Here’s my interview with Rylan Pozniak-Daniels, XR Developer and Futurist, that was conducted on Tuesday, June 10, 2025 at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, CA. 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 voicesofvr. So continuing my series of looking at AWE past and present, today's interview is with Rylan Posnack-Daniels, part two of two, where the first conversation I had with him back in 2019, and this is me catching up with Rylan at AWE 2025, just to get an update as to his journey through college, all these different places that he worked, and he's building these different XR applications. So he's an AR, VR developer and also a futurist. And so, yeah, just really interesting to catch up and get some of his latest thoughts of where everything is at here in the industry and his storied journey through all these different institutions and companies and platforms and his thoughts and ideas of where XR is at now and where it's going here in the future. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Rylan happened on Tuesday, June 10th, 2025 at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:16.804] Rylan Pozniak-Daniels: I'm Rylan Pozniak-Daniels. I'm a XR developer and futurist and I make lots of XR apps across... I've been doing XR for about 10 years. I got started initially actually through engaging in journalism. I was interviewing people in like the tech space and I was always kind of curious. I had a natural curiosity for like where the future was going, and so I kind of got into journalism as a young person. I think I was only 13 years old or so when I got the opportunity to be what's called a kid reporter for a Time for Kids magazine, where a Time magazine would kind of send people out for the kind of kid's perspective of where technology was going. And one of these interviews, actually, I got to go to the E3 conference, the big video game conference in LA. and I got to interview Shigeru Miyamoto, who's the creator of Super Mario, and it was kind of interesting, because I was exploring all the new games that was being released at that time, and I think I was like, yeah, I think I was like 12 or 13 only, just I didn't know much what was going, but I was so curious where the future was going, and I asked him where the future of games is going, and he even, this is like, 10, 11 years ago, he said VR and AR is really where the future of games are going because of their interactivity and immersiveness. And that just kind of set me on a path from then I wanted, like that day, I think, after I met Toshiguro, I just went home to kind of learn everything I could about AR and VR. I looked up tutorials, how to make AR, VR stuff. There wasn't much stuff at the time. I think at that time, it was actually before ARKit was made by Apple, before ARCore, before all these kind of standards that we have today of how we make VR, AR content. I think that the only thing around at that time was Vuforia, which I just used, you know, the web camera of my MacBook computer just to kind of like do some AR stuff. I think the first AR app I ever made, it was like a an AR card game that you like, I had physical like Pokemon style trading cards that I would like print out and then project AR 3D effects on the cards as well. And that was kind of my first AR experience. And yeah, like I was in the eighth grade at the time, I was probably 13 or 14. And after I made a series of apps like that, I reached out to at that time by someone at Snapchat. they were kind of interested to see if there were some people who were interested in, at the time, the launch of people outside of Snapchat who can make the AR lenses for the Snapchat platform, like usually AR face effects and lenses were only made by the Snapchat company. So yeah, somehow I got the opportunity to be one of the first people like developers outside of Snapchat to create AR effects for the Snapchat platform as well. I think my effect was like an AR, it's like a rocket kind of flies out of your mouth when you open your mouth and kind of celebrates the spirit of space exploration as well with AR. I got The opportunity to work with a legend in the space, Alexander Magzowel, who is the production designer for Minority Report and Steven Spielberg's films and the Magic Leap headset that just came out and I got to spend a whole kind of time with him figuring out how to use the Magic Leap technology to kind of figure out cities of the future and do a visualization of that through kind of a world-building practice. And I was just still in high school at this time. I guess after that, I went to go to college at the University of Southern California, a famed university for a lot of VR research and a lot of VR innovation. I got to work at various USC research labs in the VR space with you know, absolute legends and pioneers like Mark Bolas and Scott Fisher at NASA, who created some of the first VR headsets there. I think actually about this time, I think I was actually just emerging into college. And I actually I think it was the first time I met you actually, Kent, at a previous AWE. And that was actually a really interesting time, too, because I was really working on like a lot of these kind of future looking VR experiences about where Because at the time, VR was mostly used, and still is mostly used in the consumer space for gaming and playing with friends, but I was always interested in being a student, the educational aspects, the social impact aspects. And at that time, I think I was just actually 17 when I first met you. And at that time, I think based on a variety of work I did in a social XR space, an educational space, at that AWE, They actually honored me with a AWE award for what's called the Nextent Prize for social impact with VR and AR technology from the Virtual World Society and Tom Furness, who's an absolute legend in the space. I mean, Tom really was there before anyone else. And so I'm just super grateful for that award as well at that time. And all these experiences kind of set me on a path to continue to figure out not only how to kind of continue the status quo of how VR is going, but figure out kind of new ways to create content. Because content is king in this space. But during college, I got to work at companies like Apple, a Vision Pro team at Apple, thinking through prototyping future interfaces there. Before Vision Pro was even a known quantity, really. Also, Niantic, who made Pokemon Go and was just... you know, doing a geolocated AR stuff. I also worked at the MXR lab at the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC, which had a lot of VR prototypes that led to things like Google Cardboard and the Oculus. And so I've kind of touched a lot of different areas of mixed reality and XR innovation. It's just the biggest passion of mine, to be honest, like all these spaces and And yeah, lately I created for my university thesis project, that summer was the launch of the Apple Vision Pro, or it was the announcement to the world that Apple's actually really working on an AR VR headset. I think that was actually one of the things that I was always thinking would be changing the world. Even like 10 years ago when I first got started in the AR VR space, like Apple coming out with the AR VR headset because they democratize things to the masses all the time. And so I made it kind of my university thesis project to create one of the first apps for the Apple Vision Pro and it's called AR Lingo. It's like an AR VR language learning experience where you can put on the headset and travel to a new country and experience, use your voice to speak to AI characters that will train you how to speak in different languages and have a kind of immersive experience. So I got the opportunity to travel to Cupertino's headquarters and get to try on the headset before it was a live product to the Apple stores. And yeah, I got to launch my app on day one of the Apple Vision Pro as well. And so since then, I've been creating a lot of kind of new experimental apps that are cross-platform on a lot of devices. And I'm going to be speaking about it also here at the AWB conference about these cross-platform apps and where I think that future is also going. So that's kind of a summary of all the fun things I've been trying to do in the AR VR space. And I just I mean, I've been in it for so long because I've been so passionate about it. And I think it has honestly one of the biggest potentials to kind of uplift humanity in new positive directions. So I kind of hope to continue to be contributing to that direction.
[00:08:40.319] Kent Bye: Nice. And it's quite a storied journey into XR and have these encounters with all these legends of the field. And I remember we did an interview back at AWE and I think you were maybe in between, like you just graduated high school, maybe going into college. And so, so you went on, you've studied and talk a bit about like, have you graduated? What's your aims? Or if you're going to be an independent contractor, if you plan on working with someone and. Yeah, this cross-platform investigation that you started to do in terms of trying to create applications across all these different XR platforms using Unity and some of the design implications to do that. But yeah, just curious to hear a little bit about your future plans, where you're going next, and also some of the different things you're going to be talking about here at AWE.
[00:09:21.055] Rylan Pozniak-Daniels: Definitely. Yeah. So I actually just recently graduated from USC and I've been really interested in the idea of interoperability in XR, especially because not only there are so many hardware platforms out there by so many different hardware vendors, but the hardware keeps changing. I think the form factors are also changing. I think when I first got started in the AR VR space, like 10 years ago, it wasn't obvious that we'd have this class that we know now of like sort of hybrid VR AR pass through AR headsets, you know, for example, the Apple vision pro, or even frankly, the way the meta quest has evolved. I mean, the meta quest really started as like just a completely VR headset that had, you know, some kind of black and white pass through to kind of, be able to avoid obstacles and stuff like that. But it was not really known 10 years ago that this would kind of evolve into like hybrid AR VR devices. And I think similarly, well, it's probably more known now because of all the like announcements of like Meta Orion and Snapchat Spectacles. But I think that's sort of the next wave of the class of devices that is emerging as these kind of lightweight glasses that have really cool mixed reality capabilities as well that you can maybe wear more like a mobile basis. So I think That's really where my interest for cross-platform XR apps started is I have made a lot of apps and I've always been kind of for a few reasons. One is how to kind of future-proof apps so you can make an app once and design it in a way that can last for even new classes of hardware that we might not even know yet are existing because the industry is changing so fast and Being a futurist propels one to think about how to design content that goes towards that. But I think it's also unknown, even when new headsets arrive and that new class of hardware arrives, we don't yet know in what sense that will be democratized or in what way that will be popularized. For example, the MetaQuest is probably one of the most popular headsets right now. But there's still many ways that people game, that socially connect. And I think we'll see how it compares between developed countries and developing countries. And I think there's a lot of variability still in how AR VR hardware will become adopted. But I think the importance of technology and digital infrastructure is pretty much in every country and especially at the mobile phone sense. And I think AI especially is going to drive continued demand of these technologies. So maybe XR headsets might be the most immersive, most interactive way to experience applications and AI, but mobile phones might be the most accessible and the most democratized way. So I still believe in supporting every platform that might happen. And so, you know, going forward, I kind of see myself continuing to distribute apps on the app stores. And, you know, we'll see. Maybe I'll, you know, I don't want to give too much away today, but maybe I'll start my own, you know, a mixed reality studio. Maybe I'll go work on the most innovative things. Honestly, I want to be where the future is at. I mean, I'm 23 years old right now. I'm just thinking, what could be the future? Because I think the future can be so bright, but it's kind of up to creators like myself to kind of think through these hard problems now while the tech is still emerging. Honestly, before it's being democratized, because now it's this kind of fun prototyping time period to get to that point, I think.
[00:12:42.995] Kent Bye: Just a quick follow-on, because as you aspire to do these cross-platform applications, Snap and the Snap Spectacles, as far as I know right now, you can't really build a Unity app for the Snap Spectacles. You have to use their Snap Studio. And so I know that there's WebXR that's out there that they may be rendering out WebXR, but I'm just curious to hear how you think around the Snap Spectacles and this move towards their own custom way of producing content that you can't actually use something like Unity to be able to deploy content on.
[00:13:11.713] Rylan Pozniak-Daniels: Right. Well, I think whether it's Lens Studio or Unity or Unreal, I do feel there is value still today for kind of a native app-based frameworks, because even though the web might be more accessible in a lot of ways for any headset, any device, I think apps still have a lot of functionality that might not always be accessible otherwise. Being able to fully access the camera feed for AR is not always accessible in the web, even things like controller haptics and stuff. But actually, you know, I actually think Lens Studio is also a very capable tool. Actually, just recently I was at the Stanford XR Hackathon. My team and I actually created this first gen application for the Snapchat Spectacles. We got really early access to it and we actually won their Snapchat AR prize actually for making the first or one of the first multiplayer AR games for that platform. And I think Spectacles inherently is a very social device as well, sort of where multiple people who have Spectacles can connect that way. So we were really excited to kind of leap on that tech and build a multiplayer AR gaming application that's very social. So I think You know, there is some interesting thing that there's many tools to make these content. I think that's actually kind of beautiful in a way because there's many possibilities for how to create content. So I think it's going to kind of diversify the kind of spectrum of possibilities, especially because it's still emerging hardware and we're still kind of figuring out what will the ultimate applications be. But I think the more tools, the more applications, I think the better.
[00:14:45.868] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, what do you think the ultimate potential of XR and spatial computing might be, and what it might be able to enable?
[00:14:52.978] Rylan Pozniak-Daniels: Yeah. Well, I think the ultimate potential, honestly, is, frankly, I actually really think AR, VR, will be a critical aspect of taking people to new worlds. And not just new virtual worlds, but I mean actually literally going to other planets in our solar system. I got actually the opportunity during college to work with a team on this NASA competition to create some of the first AR interfaces for the astronauts for the Artemis mission, which, quick context, is like the first human mission to the moon in over 50 years. It's the first original moon missions. And I think that's One of the ways I think AR will kind of literally take humanity in like a new bold direction is by enhancing how explorers of new planets I think can literally expand humanity to different places around the physical universe and not just the virtual universe. I think that's kind of cool. It's like a virtual and physical universe that I think AR VR can take us to. I think the other area besides space that I'm really excited about is AI's integration into XR. I think that As generative AI continues to evolve, that's going to influence both the way we create and develop AR, VR applications, but also the way we experience AR and VR applications. And having an assistant that can talk to you. I mean, actually, even in my app, the AR Lingo app for the Apple Vision Pro, that used generative AI to learn languages. And I think AI and XR is going to impact the education space. But frankly, everything from medicine to even gaming, all applications I think will benefit. But yeah, I think what's really... The future's not written yet, and I think that's probably... Now that XR right now is kind of, I think, getting to a critical tipping point, in my opinion, where we have everything coming, where finally we'll be having these lightweight AR glasses that are really... working very quite well. And generative AI is coming into the fold. And also a lot of space missions are being launched. And I think this kind of convergence, frankly, this year and in the next few years, I think is going to be one of the most exciting times ever in XR. And I'm just super excited to be on the bleeding edge of where that's all going. And I can't wait. I'm all here for it.
[00:17:08.967] Kent Bye: Anything else left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:17:12.239] Rylan Pozniak-Daniels: Well, feel free to find me online. My name is Rylan Pozniak-Daniels, R-Y-L-A-N-P-O-Z-N-I-A-K-D-A-N-I-E-L-S. And I just want to say that this is the best time ever to develop applications on any XR platform. And especially as AI makes it easier than ever to create those applications and also for people to experience those applications, I think the future is brighter than ever. And honestly, it's going to be amazing. I think that there have often been in science fiction Even like in Ready Player One, I think people often think of that as like the kind of initial vision. Well, not the initial vision, but like a snow crash and Neil Stevenson was like the metaverse. But Ready Player One was like also another, you know, actually both of those famous stories in XR, I think, showed kind of a bleak future of how the world is going sort of to a kind of a negative way and XR kind of is the escape. It's the way to kind of not worry about the world's problems and I think I actually believe in an alternative where I think XR could actually be the thing that actually enhances humanity and maybe deals with the world's problems. I think that you know in Ready Player One It's sort of like they're all escaping the tragedies of how a real world has been devastated by all kinds of disaster and they try to have a better life in VR and similarly in Snow Crash, you know. But I think in today's world, in Earth, I think XR and AI and that convergence is going to really actually make it more positive. And I think that really depends on developers to make that happen. So I think that's what I'm really optimistic about.
[00:18:49.164] Kent Bye: Awesome. Yeah, it definitely feels like we're in an inflection point where it could kind of, from my mind, kind of go in a number of different directions. I have a lot of concerns around AI and automation, consolidation of power and other things that a little bit more critical take on what AI is doing to our brains and to society. But it is, I think, a beginning of a new cycle where all these things are coming together. Anyway, thanks again. It was a great pleasure to get a chance to catch up with you. I'll have to dig back into the archive and see this post-high school Ryland and now post-graduate Ryland and see this trajectory that you're on. It's really exciting to see your journey into the space and where you continue to take it here in the future. So thanks again for joining me here on the podcast to share a little bit more about your journey and where you see it all going here in the future. So thank you.
[00:19:28.313] Rylan Pozniak-Daniels: Definitely. Thank you. Excited to catch up, yeah.
[00:19:31.837] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage so you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
