I interviewed Lucas Rizzotto at the Snap Lens Fest about the Snap Spectacles as well as his ideas on AR Minimalism. 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 future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continuing our series of looking at different announcements around Snap Spectacles, as well as the Snap ecosystem, today's episode is with another independent AR developer named Lucas Rizzotto. He does XR development, so both VR and AR. He does immersive storytelling as well as storytelling in the context of being a content creator where he creates these different inventions to kind of show what's even possible with these emerging technologies. So I kind of caught Lucas at this cross section of kind of a self-described existential crisis of just trying to figure out where these emerging XR markets are at, both with VR and AR. And what's really going to take it to this inflection point to make it as a viable ecosystem to allow developers like himself to really make a go of making a living within the context of this ecosystem. So Lucas is also challenging some of the fundamental assumptions around what is it going to take as like a minimal thing that you need to have in order to have AR take off. is it going to be like full augmentation with 3d objects in the space or are there going to be just an audio layer or text layer that's going to be enough to have glasses that are able to add this level of augmentation some of the different things that he's been doing with the open source brilliant labs frame or maybe just something with how people are using the ray-ban meta smart glasses with these artificial intelligence or ability to have conversational interfaces to take photos or even just to use your glasses as like a bluetooth speaker that is able to use the directional audio to kind of beam the sound into your ears so we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the voices of your podcast so this interview with lucas happened on wednesday september 18th 2024 so with that let's go ahead and dive right in
[00:02:00.976] Lucas Rizzotto: Hi, my name is Lucas Rosero, and I build lots of VR, AR, MR, all the things with emerging technology, games, apps, art pieces, and a bunch of stuff online.
[00:02:12.132] Kent Bye: MARK MANDELBACHER- Great. Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into this space.
[00:02:17.421] Lucas Rizzotto: Yeah, I actually was not a technical person until the HoloLens 1, which I impulsively bought when I should be paying for my student loans at the time. I made a crazy judgment call. I bought one, learned how to develop for it, and kind of like fell in love with the medium of 3D and doing immersive things and really designing people's senses. That was always something that was really exciting for me.
[00:02:41.585] Kent Bye: I know you've had quite a varied path in terms of all the things you've been working on, but how do you tell the story of who you are, what you've done?
[00:02:49.390] Lucas Rizzotto: I realize that I did not answer your question well at all. I just talked about the beginning. So how do I articulate the whole path? Honestly, right now I just say that I invent things and I tell stories about them. That's how I synthesize it. but in the realm of XR it's like building lots of prototypes and apps and games and either creating compelling immersive products and stories or creating immersive products and telling the stories about them online like I've done with a lot of my projects which are things that don't have commercial applicability in the world right now but are like really interesting concepts to explore. It's a complicated thing to describe. I've sort of created my own job so I just say I invent things and I tell stories.
[00:03:33.652] Kent Bye: So yeah, as a storyteller, I've come across you through different immersive film festivals that are showing some of your work, Where Thoughts Go. And then also you had a piece around Flat Earth that was kind of a satire. But you've also started to build your own applications that are on the store with Pillow that was featured at South by Southwest. And so maybe you could just tie together the through line of what connects each of those different immersive experiences that you've worked on.
[00:04:00.996] Lucas Rizzotto: The truth is that the through line is the personal discovery through line. So when I did Pillow, the question I had, I mean, of course, is like all these design ideas that I want to explore. And generally, when I'm doing an XR product, what I'm looking at is like, what are the assumptions we have? Because this is too early for us to have assumptions. If everybody agrees on something, it means they're usually wrong. So in the case of Where Thoughts Go, it's like everybody's saying that VR is an isolationist medium. So I'm like, cool, I'm going to make something that hyperconnects people. to prove him wrong. In the case of Pillow, everyone's like, cool, VR is great for fitness in the living room and standing up. I'm like, cool, I want to make an entire platform designed for lying down in bed, which is like a space that was being ignored. So it was a lot of like looking at what the assumptions are and going in the opposite direction and finding lots of interesting ideas. But also I started Pillow because I wanted to find out, is the startup world right for me? And that was actually, I think, the main motivator. It's like me trying to answer these questions about myself so I can know what I want to do with my life. Was it right for you? I believe not. OK. So what are you doing now, then? I mean, I'm still doing stuff with Pillow, but I realize that I'm not the kind of person that can spend five years on one idea. That is not me. That will never be me. I like to do lots of things. I like to do lots of experimenting. So right now I've been just building stuff online and creating products to tell stories and create conversations about the future and just like, you know, build to show people what's possible instead of build to release a product and compete in the marketplace, which I'm less interested by.
[00:05:29.742] Kent Bye: OK, so yeah, I see that what you're doing is kind of this intersection of rapid prototyping, rapid iteration, trying to explore these ideas, but also the whole creator economy of being an influencer and creating videos and trying to cut this process of building something, but also showing it in the videos. And I know that we've talked previously when you had your Flat Earth, where you were kind of in the midst of working a lot on that. So I'm just curious if that's something you're going to continue of being this kind of content creator, storyteller, but also using that just as a platform to rapidly iterate and do these prototypes of finding the edges of what's interesting with emerging technologies.
[00:06:05.327] Lucas Rizzotto: So that's the thing. When I say I invent things and I tell stories, I really mean it. So sometimes you build something and you're like, what's the best story I can tell with this? Like a TikTok. Sometimes you build something and you're like, I can do a full documentary about this. Sometimes you build something like a VR storytelling experience and you're like, cool, that is a good story on its own. It can stand alone. And sometimes you build a little thing over a week and you're like, that's great for stand-up. So it's you building and finding out what's the best medium and format for it afterwards, right? So that is why to me, it's like it all connects. You're building and then being like, okay, what do I do with this? But to outsiders, it can seem random and purposeless and confusing.
[00:06:42.509] Kent Bye: So since the last time I talked to you, you've actually had a chance to give a talk at TED. So I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience. Because all the stuff you're telling me now, it was a part of your TED Talk. And so what was the story that you were trying to tell to the broader TED community in terms of your journey of doing whatever you're doing with this kind of pathless path that you're inventing as you go along?
[00:07:02.048] Lucas Rizzotto: I think the general ethos of the whole TED talk was really just that following your impulse and doing weird creative things leads to the discovery and creation of new knowledge. And that is, you know, I think you can see that with works like Pillow, literally looking at people's assumptions and going the other way. Even if you're going in blindly, you're going to find out a bunch of stuff. like a bunch of really really valuable stuff but it can be kind of scary to just like trust your own gut and just like be creative without second guessing yourself sometimes and just building a lot of weird stuff that excites you personally but yeah my tattoo kind of creates this blueprint of if you follow your interests and your passions and you just charge blindly into the creative unknown you will find gold if you're looking for it yeah
[00:07:49.949] Kent Bye: Nice. OK, well, I think that sets a good context of who you are and what you're doing.
[00:07:54.150] Lucas Rizzotto: I'm so sorry.
[00:07:56.091] Kent Bye: No, it's great. I think there's a lot of strands. That's why I wanted to kind of pull at each of those different strands. Because your journey has started with the HoloLens and AR. I think most people in the XR industry start with VR, but it's interesting that you always had this vision for augmented reality, something that you were really compelled with, that then you went in to make some VR. And now, I think with more and more of the head sets were here at the snap spectacles and you just got the new snap spectacles on your forehead and starting to play around and iterate with it the first time we actually i think recorded voices vr podcast was at magic leap leap con in 2018 which was i think the biggest ar event that was around with artists and makers and creatives that were bringing them all together whereas most of the stuff i had attended up to that point was like microsoft build with like enterprise-y demos with the HoloLens, but no one was an artist or a storyteller doing anything interesting. And it was probably the most interesting prototypes of artistic expression for the medium that I've seen up to this point. And then I feel like now with Snap announcing it, we're kind of going back into the creative artistic phase of AR for all these developers that are here that are going to start to potentially explore some of the more creative sides. But I'd love to hear some of your thoughts, because you've walking the line between the AR and the VR, and what is it about the AR that keeps you coming back to it?
[00:09:14.560] Lucas Rizzotto: At a very fundamental level, having technology that allows you to create matter out of thin air seems like a very useful, interesting thing. And augmented reality kind of enables you to do that without disrupting context, right? It's just bringing magic into the real world. To me, it sounds more compelling than just rebuilding everything from scratch. So I've always had a softer spot for augmented reality. However, I did start doing VR mostly because of just It was the only place where I could make any money. I mean, HoloLens. I did the app that was the most downloaded app for a month. And it was like, oh, 300 downloads. Great. Cool. But yeah, augmented reality always interested me more as something that is a problem when it comes to creative potential. And yeah. But I'm kind of having an existential crisis with it. So it's hard for me to just talk about it as optimistically as I would in the past. MARK MANDELMANN- What do you mean? I think we're all complete. I think we all got it wrong. I think 3D is a waste of time now. And that's the most of the overhead. That's most of what makes air glasses so hard to make. That's what makes this truly, truly difficult. And I've been, as someone who has been doing 3D things for a while, after listening to people, it's just like, wait, do we really need 3D to make things that people really want? And I think the answer is no, which is hard for me to say because I love 3D stuff and I've been doing it for a while. But I think we've entered this realm in which we're like, oh, if it's only smaller or cheaper, et cetera, then all of a sudden people are going to start using it after Christmas. But I don't think that's the case. I think the fundamentals are wrong. And I think instead of building things that people want, we're chasing the sci-fi dream of making holograms. when we don't have much to show for it after eight years. And I don't think there's any evidence. It's just making it cheaper is going to fix things.
[00:11:11.624] Kent Bye: So are you talking about the smart glasses approach that has more AI and audio? Or are you just saying that this is all a giant delusion that we shouldn't be going down and making it
[00:11:21.335] Lucas Rizzotto: I think generally, yeah. So the way I put it is like there's AR, VR, like AR maximalism, which is what we're doing. You can edit everything. You can overlay everything. And then there's AR minimalism, which is kind of like what I advocate for, which is using artificial intelligence to make things that are useful, that augment your intelligence, that make you better at things, that make you better... And the very simple 2D interface that only shows what you need, when you need it, and then it goes away. You know, it's not about re-transforming the world. It's just about making you better at the things you already do. And that's usually how tech goes mainstream. That's why Chat2PT exploded. That's why PCs happened. It's because we took all the things that people already did and we made them easier and better to use. But that's not what XR has been about. XR has been about making new things, which is exciting. But that's not how things go mainstream. You're making new classes of things, and it's harder to convince people to adopt them. It's more creatively exciting, but it's just not how tech explodes.
[00:12:23.393] Kent Bye: Well, so the analyst and theorist that I look to to look at how tech explodes is Simon Wardley, where he says there's four phases. There's an academic idea. There's the custom bespoke enterprise product. And then there's the consumer product that goes into the mainstream and then eventually gets to the mass ubiquity. And so to go through each of those different distinct phases is a unique evolutionary phase, to go from the academic idea to the custom bespoke enterprise to the mass consumer product into it's everywhere. And I feel like, in some ways, all the XR companies have tried to skip that enterprise part. They've tried to skip to the consumer part without finding the utility in the enterprise because their consumer product companies like Meta, they're interested in optimizing for trying to develop the new platform so they don't miss the boat like they did for mobile. So I feel like there's a certain part where, like with Snap, they have some things that have B2B2C type of things where they're using their technology and some more enterprise-y context at museums, location-based entertainment, or with the Snap Photo booths. It feels like they're still primarily a consumer company, but to kind of augment it more with the enterprise. And one of the things that Meta hasn't done is really embrace that enterprise venture. So I feel like there's a phase of how to organically grow. And I feel like they've dumped billions of dollars in something to kind of artificially make something happen when it needs to have more of a robust developer ecosystem that is coming more slow and organic growth rather than something that's artificially supercharged by billions of dollars that they've lost.
[00:13:54.104] Lucas Rizzotto: Yeah, it's subsidized. The whole market is subsidized. VR and AR would be completely unsustainable without it. But that's what you see in enterprise. There are uses for 3D interfaces and all that stuff, but they're niche. You can't replace everything with a 3D interface. A lot of things don't benefit from it at all. So the question is, for the use cases that people matter, is all the hassle of creating these 3D devices with 3D optics and real-time spatial tracking, is it worth it? all this pain and effort and friction i think not just because i've been able to do very quick projects with like you know very lo-fi ar glasses it took me like seven hours to build and then i gave it to someone and they immediately want to buy it and i've spent like also a year and a half working vr products and then i put it on people and they like it but they don't want to buy it So I'm also listening to just like friction and just being like, OK, there's the things that I want to make, but also there's the way people think about things. And sometimes they're not the same.
[00:14:54.775] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think these types of questions are something that the whole industry is trying to figure out. I just got back from Venice Immersive, where there is some really brilliant and amazing immersive storytelling that's happening that is still trying to figure out how to go from that custom bespoke festival circuit into mainstream businesses that is able to sustain the production of that type of creative content. And so I would push back and say, There's still real value of this immersion in the type of 3D. And one great example is a company called Emissive, or Excurio, that is based out of France. And they create these immersive expeditions where they can put over 100 people through at a time. They've done five of them now. And they get anywhere from 80 to over 100,000 people through it over a number of months. And so it's a wildly successful, profitable business that's location-based entertainment that has been spreading around the world from China to Montreal. So there are some examples of deep immersion with 3D that is out there, but they're not as widely known for what's happening here in the United States. A lot of what's happening at Venice Immersive is subsidized by governments and grants to catalyze that type of innovation. We don't have that type of funding for public art here in the United States. And so you get this kind of bubble where everything has to turn into this market lens. So yeah.
[00:16:08.828] Lucas Rizzotto: Yeah. Let me add to this, because yes, there are use cases. There's lots of amazing things you can do, lots of amazing stories you can tell. There's lots of businesses that can be built. When I say that it's not going to work, quote unquote, it's because Meta and Snap, if they don't move tens of millions of units, It's all or nothing. There's no scenario where just powering a bunch of successful small, medium-sized businesses, just a couple, that's not a success case. It's either everybody or they're all gonna pull out and our industry will collapse. When I'm talking about it not working is like, I don't think it's going to work at that level that's required for this to continue to exist in the long run with the set of expectations that they have for it. If this was a more sensible, slow and go approach, it'll be different, but they're all or nothing.
[00:16:56.192] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I think they've had this number that they presented from very early days at MetaConnects and Oculus Connects at the time where they said, we need to have at least 10 million headsets that are out there that then that would become a viable ecosystem that would allow this kind of flywheel of a market to exist. So that would make enough sense for people to create content and be able to sell it. So I feel like. They have the VR ecosystem they've been cultivating. And then they have this whole other strand, which is like the meta Ray-Ban glasses, which is more of a smart glasses and more of like leaning more heavily into like this lightweight artificial intelligence that's coming through more audio based experiences or AI integrations with the camera. So it feels like they're going from that bottom up more minimalist approach and the more full immersion approach. And maybe with the Quest 3S that's rumored to be announced, maybe that'll be like, OK, they increased the price of the Quest 3? And yes, it's more capable, but also did they now just undercut their market because it doesn't make sense for people to upgrade because it's so much more expensive? And is there going to get the core essential power of the Quest in the latest version of the Quest 3S so that they can have this mass adoption to get to that market so that makes more sense for people to develop content? That's what at least I see. And with Snap, they've certainly been funding and supporting that ecosystem to develop to the point where it's at. But yeah, then it's what happens here in the future to see what we've seen in other instances in the industry and to see, OK, is this something that's actually going to hit a critical mass of adoption where it makes sense for developers to develop? And if they do, then what's the business model for how they make sense of it in terms of trying to create businesses around it all?
[00:18:32.731] Lucas Rizzotto: Yeah, this covered a lot of ground. But I think the one thing that can be done right now is really to give developers camera access, because then that would allow us to create really intelligent AR maximalist apps. But I actually really think social media is like, I look at it as a very, very successful augmented reality game, because the way it just slides into our social lives perfectly and gamifies it and plays into all the stuff that's already there, like all of the dynamics that we have with friends and acquaintances. people we're into and people that we admire so I think social media is a really successful AR game and I hope we can do stuff like that with AR in general AR as we know it I don't know what the thread is now
[00:19:18.789] Kent Bye: Well, I think let's go to what you've been playing with in terms of what's the thing that you've been finding interesting to build and experiment for yourself or your own creative ventures? Because you have a number of these glasses you've been wearing that have ways of either augmenting or giving information. What are some of the different things that get you excited in terms of this more minimalist approach for AR that you're interested in maybe building applications on top of?
[00:19:41.311] Lucas Rizzotto: Yeah, one of the things I've done that seems to have gotten some traction online in the past two weeks is getting these open source classes by Brilliant Labs called The Frame and programming them to take photos of my life every 15 minutes or so, so I could, over several weeks, create a huge timeline of everything that I've done, AI-written descriptions about every single photo, which not only makes my mind indexed and searchable, which is already a cool concept on its own, it's like instant memory retrieval, But it also allows me to create AIs that track my habits and are able to coach me on how to be healthier, how to be happier. And it's like this omniscient entity that's actually looking out for me and helping me become a better person. That's something that I find extremely engaging. It's a very, very beneficial use case in which everybody sees the advantage immediately and it actually didn't take that much time to build because 3D is such a... There's so much you're thinking about, there's all the assets. But in VR, you spend so many weeks working on the background of things, literally, instead of just focusing on like, wait, how does this help people? But that's one of them, one of the use cases. But there's also simple things that bring people a lot of immediate joy and... desired to own the technology, like I made glasses that help you flirt with people. So you look at someone, and you tap the glasses, and it takes a photo of them, and it just creates context-aware pickup lines and projects them into your eye. And that is such a good party trick, but it's also like it really speaks to something that you want. Also, it might be a little bit creepy, but go ahead. Yeah, but it's done playfully. I'm not pretending to have charisma. People know what's happening. But really, what we're approaching is we can get to a sort of use case in which you can literally alter your stats in real time of increased charisma, increased intelligence. And that is what we're talking about, that kind of technology that just slides into where you are and helps you do what you do better. And we're not putting a bunch of dinosaurs into your world, we're just like adding as little as humanly possible so you can do what you want to do. And I think that vision of AR is something that I'm starting to understand more as like the thing that is going to work rather than us, you know, doing dinosaur demos.
[00:21:52.947] Kent Bye: So saying all that, you're also wearing the Snap Spectacles on your head, which is taking a little bit more of let's put 3D objects in the world, but in a context of 45 minutes or 45 minutes total over maybe incremented times where you're maybe sleeping it so you can extend out a longer play time that's maybe augmented by your phone. But do you have any ideas for things that you want to start to experiment with this platform? Or are you more interested in doing this whole other thing with audio-based minimalist AR with AI?
[00:22:22.968] Lucas Rizzotto: Camera access, I'm literally only interested in that. Sure, the display means that I can create a more engaging visual layer for that kind of minimalist AR, but I've been doing this for seven, eight years now. I've done a lot of what you can do with spatial mapping and hand tracking, etc. I've shown stuff to hundreds of people. I've seen that you can do stuff that's fun, but that people ultimately won't care about that much in the long run. So I'm interested in exploring the things that I'm like, maybe this will work. But yeah, you know, I could do a bunch of stuff with the glasses of like, you know, making, you know, beautiful plants grow out of the ground or the walls, which is like pretty, but I know it won't resonate with people in the long run. So yeah, I would probably take the camera access. And I think Snap's going to find out over the next eight months that most of the useful things that people actually use regularly will be things leveraging AI and camera access. And if there is an next iteration of these, it's going to be a more lightweight. It's going to have less 3D probably the next one.
[00:23:25.353] Kent Bye: Well, one of the things that they said this morning, Evan and Bobby, the co-founders of Snap, that they did say that they were going to be enabling camera access, but through a developer account, which would mean that they said they have some privacy concerns they want to look at. So Meta has also not had camera access for any of their AR platforms. But what would camera access give you? What are the type of things that you need camera access to do, but you can't do now without the camera access?
[00:23:49.693] Lucas Rizzotto: OK, number one, we have decades of computer vision technology that we've developed that is not being used, which is like, it's insane already. It's just like in principle. But I think it's the key for us to build really, really powerful context-aware applications. And augmented reality is all about contextual computing, right? It's understanding what the context is so you can improve it and do a better job and create things that improve whatever context you're in. Computer vision is a huge part of this. I imagine that Snap is going to provide light camera access, as in they're going to let you do some AI stuff with it, but they're not going to give you raw access to the images. And meta, probably not. So it's really going to come down to, honestly, headsets like the Lynx and companies like Brilliant Labs. Those companies will give developers full access to everything. And eventually, there's going to be some startup that's going to be doing this very successfully. And maybe it's Brilliant, maybe somebody else. We'll kind of like, you know, put a fire on everyone's butt and get them to move forward. But it's like, yeah, a lot of the biggest sources of value and innovation in AR are being held back because these corporations are scared. In the case of Snap, yeah, some developer is going to get photos of you naked at some point, which is strange, but it's also kind of funny given that Snap became big because it was a big platform for sending nudes.
[00:25:07.173] Kent Bye: Yeah. Well, I think there are legitimate concerns around bystander privacy and all these things in terms of like, yes, we want to move fast and break things. But there's a lot of social norms that could be quite disruptive when, I mean, it's already kind of like getting into that with even like the Ray-Bans with cameras being embedded into the glasses. But there's a lot of, I guess, moral panic around cameras being on phones that they had requirements for it to have the camera sound whenever you took pictures. And so, yeah. So I don't know. I feel like that there are legitimate, Concerns around privacy that are there but it also seems like in order for this to be a thing you kind of have to either find some way of navigating that or Just like wait until someone actually gives people access to the camera access.
[00:25:49.656] Lucas Rizzotto: I agree. There are legitimate privacy concerns a hundred percent The question with like any fear and any concern is like what percentage of chance that something really bad will happen, right? I mean, I could go outside and I could get stabbed. It's what's going to define whether I go outside or not. It's like, what's the likelihood? And there's a lot of things companies can do to lower the likelihood to an acceptable percentage of risk, but the problem is that these companies have too much to lose. It's less of an ethical concern, it's more like what is going to happen with Matter's reputation if one bad thing happens. I don't think it's about ethics, it's just a risk management issue primarily for them. But I understand the privacy concerns are totally valid, I just don't think that's what's guiding the decision making. It's just a risk assessment of what's the likelihood that a scandal could make us lose billions of dollars overnight.
[00:26:40.626] Kent Bye: Yeah, having the FTC come in, especially.
[00:26:42.328] Lucas Rizzotto: Yeah, exactly.
[00:26:42.989] Kent Bye: Yeah, so like Meta is under consent decrees, so they might be a little bit more cautious there. So yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential of spatial computing might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:26:58.957] Lucas Rizzotto: And ironically, even though we've been through this journey of changing the way we look at the industry and doing a lot of twists and turns, I believe what I'm going to say is going to still be very similar to what I said in 2018, which is a good sign. I still think the ultimate potential, whether it is headsets or tiny glasses with 2D displays, it's making people better people, making them more self-aware, just making people better at the end of the day, giving them more self-awareness, making them smarter, making them nicer. making them more empathetic, and you don't need 3D to do that. And you also, yeah, let's go with that.
[00:27:38.379] Kent Bye: Yeah, I would defend the honor of 3D just saying that there's still a space and a full diversity of different types of experiences that are out there that by using that 3D are still really quite amazing. And that just having come back from Venice and seeing some of those that I can definitely say that I'm still personally more of a fan of that VR than AR for that reason of being able to be completely transported into another realm and the types of experiences you can have. So I still do think there's a huge value for that.
[00:28:02.179] Lucas Rizzotto: Can I add something? Cool. I submitted something to Venice this year. I'm doing immersive 3D stories. I am making a Quest app right now. But these are things that I'm doing out of passion. And I'm doing it with full awareness that I'm doing it because I love the medium and because I love to build 3D things. But I'm not deluding myself that this is going to make me millions of dollars.
[00:28:23.336] Kent Bye: I think, yeah, just trying to find a way to sustain everything, I think, is on top of everyone's mind. But I love it.
[00:28:29.304] Lucas Rizzotto: I love it. I love this stuff. Just, yeah, just trying to be critical of it. Just not trying to fall into too deep into the hype hole.
[00:28:38.816] Kent Bye: Anything else that's left unsaid? Any final thoughts you have for the immersive community?
[00:28:43.311] Lucas Rizzotto: I think the fact that my response of like what's the ultimate potential is still the same. It shows that it's really at the end of the day, it's about your mission and it's about what you want to do and the way you want to change and improve the world and the technology you use, the way which you get there, that's totally interchangeable and not nearly as important as we think. So whatever it is that got you in XR, no matter what format it takes, whatever got you here is something you should listen to, no matter what happens and what twists and turns the industry goes into, or if it reshapes or reforms. What got you started, what got you here, is worth listening to.
[00:29:24.784] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Lucas, thanks so much for joining me today to share some of your thoughts and reflections on the current state of the industry and what's really capturing your attention and imagination. And yeah, we're going to be going off to Cosm, which is a whole like mini sphere type of thing here in Los Angeles, just to kind of check out what's happening at the the frontiers of immersive entertainment on that front. So yeah, it'll be fun to check out what's going on there and just kind of more of a movie-based 360 video, but in a shared experience in this, what they call shared reality. So looking forward to that. And also, yeah, just really appreciated all the different reflections of thinking about the things that are still needed to take this to the next step. And also, we're all trying to figure out how did it all make it work financially. So yeah.
[00:30:07.599] Lucas Rizzotto: Last sentence. This interview might age extremely well or extremely poorly. I'm undergoing an existential crisis, so I don't know. These ideas are new. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks.
[00:30:17.267] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Voices of VR podcast. That's a part of my larger series of doing a deep dive into both the announcements around Snap Spectacles, as well as the AR ecosystem at Snap. What I do here at the Voices of VR podcast is fairly unique. I really like to lean into oral history, so to capture the stories of people who are on the front lines, but also to have my own experiences and to try to give a holistic picture of what's happening, not only with the company, but also the ecosystem of developers that they've been able to cultivate. And so for me, I find the most valuable information that comes from the independent artists and creators and developers who are at the front lines of pushing the edges of what this technology can do and listening to what their dreams and aspirations are for where this technology is going to go in the future. So I feel like that's a little bit different approach than what anybody else is doing. But it also takes a lot of time and energy to go to these places and to do these interviews and put it together in this type of production. So if you find value in that, then please do consider becoming a member of the Patreon. Just $5 a month will go a long way of helping me to sustain this type of coverage. And if you could give more, $10 or $20 or $50 a month, that has also been a huge help for allowing me to continue to bring this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
