On April 22nd, 2024, Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook) made an announcement titled A New Era for Mixed Reality: Today we’re taking the next step toward our vision for a more open computing platform for the metaverse. We’re opening up the operating system powering our Meta Quest devices to third-party hardware makers, giving more choice to consumers and a larger ecosystem for developers to build for. We’re working with leading global technology companies to bring this new ecosystem to life and making it even easier for developers to build apps and reach their audiences on the platf ..read more

The Glue website Glue, a corporate collaboration social VR platform I first wrote about in November 2019, has declared bankruptcy. In a post dated April 10th, 2024 on the Glue website, Glue’s CEO, Jussi Havu, writes: We regret to inform you that the company responsible for Glue has been declared bankrupt on 8 April 2024 by decision of the District Court of Helsinki. Despite our best efforts to prevent this outcome, we were unable to find a timely solution. During the next two weeks, we are dedicated to exploring all options to secure a successor for the Glue service. As we cannot promise a d ..read more

In keeping with my recent editorial decision to no longer write about any metaverse platforms which incorporate blockchain, cryptocurrencies, or Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on this blog, I have decided to delete all channels on the associated 723-member RyanSchultz.com Discord server pertaining to such projects. (Almost all of these channels had not seen much activity lately anyway, so it’s not really a loss.) I have kept only one such channel, #nft-dumpster-fire, and renamed it to #crypt-nft-dumpster-fire, since many people seem to like sharing and bemoaning the latest outrages, rug pulls, an ..read more

Image by Pexels from Pixabay I have—finally!— had an opportunity to update my Google spreadsheet of social VR platforms, removing those which are no longer around, and adding a few new ones since the last update, which was several years ago. Please note that this spreadsheet is focused solely on metaverse platforms which support virtual reality, i.e. social VR. If a platform is flatscreen access only (e.g. Second Life), it is not included in this spreadsheet. Please also note that I will no longer be writing about any metaverse platform which incorporates blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and/or ..read more

The HelloSpace team (makers of InSpaze) met with Apple CEO Tim Cook in late March (source: Twitter) In its emphasis on the term spatial computing (instead of virtual reality or augmented reality), some observers have commented that there is a somewhat puzzling lack of social VR/AR apps for the Apple Vision Pro. Well, I recently learned (from the very active r/VisionPro community on Reddit) that there is a social app for the AVP, called InSpaze. Here’s a 15-minute YouTube video giving you an idea of what is possible now: Please note several interesting things about this video: First, when you ..read more

Have you read? Editorial: Why Second Life Is the Perfect Model of a Mature, Fully Evolved Virtual World for Newer Social VR Platforms to Emulate (in case any of you were wondering why I still bother to write about 20-year-old Second Life when there are so many other, newer metaverse platforms out there I could cover on my blog). Vanity Fair (foreground, in the red party dress, waving her hands in the air like she just don’t care ), at the packed Club 511 in Second Life, last weekend. Sometimes, you just want to find a crowd in SL! For most of the past 17 years I have been in the virtual world ..read more

Love is under new management, with a new formal dress code and new rules, and I have found it to be a worthy and elegant successor to the Frank’s Jazz club(s) of yesteryear. As the uncrowned freebie queen of Second Life, I have tended to devote much of my time to posting about fabulous freebies in SL avatar fashion to my blog and to my Steals, Deals, and Freebies group in Second Life (more often lately to the latter than the former, as I have been slowly scaling back on my coverage of Second Life). But today I wanted to share a different kind of freebie: a limited-time opportunity to join a wo ..read more

VenusSX, one of the participants, sent me a press release about this series showcasing the state of the art in VR, taking place on the sidelines of the actual SXSW 2024 conference taking place in Austin, Texas this week and weekend (I will assume that this series is not part of the official SXSW event). According to the press release: The organizers of the VR conference IMMERSIVE X, together with Innovation Bridge Europe, are presenting a five-part series of events called “X-HOUR” from March 7th to 11th on the sidelines of SXSW 2024 in Austin, Texas. The series will showcase outstanding and ..read more

I follow a number of Second Life YouTubers using Feedbin (a handy tool which I wrote about here; what I like about it is that I can organize my viewing, and not have to deal with YouTube’s notorious recommendation algorithm). Last night, I watched a video from a Second Life user who announced that they were stepping away from SL, and why. In the description of the video was a link to an anonymous article which had been published on Medium on Feb. 24th, 2024, and updated Feb, 29th, which makes some very serious and disturbing allegations against several Second Life users and companies, and som ..read more

A ..read more