Voices of VR

Mar 06 2025 200 ep. 50 mins 11.5k

Voices of VR Podcast artwork

Since May 2014, Kent Bye has published over 1000 Voices of VR podcast interviews featuring the pioneering artists, storytellers, and technologists driving the resurgence of virtual & augmented reality. He's an oral historian, experiential journalist, & aspiring philosopher, helping to define the patterns of immersive storytelling, experiential design, ethical frameworks, & the ultimate potential of XR.

Arts Technology Society & Culture

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#1529: SXSW 2025 XR Experience Selection Sneak Peak with Programmer Blake Kammerdiener

Mar 06 2025 55 mins

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 sho

#1528: “Theater” App on Apple Vision Pro Features Indie-Produced Dome, Planetarium, and Stereoscopic Content

Mar 06 2025 63 mins

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 conte

#1527: “Lovesick” is Character-Driven, Escape Room Indie Gem of a Story

Mar 04 2025 57 mins

Lovesick is a narrative game featuring a character-driven story of a bank on the brink of collapse that faces a series of supernatural events that they must escape from. It features a lot of escape room and puzzle mechanics that are mixed with embodied gameplay, but at the heart it's about the relationship between these four different band members in what I found to be a real gem o

#1526: Allegations that Meta’s OVRPlugin is Undermining the Spirit of OpenXR by Blocking Non-Meta Headsets on PCVR.

Feb 28 2025 45 mins

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 OVRPlugi

#1525: Niantic’s “Into the Scaniverse” Maps Over 50k Gaussian Splats from Around the World on Quest and WebXR

Feb 27 2025 60 mins

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 rele

#1524: HTC Viverse Leverages Open Web Tech in Aim to Become ‘YouTube of 3D Content’

Feb 26 2025 64 mins

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 a

#1523: XR & AI Ethics & State of the Industry Discussion with Polys Ombudsperson Winners

Feb 21 2025 59 mins

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 dilemma

#1522: A Survey of Spatial Audio Formats with 1618 Digital’s Oliver Kadel

Jan 29 2025 50 mins

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 f

#1521: New glTF External Reference Format Combines Multiple Assets into a Scene

Jan 29 2025 58 mins

The Khronos Group is working on a new open standard tentatively called the glTF External Reference Format (or glTFx for short), which will allow users to add multiple glTF assets to a single scene. This used to be called the "glTF Experience Format (glXF)," and the final name is still being finalized. This will enable new capabilities that are not possible by using glTF itself to c

#1520: Design Breakdown of One-on-One Immersive Theatre piece TM with Ontroerend Goed’s Alexander Devriendt

Jan 29 2025 65 mins

I dig into my archives to unpack the one-on-one, immersive theatre piece that I saw online back in 2021 called TM that used a Socratic dialectic to interrogate you as you're going through a process of joining an imaginary cult. I spoke with Ontroerend Goed's artistic director Alexander Devriendt to get a lot more context for how he designs immersive theatre productions for folks wh