RIP @RecRoom. They close their doors today at noon PDT. I spoke with former employee @ShawnCWhiting on his reflections on what happened, some highlights along the way with various memories & reflections. RIP @RecRoom 2016-2026. voicesofvr.com/1719-rip-rec-…

I was fortunate to catch a sneak peek at this and it is excellent ! Everyone in XR should read. Continues to astound me how much value Kent brings to our industry. Support him on patreon! patreon.com/voicesofvr

I wrote a 121-page report on the future of immersive storytelling and interactive art for @DocLab & @weareagog. There's an exciting indie XR distribution network that's emerging. There's also a section on AI Ethics where I share my personal takes on AI. professionals.idfa.nl/storie…

📣 This solo developer who currently works at Pixar as a Technical Director is building a VR rhythm game called Sock Puppet Superstar for Quest as an indie project, and over the last week he has been going viral on TikTok! 🤖Features/Tech: - Using Unity, OpenXR, hand tracking, and a custom voice synthesizer built in FMOD - Raise and lower your puppet to control the pitch - Works with hand tracking or controllers - Customize your sock puppet with colors, fabrics, accessories, and voices 📌 Devs can achieve this using the Meta XR Interaction SDK or Unity XR Toolkit (XR Hands) to add full hand support like what’s shown here. 🚀 Share this to give this solo indie dev more visibility! I’ll continue this bi-weekly with more indie devs who deserve the amplification!

Pro-AI engineer reckons with the corrosive nature of LLM-coding leading to brainrot. Now entering Harm Reduction phase of weaning off magical ride of instant gratification addictive psychosis. Will inevitably lead to developing experiential & transformative economy projects

UFO-Related #SXSW sessions Keynote w Spielberg 3/13 1p schedule.sxsw.com/events/PP1… Historic Impact of @AgeofDisclosure Doc w @Dan_Farah, @jaystratton, @lesliekean, & Hal Puthoff, 3/13 4p schedule.sxsw.com/2026/event… @danielsheehan45 Podcast, 3/17 4p schedule.sxsw.com/events/PP1… #UFOTwitter

Internal memo: “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns." 🤡 The absolute gall of these people never ceases to amaze me nytimes.com/2026/02/13/techn…

Reflecting in Tokyo with my time off... Thought hard on what happened to VR industry this past month... This is a long read: I've been in VR since 2013 when I first helped start up Survios. You can imagine how the Meta VR fallout devastated me in really unique ways. Totally and absolutely crushing. I can't even really explain it fully. It's hard to express how personal it all is being in it for so long. And I'm not saying that was smart to allow. I believed in VR too much and let it get there. The best-laid plans of mice and men, right? But this was very consequential to the entire VR gaming industry. While there are always paths to raise capital, traditional gaming is already struggling and VR focused gaming is even worse now. It's a bloodbath. For everyone. So when Meta pulled the 1st party plug I said watch 3rd party- we've already seen major shake ups. Now wait until the entire year runs it's course. This is especially so now with Steam Frame delayed and component prices rising rapidly. It all conflicts with promising myself in 2013 when I left AAA for VR it would be my only focus. VR became my requirement for opportunity. Period. I put VR first. I refused all work not VR related. It's been 13 years now in "VR only" and I've done a lot, worked on many titles, and certainly hit some dreams... And 6 years ago I started a family right into the whole 2020 turmoil. Anyone from the game industry knows the challenge of living any nornal family life. And XR as an emerging technology frankly made that dynamic even tougher. Everything since that 2020 year has slowly but surely recalibrated me. Those years added even more complex pressure as my grandparents passed away in the lockdown. I never understood it when I was young but you really do change once you have kids and really go through it. So I'm exhausted caring so much while watching apologists dismiss and sugarcoat how major this tide going out really is. As if AI glasses will save VR! "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked." Well get ready to see some birthday suits out there. Many studios are already retreating. Some will go under. So I need to be honest with myself... My framing: First I quit college and entered gamedev in 2007 to make games. It's all I ever wanted to do. Then I quit AAA and entered VR in 2013 to make the VR medium I believed in succeed. I tried the DK1 and could not stop talking about the potential of VR to the frustration of my traditional gaming peers. This crunch life I've now spent nearly 20 years in, while it has given me many gifts, has taken quite a lot of my time. My advice to hedge for new young XR devs- If I were to continue the "emerging tech" race here in XR I would go hard into AR AI design for incoming mixed reality devices. And I think they will do very well in mainstream. I would urge people interested to explore it. However, this isn't a box for my own passion. I can't pretend it is. I love VR. I love gaming. AI glasses do not excite me. Even traditional gaming is a better fit for me than glasses tech. This all puts me at my current decision- I will adjust my efforts and shift to XR being a great feature of my games, not the focus, and this will also reflect in my posting which will evolve toward more traditional gaming. So instead of putting all the eggs in one basket like launching first on Quest platform or even try to shift as a Steam Frame exclusive, I'll instead build traditional flat with "VR as a feature" Anyone who knows me well will understand how hard this decision was. But as an avid PC/PCVR gamer, I'm going to my gaming roots first. I don't see a path for me with glasses tech being pushed everywhere. Can't lie to myself and fake enthusiasm for emerging tech I'm not that interested in. I'm not going into mobile apps or building for a generative AI platform. I'm here to create what only games can. I want people to experience worlds.

This is an incredible recap of Internet history & how Section 230 protects free speech. Authoritarians & surveillance capitalists are destroying it to entrench their power. It’ll introduce government censorship, all accounts tied to IDs, & a dystopian AI Big Brother hellscape. 🎯

Ian Hamilton says he was fired from @UploadVR after proposing three requests in response to a "clearly disclosed AI author" experiment: brevity, an option for readers to opt-out from all AI content, & human writer right of 1st refusal to an assignment. goodvr.substack.com/p/ian-is…

KDE Plasma plugin turns it into a full VR desktop! Aaaaaaaaaaaaa See the draft code/merge request here: invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-…

This take on the Meta XR layoffs by @ASychov is the closest to how I've been feeling. I've been talking about how we're at the beginning of a new immersive cycle, and need to return to sustainable, organic growth. So lots of resonance here. Much more to work through, but tune in:

Always appreciate how @AgileLens pushes the latest cutting-edge tech with their annual Christmas Carol performance.

Last #InlocoMetaTalks session of 2025 for an insightful discussion on the dawn of a new era in immersive technology. There have been at least three major waves of virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality since 1968, and we are just now beginning a brand new cycle with some major new hardware from AndroidXR and SteamOS. Join experiential journalist and oral historian @kentbye as he unpacks additional context of this current immersive zeitgeist looking to patterns in the past, present, and future of immersive. Immersive storytelling and immersive art also feature prominently in Bye’s coverage and so he’ll be pointing out some deeper trends from cutting-edge immersive artists that elucidate some of these deeper trends. And what about AI? Are we on the frontier or something truly radical? Or are we trapped in a delusional bubble where pervasive enshittification is accelerating the dead Internet theory and ruining everything? 📅 December 18 🕕 6 PM CET / 9 PM Dubai / 9 AM PST 📍 Join on Spatial spatial.io/s/VERTICAL-HORIZO… 📺 Livestream here or on YouTube youtube.com/watch?v=XFG9XpUk… #vr #ar

Just listened to this @AIXRPodcast episode yesterday, it's a great retrospective of over a decade of work in the field from @kentbye as well as thoughts on where we're going next. Thank you @CharlieFink @VirtualTedS

💬 #InlocoMetaTalks is back with a powerful topic! Title: "The Beginning of a New Immersive Cycle" 😮‍💨 We’ve lived through multiple waves of VR/AR/MR. 📺 What’s really happening right now? 🔜 Where is this leading us—and the entire industry? Join @kentbye —the legendary 'Voice of VR', podcaster, and chronicler of the entire industry—as we unpack the past, present, and future of immersive tech. See you on December 18 on @Spatial_io 🦈 Timing and full description—coming soon! Hosted by #InlocoSharkie 🦈 @ElsaLeleka #ImmersiveTech #VR #XR #DigitalFuture #AI

@KentBye has spent more than 11 years studying VR and identifies it as an interdisciplinary fusion requiring philosophy, design, ethics, and human understanding woven together. Medium affordances and ethical implications are inseparable and must be studied simultaneously. Most innovators skip the ethics layer entirely, and that is exactly where the frontier remains open. Integration beats siloed innovation every time. @aixrpodcast #VR #Ethics #Innovation #XR #Leadership