News
BMW art cars go digital in augmented reality anywhere, anytime with acute art
50 years of BMW art car is on display in AR with the collection being added to the Acute Art app. Featuring world renowned artists from past years such as Jeff Koons, Esther Mahlangu, and Roy Lichtenstein, you'll be able to see virtual interpretations of BMW as a canvas for the artist's vision.
Ready Player Me - Full-Body 3D Avatar Creator For VR Apps & Games
Back in issue 15 of the newsletter we highlighted the avatar generator put out by Wolf3D. They have now released a new version meant to allow users to make one avatar that can be used across the entire Metaverse. The avatars work in over 200 current apps on VR, mobile, desktop, and the web.
Clearview’s Face Surveillance Still Has No First Amendment Defense | Electronic Frontier Foundation
The legal term "bad actor" (though villain is another good word) definitely applies to any company violating the privacy of individuals in collecting sensitive information or measurements without the user's consent. This article is an update on court cases initiated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation regarding Clearview's face surveillance program. The program helps law enforcement identify people based on social media and online photos within a database they created from scraping Facebook, YouTube, and other online platforms. Yes, that sounds very dystopian, and that's what one of their early investors told the New York Times back in 2020.
Facebook Deprecates Proprietary Oculus APIs For OpenXR Focus
Way back in issue 6 we mentioned Unity's commitment to supporting OpenXR, and this week Facebook announced it will deprecate its proprietary Oculus APIs in favor of industry standard OpenXR. Facebook's idea of being a Metaverse company in 5 years aside, this shows a commitment to collaboration and partnership we hope to see in other companies contributing to the connected ecosystem we will need for the first version of a Metaverse to become a reality.
Reading
Building the Metaverse Megadeck | by Jon Radoff | Building the Metaverse
Building the Metaverse is a great Medium blog to subscribe in general, but this particular post features a presentation put together from months of work investigating the Metaverse. This deck covers everything you should know about where we are in the path to a connected Metaverse. From trends to the companies building it, this takes you through the Seven Layers of the Metaverse value chain in the most comprehensive way we've seen so far.
Imagining the Future: HMU Experience - Part 2
Part two in our series reimagining the capabilities of head mounted VR headsets went live a few weeks ago but we didn't think to feature it in the newsletter until now. In this installment we explore what VR could look like if we were able to share more with people in the same room with us while we're in VR. What would it two people in VR shared their location info so they could move around together in VR?
One More Thing
Tech as Art: Supporting Artists Who Use Technology as a Creative Medium
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is a United States federal program providing financial patronage to artists since 1965. As mediums and creative practices of artists use changes dramatically over the years and the NEA has worked to stay current in understanding how to effectively support the creation of art regardless what form it takes. This report came from two years researching exploring artists whose practices include digital technologies and we feel a must read.
Commentary
It's always great when there is news on people and companies we've featured. Seeing evolution of ideas and creative growth helps bolster the tools and services needed to bring us closer to the reality of a shared Metaverse. A few of the links this week are noteworthy updates to things we've covered that you should definitely be aware.
It also occurred to us that we've been so focused on sharing other's content that we have not done a great job of sharing our own. Part 2 in our series "Imagining the Future: HMU Experience" was released more than a month ago and we didn't mention it in the newsletter. So much has been happening that it honestly slipped our minds that we weren't promoting it.
Finally this week we were quite surprised that when looking at all the news and links we came across this week that our One More Thing would actually come from the U.S. federal government. Yeah... that was totally unexpected, But surprise and awe seems to be a consistent feeling we get covering AR/VR/MR/XR.
Thank you for reading and subscribing, and we'll see you next week!
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