New World Notes

This Great-Looking, Fully VR, Voxel-Based Sandbox Game Was Created by One Person -- And It's Now Updated & On Sale!

cyubeVR is easily among the most impressive-looking VR games I’ve come across, and while it launched in 2018, it just had a huge graphics optimization update. It’s now on sale on Steam until September 20.

A voxel-based sandbox world, cyubVR (pronounced “cube VR”, of course) is credited as coming from Stonebrick Studios, but it’s really a labor of love from one person.

“There is exactly one person on the dev team, it's just me,” they tell me, who goes by the name "sbsce", and quickly credits the game’s dedicated user community as collaborators. “I've been working full-time on cyubeVR for over 7.5 years by now, so quite a long time!”  

There is no multiplayer mode yet, but sbsce tells me that’s on the roadmap. “It's certainly one of the most requested features by the community.”

And despite surface appearances, it’s not Minecraft. Really:

Watch: Philip Rosedale Interviews Metaverse Pioneer Avi Bar-Zeev on Helping Create Second Life Prims, Apple's VisionPro, and Much More

Philip Rosedale's latest vlogcast interview is with Avi Bar-Zeev, an XR/metaverse pioneer who's been doing this so long, he was working for a virtual world company in the 90s which Neal Stephenson used to visit shortly after Snow Crash came out -- when Stephenson first reportedly looked into creating the Metaverse himself. (At least that's what Avi remembers; more on that below.)

Since then, Avi helped create Second Life's prim-based creation system (a topic he discusses with Philip here), and eventually went on to do experience design work for Apple's VisionPro. As he tells Philip: 

"It's really good for a lot of certain applications but what Apple's throwing down the gauntlet with is saying this is the next user interface paradigm, and it's the one that's gonna displace the mouse and windows... It's not just about having more screen real estate. It's about having the content come off the screens. And so a lot of the toolkits they've shown make it easy for you to pop stuff out of 2d into 3d including personas." (Personas being what Apple calls "avatars").

In the interview Philip mentions an amazing user-creation demonstration of the power of prims -- watch that below, plus an excerpt of my chat with Avi from Making a Metaverse That Matters:

Roblox on Quest Feels Like a Buggy Rush Job (Comment of the Week)

Commenting on Meta putting the new Quest/Roblox integration as a key to its metaverse strategy, VR expert "SkarredGhost" believes it was a rush job:

Yeah, it's clear that Meta is betting a lot on Roblox. I tried today Roblox on Quest and it is so full of visible bugs that it is clear that it has been rushed out to release it for business reasons (Zuck being able to talk about it to investors). 

In fact Mr. Ghost has a whole blog post and YouTube walkthrough (watch above) on the topic, which is important, because the current version is not officially discoverable -- but has already been played by quite a lot of Quest owners:

Meta Quest Coming to Roblox -- Niche Add-On... That'll Also Provoke More Provoke Scrutiny to Both Platforms

Nice upcoming integration for Roblox users who also happen to own a Meta Quest:

Roblox, one of the largest 3D immersive platforms, will soon be available on Meta Quest, the leading VR headset. Roblox on Meta Quest is available for any user 13 and older.

This opens up another opportunity for developers to create and share their experiences with millions of people instantly on Meta Quest. Roblox developers will be able to bring their existing experiences to Meta Quest or create unique new experiences with VR in mind.

This is a great opportunity for VR developers, inviting them to port their experiences to a much larger audience. (And Roblox already boasts a number of high quality immersive games like Tunneler and Frontlines.)

However, with Quest 2 sales already plateauing at around 20 million, I doubt Roblox will grow the market for the VR headset any further. In fact, Quest usage is already dominated by competing metaverse platforms Rec Room and VRChat -- which also suggests that we probably won't see many Quest users becoming dedicated Roblox users, or vice versa. (Metaverse platforms tend to engender fierce community loyalty, beyond occasional tourist visits to other platforms.)

But both Meta and Roblox corporate heads should also expect more public/political scrutiny coming their way. Top Senators recently enjoined Meta to prohibit its own metaverse platform to teen children:

 

Listen: Kent Bye & Me on Making a Metaverse That Matters for Voices of VR

Just had a great conversation on Kent Bye's excellent Voice of VR podcast (stream above) around Making a Metaverse That Matters, and since Kent is an expert on the topic, we get into a super deep dive. Here's some highlights, including our debate around Meta not doing any research (far as I can tell) into sex differences in VR nausea:

• 9:10 -- How I got started with all this, and my approach to writing the book.
• 12:00 -- Why I have a strict literary definition of the Metaverse.
• 15:00 -- Unpacking some of the concepts which make virtual worlds and the Metaverse powerful.
• 17:00 -- What happened with Second Life when it was once touted as the coming of the Metaverse?
• 22:00 -- Why it's just as important to talk with the community creators as it is the platform developers.
• 23:00 -- My take on the "Metaverse is dead" media narrative.
• 29:00 -- The Second Life economy as the best model, as compared to cryptoverse / blockchain-based platforms, and compared with Epic/Fortnite's new model, and how it relates to creating for the sake of social motivation.

CONFIRMED: Apple Quietly Promoting Full VR Applications on Vision Pro to Devs, Working Directly With Metaverse Platform Rec Room

At right: Video from Apple's WWDC 2023 developer page

After some tantalizing hints on Monday, I can confirm that Apple is indeed working directly with leading metaverse platform Rec Room on being a full VR application for Vision Pro. You can see for yourself by going to this WWDC 2023 developer page, where Apple devs feature Rec Room as a key Unity application for use on Vision Pro.

To put it another way: Apple is quietly promoting Vision Pro for full VR use, including on metaverse platform.

I say "quietly", because if you look at the major WWDC presentation hosted by Tim Cook, there's very little about bringing 3D AR experiences into Vision Pro, and literally nothing about VR. (As in the words "virtual reality" neve once leave Cook's lips.) 

Apple seems to be smartly employing a mullet strategy for Vision Pro:  Business, productivity, and everyday iPhone-like augmented reality applications for wealthy mainstream consumers in front -- full virtual reality party for hardcore VR / metaverse geeks in back.

Speaking of which, here's VR influencer Nathie showing off Rec Room in full VR in Apple Vision Pro:

Quest 3 Continues Meta's Sunk Cost Fallacy for a VR Mass Market That Does Not & Likely Cannot Exist

Zuck: We spent tens of billions of dollars trying to turn Quest 2 into a mass market product, even buying a literal Super Bowl ad, but it still hasn't sold more than 20 million units. What now?

Boz: Thinner and weirder and more expensive headsets!

Yes that's literally what they did:

What UploadVR's Ian Hamilton Will Watch for at Apple's XR Reveal at Next WWDC -- And What I Fear

https://t.co/TVYLxiTQTZ pic.twitter.com/KcbXk2fmu9

— Ian Hamilton (@hmltn) May 23, 2023

Apple is widely expected to finally reveal its long-awaited, much-rumored XR headset at this year's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, starting this June 5 -- even moreso because for the first time, Ian Hamilton, long time XR industry reporter at UploadVR (and .gif mood master), was invited to attend. (Road to VR was also invited.) 

Here's what Ian will be looking for from Apple, when he's among the gathered reporters:

"If they mention the price I’ll be curious what the reaction will be in the audience," as he puts it to me, "and how Apple talks about its commitment to plans for the future."

He contrasts that with the reaction among the crowd at Oculus Connect, when the Quest MSRP was revealed. "Developers in the audience cheered when they heard $399 for Quest. Apple will probably need to wow that audience with something other than price."

And yes, Ian has also heard the frequent rumors that Apple's XR headset will have a starting (and gut- punching) price of $3000, but he's still waiting to see if that's actually the case: "It’s just one of those things where I’ll truly believe it when it’s stated by Apple publicly."

The other rumored feature is around XR avatars for Apple's platform: "If they show human-like avatars I’ll be extremely curious whether it’s a live demo or pre-recorded, and whether those avatars get out of the Uncanny Valley."

Because according to other frequently reported rumors, Apple is developing those too:

One of the headset's marquee features is said to be lifelike avatars that have accurate facial features captured by the included cameras. Each eye will be tracked by at least one camera, letting the headset accurately show the user's gaze on an avatar. With precise eye-tracking, the headset will be able to perform foveated rendering to conserve power by only rendering imagery in full resolution directly where the user is looking.

I share Ian's curiosity, because hyperreal human avatars would be a really, really bad idea, especially if there's no other option for consumers but them. Not only is there no proven market for photorealistic human avatars, they provably unleash a number of unintended negative consequences. As avatar expert Nick Yee explained to me for the book:

 

VRChat Finally Announces Creator Economy in Very Cautious Closed Beta

After 9 years of operation, VRChat is finally -- and very carefully -- rolling out its user creator economy:

First, when we say Closed Beta, we really mean it – we only intend on inviting in 10 - 20 creators at first. Up until now, we’ve been testing these systems internally, but before releasing them to the public (even in a beta format) we want to make sure that they both actually work and that creators find them easy to use. That first point can’t be stressed enough! We have to make sure that this system is solid at launch, as people will be putting their real, actual money into it.

As I've written before, there's likely over 1000 VRChat creators who are earning an income from external sources like Patreon and YouTube. So this is a much-demanded feature. It also puts VRChat much more in line with being a full-fledged metaverse platform.

I'm not surprised that VRChat is only announcing this now. In my upcoming book, the founders Graham Gaylor and Jesse Joudrey told me how concerned they are about getting this feature right:

 

New Apple VR Rumors Ignore Small Sales & Insiders Hesitant About VR

I definitely don't want to get into the habit of dunking on seriously questionable Insider articles but, well, here we go again:

The original designer of Meta's VR offering, Oculus, says Apple's much-rumored rival metaverse headset [!!!] is "so good."

Palmer Luckey, a billionaire who cofounded Oculus VR in 2012 and now leads defense-tech startup Anduril, made the bold claim in a tweet on Sunday, suggesting he had tried out the iPhone maker's next-generation hardware...

Industry watchers are expecting the tech giant to debut its metaverse project in June at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), particularly after the company made a quiet announcement about its iPad last week that would typically be saved for the conference.

First off:

A VR headset.

Is not.

The Metaverse.

It is definitely not a "metaverse project".

It's not even a necessary component of the Metaverse. VR HMDs are but one of many devices to access a metaverse platform.

It's like calling a new iPhone with updated 3D graphics a "metaverse project" -- in fact, that would actually be somewhat more accurate, since vastly vastly more people use smartphones to access metaverse platforms, than do so in VR.

Anyway, the real issue here is, first of all, taking away the wrong lesson of the Oculus Quest. As anyone who follows Meta's earnings reports can tell you, Quest sales remain slow -- the install base remains small, not yet even 20 million.

The other problem is putting more stock in what Oculus' founder (who no longer works in VR) says about Apple's VR headset -- while ignoring what people actually working at Apple say. As I blogged a couple months ago, citing a Times report and an insider I interviewed for my book: