Good Virtual Reality Month 3
From Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride in the 1990s to mainstream VR's biggest barriers in the 2020s
Consumer PC VR turned a decade old this month with nothing to note the anniversary from platform players Valve or Meta.
And yet, good VR continues to be made.
Kluge’s Arturo Perez added a Dua Lipa music pack to Synth Riders as he’s taking the music software everywhere Beat Saber won’t go. Next in May, we’ll see the Blokhaven course release from Walkabout Mini Golf with Creature teasing updates to its lineup of games as H3VR game creator Anton Hand posted a “nudge” suggesting people should tune into the showcase May 6 at 9:30 a.m. Pacific time.
Good Virtual Reality marked the occasion of the 10 year anniversary of consumer PC VR hosting a range of voices exploring the medium as a place of unmatched free expression.
From the forefront of exploring simulated space, VR artists shared their ideas and their journeys:
After Tender Claws founders Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro carried thousands of people through the pandemic with their performances of The Tempest in headsets they’ve returned to their roots with immersive installations.
After working on Tilt Brush, Cosmonious High, and Starship Home, Ashley Pinnick hopes to “see more people making their weird art and their weird games” while suggesting new artists have “a point of view and…something you want to share.”
After thousands of hours in VRChat, K. Guillory describes the practice of immersivism as “impressionism plus the Internet”. When she joins a new online space she sets up a workshop and starts exploring. “Let’s make some art. Let’s make some memories of this art. What kind of art is going to pop up this time?”
Schell Games founder Jesse Schell worked on the pioneering Disney VR attraction Aladdin’s Magic Carpet Ride in the early 1990s while Oluwaseyi Sosanya has been making VR for a decade with Gravity Sketch producing products both digital and physical. I also spoke with Dauntless XR co-founder Sofia Lazaro who is exploring where headsets help In aerospace. These creators serve completely different markets with their software underscoring a recurring theme of Good Virtual Reality that simulated space is still being explored and discovered.
Enthusiasts JoyReign and JDun champion experiences in Apple Vision Pro as pioneers Alex Coulombe and Steve Lukas work in Unreal and Unity to solve the biggest problems facing VR use. The developers are trying to take the shared experiences two people can have together in $7,000 worth of Apple systems to people using much more affordable hardware.
The Good VR Podcast also talked with a series of people building coalitions in VR:
Joseph Simpson gathers a community in Vision Pro development
Vanessa Moss explores the future of meetings.
Paul and Mike meet across every possible space in VR to support Alcoholics Anonymous.
Sonya Haskins aka Hasko7 works as Head of Programming for the Augmented World Expo coming up in June after helping build community in Echo Arena last decade.
The Good VR podcast ramped up in a major way this month with several thousand downloads across all podcast platform for its 19 episodes, most of them going out to paid subscribers first.
You can email me about Good VR at editor@goodvirtualreality.com.