Voices of VR

Cameron Kostopolous, director of the immersive VR piece 'In the Current of Being,' explores the harrowing impact of conversion therapy through the lens of embodied storytelling. He discusses how innovative haptic technology creates deeper emotional engagement, allowing audiences to connect profoundly with the trauma experienced by survivors. The conversation also addresses the current legal landscape surrounding conversion therapy and the importance of storytelling in driving social change, aiming to ban these practices and foster empathy for the LGBTQ+ community.

There is a six-month exhibition titled "Other Worlds Are Possible" featuring a retrospective of a dozen different immersive storytelling pieces that will shown at the Le Pavillion in Nemur, Belgium from March 22 to September 21, 2025. The exhibition was curated by independent immersive curator Ana Brzezińska, and will also feature other AR pieces, screen-based work, but also an exhibit detailing a brief history and evolution of immersive art and immersive storytelling from different design disciplines. I had a chance to catch up with Brzezińska to get a bit more context on her design intention for this exhibition, to talk about the current state of immersive art and storytelling, as well as her current focus on brining this work to traditional cultural institutions that are reaching out to mainstream audiences. Here's a list of different immersive storytelling pieces that will be featured over the next sixth months (with links to my Voices of VR podcast interviews with the creators). NOTES ON BLINDNESS (2016) SPHERES (2017) BATTLESCAR (2018) GLOOMY EYES (2019) TRAVELING WHILE BLACK (2019) THE HANGMAN AT HOME (2020) GOLIATH: PLAYING WITH REALITY (2021) PLANET CITY (2022) PLASTISAPIENS (2022) EVOLVER (2022) FROM THE MAIN SQUARE (2022) ALL THAT REMAINS (2022) OVER THE RAINBOW (2023) This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The SXSW XR Experience Selection runs from March 9-11 and contains 15 pieces in competition and 16 pieces in the spotlight, and I had a chance to chat with SXSW's XR programmer Blake Kammerdiener about each of these pieces. He provides some highlights from the XR Track Sessions at SXSW, and also mentions that there is an immersive piece called NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars) that is showing on March 11th & 12th. See down below for some more links to different SXSW events. Here is a list of the XR experiences being shown at SXSW, and I will update this post as I post my Voices of VR podcast interviews as I've featured a dozen projects in my previous coverage. UPDATE (March 29, 2025): I've now added links to all of my subsequent coverage at SXSW down below. And be sure to check out this Linked article: Recap of All SXSW XR Experiences Including Voices of VR Podcast Interviews with Every Artist. SXSW XR Experience Competition [Overview of all of the SXSW 2025 XR Experience Program] - #1529: SXSW 2025 XR Experience Selection Sneak Peak with Programmer Blake Kammerdiener 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre - #1548: 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre Uses Phone-Based AR to Volumetrically Tell a Forgotten History Any War Any Enemy - #1490: “Any War Any Enemy” is a Beautiful Anti-War, Immersive Poem About Nuclear Annihilation Cosmos in Focus - #1554: Cosmos in Focus Contextualizes James Webb Telescope Images in Educational Immersive Planetarium Experience Currents - #1556: Currents Boldly Defines a New Era of DIY 180-Degree Immersive Filmmaking with a Kit Under $5k Face Jumping - #1532: Tenderclaws' "Face Jumping" Explores the Frontiers of Eye-Tracked Locomotion in Poetically Surreal Short Honey Fungus - #1549: Honey Fungus Cultivates Intimacy with Nature through Embodied Actions Inspired by Fungi and Queer Ecology In the Current of Being - #1531: In the Current of Being Uses Immersive Haptics to Tell the Story of Electroshock Conversation Therapy Proof As If Proof Were Needed - #1543: Proof As If Proof Were Needed Enables Audiences to Collaboratively Edit Video Feeds via Embodied Movements Reflections of Little Red Dot - #1539: Wandering in Open World Doc Archives in Mixed Reality with SXSW XR Jury Prize Winner "Reflections of Little Red Dot" Shelter - #1545: Shelter Observational 360 Documentary Shows Intimate Side of War via Ukrainian Citizen Bomb Shelters [The Choice Chapter 1] - #1075: Stereoscopic Compositing Innovations & “The Choice” Interactive Documentary Exploring Reproductive Rights in Texas The Choice - Chapters 2 and 3 - #1547: Simulating One-on-One Conversations about Abortion Experiences to Change Minds with "The Choice - Chapters 2 & 3" The Last Practice - #1542: Exploring the Paradox of Narratively Critiquing AI While Also Using AI to Make "The Last Practice" The Secret Life of Monsters - The Gateway Experience - #1538: Mixed Reality Calibration Innovations Hidden within "The Secret Life of Monsters: The Gateway Experience" Traces: The Grief Processor - #1544: Traces: The Grief Processor Immersive Documentary Invites Groups to Learn About Grief Ways of Knowing: A Navajo Nuclear History - #1546: How Indigenous Storytelling is Changing Non-Proliferation Narratives in "Ways of Knowing: A Navajo Nuclear History" SXSW XR Experience Spotlight Address Unknown: Fukushima Now - #1438: Honoring the Memory of Abandoned Ghost Towns with “Address Unknown: Fukushima Now” All I Know About Teacher Li - #1452: Immersive Documentary about Chinese Censorship “All I Know About Teacher Li” Tops Venice Immersive Audience Favorites Survey Ancestors - #1507: From Selfies to Virtual Offspring, “Ancestors” Turns Strangers into Family and Intergenerational Speculative Futures Anouschka - #1334: “Anouschka” Wins IDFA DocLab Digital Storytelling Award with AR Narrative Game about Cultural Heritage [Oyrza from DocLab 2024, but also some more discussion about Anouschka] - #1540: Hacking...

The Theater application for the Apple Vision Pro by Sandwich Vision launched in June 2024 with the spatial livestreaming of John Gruber's live interview of Apple Executives at WWDC. They have been collaborating with independent producers of spatial video to distribute rentals and purchases of immersive content spanning across stereoscopic 180-videos to educational planetarium content to more experimental dome content as well as stereoscopic captures of live music performances (I can highly recommend checking out Fungi: Web of Life by K2 Studios). Users can also connect their private collections of movies via Plex Media Servers to enjoy their own private movie collection in a virtual home theater experience with a number of different theater options. They're also currently implementing social features, and may start having live screenings of classic movies with potential collaborations with independent movie theaters. I had a chance to catch up with Sandwich Vision co-founder Adam Lisagor to hear a bit more about his journey into the XR space, how he's blended storytelling and technology throughout his career, as well as his hopes for what might be a new renaissance of spatial video content given Apple's emphasis of on 180-degree spatial video rather than the VR filmmaking era of 360-degree videos. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Corey Warning, co-founder of Rose City Games and director of Lovesick, shares insights from his decade in indie game development. He discusses the captivating, character-driven narrative of a post-punk band facing supernatural dilemmas in their bank's collapse. Corey elaborates on the innovative escape room mechanics and player immersion, blending nostalgia and challenges from the 90s music scene. He also touches on the balance of adult themes and accessibility in VR, highlighting how collaboration enhances storytelling in this unique game.

In a series of posts from February 8th to 11th, open source developer Matthieu Bucchianeri started making allegations that Meta's OVRPlugin is blocking non-Meta OpenXR runtimes, thereby undermining the open and interoperable spirit of OpenXR. He claims that "the OVRPlugin takes intentional precautions to exclude non-Meta platforms. This means that XR content developed with OVRPlugin will only work with Quest Link, and it will not work with any other runtime." Bucchianeri's allegation is that if a PCVR game includes Meta's OVRPlugin as their OpenXR middleware and doesn't implement the counter-blocking measures that he details, then PCVR users will only be able to use a Quest headset with Quest Link while other non-Meta headsets like "Pimax, Pico, Varjo, Vive" will be blocked, even if they have conformant OpenXR runtimes. Bucchianeri has validated these blocking counter-measures, and he says, "as proven with many applications using OVRPlugin with counter-measures enabled, these applications can run on a conformant OpenXR implementation." Not very many XR developers are willing to speak about these issues on the record, but I did manage to record a Voices of VR podcast interview with Virtual Desktop's Guy Godin who was able to independently corroborate many of the core allegations from Bucchianeri. Godin collaborated with Bucchianeri on the Virtual Desktop OpenXR (VDXR) runtime, but has also been receiving many complaints from PCVR users around Meta's OpenXR non-compliance issues, especially with games that launch both on Quest and PCVR and use Meta's OVRPlugin. Godin told me that games will work fine natively on the Quest, but any non-Quest headsets or if they aren't using Quest Link will be blocked on the PCVR version, unless the developer specifically implements anti-blocking counter-measures detailed by Bucchianeri in his technical write-up. It appears as though OpenXR conformance from the Khronos Group only pertains to the actual OpenXR runtimes on the hardware, but headset manufacturers are able to create their own SDK plug-in middleware that interfaces with OpenXR that doesn't have the same conformance requirements. It appears as though Meta is able to technically maintain their OpenXR runtime conformant status because it does not apply to their OVRPlugin middleware SDK solution, and Bucchianeri is claiming that Meta is undermining the normative standards of interoperability by not following the best practices from the Khronos Group. He says, "For the past several years, Khronos has come up with best practices and solutions to develop OpenXR applications and maximize cross-vendor and cross-platform interoperability. Khronos has asked XR developers all over the world to follow these best practices, however - Meta - the largest vendor in Khronos is refusing to follow these best practices." Bucchianeri is also claiming to have had private communications with Meta confirming that these were deliberate and intentional changes. He says, "This is not an accident: this concern was reported to Meta early in 2024 via official means in the Khronos group. Meta acknowledged purposedly blocking other platforms from running OpenXR content at that time." I was able to confirm in my discussion with Guy Godwin in this Voices of VR podcast episode that he also believes that these were deliberate and intentional changes to undermine the spirit of OpenXR. Part of why Bucchianeri was blowing the whistle is because the Khronos Group had not been taking any action against Meta. He describes Meta's actions as "reverting many of the improvements to the developers and users ecosystem that Khronos has spent time, money, energy into solving for the past 7 years." He says, "Unfortunately, since 2024, Khronos has refused to take actions to stop Meta’s OVRPlugin destructive initiative towards the PCVR ecosystem. By not taking any actions to resolve the issues created by Meta’s OVRPlugin, Khronos is sending the message that OpenXR is no lo...

Niantic launched their Into the Scaniverse application on Quest 3 on February 26th, 2025 that features over 50,000 Gaussian Spats from 120 different countries. They originally launched the WebXR version on December 10th, 2024 at IntoTheScaniverse.com, which was built using Niantic Studio (be sure to check out their comprehensive history of Gaussian Splats by Kirsten M. Johnson released at the same time). Users can use the Scaniverse mobile app on Android or iOS to capture, render, geotag, and upload their own Gaussian Splats onto the Into the Scaniverse mapps that can be viewed on either mobile phone or XR devices. I had a chance to speak more about Into the Scaniverse with Joel Udwin, who is Niantic's Director of Product for Niantic's AR, Research, Developer Platforms, and Scaniverse. Gaussian Splats are only about 1 year and a half old as the original "3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering" paper was presented at SIGGRAPH in August 2023, but it represents a new rendering pipeline for volumetrically captured content. Niantic's Into the Scaniverse apps are able to process and render these splats locally on the phone or Quest devices, and they have a lot of plans for how they will continue to utilize and develop this as a core part of their technology infrastructure and enabling new mixed reality applications. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR51MrAtUM4 This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

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

The latest Polys Ombudsperson of the Year is Ingrid Kopp, and previous winners Brittan Heller, Michaela Montagna, and myself gathered again on December 8 2024 to reflect on the current state of the XR industry as well as the specific ethical concerns about the intersection between XR and AI. We also speak about some of the power of storytelling to unpack some of these moral dilemmas, as well as tech policy in the context of the existing political climate, but also some of the broader and general trends of the XR industry. In my takeaways at the end, I also elaborate on the leaked memo from Meta CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth saying "We need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR. And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance. If you don't feel the weight of history on you then you aren't paying attention. This year likely determines whether this entire effort will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure." A lot of their Meta's commitment to XR seems to be directly tethered to the success or failure of their own first-party app. Zuckerberg's AR/VR Strategy memo from 2014 leaked to TechCrunch by Blake Harris now seems particularly prescient: "for now keep in mind that we need to succeed in building both a major platform and key apps to improve our strategic position on the next platform. If we only build key apps but not the platform, we will remain in our current position. If we only build the platform but not the key apps, we may be in a worse position." Zuckerberg later elaborates that apps and experiences are their top priority in XR: "I think you can divide the ecosystem into three major parts: apps / experiences, platform services and hardware / systems. In my vision of ubiquitous VR / AR, these are listed in order of importance." As time has passed, it's become more and more clear that the success of Meta's Horizon worlds may be directly tethered to Meta's overall commitment to the XR industry. Just yesterday, Meta announced a $50 million dollar fund for Meta Horizon World creators, with special awards for mobile: "By investing in mobile content, we can reach a lot of new people who don’t yet own a Quest headset and ultimately grow the pie for everyone. That’s why, as part of our $50 million Creator Fund for creators of mobile and MR worlds, we’re also announcing our first creator competition of the year with a focus on mobile." UploadVR did a really great follow-up report about "From Quest To Horizon: How Meta's Shifting Priorities Are Affecting Developers" that includes many anonymous statements from XR developers talking about the impact of Meta's shifting priorities. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Oliver Kadel's 1618 Digital specializes in spatial audio sound design and engineering across linear immersive storytelling and interactive immersive experiences. Kadel also co-hosts The Immersive Audio Podcast with Monica Bolles, and I was recently featured in episode #109. I sat down with Kadel to get a survey of some of the spatial audio formats and production pipelines ranging from 3rd order ambisonics, object-oriented audio in game engines, working with the audio formats for Apple Immersive Video, Dolby Atmos, MPEG-H Audio, and emerging open standards like the Immersive Audio Model & Format (IAMF), which is "an audio container specification designed to revolutionize immersive audio experiences across a wide range of applications, including streaming, gaming, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and traditional broadcasting." We talk about some of his favorite immersive audio productions, his process of getting a Ph.D. studying the impact of spatial audio on cognitive load, and some of the future trends of spatial audio.