Experiences
Virtual Guided Tour of Barcelona’s Picasso Museum and the Gaudi
Wish that you could tour the museums of Barcelona for Valentine Day? This Sunday from 6pm to 9pm EDT take a virtual guided tour of Barcelona's Picasso Museum and the Gaudi from the safety and comfort of home.
Gaming
The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets on Oculus Quest | Oculus
We bought this game but really weren't into it until the recent addition of hand tracking into the gameplay. That's made all the difference for us to be able to get deeper into this very fun puzzle game within a world of cute characters. This is a game that could only feel this good in VR, and we're glad that to now be able to put down the remotes and play without them.
SideQuest
Sidequest is the unofficial second Oculus store. This is the place where independent developers can distribute their work without the heavy scrutiny being in the official Oculus store. Though Oculus App Lab raising some doubt for the future of the service it's still going very strong and we'd be very surprised if anything changed this year.
Business
Hire a Virtual Host for your Hotel and Airbnb | CrowsNest XR
Organizations and businesses are using more and more Augmented Reality to engage with customers and provide a bespoke experience that a mere bot or video cannot provide. CrowsNestXR provides the tools and talent to let you have a representative AI available any time and anyplace to respond to questions, regardless if they are at your business or in their home.
43 Virtual Reality Statistics That Rock The Market
This is perhaps the most comprehensive set of statistics for Virtual and Augmented Reality we've come across in years. Normally this kind of data would need to be sourced from individual reports and resources. If you are curious about how popular the technology has become, what consumers are really buying, and what sectors are growing this is the article to bookmark and reference.
Research
The Rise of VTubers as Social Media Influencers, Explained
This article examines the origins and popularity of a type of content creator and media influencer who chooses to perform as an animated virtual avatar instead of appearing on camera. If you've never heard of this (and also didn't see our recommendation for The Virtual Reality Show in Issue 1 this is article with accompanying video is a good place to begin to understand the phenomenon of VTubing.
Development
Oculus Creators Portal | Discover
If you ever thought of creating your own experience for the Oculus or other headsets this is a great resource to start learning what it takes to bring your creative vision to life. Learn about the features that go into truly immersive experiences, how to distribute your creation, and what it some popular creators have to say about the platform. This is just a jumping off point to learning more about development, but shares a good baseline knowledge to help you decide what form could work best for you.
Jobs
How To Optimize Your CV For A Career In VR & AR
With so much happening with Virtual Reality it's amazing that there aren't more articles and industry advice for how to break into the job of your dreams. This article gives pretty good advice and does a great job not making this seem like an impossible goal to set, and the better we do encouraging the right set of skills and experience the more likely we are to encourage more people into the industry.
Commentary
This past week we went down a bit of a rabbit hole researching hosts and how to others are approaching the problem of engaging with audiences and customers when they can't come into a physical location. Some of those links made it into this issue and we feel are pretty inventive ways to think about how we'll be extending artificial intelligence, virtual avatars and holograms, and insights from looking at how technology is being adopted to better serve users.
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Other Realities