Good VR Podcast

Ian Hamilton

Audio from people building toward good VR. Read more about Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com and support independent journalism directly. www.goodvirtualreality.com

  1. Sock Puppet Superstar Developer 'Just Following The Fun'

    1D AGO

    Sock Puppet Superstar Developer 'Just Following The Fun'

    After his passion project unexpectedly went viral, developer Brandon Montell rushed to put together wishlist pages for Sock Puppet Superstar. You can wishlist the game now on Steam and the Quest store. “Anytime I do something that makes myself chuckle a little bit, I am just like, "Okay, that has to go in the game,” Montell says on the Good VR Podcast. “It was not a business market-driven decision to start working on it, and if it had been, I probably wouldn't have started working on it. But it was just starting as this passion project. I just felt really passionate about learning to make music in different ways in 3D space. So I was following the fun, and I feel like even though there might be some market headwind, I feel like it's no less fun to do stuff in VR and to tinker with it.” Montell’s episode of the podcast lasts around 26 minutes edited with Riverside and he shows through his replies exactly how Good VR is discovered. Someone with a bit of passion for an idea follows the fun and then shares it with the world. “This project is the fusion of three of my interests, because I've always loved coding, and that's why I majored in computer science. I also love graphics and animation, And I also have at times been a hobbyist animator. I collected instruments and would try to learn new instruments,” Montell said. “So in a lot of ways, a VR animated music game is the fusion of those three things, of being able to code it, do the art and animation, and figure out the music side of things. I think all of those things are definitely coalescing in this project…I'm having fun making it, so hopefully other people will have fun playing it.” Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe

    27 min

  2. MAY 11

    Building VR & AR Games From Iran To Finland

    How would development studio Not Suspicious fulfill agreements to put mixed reality games Airspace Defender and Banners & Bastions on Pico headsets with developers in Iran during an Internet blackout and a war with the United States? The answer is that they wouldn’t. Iranian husand-and-wife developers Sahand Malaei and Pardis Mohtadi just arrived in Finland to continue that work after departing Iran, where they had watched strikes out their window and felt them shake the foundations of the building where they worked on mixed reality games. The Good VR Podcast hosted Not Suspicious founder Rafael Brochado and Malaei for discussions about everything from their favorite experiences in VR headsets to the reality of attempting to work during a war. You can find Airspace Defender and Banners & Bastions on the Quest store now. Banners & Bastions arrives on the Pico Store May 21. Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe

    1h 54m

  3. MAY 6

    H3VR2 Revealed By RUST LTD. For Quest And Steam, With Anton Hand

    Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades development studio RUST LTD. revealed a sequel during the Creature Feature. I’ve told people I’m not really into VR shooters, but the more nuanced truth is that nothing in the category interests me the way Pistol Whip grabbed me with its rhythm focus in about 30 seconds and then kept me playing there for years. Now, I’m anticipating Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades 2 in a way I haven’t any other VR game. H3VR2 has been in development for some time and it is funded in part by Meta, with the reveal made during Doug North Cook’s latest VR gaming showcase. Some of the most accomplished VR developers in the world have joined RUST LTD. to devote their time to the project including SUPERHOT VR for Quest developer Mark Schramm and Vertigo 1 & 2 creator Zach Tsiakalis-Brown. “I see these people around me, many of whom are like my dear friends, who are capable of building some of the most incredible experiences that I think anyone has ever made,” North Cook said in February on the first episode of the Good VR Podcast. “And I am just desperate to ensure that they keep being able to build those things.” In case you are unfamiliar with H3VR, the work from Anton Hand and his colleagues at RUST LTD. exists in a category by itself on Steam. The VR sandbox game has been in development for a full decade of early access accruing more than 20,000 reviews over that time and an overwhelmingly positive rating. Never put on sale below its $20 starting price, its 1.0 version is still in ongoing testing to support the robust modding community after more than 150 updates across the decade adding new game modes, features, and guns focused around shooting targets or human-sized hot dogs. “One of the big differences that we’re doing now compared to the original game is that there is a very managed onboarding experience in the game,” Hand says on the Good VR Podcast. “It’s both narratively letting you know about the context that you’re in with it, but is actually ensuring do you want to set your locomotion options before you move anywhere? Here are your hands, here is what is going on.” The action-adventure game aims to reach new players as well as existing enthusiasts alike built in the “spirit of a sim.” There’s a “Certification Range” and voiced tutorials to introduce players to the virtual firearms and their handling. “While you’re practicing,” Hand explains as an example, the tutorial shares “a couple fun facts about this type of firearm that you might not have heard of.” Hand is famously critical of Facebook and Meta while being a staunch supporter of PC VR efforts over the years. Shock that he would take Meta’s funding, and that a sequel is deep into development, is likely to reverberate through the VR community and beyond. Even more than Half-Life, a series adapted to headsets rather than born in them, H3VR2 could inject tremendous enthusiasm into the narrative around VR and standalone headsets in particular. You can listen now to a one-hour Good VR Podcast episode with Hand breaking down his path into VR, 10 years of H3VR, how Meta came to help fund the sequel, and his answer to the question “did you sell out?” You can also wait for the full two-hour video version premiering tomorrow with a much deeper dive into the artist’s perspective and journey, charting Hand’s path from the first piece of digital art he made in 1993 to his favorite Star Trek captain and top moment of presence in VR. H3VR2 wishlist pages are available for Steam and Quest. Good Virtual Reality is an independent community-supported you can donate to support or subscribe below. Good Virtual Reality is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe

    1 hr

  4. APR 30

    Hasko7 From Oculus Rift Echo Arena To Augmented World Expo

    Sonya Haskins was Hasko7 to the Echo Arena community, a supportive figure who would help people however she could. These days she’s Head of Programming for the Augmented World Expo, helping organize its latest conference June 15-18 in Long Beach, California. She recently moved to the city after spending much of her life in the southern United States. From purchasing an Oculus Rift in 2017 after a demo at Best Buy to now, she’s transformed almost everything about her life. She sat for just over an hour for the Good VR Podcast with me using the Riverside podcasting platform. I edited down our talk to just around 52 minutes covering her journey over this time. When Meta killed Echo Arena in 2023, its closure struck a blow to her identity, with her name attached to a place that formed the foundation of a new persona she found in virtual reality. “When the game started to shut down,” Haskins says on the Good VR Podcast. “I actually was thinking wow, now who am I? Because nobody ever calls me Sonya. I’m divorced now. All my friends are gamers who call me Hasko7.” In her family it is tradition to purchase one’s own headstone so that loved ones aren’t burdened with the task. She shares over our conversation that she recently bought hers and, when people pass by her stone in the ground one day, they’ll see her name, the dates marking her lifetime, as well as the disk of Echo Arena. “Echo Arena was a life-changing experience for me,” she says. “I began to meet people outside of my traditional social circle and society that I was used to and met people from around the world, became friends with them, talked with them. It became a community where you would put a headset on and suddenly you’re in this immersive world with a bunch of other robots and you could play these games and be competitive, but it was so much more than that and, to me, Echo Arena is a great example of the beauty of immersive reality, which is you can be somewhere else and do something else and try on different personalities or different looks and different attitudes and see what you want to be in life or what you want to explore, and so that’s what that game was to me - it really gave me the freedom and the permission and the opportunity to be able to say you know is it okay to do something or be something other than a stay-at-home mom.” The transcript for this podcast is auto-generated. Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe

    53 min
  5. K. Guillory On How To Paint Cyberspace With Immersivism

    APR 29

    K. Guillory On How To Paint Cyberspace With Immersivism

    Artist K Guillory joined the Good VR Podcast to discuss her path into exploring the practice of immersivism. One of the first articles on this site was about Guillory’s work painting a furry in her living room. Now on the podcast the artist dives deep into her path from Second Life to fully immersive virtual spaces in headset and her explorations making art while there. Immersivism “is when you make fine art about virtual worlds, digital life, cyberspace,” Guillory says on the podcast. “A very quick way to remember it is impressionism plus the Internet equals immersivism.” Guillory’s Steam account logs the number of hours she’s spent in VRChat at over 3,000, not including the time she’s spent as a “Questie” logged into the application in standalone VR on the Quest platform. She made a space in VRChat she calls “Gate” that’s an island with a giant gate on it that she’s rigged up to connect out to Resonite, allowing her to essentially transition seamlessly between the two social platforms without leaving the headset. “An artist is somebody that is constantly going to their canvas or their sculpting station or whatever they work with…and they are constantly going there in search of the truth. The truth of themselves, the truth of the world,” Guillory says on the podcast. “They are always trying to create something on canvas, on the table, in their workshop of something that they’re looking for something. And I think that when I began this, I was just following a path of curiosity. I really wanted to know where was my research going to lead me? There was some kind of truth out there that I was going to find. And I just kept following that. And I think that I stay on this path because I must see how the story ends. I need to keep going. There are times when, like when I went to Resonite, and I set up at each platform I visit, I set up an atelier — a workshop — and I just want to see what happens. Let’s make some art. Let’s make some memories of this art. What kind of art is going to pop up this time? And I think when I got to Resonite, it was kind of like when a character in a movie kind of gets towards the end of a simulated world and things start to kind of run out. And it’s like — this next part is the part that I built. And that was very exciting.” Listen to Guillory’s suggestions now for other artists to check out working in this space, her suggestions for new artists exploring VR for the first time, and her favorite memories. “While still a niche art movement practiced by a loose network of artists,” Guillory noted after our podcast, she and her friends “practice making this art through an online research facility and gallery called “The Museum of Immersivism”. Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe

    45 min

  6. APR 22

    Jesse Schell From Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride To I Expect You To Die, Until You Fall & Among Us VR

    Schell Games head Jesse Schell joined the Good VR podcast and recapped his path in VR from working on Disney’s pioneering VR attraction Aladdin’s Magic Carpet Ride in the early 1990s to the studio’s recent explorations in generative AI. Along the way, we discuss the seated I Expect You To Die trilogy, the physically active Until You Fall sword fighting game, and the ambitious effort to transition the mobile multiplayer game Among Us to fully immersive embodied virtual reality. “The business of watching your back, the fact that in VR, you literally have to turn around to see…is someone behind me?” Schell said. “Like, ooh, that does feel kind of like a match. And so we were excited by the idea of it in conversations with Innersloth, this was something that was interesting to them. And so we ended up kind of being able to team up to get it done. They were very interested in having us be a part of that. And it definitely has been the most, in terms of number of players, the most successful VR experience that we’ve been a part of.” Most recently, Schell transitioned development of Among Us back to original developer Innersloth. The title represents perhaps the only multiplayer title in gaming to transition across all those platforms and modes of play, essentially going full circle from a flat map on a flat screen to a 3D map on a 3D screen and then, finally, back to a 3D map on a flat screen. Schell says what “shocked us” was that, as the title moved from VR back to flat, they expected more players to enjoy the game in that final mode of play. “As many players as we have in VR, I don’t know, we’ll probably have three times as many in flat? Of course we will,” he said they thought. “And the answer was no, that hasn’t been true. The VR part of it has been more successful for us than the flat version, which was a little surprising.” I manually edited the 52-minute conversation with Schell recorded on the podcast platform Riverside down to 44 minutes with an automatically generated transcription available above. Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe

    44 min
  7. Sofia Lazaro Explores Where Headsets Help In Aerospace With Dauntless XR

    APR 21

    Sofia Lazaro Explores Where Headsets Help In Aerospace With Dauntless XR

    Sofia Lazaro is the cofounder of Dauntless XR which focuses on products in mixed reality “for the deskless workforce.” “Individuals who work in aerospace, manufacturing, and defense, and [Dauntless] really aims at use cases to how can we use XR as a medium to give people the information they need when they need it in 3D in kind of a hands-free format,” Lazaro explains on the Good VR podcast. “There’s a stark dividing line through our use cases. And we build hardware agnostic specifically so that we can bring in the right hardware that’s right for the use case. And for us, the hard line tends to be — is this a classroom or a field context? — And if it’s a classroom context or maybe at least not a context where we’re concerned about physical safety, so we don’t have humans in the same space as large machinery or things like that, that is when we would lean more on the things that have the higher field of view.” Lazaro’s conversation with me on the Good VR podcast covers a range of topics including Dauntless XR’s effort to build software that covers 3D data collaboration and workflow assistance, aiming to relieve people from needing to carry “binders of reference materials out into the field.” Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe

    46 min
  8. Tender Claws From Virtual Virtual Reality & The Under Presents To Stranger Things VR & Body Proxy

    APR 19

    Tender Claws From Virtual Virtual Reality & The Under Presents To Stranger Things VR & Body Proxy

    Some of the most memorable experiences that have ever been made for VR headsets started in the minds of Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro at Tender Claws. Artists and creators who have closely followed good VR projects over the last decade still carry with them today their experiences in Virtual Virtual Reality on Daydream headsets and, during the pandemic, the intimate social connection possible in Quest systems buying a ticket to a showing of The Tempest in The Under Presents. The pair estimate their theater in VR hosted somewhere between thousands to tens of thousands of individual performances across the pandemic, providing a vital place of performance to actors when their physical venues closed and much-needed magic and social connection to isolated attendees. Their sequel Virtual Virtual Reality 2 might be seen as prophetic to the ends of Rec Room and Horizon Worlds while Stranger Things VR released at the zenith of Meta’s explorations into mixed reality on Quest systems. More recently, the pair have returned to their installation-based roots with experiences touring through festivals in projects like Face Jumping and, this year, the AI glasses-based Body Proxy.  “What we do is kind of like look at the zeitgeist and look at both the critical and creative landscape that we're participating in,” Gorman said on the Good VR Podcast. “And think about speculative futures and narratives that make people think about technology rollout or what the systems they're engaging in are…I think what has been really supportive and important for us as artists in that our pieces come out as sort of precedent sometimes and make a statement about these speculative futures that then may or may not come to pass.” Their work across space and embodiment strains the very definition of games, with the pair responding to my questions across an hour-long conversation I edited down to around 47 minutes with the podcasting platform Riverside. “ I think we have a very blurry definition of game and we will refer to all of them as games and all of them as experiences depending on the audience we're talking to,” said Cannizzaro during the conversation. I discuss with the cofounders the recent colocation chat I had with Alex Coulombe and Steve Lukas and manually corrected the transcription of our conversation to the best of my ability in an effort to make their deep reflections as universally digestible as possible. “You have [an] audience and market that feels like, ‘oh, what is a game and what is an experience?’ And that's still a discussion. But in the worlds we inhabit, we are far past that discussion and looking into a broader -- what is interaction in this space,” Gorman said. “I  think it's actually maybe your relation to others through the technology is what creates presence.” Thank you to Good Virtual Reality’s paid subscribers and founding members for supporting this independent journalism. Good Virtual Reality is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe

    48 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
8 Ratings

About

Audio from people building toward good VR. Read more about Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com and support independent journalism directly. www.goodvirtualreality.com

Information

  • Creator
    Ian Hamilton
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Ian Hamilton
  • Show Website
    Good VR Podcast

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