How VR is rewiring my brain

About a month ago I was assembling Ikea furniture in my new living space and in my flow I mistakingly connected two wrong pieces and my immediate, conscious reaction was to hit 'UNDO.'

Last week while riding my bike around White Rock Lake I stopped to watch the sun set and found the colors of the sun reflecting off the water and the blues and oranges seemed to be separated on their own layers.

Last night while swimming in the pool with my son after dark, I emerged from the pool water and then as if someone hit a switch, I began to see dense yet transparent halos around the accent lighting as if I was viewing the lights through a view finder and lens as opposed to my bare naked eyes.

Rewind to October of 2017 when I first began creating in VR. There was an abundance of developers babying users by defaulting to 'teleporting' around VR environments. One of the only games I had that allowed for unrestrained movement was Pavlov Shooter. Even though playing the game gave me a bit of motion sickness, I loved the immersive nature and over the course of a month I felt myself adjust. Everyday in terrestrial reality, I felt like I had just gotten off a boat. I could be standing still and feel as if I was in motion. While driving, I found myself speeding as my reaction time was evolving. And at night, as I drifted off to sleep, instead of gazing at dark organic images merging together behind my eyelids as I did when I was a boy, I began to see more structured geometry and grid like patterns.

Today, marks nearly 8 months and 600 hours in VR and I wake up often from dreams where I am creating in VR. Nearly everyday I sense the feeling of deja vu, which I have always experienced but now it's a bit ridiculous.

Full disclosure: Between 2011 and 2014, I had travelled DEEP down the rabbit hole of psychedelia in an effort to weaken the strength of my ego and naturalize my spiritual connection with myself. I've taken it further than most people I know and have in my own perception, experienced alternate timelines, the inner compartmentalization of elemental energy and communication with high and low frequency energies. In a sense, these experiences may have 'lubed' me up for the subtle changes of frequent VR but I predict that once VR is as common as the smart phone, that reports of lucid dreaming will increase as will the collective ambition towards digitally unlocking our minds.

Here's this weeks render: Mr. Meowzer, sitting on top of the world.

See it on SketchFab! https://skfb.ly/6zK89

How I made a low-poly Avatar for VR Chat

I recently discovered the awesomeness of VR Chat, a hub for VR users and non-VR users to come together. In these digital worlds, users occupy the space in avatars and the appeal is the randomness of each experience.

My first time in, I picked from a varied and fun selection of stock avatars that blink and move their mouths but as I saw the varied and incredibly diverse population of VR Chat, I decided that I just can't do it stock:)

So my first thought was to use something I made in MasterpieceVR but the way the files save requires a few more steps to retain color info, etc and while it's definitely on my agenda, I thought I'd take a stab at making my an avatar in Google Blocks. And to my surprise there was a recent update that allows for much more precision.

Now if you go to the 'labs' at the bottom of your panel palate, you can switch on new features. There are four dots that represent the center divide for the block you're creating in so setting up a few poles for reference is easy.

I made a dope avatar that was too big for the SDK so be warned, VR Chat has a 20k poly limit, preferably 10k.  Don't spend hours on anything too elaborate. In fact, keep in mind the design process and see if you can extend a shape out as opposed to adding one. It's fun (for me at least) to work within a limit and I'm happy with the result. He comes in at about 7800 polygons and is a feather weight file wise. 

If you'd like to try him out you can download him here and use this video to learn how to upload using the VR CHAT SDK.

 

Story Telling in Extended Reality

It's January 31st in 2018 and I am just feeling settled after a busy 3 months of traveling and making art. This is my first published blog entry on my brand new site. I'm using Squarespace and mostly uploading images taken within VR and it's an incredibly easy process. Shoots, with 3 clicks I can record my experience and share it on YouTube. I'm feeling powerful and blessed. I know well enough that everything can change at any given moment, so I am thankful that TODAY, that my family is healthy and happy. I recognize that this is temporary and I deeply respect the gravity of that. Yet there was a time when I didn't, it was my late teenage years and I really didn't care about caring. I don't think for one second that I'm alone in this and in my case, a number of hard learned lessons brought back to life my 'inner child', minus largely the naivety.

In my podcasts I often talk about education and VR and thought about some radically fantastical time down the line where immersive VR experiences on an online playlist will out perform our traditional education system. After having spent the last week immersed in XR (extended realities) dialogue and experiences while in New York (I was there showcasing 'Big City Nights'), I've come to believe that immersive story telling may be a powerful alley on our journey towards that goal.

My brother in law has these amazing Russian fairy tales like Hansel and Greta, illustrated beautifully and inclusive of the darker details so often watered down in the current culture.  Today while walking home from school with my 4 year old son, he describes to me a scene from his day...he describes it very well and asks, "Did you see me do that?" to which I reply, "I did in my mind, just now as you described it." So it occurs to me that children, or at least my son and myself are very aware of our mind's eye which is why we both love stories.

So what if we create the 'fairy tales' of XR, where we can sharpen intrinsic intuition and teach a moral through immersive story telling? What if we could share our hard earned lessons in a way that is memorable with others?

The question then becomes, how do we get stories from those who are not content creators?  Can we have a platform to submit oral or written accounts of our tales and have an AI start creating a scene based on visual data from these accounts?

What are your thoughts on the potential of XR as an aid in character development?