTuber Twice about the History of VRChat 2014-2022 that does a really great job of establishing the major platform developments, UI/UX changes, as well as turning points in the cultural evolution of the VRChat platform. Twice first came across VRChat in 2017, and so his video aggregates some archival footage before he started creating his own content, but for everything after 2017 he weaves his own personal history, footage, and memories on the platform to help flesh out the broader story of VRChat as a platform. This documentary inspired me to go on my own trip down memory lane as well as a entering into a bit of a rabbit hole of research into the origin story of VRChat itself, and so I wanted to share some of the results of my archeological dig here. I first ordered my Oculus Rift DK1 on January 1, 2014, and I received it about a week later. I along with many VR enthusiasts and VR developers ended up obsessively following the /r/Oculus subreddit as this where a critical mass of the community was congregating to share ...

Ian Hamilton and Don Hopper discuss the upcoming Alien: Rogue incursion, Walkabout Mini Golf's new Wallace & Gromit course, the relaxation of floating in Zero G with Solara One on Quest, Driving a mini RC car in virtual reality and much more.

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

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. 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

First podcast on virtual reality! Today me and my guest NikkiSixxx423 put on our VR headsets and do a podcast in a virtual bar! We talk about her bar "the moonlit lounge" and up and coming strip club. Also some hilarious and crazy stories. Thanks for listening! Follow moonlit lounge discord at https://discord.com/invite/EZq6gKf6cs (VR strip club) The witches moon spell discord https://discord.com/invite/FqHfmxhah6 If you'd like to tip the staff at the bar/club or just be an amazing person, cashapp at Pay $NikkiSixxx423 on Cash App

I will be once again hosting at Summer Games Done Quick 2024! Check out my schedule to see what I'm hosting on Day 1 and Day 3 of the event! VRChat has laid off 30% of their team due to incorrect staffing and the inability to scale. Cities: Skylines 2 had to remove virtual landlords from the game because it made the rent in game too high. The new Call of Duty is NOT 308GB after all - that's only if you literally install every version of COD included. Then we talk to Rob about Twitch adding super reactions and why you shouldn't give us $100 just to make emotes appear.

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

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

Summer Game Fest 2024 is over so let's talk about all of it including Xbox. Become a podlord or normal patron today! http://www.patreon.com/GBPodcasts RSS Feed: https://gbpods.podbean.com/ Kris Wolfheart's Twitter: https://twitter.com/kriswolfheart GigaBoots' Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/gigaboots GB Main Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/gigaboots GB Fan Discord: https://discord.gg/XAGcxBk #SummerGameFest #GearsofWar #Xbox   Tags: gigaboots,big think dimension,BTD,xbox games showcase,ubisoft forward,devolver direct,summer game fest,pc gaming show,unbeatable,Skull an bones,anno 117,star wars outlaws,avatar frontiers of pandora,assassin's creed shadows,xdefiant,prince of persia the sands of time remake,stormgate,mecha break,frag punk,visions of mana,flintlock the siege of dawn,metal gear solid delta,state of decay 3,south of midnight,expedition 33,VRChat,Quest 3,Apple Vision Pro

This week is show #199. Our guest is Jeri Ellsworth, CEO and Co-Founder of Tilt Five. Next week we'll record show #200 in front of a live audience at AWE in Long Beach, CA. This week we review Apple AI (Apple Intelligence), their cross-platform AI implementation. Also in the news, Mistral raises $600 M to compete with OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic. Sandbox metaverse raises $20M, and achieves unicorn status while unicorn VR Chat lays off 30% of its staff. Jeri Ellsworth is co-founder of the AR tabletop game hardware company Tilt Five, which creates PC-based 3D AR board games that play on a reflective mat. Hardware is hard. Harder when it also needs great software. With Nintendo as its guiding light, against the odds, Tilt Five is building momentum. 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.

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.

This week Drumsy joins us to talk about VR Chat, Mr. Beast, Artificial Intelligence and much more!