I interviewed Project: Lost Worlds director Fins at Venice Immersive 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voices of VR. So continuing my series of looking at different immersive stories from Venice Immersive 2024. Today's episode, we're looking at a piece called Project Lost Worlds, which is by Fens. It's a VR chat world that is a part of the competition. So I had a conversation with Finns last year around his Complex 7, and he's just a real master world builder and able to create these really vast scenes with amazing lighting. And this year is probably one of the most ambitious projects that he's had yet, where you're taking this kind of interstellar space cruise into another world where there's all these dinosaurs that you get to explore and look at. And it's such a large project that this is actually just a kind of an early demo. He says it's probably around 30 or 40 percent of what it's going to be when it's completely finished. And so even though it was being shown within the competition here this year at Venice Immersive, he's not going to be having a public launch until sometime in 2025. So we get a little bit of an early look and explore through some of his imaginal success. interstellar space tourism space safari and all the different inspirations from like interstellar to like avatar as well as like jurassic park so all these things fuse together within the context of this piece so that's what we're coming on today's episode of the voices of vr podcast so this interview with fins happened on sunday september 1st 2024 so with that let's go ahead and dive right in hello i am fins and i'm a world builder and a 3d artist at vr chat All right, so why don't you go ahead and give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working with VR?
[00:01:58.465] Fins: Yeah, so I started out as a concept artist to the illustration. And I do illustration for probably five to six years, and then I do concept art for about three years. Before VRChat, I do concept art for video games, movies, if they need a piece of conceptualized art. or stories, something I will draw it for them and they turn it into a 3D model. But then about five and a half years ago, almost six years ago, I saw a video on YouTube about VRChat. I got curious, downloaded the thing, and made my first world about six or seven months later after getting a little acquainted with the platform. And ever since then, Blink Open Eyes, six years later, I am now working at VRJet as a 3D artist and also been making various experiences in the world as my personal piece.
[00:02:49.389] Kent Bye: Right. Well, five or six years ago put us into, like, you know, 2018, 2019, the Knuckles era. Was it the Knuckles meme that got you into VRChat, or was it something else? What was it that you saw on YouTube?
[00:02:59.934] Fins: It was something else, but it was definitely because of the Knuckles that those... It was Jemski. His series of the, whatever that's called, Only in VRChat, or something like that. And I saw some clip about it, and people was having fun and doing, like, sandbox. But then when I looked closer into it, And I realized, oh wait, those are user-created worlds and avatars. And that has been my thing for most of my younger life, where I just love making custom maps, playing The Sims, doing tycoon games, or even doing custom Starcraft maps and whatnot. And the fact that you can do this with multiplayer online in real time was crazy to me, so I just jumped in.
[00:03:41.527] Kent Bye: Well, I know that usually most people go into VRChat and experience other things, and eventually you start to build your own worlds. But what kind of communities or other worlds did you see that then convinced you that you wanted to actually start to dive in and start to build? Was it pretty soon, or did you kind of check things out? Or maybe describe a little bit about your early days of VRChat.
[00:04:01.701] Fins: I was pretty shy at first, a little introvert. So a lot of the time I just kind of like go around public world and see what other people are doing and just kind of like be the background and hopefully maybe can get a small conversation or two. But the more I check out the worlds, the more I was inspired to do it. Particularly in the early days, there was one science laser world called archery. And there was a little flyer on the ground to say, hey, build your own world. I would not, I don't remember the exact message, but it was something I was like, okay, right. It's time for me to like stop putting this off. And I shouldn't like seriously put some time into trying this out finally.
[00:04:41.155] Kent Bye: Well, being a concept artist, was most of your medium and output in 2D? Or were you working with 3D modeling at all? Or maybe talk about the existing media that you were doing, your practice of concept art, and then slowly getting into more and more of the 3D and more building parts.
[00:04:57.074] Fins: So as concert artists, we are trained to utilize the best way to get to the end result, even if that includes 3D. So yes, 3D was involved, but not to the extent that was my work creation that I do nowadays. You can go into Blender and you put some cube together and maybe you put on a rough shape or whatever you want to draw and then you paint over it. That will get you the result faster without having to recalculate the horizon line or the perspective and everything. So 3D was an essential part but it was not the deep world building that I am currently doing as a 3D artist.
[00:05:33.379] Kent Bye: So then what was the first world that you created?
[00:05:35.682] Fins: It was called Shark Fin Cafe. It was by my name, Fin, back then. And I loved all things sharks. One of the things I saw on Reddit, I think it was Reddit, people were asking like, hey, anybody knows a rain world? just sit and relax in and watch the rain just you know dropping down and i was like whoa this actually didn't exist at the time so i made the cafe i converted one of the shaders from shadertoy.com that had like the window rain dripping affecting that was the first ever done on VRChat. I am positive because I never saw that at the time. But I put it on the window and then people was like, oh, wow, like this cafe is so cozy and people come by and even just sit there and watch the rain. And now you got all the homework with all the rainy shader things. So it was pretty cool.
[00:06:22.423] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's a lot of worlds, a lot of public worlds where I go into and that there's raining sounds outside and people hanging out. So it's definitely become a bit of a meme in the public worlds. So as a concept artist, you're usually working with clients or other like people who have very specific visions for what they want. And so then you come into VRChat, you build your first world. Then what was the process of like getting feedback, having people see it and what happened from there?
[00:06:47.646] Fins: So what is the thing I would say advantage? So when working as a concept artist obviously you have to look at the source material or whatever the idea to have and then transform that into a two-day pictures and then hopefully that align with the vision if not then you have the revisions but for my own stuff I kind of have it on my head already and for me I kind of usually can skip the part where I do have to draw it out but able to have the skill previously working as a studio artist and as a concept artist to understand like where that process in the development is and I can plan ahead with my own personal project without having to do the thing to begin with which is something I found actually a lot of people have trouble with They have a general idea, but they don't understand the picture or the vision for it. And they don't really know how to execute it. And for me, that's my little advantage of being a 2D concept artist is that I'm able to mostly execute what I have in my mind by using my previous experience as a concept artist.
[00:07:45.524] Kent Bye: OK. And so does that mean you don't make any sketches when you do it? You just go straight into your 3D modeling program and make it out and put it into VR? Or is there any sort of planning or sketching?
[00:07:57.739] Fins: Sometimes there is some. I do actually have concept art for some of my work. It's private. I haven't really released any of them where I need to really have a concrete because sometimes you have a picture in your mind. It does distort over time or it does change. And if you want to hold down a very core idea, you probably want to do like they call it like hero art. Basically, so you wouldn't keep the essentially the color palette, the theme, the vibe and the lighting and whatnot. And hopefully that you can use that as a reference for the rest of the development phase. But for me, as far as like concepting, it would be mostly in the form of they call white boxing is basically is put down a bunch of white white box and then you feel that over with the actual asset and then build the environment over time. which is kind of almost like the concept art in the early part, but instead of painting over it, now you actually put in 3D art over it.
[00:08:52.581] Kent Bye: And do you add any texturing to these white boxes, or is it just literally like cubes in space just to get a sense of the overall spatial architecture of a space?
[00:09:00.805] Fins: A lot of time, they are texture on, but, well, texture probably a bit farther. They are colored. And then I would make the lighting on them. And then they will get the actual acid filling.
[00:09:11.829] Kent Bye: OK. Yeah, so you're working a lot with lighting. Well, I know last year, we were talking about the experience that you had, Complex 7. And you were doing a lot more. advanced lighting techniques and kind of trickery in a way that you would create these impossible lights, but just to give it a little bit more pop in these virtual worlds. But if you think about from Complex 7 and your latest, your Project Lost Worlds, which is showing this year at Finis Immersive 2024, you've had a number of different worlds you've created between your first world and then. How many worlds have you put out since your very first world?
[00:09:44.068] Fins: I would say probably 30 to 40, way more in private, but publicly about 35 or so.
[00:09:51.991] Kent Bye: Roughly how many private then? 70. Like total, 70 more additional?
[00:09:57.614] Fins: Yeah, 70 more additional.
[00:09:59.154] Kent Bye: Okay, so about 30% of all the stuff you've created is only public and 70 or so percent of it is private?
[00:10:05.217] Fins: Yes.
[00:10:06.017] Kent Bye: Okay, wow, okay. So... And is that just because you're sketching for yourself or are there other clients or is it just your own creative process of messing around with stuff and seeing how it looks without having other people look at it yet?
[00:10:21.604] Fins: I have an extremely strict public standard. When I release something, it has to be polished. I have a reason why it exists. And for a lot of my private world, it's either a tech demo or a test lighting or a scene or even like a whole world where it's functional but it doesn't have a purpose or I wouldn't quote unquote call it like public ready. Yes, which means like testing all the bugs. getting UI and QA and everything works, there's nothing wrong if public people come in. So when those things don't meet that standard, I don't release them, regardless of how far they are.
[00:10:56.165] Kent Bye: OK. So about 100 worlds that you've been making for the past five or six years. So that's anywhere from 20 or less a year. That sounds like a pretty fast clip of more than a couple of months on average for the past five years, six years. So I do want to ask in terms of like, I know last year you were doing a lot of deep dives into lighting. If you think about like your evolution as a world builder over the last like five to six years, what are some of like the milestones or turning points that you can point to to say, okay, here's what you were looking at. Here's this world and like kind of the development of your own artistic practice.
[00:11:32.762] Fins: I would say the turning point, the first one was Moody. That was one that I'm most proud about when it comes to the complexity. It was one of the first cheats where you can literally click a button and you swap the environment outside and you swap day or night, the weather. Every scene has different customizations and I was very proud about it. It was my first spotlight work as well by VRChat. So in the technical sense, I learned a lot of triggers, how to use SDK and everything like that. That was the culmination of that. And then, I guess a few years later, Magic Haze happened, right? And Magic Haze happened where it kind of opened the door to like ride attraction style kind of world. And it's just more like, I would say, quote unquote, Hollywood-like or Disneyland-like type of world where it's big and complex and have a lot of moving parts together on a linear progression. So I was like moody. Magic Heist, and then finally Complex 7, my latest piece, where it's less about the complexity of the technical process of logic or trigger. It's more about the technical aspect of optimizing during the lighting, making sure it performs well, and just look the best it can be on the Unity engine that's severely limited in a lot of ways.
[00:12:58.098] Kent Bye: And I remember seeing Magic Heist either at Raindance or Venice. Where were you premiering that at?
[00:13:03.522] Fins: It was Raindance. It was Raindance.
[00:13:05.783] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think I was on the world jury that year waiting for the build to come out. So you have a lot of working on these different worlds that it seems like you're very driven by deadlines and trying to aim towards its public release. So always pushing yourself to kind of get all the things ready for these public launches. And so, yeah, again, this year you have Project Lost Worlds, which is a project that I understand as far as my understanding is that you're Showing a bit here, but it's going to be a little bit while until it's reached your threshold for the public launch.
[00:13:37.355] Fins: Indeed. Deadline is a friend and enemy at the same time. It's a friend that keeps me motivated and keeps me on my feet so I don't slug off and then get distracted by another shiny thing that I want to do. But at the same time, it's my enemy because I want to take away my social life and a lot of my free time. I don't get to play video games. I don't get to chat with friends as much as I would love to. So it's a double-edged knife and it's still a constant battle to balance it so I don't go crazy but at the same time I don't like get burned out and completely don't want to make war again. That's where Project Lost World goes. Yes, the Venice version is extremely watered down. A lot of things was cut out. It's basically essentially an early early alpha demo to what's to come hopefully ideally summer next year, 2025.
[00:14:24.127] Kent Bye: So it's showing here during Venice Immersive, but going back into that private vault until it's ready to be released to the world sometime next year. So yeah, maybe you could just give me a little bit of the backstory. Where did Project Lost World start for you?
[00:14:37.057] Fins: way back in 2019. Actually, I wouldn't even call it further than that. One of the first world I wanted to make wasn't a cafe, but actually, literally, the Project Lost World itself. But I had no way of knowing how to do it. I just know I want to be in this world, like, dinosaurs and bioluminescent plants and, you know, floating mountains, just like in front of the movie Avatar and the movie director for the thing that inspired me. But I just did not have the technical skill and even artistic skill to do it on Unity. I tried it a couple of times, completely failed, deleted the project, forgot about it. Then about 2019, I did New Year Eve. they were selecting me as one of the people get to put a poster on the New Year banner and I put this thing like coming soon and it was like a little imprint of the dinosaur foot on the thing and say you know this is coming soon this is a dinosaur experience but it never came Because I did a few, well, I watched back in the world, but at the end of the day, it didn't feel like it was living up to the standard that I have even way back then. And I feel like I need more time. I need more experience. I need more time to learn Unity as the engine itself and even growing myself as an artist. And hopefully by the time I am ready, I can execute it in the vision that I am having in my head.
[00:15:57.813] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, I know when you speak of the bioluminescence flowers and flora and fauna, it reminds me of a piece that you had for, I think it was Raindance 2020, where it was from like Avatar-inspired world. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that world and how that came about.
[00:16:12.560] Fins: Yeah, so it was a little teaser for Project Lost World at the time. But then Maria came to me and like, we want to feature you for the Most Impressive World. I was very confused. I was like, wait, why? Because this is a tiny little teaser. Like, well, you want this one, one rain dance. I was very confused. But I was happy regardless to be a part of something cool. And that's when I discovered the whole, you know, like XR Festival thing and rain dance and all things like outside. Before that, I had no idea about any of this stuff. So it was a gateway. to everything that happened now even at Venice and you know with Project Lost World so it's kind of like come all the way around first the very teaser for Project Lost World got into Raindance and now I am featuring the demo version of Project Lost World at Venice like years later so it's quite a journey
[00:17:01.004] Kent Bye: Yeah, and well, at some point along the way, you started to work for VRChat full time as a world builder, having around 100 worlds that you have with 34 of them public and another 70 that are not public. But maybe you could talk about the process of starting to go work for VRChat, and what are the types of stuff that you do there?
[00:17:18.353] Fins: Yeah, getting hired by Virchow was a little unexpected, but I'm extremely happy to be here, very grateful, and I'm constantly humbled by the fact that they think I am skilled enough to be there, but I'm very dedicated to making sure that the expectations are living up to it. Through the day in the morning, I wake up at about 9 a.m., get myself ready, and check slacks, see if I have any tasks, and then I go check in with my managers. And ideally work from about 11 there all the way to like 6. I do take like half an hour lunch break. I think in the afternoon sometimes, not always, sometimes. But then at 6 p.m. I sign off and then I open my own Unity that I work on my stuff.
[00:18:05.045] Kent Bye: Nice. And so when did you start working for VRChat then?
[00:18:07.908] Fins: September 2022.
[00:18:11.181] Kent Bye: So the tail end of the pandemic after you had started to publish some of these worlds at these festivals that were being featured. And then, yeah, we talked last year and you were already working for VRChat for Complex 7. And now with The Lost Worlds, it's a really, I'll speak a little bit about my experience of the piece because it's really a vast world that you get entered into. Well, actually, maybe I'll let you kind of describe what you have now with the flow of the experience, because I know it may change at some point since it's not its final version. So I'll let you describe where you begin and then the different phases of this journey that you're taking on. It feels like this kind of like space travel agency or then the future when people use the ability to go to another planet as kind of like a tourist safari.
[00:18:57.239] Fins: Of course yeah so the whole thing even in the name Project Lost World was meant to be accumulation of like my very childhood obsession with the stars and the universe like I used to live in a place like you can look up and kind of see the star and a lot of time I I remember vividly when I was a little kid, I would sit down with my grandmothers and then look at the stars, kind of wondering, like, what are those blinking lights? And then I would look more and more into it. I started reading books. I started watching, you know, shows related to that. And it's just a constant fascination for me. And growing up, I wanted to be an astronomer or even a potential astronaut. But unfortunately, I'm not academically gifted enough. So I turned to the way of artists. And this is my way of expressing that little childhood vision and wonders that I have. And in the name, The Project Lost World, what I mean is that when you're growing up and you're burdened with responsibility, the reality of getting money and getting food on the table, paying bills, taking care of your health and all that stuff, you forget the world that you used to build in your head. And those wonders that you used to have as a little kid, the little dinosaur toys that you hold up and you imagine this whole, you know, landscape crawling with this amazing creature or you imagine this one distant planet in the sky that you are maybe looking at right now are full of life, like those little world that you build in your head lost in the unfortunate reality of adulthood. So Project Lost World is not literally also just like the world that is lost but also in the sense that your childhood sometimes is lost and this is a way to pay a little tribute and reminder of that lost childhood. So in the beginning of the Project Lost World, you hear the narrator, kind of like the main character, essentially kind of like monologuing about like he used to look up in the sky and wondering about the star which is pretty much like it's just myself it's a little bit of so insert and what i used to think when i was a little kid and just translating this another person and they narrating about this grandness of universe and wanting to explore and after that it's kind of flipped to this space station headquarter thing where like um it's in the present time in this where the story takes place where he is much older now and space travel is actually a normal thing and the technology has been improved and advanced so far that people can like go to another stars so you sit through this little introduction and little intro like giving you the context of where you are what are you doing where are you going and you're given this little ride to this grand launch pad where you can see the vehicle and it kind of gives you a sense of like exciting of like what to come And hopefully that can get people a little bit pumped up. They are ready to embark on a grand adventure and this vessel will take them to the stars. And this is the launch sequence which I took a lot of liberty listening to hours of the NASA shuttle launch in real life. And I was like, okay, how do I translate it into the script? At first it was a bit too long and I got great feedback. from Ken and then I cut it down. So it's a much, much more refined piece now. Hopefully I can even make it better as the full work came out. But yeah, you launch into space, you get a little bit of the overview effect when the earth is kind of like roll down the window and the emotional music come in. The theme of the whole the world but I give people there's no narration nothing it's just a little music and a little give people that time to think that hey they're in space this is like the journey are a real and then finally you meet Astoria like that's your home it's a giant interstellar spaceship that can go to another star and this is basically your home for the next couple of months as you travel to the next planet. Obviously it's not going to be in the literal couple of months, it's going to time skip. But Astoria is a symbol of humanity coming together, putting aside the difference and building this castle in the sky and taking people to places beyond human imagination. And there's this certain planet system called the Stellar system where they found one of the closest star systems. It's fictional that there is life on these two moons rotating around a gas giant called Stratos. And your destination in six months is going to be that particular planet called Arius. And on Arius, it's kind of like Earth, but on like the Jurassic era with a combination of like a lot of like fictional sign in it and have floating mountain and bioluminescence, the plants, all of that. This is a space travel wonder. There's no deep story. There's no... The closest to the deep story is that, right? The childhood wonder and everything like that. But at the end of the day, the simple joy of imagining and having an adventure and a journey going to another star and just a little escape from reality and go back to where you used to be when you were a little kid.
[00:24:03.935] Kent Bye: Nice. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, I think that recaps a lot of the highlights that I have from my trip. And I do think that the beginning of the Project Lost worlds, especially the first couple of scenes, they're a little bit more cinematic in terms of like having narration, having some person who's got some explicit dialogue. A lot of times in your previous worlds, you've just kind of relied a lot more onto the environmental storytelling or just have like little robots with little placards that you can add in later and read in. But I really think the start of this piece is really strong in terms of, you know, setting that context and you're standing, you have a home where I guess this is the origin point when you talk about this narrator who's kind of an autobiographical representation of yourself with this house that's on a lake with the pier that you walk out on. And then you have a disclaimer that this is not quite ready yet, but then we go into kind of launch sequence where you see this rocket ship going out in the distance. And so Yeah, there's a lot of moments in the piece where I was just filled with awe and wonder. And the type of environmental design, I think, is, you know, after seeing all the different experiences here at Venice Immersive, it's, you know, really world class. You know, like you said, you have a very high standard for the stuff that you're putting out there so just a really impressive like world building and these vast scenes but i feel like even though it's not explicit narrative there's kind of a logic to the sequences that we're going through that have these cut scenes and so it feels a lot more cinematic than the previous vr chat worlds which were much more like site-specific environment that you're exploring around and maybe they'll be some loading or whatnot, but it wasn't like these kind of more explicit cuts that you have. So I'm wondering if there was any inspirations that you took either from existing media, cinema, other film, immersive stories that you've seen over time that you wanted to have that a little bit more of a cinematic take in this piece.
[00:25:53.348] Fins: Yeah, Project Lost World is very more film-driven than most of the projects I've gotten. Magic Haze was basically an attraction. Treasure Haze was like an adventure, Indiana Jones-style interactive experience, but even complex and free roam places you can do with making your own story and finding out what happened and do your speculation. But for Project Lost World itself, It's fairly film-driven, the way that it's presented and the way the scene is set up to give you a specific point of view and specific, like, you know, narration and delivering specific kind of, like, mental image. And a lot of that did come from various movies and pop culture and stuff that I loved over the years. Interstellar literally was, like, the inspiration of, like, the beginning scene with the farmhouse and then you move to, like, the big space station and even the planet Avatar. So a lot of things, an accumulation of that inspiration. So there's no one particular one, but it's very film-driven, for sure.
[00:27:03.395] Kent Bye: Yeah, I know that when we were going through, you were giving me a private tour ahead of Venice Immersive, and you were mentioning Pacific Rim and Avatar, so maybe you could give a little bit about how some of these other films were playing in as well.
[00:27:13.683] Fins: Yeah, mostly the film Interstellar is really hit home so hard about the odd and wonders of how small you are and the unknown of the universe and the stars. And even though you see it right there up in the sky all the time, anytime. You really don't understand what's really out there and you don't know what's... We are tiny, incomprehensibly tiny compared with what's out there. And then Avatar is a fantasy. It's a really good balance between... interstellar avatar one is purely fantasy one is like fantasy but also relies so much on the science to be onto it so i feel there's such a good balance between those like inspiration that i have really loved over the years to be able to like how do you get this work together how do you express your love for all things cosmos but also keep literally the magic and and the fantasy in your head as a kid or somebody doesn't really understand you know to sign behind it more and hopefully it can have a story or experience that kind of relatable to more than just specific set of people
[00:28:28.539] Kent Bye: So you're doing a VRChat world that is about space, which space is really big. And there's a problem with having VRChat worlds where if you get too far from the origin, you start to have floating point errors and things get really wonky. And so what kind of magic did you have to pull off in order to arrange all of this stuff in a way that you can stay each of these different places relatively close to the center? but also still have this incredibly vast world that you're creating. There seems to be some sort of magic that I don't quite understand what might be happening.
[00:29:00.746] Fins: It's just a lot of janky way of organizing layers and folders. Literally, the spawn that you spawn in the farmhouse later, that's literally where the planet Arios is. But you don't see that because I set up a very specific way. Every scene have a transition and every transition have its own cleaning and activating. It's like clean up and then activating. So it will clean up the previous scene and then make room for the next scene to come in. And then I keep reusing that space as much as I can to the point where it may cause problems. I don't get to do occlusion cooling too much because the occlusion cooling is permanent. So that space is only for that particular set. So things like interior, like the space station on Astoria, this occlusion cooling, I can't use that space anymore. That's only for that. But in the farmhouse, on aerials, or even the launch pad, a lot of things were reused. And a lot of smokes and mirrors, like when you're actually in the space shuttle and you start to see things moving and stuff, the space shuttle is actually just moving stationary, it's just rotating stationary, but it gives you that sense of motion. You're literally seeing your avatar and your friend's avatar's hair is starting to go wonky, and then you see your own employee, like, it's just rotating, but no, the thing is just rotating, like, stationary, and you don't really feel that. So a lot of things like movie magic, like you have to make believe somehow with the smoke and mirrors and the technical and you hopefully you hide it enough that people don't notice it.
[00:30:31.604] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think that the scale of that, where you're going onto this spaceship that you're going to be on for six months, it's one of the more vast VRChat World experiences that I've had, where you just have this sense of scale. Can you describe a little bit how big some of these objects are? Because it feels like it's pretty significantly large. And it's sometimes hard to tell when you're flying into it. I think you mentioned to me, oh, look at that little window right there. That's about the size of an entire ship, which gave me a sense of many orders of magnitude larger than what the ship was, was this other thing that I was looking at. But I haven't seen a lot of other VRChat worlds that are working at that level of scale. But maybe you could just give a bit of a sense of what's the scales that you're working with here.
[00:31:14.935] Fins: So Astoria, the main ship where you stay, if you put Astoria and then you put Complex 7, you need to have about five or six Complex 7 line up back to back to actually get to the length of Astoria. That's how big it is. And it's so big that by the time you reach Astoria on the shuttle, you already start getting floating point arrows because she is so far away, but she is so big. And once you are on Astoria and you look outside and you see Stratos, Stratos is almost, I would say, almost half the scale of an actual planet. Like, ginormous. And there was some shader magic needed to happen for you to be able to see something that big and that far away. And if you actually took a flying avatar and you tried to break out of the boundary and try to go to the planet, it would take you forever. It would take you forever. And by the time you reach it, it wouldn't just cover your whole screen because it's so insanely big.
[00:32:11.282] Kent Bye: Why not just cheat something like that if it's so far away?
[00:32:14.696] Fins: I wanted to. I might have to once the whole thing. But for now, I feel like it's such a big, major set piece that I don't want to undermine the possibility of faking the scale a little bit. So yeah, there's movie magic. But at the same time, if I can't do in real scale, I will do it.
[00:32:34.664] Kent Bye: OK. OK. Gotcha. And so it sounds like that because you're cleaning up stuff afterwards that it's going to be very difficult for late joiners to come in. So people kind of have to join at the same time. Is that kind of the idea?
[00:32:45.074] Fins: yeah hopefully the full version will allow late joining but for now unfortunately due to technical complexity of cleaning up and it's master reliant everything is sync right so it's master reliant which means late joining right now it's not possible i'm sure it will be possible if there's more time put into the tech and organizing how I am cleaning up things and organizing how, okay, maybe if you join, you press this button and it will catch up you with everyone else. It's completely possible. It's just a matter of time putting into it and I had a deadline. It couldn't be done for now.
[00:33:18.499] Kent Bye: I know that there was a whole like Disney, like the Star Wars Starship Cruiser that was like an immersive theater hotel where people would actually go and spend the night in a hotel. And then they would they would look out the windows and see like space outside. And there's a lot of what being on this Astoria spaceship. I haven't been to the Disney's Starship Cruiser that's now shut down, but just like watching some videos and checking it out. It gave me this sense of actually going on this kind of interstellar adventure And, you know, you're in your living quarters, you're kind of walking through the hallways, you have, like, these tunnels that have bioluminescent flowers and flora and fauna that are reminding you of where you're about to go. You have these information placards that are giving information around the animals that are there. And then you have this big, giant, kind of holographic zoo that has these dinosaurs that are there that also have some information. And you were actually giving me a guided tour and then you blipped out and then I was left to myself to kind of look around. And I just kind of like really took my time to just look at everything because there was so much to look at and like read all the different texts that you have. And yeah, there's a lot of stuff that I can imagine that there could be some tours that are just kind of like zipping through. But you have actually integrated a lot of these more environmental storytelling to kind of really imagine what it would be like to take this space tourism to this another planet. So.
[00:34:39.321] Fins: yeah i'd love to hear about your process of designing this cruise it's like a interstellar cruise and the ship that you've created of course yeah so this is great because i i binge watching so much cruise ship traveling documentary and three viewers and they're like okay this is my experience my hotel whatever i think about it oh the food wasn't that great and this is the lobby what i think about the views and everything i watch hours and hours on or even like months, like there was so much of it. And I took in a lot of mental pictures and information. Then I watched like, I haven't been to Disneyland or Universal Studios in a long time, but I look a lot of like, you know, POV travel and I took note of like how they present. When you wait in line for like a particular ride, the line actually designed to like kind of onboarding you with like props and like story and screen with like maybe background there's a little thing going on and kind of transport you from your reality to the story to the world and Astoria is was that transfer obviously there was the previous scene But I want people to feel like they are in the destination or in the place where they travel. Like they arrive and I want to feel every piece. This is why I put so much text and I put so much like details on a lot of things around people booking for tickets, tourists, food delivery, robot. Everything makes sense. because I want the set piece to every single thing you look at and you think of like why is this thing here and if you think for a moment it makes sense and it's something I noticed a lot of great attractions and a lot of things does and I feel like it's something I want to replicate in a way that I feel wouldn't help deliver the experience yeah did you think about actually going on a cruise I would love to, but I have not got a chance.
[00:36:37.977] Kent Bye: OK. So you're doing a lot of research. I have been on one cruise in my life for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. But I probably wouldn't have gone, other than that sort of like family trip. But I did have my cruise adventure. Yeah, there is this moment of cruises where you have these little expeditions where you have an option to go do this or that. And so, you know, having these little advertisements in world that are telling you some of these different expeditions that you can go down into. And so in terms of the lore of this story, is this the main expedition that people can go on? Or is this one of the side quests that are kind of one of many other different types of journeys that people could go on on this cruise ship?
[00:37:19.728] Fins: Lore-wise, if you look at a lot of the information more, and even like the advertisement around Astoria, you can see they're actually advertising going to other planets, even within our solar system. Like going to Venus, or going to, you know, Mercury and stuff, or even going to one of the other sister planets on Stratos, which is Aumelian, which is a water planet. that have a lot of bioluminescent fish and life underwater, but it's completely water. Lore-wise, yes, but for the particular world, it's all the areas which is the main attraction.
[00:37:54.401] Kent Bye: OK. OK, so talk about your connection to dinosaurs. Oh, I love them.
[00:38:00.533] Fins: Yeah, growing up, I have zoo books talking about dinosaurs. My mom, my dad got me dinosaur toys. I watch Jurassic Park probably seven or eight times now. I love all the dinosaurs because it's such a... It's not strange that a lot of kids have a fascination with dinosaurs, right? You have dinosaurs toys and everything. It's kind of unbelievable that such a life form used to exist before our times. And it's really sparked the imagination. And there's still a lot of things that we don't know about dinosaurs, even though they used to roam the planet. We don't know, we get things wrong, like dinosaurs maybe have letters, but now we find out that maybe they're full of feathers. It just really gives a lot of room for interpretation and a lot of room for imagination. I think it plays really well into the alien-ness of it. You can put a dinosaur on another planet and it still makes sense.
[00:38:51.513] Kent Bye: When I watched Joe Hunting's We Met in Virtual Reality, there's a scene where I think Dust Bunny and Toaster were going into a Jeep where there was a big brontosaurus dinosaur in VR chat in this kind of Jurassic Park-like world. Had you seen any other dinosaur worlds in VR or VR chat before you made your Project Lost worlds?
[00:39:10.781] Fins: The world you're talking about is my world.
[00:39:12.242] Kent Bye: Oh, it's your world. OK.
[00:39:13.843] Fins: Yeah, it's my earlier prototype of Project Lost World and I regularly used to give a private tour and give links to friends and other people who are interested in trying the tour. As you can see, it used to be a jeep. It used to be actually taking place in modern time but then Due to technical reasons, I found out like having a drip on bumpy surface and going off-roading probably not the most comfortable thing ever especially if you have motion sickness and also like the animation cost to it and I feel like modern world doesn't really leave a lot of room for imagination so I end up rewriting the story and doing it in the future where things are advanced and things were better and it's more of a utopian timeline than what we're having to deal with right now.
[00:40:04.741] Kent Bye: OK. OK. Is that one of the 70 private worlds that you have in your vault?
[00:40:08.804] Fins: Yes. And unfortunately, that particular copy of First Class World is corrupted in my hard drive. I can no longer get it back. The only way it only exists for now is in the VHS cloud.
[00:40:21.812] Kent Bye: OK. And so is that brontosaurus that's in that movie of We Met in Virtual Reality and that clip that's from your world, is that the same brontosaurus that's in this Project Lost world? Or did you have to redo anything? Oh, no.
[00:40:32.434] Fins: It's the same brontosaurus. It's amazing. I paid a lot of money for that particular one, and it still served me so well after so many years. It's the main hero piece. Right. You know, obviously, the classic scene in Jurassic Park where they go in herds. It really shows the scale and the sense of art and wonder in many people. And the model itself is a phenomenal model. You can see all the little muscles jiggling and the skin just flapping as it's moving. There's a sense of weight in it. And it's perfect. Money well spent.
[00:41:14.057] Kent Bye: Nice. Was that the first time that you had seen dinosaurs of that scale was like building yourself in your own world? Or was there any other references you had of other VR experiences or VR chat worlds that were playing with dinosaurs? Or was it the first time that you saw any of that from your own creations?
[00:41:29.520] Fins: There is the other dinosaur world on VHS, but they don't really have the particular scale or the quality when it comes to animation, understandably, because that stuff is either very expensive or very hard to come by. The only other dinosaur experience that I have is the, I think it's like the old Oculus demo reel, where there's like a giant T-Rex in like a hallway of a museum or something. It just starts coming at you and then it's just cut to black. It's like a minute. And I think that's about it. Yeah.
[00:41:58.561] Kent Bye: Yeah, they showed that in Oculus Connect 1 with the Crystal Cove demo, whatever the next demo that ended up maybe becoming the DK2 or whatever it was. I don't remember the exact, but it's definitely a demo scene that I remember seeing in 2014 in September. People were coming out of it, really being blown away at dinosaurs. Also, there's like Apple Vision Pro. They have Encounter Dinosaurs. It's a really high-fidelity experience. Have you had a chance to see that one yet?
[00:42:22.815] Fins: I saw people do it, but I don't have the Vision Pro, so I never got to try it. I would love to.
[00:42:28.237] Kent Bye: OK, there are some Vision Pros that are here on site. You should see if you can get a demo of that. It's probably one of the more high fidelity, impressive experiences on Apple Vision Pro, at least at launch. It's really quite impressive. But you have a little bit more of an interaction with a big giant dinosaur, the fidelity of Apple Vision Pro. So yeah, what was it like for you to like being in this world and running around the bioluminescence plants and the dinosaurs and you know There's there's a little like the saying of like you can't get high with your own supply But I think that there's like a little bit more limited in VR where you can actually like get into that state of on wonder So yeah, just wondering what it was like for you to kind of play in this world. I
[00:43:05.160] Fins: Of course. Doing things in the editor on a small monitor in your home, that's one thing. But when I put it on the headset, sometimes I surprise myself. Yeah, the product is just walking out for the first time, or when I load into a band for the first time, I look around and I'm like, wow the scale like it translates so well in a VR headset like it's just not the same thing at all in the editor you see this small little window and all the hierarchy in a project folder and you put it together and you hope you know it will work but once you put on the headset yeah I definitely have a lot of moment where I'm like wow this is working way better than I expected or it's you know looking so much better and Then sometimes I want to relive that experience by, you know, grabbing people, my friend and then showed up to them and they have their own reaction and I get to relive that experience. So yes, it's absolutely, yeah.
[00:43:58.508] Kent Bye: In the version that I saw, there was like a little robot guide that's there guiding you to where to go. But then also when you have a VRChat guide, they have the ability to kind of guide and direct people. And so I'm wondering if you could elaborate on this design decision to like either have in-world things to help guide people along or... In this case, there's some docents that are a part of the festival, but this seems like the type of world where you could feasibly have people who like to live action role play and give people these types of tours. It feels like it's a type of experience that people could really start to live into.
[00:44:31.892] Fins: Of course, the current version of the world is built with Venice in mind with the tour guide. Reggie, the robot, that's his name. I feel like it's so fitting to be on the tour, on a safari tour and having a personal tour guide and really help you out with getting you to the place you need to be and explaining to you what things are. I feel like it's really fit with immersive because a lot of people here are not super interactive and they really would love to understand the context and think a little better. I feel like Reggie is a good balance between kind of get you two things but at the same time giving you context and putting you deeper into the world. And then the two tour guide kind of like supplement to that and making sure that, you know, the technical or make sure nothing goes wrong. Things that outside of Reggie control, obviously, because he's a robot and the two tour guide are being there. But hopefully in the final version, there is a balance where if you just want to explore it by yourself or having, you know, somebody want to use a role play and something like that, you can turn up Reggie or you can mute him. And then for people who do, you know, enjoy tour guide or even have some hand holding, Reggie will be there to service you.
[00:45:47.562] Kent Bye: Great. So yeah, we're here back in Venice immersive 2024. How's your trip been going so far?
[00:45:55.571] Fins: I would say it's a bit more negative than last year unfortunately due to the weather and the unfortunate location of my hotel. Getting from my hotel to Lidl has been quite painful in literal sense and for some reason there has been probably twice as many people this year so everything is packed everything is a bit crazy. I'm sure after I come back to my home, it's going to be quite a memorable experience in a good and bittersweet way, but at the same time, for now, it's quite crazy. So I am just getting through by the days, and hopefully by the time I come home, I still consider this a very memorable and enjoyable experience.
[00:46:38.700] Kent Bye: Nice. And have you been able to see any experiences?
[00:46:43.083] Fins: I got to see Uncanny Valley by the Ferraman Collective, and it was amazing. I love it a lot. It was very fun.
[00:46:52.008] Kent Bye: Nice. And yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:47:03.223] Fins: I hate the word metaverse and I hate the word Oasis. It's so overused at this point. But it's a space. You can do whatever you want. You can be anything you want. And it's such a profound, really touching that people can change their life. They can express themselves in the way that they want to do or simply all they want to do is just log on and just cheer in front of the mirrors. No judgment there. like there's a lot of potential it's like the new internet and i'm still optimistic that hopefully this continue and the fact that the biennale here having you know dedicated section to vr chat where years ago it's like a meme about a freaking little red guy on guy that no closer now we are showing artistic project, walking the red carpet. We have a lot of work to do, we have a long way to go, but I'm happy where I have come so far.
[00:48:04.454] Kent Bye: Nice. And I know that last year at Venice Immersive, we had a chance to talk about a little bit of the preview of the creative economy that would launch a few months after that. And now it's still kind of being tested out. And there were some VRChat layoffs. And I think everybody in the XR industry is trying to look at this type of work and art that's showing at VRChat. Venice Immersive and trying to figure out the real business models and how to really sustain it and distribute it and really make it viable. It's the same type of problems that the immersive storytellers are having in order to really figure out all that stuff. It's kind of also reflected in what VRChat's doing. So I'm wondering if you have any comments in terms of like what you see as some of the next steps of the types of creator economy or other things that are trying to really have a new paradigm of a model that's going to really sustain a platform like VRChat. There's been a lot of conversations I've been having with folks at Raindance over the last couple of months and just some folks kind of reflecting on all the different situations. So yeah, I don't know if you have any thoughts that you want to share in terms of just kind of reflecting on where things are at and where you would like to see things go in the future.
[00:49:14.540] Fins: Of course. Yeah, I am constantly reminding myself and I am very aware of the privileged position that I am in working at VHS, doing my job and doing, you know, VHS world and keep doing my passion and able to pay for it. and making this a dream job and I know how hard and how unlikely that this is to thousands of insanely talented artists on our platform and this is something I constantly want to push on you know like yeah you're making stuff you can go to red carpet you can get this future but at the end of the day it's gonna pay the bills and put food on the table and it's a hard reality for a lot of people to really face when it comes to this kind of stuff. So creative economy, still a lot of work to do. Obviously we constantly gonna try to improve it and really the goal is to empower artists making the tool easier so that they can use and they can express themselves in whatever way whenever they have a programming background or not or you know let them able to earn some level in common support so that they can keep doing what they love And basically, it's just I want to be able to see more people get to the point that I was privileged to be gotten to. I want to see more of that on the platform, even though it's VHS as a whole. But on VHS here, it's really, really a profound mission. Yeah, in the end of the day, we hope to keep continuing doing what we can. of VRChat as a platform to keep providing a space for people to express themselves, to be with their friends, to connect. And personally, me as an artist, I hope that I can push VRChat in a way that help continue empowering other artists to able to financially support themselves and get their names and their work out there.
[00:51:14.118] Kent Bye: Did you happen to come across the company Emissive and the piece that they had this year, the Oppressionist 1874, also previously did Eternal Notre Dame. Had you heard of them at all or know of them?
[00:51:25.169] Fins: I saw the name, but I have not gotten enough details to go into it.
[00:51:29.181] Kent Bye: OK, well, just to give a little bit of context is that they have a system where they can basically run 100 people per hour through this system. And they've had like 80,000 to like over 150,000 people over a number of months that are going to what is essentially like kind of like what you've done with this like VR chat world adventure. But imagine that. But you're going into like Notre Dame or the pyramids, you know, and it's basically a big giant space where people are walking through with like location based entertainment. And it's actually a business model where people are going and enjoying that type of experience. And when people do this type of world with the controllers, they're having abstracted locomotion. But it seems like, as I was thinking about that model, it seems like Project Lost Worlds is kind of like the perfect type of world that could make that transition where people would pay to actually walk through one to one scale and actually have this sense of going on this grand adventure that you're taking people on. There are some branching stuff, but it's pretty much a linear path that I feel like it could be this process of really creating a flow or something, but obviously you're an employee of VRChat and it's, you know, on VRChat, but I will say after watching all the different content this year at Venice Immersive, that the quality of world building that you have is like on that same scale that could very easily at some point make the leap into a location-based entertainment experience. And then also hopefully the type of experience that people would potentially be willing to pay for in the context of having some sort of ticketing or, uh, Just having that type of thing that, yes, there are this many people that are seeing it in a physical installation, but VRChat has worlds that have hundreds of thousands or millions of people that are looking at it. So it can actually work at a different scale. But the economics of it are still kind of in this gift economy phase. So anyway, I just wanted to mention that. I don't know if you have any thoughts or have thought about your own work in the context of having people be able to actually walk through these worlds at one-to-one scale.
[00:53:28.343] Fins: Obviously, as an employee, I am not allowed to monetize it. It would be a conflict of interest. But it doesn't stop anybody else from doing something similar like that. And I can see that totally viable as a way to generate revenue whenever you're a person or a company. We are here in Venice, so we see so many people. But obviously, to get here, you need money. you need time, and a lot of people don't have time. And if you can go through experience in your comfort, your own home, and you can see the pyramid or location base or something like that, I feel like that would be quite attractive to a good amount of people.
[00:54:06.645] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Finns, do you have any other final thoughts or anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:54:16.255] Fins: um this is pretty much similar to what i've said to other interview in previous year they missed the platform and honestly the community in the world around that is built on but for the people and by the people the world are created by yeah sure sometimes you have corporate company but most of the time 99 of the time is by individual like me or like your friends or anybody else and they're just expressing themselves getting the art out there and i want to encourage people to keep on creating keep on building it's a collective effort to build this you know space that we all share and it's a wonderful thing to see that you know so many talented people able to share their vision and i hope this continue for a long time
[00:55:01.030] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Fens, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast to talk a little bit more about Project Lost Worlds and a little bit of a sneak peek that we're seeing here at Venice Immersive. I feel very lucky to be able to get a little bit of a look at where things might be going here in the future. And I actually think it's already fully formed enough to like I feel like it's you know, it was one of my top 10 experiences I saw this year just because I feel like there is so much. quality master world building that you have. And yeah, it's just a really beautiful piece and very much a high attention to detail in all your pieces, and especially this work as well. So very much looking forward to whenever it gets to the final phase of being ready for launch. But yeah, thanks again for taking the time to help share a little bit more about your story and the process of making Project Lost World. So thank you.
[00:55:42.825] Fins: Yeah, it's been a pleasure. And thank you so much for the opportunity. And I hope to see you again soon.
[00:55:48.359] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to these episodes from Venice Immersive 2024. And yeah, I am a crowdfunded independent journalist. And so if you enjoy this coverage and find it valuable, then please do consider joining my Patreon at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
