I did an interview with JoyReign and JDun talking about all of the latest announcements from Meta Connect 2025 focusing a lot on the biggest news from Meta Horizon including their new Studio and Engine. We also talk a bit about the other VR demos that were being shown at Meta Connect, and what they’re the most excited about coming out of Meta Connect 2025. JoyReign also talks about developing the VR game Crystal Frenzy within Horizon Worlds, and which parts of GenAI she found to be the most helpful. They also won the Amplifier Award at the Meta Horizon Creator Summit that was being held ahead of Connect. We also chat a bit about how Meta was also promoting different mobile phone games on their Horizon platform including Super Strike, Battle Kin, Shovel Up, Smash Golf early access, and Bumble Dudes. You can also 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 coverage of MetaConnect 2025, I catch up for the third year in a row with Joy Rain and JDun. They do online sleeve media where they're both producing and making worlds, but they're also content producers where they have like Get Him Into the Metaverse podcast, and they have getting things done, where they're covering all things VR, AR, XR, as well as artificial intelligence. And so they're deeply steeped within the community of MetaHorizon worlds. And so they attended some of the different events ahead of MetaConnect, where they were bringing together a lot of the other MetaHorizon world builders. And so I get a little bit of insight from there. So they're always great people to catch up to get the latest news, get some of their reflections and thoughts. We talk a bit about the new MetaHorizon Studio, the generative AI features. Joy Rain talks around Crystal Frenzy, which is a MetaHorizon game, sort of like a retro platformer inspired parkour, jumping in between platforms, collecting different crystals. And so we talk around her journey of becoming more of a game designer, but also just like this larger movement with MetaHorizon Worlds. They had a whole poster at MetaConnect that were showing the mobile horizon gaming. So the Super Strike open beta is actually only within the context of mobile gaming. There's not even a way to play that within the context of VR. I think the balancing would be a little bit uneven. That is from the same developers that did Super Rumble, and they probably found that It's not really balanced equally if someone's in VR and someone's not in VR. And so they wanted to create an experience where only people could play it within the context of mobile gaming. Then there's Battle Can, Shovel Up, Smash Golf Early Access, as well as Bumble Dudes. Those were all games that are being featured. And I'll add links if you want to go check out some of these different games to play them yourself to see how they play. So JoyRan and Jaden are always great to catch up with. It's the third year in a row that I had a chance to get an update for all the things they're looking at, some of the things they're excited about, and some of the biggest announcements that they were able to see, at least, you know, demo this year. They hadn't had a chance to see the meta-reban display glasses yet, but they're going to probably buy one anyway. So I'm sure they'll have more information as they start to get out and released on September 30th. So becoming all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Joy Rain and JDun happened on Thursday, September 18th, 2025 at the MediConnect conference at Metis headquarters in Menlo Park, California. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:43.942] JoyReign: Hi, my name is JoyReign. I am a builder in Horizon Worlds. I am CEO of Onyx Leaf Media. I'm one half of Getting Things Done YouTube channel and a whole bunch of other stuff, but you can go ahead JDun.
[00:02:59.022] JDun: Absolutely. So I am Jeremy Duncan, aka JDun, co-host of the Get Them to the Metaverse podcast, also CMO, Chief Metaverse Officer of Honest Leaf Media, as well as the other co-part of the Getting Things Done YouTube channel, covering all things XR, VR, and now AI as well. That's it.
[00:03:20.237] Kent Bye: Nice. And so, yeah, maybe each of you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space.
[00:03:25.819] JoyReign: Yeah, so I have a background in economics and finance and everybody's like, how in the world did you get into the metaverse? But we got in during the pandemic. JDun here got the headset and brought it over to my house and I tried it on, danced with the robot and I was like, I have to get this headset. So I've been in it ever since, building, connecting and exposing more people to the technology.
[00:03:49.449] JDun: that's it and uh it goes all the way back to the nintendo virtual boy so excited for that coming back uh so get the virtual boy and getting the gear vr back in the late or mid 2010s and then after that we got into those quest 2s as she spoke about i got mine she got hers and then it literally changed our entire life and we had to change everything that we were doing to start focusing on vr
[00:04:11.385] Kent Bye: And what were you doing before?
[00:04:12.826] JDun: Oh, okay. So I was doing boring IT stuff. Doing IT. We were also doing music as well. So that's actually how we met. Doing a lot of music. And so that creativity just blended straight into making content around VR.
[00:04:25.955] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah. So we had a chance to meet for the first time, I think, two years ago now. And we had a chance to talk then and then last year. And now we're getting another check-in point to see how your career in the immersive space has been going. And so maybe just update me as to what have you been up to for last year?
[00:04:40.455] JoyReign: Yeah, well, I just released my first game in Horizon Worlds called Crystal Frenzy. It's a retro platformer game. It's my love letter to all the retro games that I used to enjoy growing up. And so the object of the game is to get the crystals. But if you fall three times off the platform, you have to start all the way over. There's six biodomes to complete. And so, yeah, we have a whole bunch of fun. And multiplayer is coming soon, so be on the lookout for multiplayer Crystal Frenzy.
[00:05:13.007] JDun: Yeah, everything shifted this year to learning TypeScript, learning Blender, learning sound design, learning project management, learning 3D animation, everything that would take us to the next level in our content creator journey because we realized being one-dimensional and just making content, wasn't enough to really explore all of our creativity. So we wanted to open up our business, our mindset. So we understood we had to take that first leap first because so many companies come to us and ask these questions. And then we're like, well, we only do this side of it, but now we'd like, we do all of it. So understanding all of that. And that's what we've been this entire year.
[00:05:45.995] Kent Bye: Yeah. Yeah, just to clarify, because content has a number of different meanings. Like here in the context of MetaConnect, there's content creators who are typically people who are making 2D videos about immersive content. And then there's also other people who talk about creating content or actually creating the immersive experiences themselves, which are world builders and user-generated content platforms like Horizon Worlds. You could also say those worlds are content. And so just curious to hear how you think around starting with podcasts and video, but now with Onyx Leaf Media, you've been doing world building, but yeah, just Trying to hear a little bit more around how you've been expanding out from this definition of content.
[00:06:20.799] JDun: So when we came into this year, we set a challenge for ourselves to be a little bit more diverse in everything that we did. And so we realized we started looking at our business, looking at our content creation journey and saying, you know what? We love games. We love experiencing those things. We love talking about those things. Now we want to know the pain points of what game developers go through, what 3D animators go through, what Worldbuilders are going through because we really weren't doing a ton of that at the time. We were doing some cool stuff, but just not focusing on gaming. And so we decided to just take that three or four months and just really dig down deep. Joy took the lead and really became that developer aspect. And on the other side, I was like, okay, now we get to flex our marketing skills to market a game to understand how marketing works when you actually have something that you care about on a deep level. And so that's why Crystal Frenzy, she's doing the development side. And I say, okay, I'll take the marketing side. And it's allowed us to now blend the two loves of gaming and making games, but also making video content around the games that we're making.
[00:07:21.857] JoyReign: Being on the other side of game creation, like before we were, where we still are, a part of the MetaQuest Creator Program and having those developers give us their content to play and expose people to it. And now I'm on the other side of it to say, hey, I made my own game and I'm reaching out to other creators. And so it's like a 360 whole thing about, oh my gosh, I can't believe that I'm experiencing the other side of it. And it's, a full-on appreciation for everyone who has created a game and put their heart and their soul into it and to be able to see other people play it and really enjoy it. It's just incredible.
[00:08:01.110] Kent Bye: Nice. Well, I saw on your social media that you two won an award leading up to MetaConnect. Maybe you could give more context for what this award was that you won ahead of MetaConnect.
[00:08:12.600] JDun: So the MHCP is the MetaHorizon Creator Program and they have a summit every year. We've been blessed and honored to come for the third year in a row and this is the first time they've ever done an actual award show to focus on some creators in the community that should be doing some phenomenal things and the first award they awarded was the Amplify Award and the way they're setting up we're sitting there recording we're all excited to celebrate whoever's going to win this and they're like these are the loudest champions of worlds of Horizon Worlds and they say our names and we're like wait what you know so you know there's literally hot takes of us going no no no wait wait wait what's going on you guys are tricking us and we were just honored we were not expecting it it was not something that was announced to us that they were going to do we were just having a good time hanging out with the community that we love so much and they gave that award yeah
[00:08:59.403] JoyReign: Yeah, like J. Dunn said, to be ready to just cheer on whoever may have won that award. We were up there filming and they said our name and we were just shocked. But we really do appreciate them for recognizing all of the hard work that we've put into this, not only just for Meta Horizon Worlds, but just for VRXR period to expose people to this technology and let them know that it is for everyone. Absolutely.
[00:09:24.667] Kent Bye: Yeah, I was talking to Paige Danziger, also known as Metaverse Paige, and she was saying that there was like seven other awards. I don't expect you to do a full recap of, but maybe were there any other highlights for other folks that you want to shout out for what kind of awards they're awarding?
[00:09:37.985] JDun: Absolutely. Hardy West won Technical Entertainment. innovator of the year. There was a few other incredible folks as well. Some mentors who got a chance to be spotlighted from Horizon. We have some incredible mentors that do phenomenal work to help all these MetaHorizon Creator Program folks level up their skill set. And so it's just incredible seeing that. And then on top of that after that award show they had an actual one for what's called the meta horizon creator academy and these are folks who come together for like a little two day three day hackathon and this is their first time ever touching horizon worlds and they got to be celebrated in a cool way and some of them got awarded like the best design or things like that it wasn't expected for them to make the most stellar game day one but it was more like saying hey you guys actually did something we want to celebrate you and a lot of them left with a lot of energy to move forward and start building more in Horizon Worlds.
[00:10:29.606] Kent Bye: Any other thoughts?
[00:10:31.427] JoyReign: I absolutely agree with everything that he said. And speaking of the creator program, because we had a chance to go to the New York one to see all these creators from different platforms touch Meta Horizon's desktop editor for the first time. And it was like a two day, three day event and for them to build an entire world, fully functioning world and game within three days and publish it and then still have like awards being given out to them and certificates. It was incredible experience. So letting people know that this platform, anyone can do it. If you have the willingness to do so, you can put your mind to it and make incredible things.
[00:11:10.814] Kent Bye: What were some of the highlights from the summit?
[00:11:13.195] JDun: Oh, so the summit. Oh, my goodness. OK, so we got to talk about the Horizon Studio and Horizon Engine. This is going to literally bring new life into the entire ecosystem of Horizon. That, to me, shook us to the core because it's going to level up the graphic fidelity. It's going to level up how many concurrency, as far as avatars are concerned, how many avatars can be in the spot. Joy has other stuff she's going to mention. But I was just really, those two things were like, blown us away because we weren't expecting that and seeing where Horizon is heading next. But there's a lot of things that's happening now, too, that they talked about, some of that we enjoyed.
[00:11:49.493] JoyReign: Yeah, especially doing crazy things with avatars. Everyone likes to generate clothing and being more customizable and everything. And so it's just I'm so proud to be to be one of those people that has been champion Meta Horizons to see how far they've come. And I'm excited to see where they're going as well.
[00:12:09.912] Kent Bye: Yeah, so they've been promoting a lot of the generative AI features of this new MetaHorizon studio that's more PC-based. And so, yeah, have you had a chance to play around with that? I'm just curious to hear some of your thoughts of the integration of AI. Because I know that there is, in the broader world, there are people who are artists and creators who have concerns around AI and the way that AI may display certain aspects of creativity. And so there's always a risk of introducing things into, Creating a bunch more of AI slop that can potentially create a lower bar for things So just curious to hear some of your thoughts of you know, where things are at and if you're excited and what do you hope to see?
[00:12:47.138] JDun: So yeah, so I will take this stance very early. We only use AI for gray boxing Understanding fundamentally playing around like a plate like almost like a play box being able to test new ideas and But then when it comes down to doing even Crystal Frenzy, which she's going to talk about, she made sure to say, I want to do everything on my own. I'm going to import things on my own. In fact, I'm not going to even talk about it. I'll let her talk about it.
[00:13:10.247] JoyReign: Yes. For Crystal Frenzy, everything was handmade. I did everything customizable. and learning the tools, taking time to learn TypeScript and everything like that. But I do want to say that for the people that do use GenAI, I want to encourage them to know that just because you do use it, you don't have to use it in a way where people will be like, oh, you cheated or something like that. It's like I feel as though if someone has an idea in their head and they can just prompt it and want to get an idea from it, then yes, you could actually use it and don't be looked at, you know, less than. However, if you do want to take the time to really learn and upscale, because what if gen AI goes down or something is not there? You still want to have that skill set to be able to create stuff from scratch and still produce wonderful things.
[00:14:03.894] JDun: And I want to add some more context to this too. Now, we absolutely love the Gen EI tools. These things allow us to make environments that would normally take us weeks to do. You could do it literally in minutes. So it cuts down the development time in half. So you get to spend more time on story. You get to spend more time on art. You get to spend more time on sound, engineering, and making sure all the pieces of the game loop is there. But not just the game loop. Here's the scenario that comes up. The holodeck is what we're all trying to get to. Come on, we're all Star Trek fans. We're trying to get there. And so the idea is, eventually, I'm going to be able to walk into a blank instance and say, I want to be on Asana on Mars with my friends around and enjoy sunshine coming through, random things. And this AI is just going to be able to go create it. So it's not really for so much worrying about game development. You're going to still have people making expansive, credible worlds that's going to take skill sets. This is more to lower the bar a little bit to make it easy for people to get in and start doing world creation and making it just a tad bit more easy for them to do that.
[00:15:06.446] Kent Bye: Nice. And when you were doing the 3D modeling, were you using Blender or were you using VR programs like Gravity Sketch? Just curious to hear a little bit around your production pipeline for creating the 3D art.
[00:15:16.184] JoyReign: Yes, I was using blender, made everything from scratch from blender, using those shapes in there. So it was incredible. It took time. It was over 450 hours, sometimes 16, 17 hour days in order for me to... I didn't see her.
[00:15:33.993] JDun: I didn't see her. We didn't see each other for like for hours. We were living together and I'm barely ever seeing her because she is like so dedicated, locked in.
[00:15:42.095] JoyReign: Yeah, locked into creating to really wanting to know how to make this, make it fully functioning, to make it the best that I can. And I'm super proud of it.
[00:15:52.165] Kent Bye: In the TypeScript, is that something that is already in the ways that you make these Horizon worlds? Or maybe just give a bit more context for how TypeScript fits in.
[00:15:59.831] JDun: Absolutely. So just going back to the Blender piece, you know, we were used to building with our hands in Horizon with primitive shapes. So when she went into Blender, she did the same thing. Took the shapes and began to morph them and make them into what she wanted them to be, which was great reminiscence of old Horizon. But then when you get to the TypeScript, We were doing code blocks. Horizon was code blocks, something that was an engine inside of Horizon that you can do inside the headset. But when they started getting more advanced, we got into TypeScript. We knew nothing about TypeScript. We couldn't get you to walk two steps with TypeScript. So she took the time to get the documentation. And this is where I think the use of AI really helped. She didn't have the AI write the code. She said, explain to me how to do this in a way that I can understand it so I can go do it myself. And I think that's the smartest way to use AI so that you're not being handicapped by it doing it for you. And when something breaks, literally you can't do anything. You're now depending on that. And of course, these AI agents are not trained on Horizon like that. So a lot of times we're just learning TypeScript. We're learning these new skill sets that can now be transferred, not just to Horizon, but multiple other things like Unity, etc.
[00:17:13.072] Kent Bye: Nice. And so what kind of AI assistance were you using? Were you using like Claude or is this something that was a part of Meta, their own Llama or internal agents? Just a little more context for the AI that you're using.
[00:17:24.481] JoyReign: Yeah. So Meta has their own AI assistant built into their desktop editor now. And so you can say whatever you want to do. However, I would take that and go into Claude and say, I have this script. Please explain to me what does this mean? How do I do other functions like this? And then it would break down to me. So then I can go and write my own script from that.
[00:17:50.461] Kent Bye: So how's the game doing so far?
[00:17:52.042] JoyReign: It's doing well. It's doing well. And also, we're going to be going into multiplayer soon. It's a one-player game right now, but we're going to be releasing multiplayer. And so I'm super excited about it. It's going to be incredible.
[00:18:05.558] Kent Bye: Wow, it's quite a journey from starting with videos and then expanding into multiplayer social VR games, right?
[00:18:10.721] JoyReign: Yes, it really is. And also, too, I have not forgotten about my baby, Joy in the Morning. And so that is coming back as well. It's going to be all new, fresh, coming soon.
[00:18:22.162] JDun: That's the part that's really funny about this is that Joy in the Morning was the driving force as to why she wanted to learn how to do Blender and all these types of things because she wanted to make it better for her to be able to come up with a more creative, expansive, amazing world for Joy in the Morning. And so now with the skill set that's there that we've been learning, that we've been building, man, Joy in the Morning is going to come back in such a way that's going to change and alter people's perspective of what a talk show in the metaverse could be. yeah nice well we're here at metaconnect and so love to hear some of your thoughts of what's really stuck out for you okay so meta ray-ban display oh my gosh we finally have what is the starting line for augmented reality glasses i know they're more display they're not really augmenting but it's going to give us that perspective that we're looking for to change how we use these things but you know i will say I was expecting that there wouldn't be any VR news, seeing that it was more pushed, that it was going to be kind of Horizon. But still seeing Deadpool, seeing him invest into AAA titles made me really happy. We got Reach coming very soon, Star Wars, Beyond the Galaxy, I believe it's called. It's going to be really incredible. So excited to see that and demo some of those cool games here. And so, yeah, that's been my highlights.
[00:19:42.657] JoyReign: I concur. You took the words right out of my mouth. To see the progression of everything coming along, the form factors of the glasses getting smaller and smaller and being able to do more is just, we're on the right track, I feel like. And so I cannot wait to actually demo it. We haven't had a chance to as of yet, the Ray-Ban display, but we're going to get to it. I think we're going to get some. Absolutely.
[00:20:07.168] Kent Bye: Yeah, they switched it up. It used to be the Ray-Ban meta smart glasses, and now it's the meta Ray-Ban display glasses. So yeah, they kind of switched it up for some reason. But did you get a chance to see the other VR demos here? Like right over here, there's the James Cameron's Fire and Ash preview. It's a 3D trailer and clip.
[00:20:26.760] JDun: we're wild so we went back to the hotel we got in our headsets and we got a chance to go see connect we do that every time we want to go hang with our vr fam we're going to go see connect in headset again enjoying cheering on with other vr fellows in there and then we saw the cool trailer which was incredible to see that because it's all the quests But we have to talk about one particular thing we did yesterday and today that blew our mind. So there's this new prompt AI tool for character generation for Horizon, where you literally can go over and prompt, I think I said, Lava Ninja Turtle. It was like, give me a Lava impersonated Ninja Turtle. and they created it. And I was able to record a whole dance and it actually embodied it. And I'm like, this is something that's coming not in a few months, in a few years, in a few weeks. They just was announcing it today. And I'm like, I'm going to be able to have NPCs in my world that could embody different types of characters that I've dreamed about without having to learn anything with those 3D meshing tools. So that's one of those other things, again, where Gen AI comes in and helps us so much.
[00:21:28.473] JoyReign: Yeah, it was so much fun making that character. I did a Hello Kitty ice cream. And so she was Hello Kitty and she had a whole ice cream outfit. And I did my little dance and stuff. And it was super, super fun and super cute. And I didn't think that it was going to be that detailed, but everything was so detailed, so crisp. Just amazed at it. It was incredible.
[00:21:50.933] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think in talking to some VR developers of third-party apps and games, you know, from their perspective, there's a little bit of a de-emphasis of the broader content ecosystem and a lot more focus on the first-party apps of Horizon Worlds. Just curious to hear your reaction to, like, it's being put up on a pedestal, but yet there's also these broader ecosystem changes. So just curious to hear your thoughts.
[00:22:12.825] JDun: So I love this question. So there's been a very vocal, loud push, not just from Horizon's side, but from the VR side. And we all agree it should be equal playing field. There should be VR titles being able to be pushed on the mobile app and worlds. If you go on the VR app today, the Horizon app, you're now going to see more VR apps being showcased. Last year around this time, there was some A, B testing, I'm believing, where it was more worlds than VR. But now we're beginning to see that. We came from VR. We are VR. You know, we love that it's on mobile. We love that Horizon is branching onto PC and web, things like that. But we are VR first. So we absolutely love VR games. We want to see VR developers win. And so we do understand the context of seeing that there's this disconnect but what i'm seeing from meta side is that they're like hey we got this metaverse thing we're really believing in that's going to lead to people having portals to your games so these experiences they showed the navigator last year these experiences are supposed to like blend together someone actually said this and i have to say there was like I can't really tell the difference between a world and a VR game. And I said, that's exactly what the mission is. Eventually we wanted to just be another portal, another door to the next thing that you're doing. So Beat Saber is just a door that you're going into and not so much another application.
[00:23:33.866] JoyReign: Absolutely. And also, too, for this to be used as a way for kids who may not have a VR headset but have their mobile phone see that there is access to a VR version of that game. They can say, hey, mom, I want a VR headset and be embodied into that game. that opens up other possibilities as well. So I absolutely love to see that all of the new studios coming in here that may have just been Quest only VR games coming into Horizon and trying to test it out and see how they can bridge that gap as well.
[00:24:09.707] Kent Bye: Yeah, and they also had a set of QR codes, not sure if you saw, but they had a bunch of games that were being advertised for Horizon Worlds that were also available as mobile games. And so the games that were listed on this poster were Super Strike Open Beta, Battle Ken, Shovel Up, Smash Golf Early Access, and Bumble Dudes. So I'm not sure if you're familiar with any of these games or if you had a chance to actually play them on the mobile games.
[00:24:35.748] JDun: Yes, Super Strike is our jam. So that comes from the developers of Super Rumble. They were one of the first ones to use the more advanced tools years ago when we came from primitives over to the more desktop editors. So they were the first ones to get access and make a really incredible title. That was the game that me and Joy would bring people in to test and say, hey, Horizon is changing. Horizon is growing. Look at Super Rumble. So that's the same team. We got a chance to play it earlier yesterday. And we were like, OK, well, as soon as we get back to the house, We're jumping in here and getting our leaderboard on. That one is for sure. We did do Smash Golf before. We haven't played it on mobile, but we have played it before. Yeah.
[00:25:12.489] Kent Bye: Yeah, curious to hear some reflections on this, what seems to be a strong push from Meta's side to use mobile gaming as a vector for people wanting to jump into VR. From my perspective, it feels like sometimes different display technologies have different affordances and different things you tune for, and that it's not always a one-to-one translation for what may work well in the VR game, may not translate. And then if you're optimizing for mobile, then is that going to dilute the design of the VR experiences? Just curious to hear some of your thoughts and reflections on that.
[00:25:45.159] JoyReign: Yeah, so as a developer now who has made a game for mobile and for VR, from this perspective, sometimes when you're out and about and you have some downtime, you can pull out your phone and just play the game. But then when you really want to connect and be inside of the game, that VR aspect, to have that there and then still be able to connect with your VR community, I think that is so, so vitally important. And so I feel as though it's just a bridge. Everything is connected, whether I'm on mobile or I'm in VR, I'm still having the same love and connection for this one game or multiple games, you know. And so I feel as though, like I said earlier, that this can be used as a tool for people who do not or cannot afford a VR headset or have not been even exposed to this technology to access these games. And then they can do a deep dive in VR for these games that are accessible in VR as well.
[00:26:44.537] JDun: No, she said it all. We were just having this discussion. We probably had this discussion three times today with different developers, different world builders. And we're just so excited because we do believe there is a correlation. I think, you know, you look at a platform like Roblox and you go, okay, they weren't VR first, but they were mobile, they were PC, and now they're kind of merging into VR. as that audience levels up and ages up, and these tools get better, these headsets get lighter, that's the thing, that's the friction. We know the friction is right now, the headsets need to be a little bit lighter, we need to have them less expensive, the floor has to come down a little bit more, and these devices have to become more powerful, so that more people wanna use them. More than just, for gaming, but for spatial computing. We say that word a lot, but that's the excitement about this. So mobile starts it, but as we get to these glasses, they start getting excited. Getting away from screens, then you can see where glasses is that thing we take with us, and when we get home, our entertainment, our gaming, our networking, our social, our computer is all in that headset. So why not jump into worlds at that point? Why not jump into VRChat at that point? Why not experience the metaverse as we see it? It's this interconnected piece together.
[00:27:53.823] Kent Bye: Yeah, and it also sounds like that, talking to Paige Danziger, that there's ability for some creators to create their own fashion, their own clothes, and have you gotten into that at all?
[00:28:03.777] JoyReign: Yes. Well, JDun has a line of clothing. Do you want to talk about that? Yes.
[00:28:08.780] JDun: So we're coming out with a cool line, two lines of clothing. One is going to be based off of our faith, but the other one is going to be something that we're making just for creators. And we're really, really excited about that. But we also try to specialize in making real things come into the virtual as well. So this actual logo for Get Him to the Metverse, our podcast, we actually made a custom one to wear here, but we also have it in headsets. Yeah, on our avatars.
[00:28:35.098] JoyReign: On our avatars. They have it, right, too.
[00:28:37.541] JDun: So you can actually go to our Instagram story or when we post about it, there literally is a way you can click on our avatar and see all the items that we have on. And if we have our custom branding on, you can actually go purchase that right now. And we made it not expensive. Because we want as many people. It's not about so much making money on that. It's more so about sharing the love. of what it is and where it's going. So that's the excitement about it. But yes, the clothing is there for all MHCP. They just announced it today for all the MHCP folks.
[00:29:07.255] Kent Bye: And the demo station, they also had a section where they have the new immersive home world. I'm not sure if you got a chance to see that, if you'd seen it before or any impressions on that.
[00:29:15.822] JoyReign: It was incredible to see. I actually did a video on my social media. I had spent a day shopping in Horizon Worlds and it had a portal to go there. But the home environment is super cool because you can have Instagram in there now and you can see the plaza of Horizon Central and the NPCs running around there and it looks incredible. I never thought that it would get to this like this fast.
[00:29:44.529] JDun: There's a cool feature, too, that I think has been slept on that people don't realize. You can pin up to three applications in this home space. So, for instance, if at the desk I want to have my remote desktop and I can actually sit down physically in my room, the screen's right there on the desk in virtual reality, and I can begin to just work on my computer. Then I can go walk over to the seating area and I can be watching a film with Joy or up to eight people individually. in the experience or go to my wall where my Instagram is at and watch my videos or pictures in 3D. It's really, really incredible they're doing this automatic conversion. So yeah, it's a level up. It's not quite Oculus Home yet, what we all are dreaming of to be able to customize completely, but I think it's their first step to bringing that back to us as we had before.
[00:30:29.110] Kent Bye: Yeah, there was some closed-door, behind-the-scenes demos of the Hyperscape demo with Gaussian Splats, and I think they updated the app. I'm not sure if you had a chance to try that out yet, but it sounds like that there's going to be a way that you can do a room scan using your MetaQuest 3 to scan a room and then send it up to servers two to four hours later, get back a whole photorealistic Gaussian splat of spaces that are then going to allow different mixed reality experiences for yourself, maybe in your own space, but also to have people come together around the physical spaces that people have as a way of expressing their own identity and where they spend time. And so that also seems like something that's exciting as well.
[00:31:08.297] JDun: Listen, we are living in the future. You can take your Quest 3, scan your room, and in a few hours, walk around it. So you can then share this eventually and be able to have other people walk around your experiences. Now, we're talking about rooms and things like that. But the idea begins to build museums, digital twin types of situations, classrooms, other things that's artifactual. You know, it's like...
[00:31:31.801] JoyReign: the sky's the limit for this technology and to be able to do that with a 200 300 400 headset not anything else in your hand that's just incredible it's something we would never dream that we would be able to do with the quest platform so really cool yeah and also too to be able to take people into your space and to give them a tour and to have those personal conversations and have a whole room as a conversation piece it's incredible i just uh everything is so good
[00:32:00.515] JDun: We're living in a time where we could scan our room and eventually maybe have co-presence in it. So now you're sitting on my couch. I could put markers maybe in the future and put those there. Now you're sitting on my couch or you're in my room. And so when I'm recording a video, it's like you're actually in my space with your avatar, not just in mixed reality, but you're walking around it physically with your controllers and things like that. I just think it's going to be crazy.
[00:32:24.189] JoyReign: And also too, I think this is going to change the real estate game. Like if you want to see a house, somebody just scan the entire house or whatever, and you're out of state and you can just tour it virtually, like inside of it, it's crazy.
[00:32:38.581] Kent Bye: There's a company named Matterport that's been doing that since 2014, the very first Silicon Valley virtual reality conference. And they have camera. And if you look for a lot of real estate, they've been doing that for over 11 years now. So Matterport's been doing that for a while.
[00:32:54.252] JDun: Now you can do it with a $300 headset, which to me, it just opens up the possibility. You got to think about the kids of this generation. They're getting to grow up with stuff that we could have only dreamed of when we were kids. We talked about the virtual board earlier. It was red screen, barely could play. It only had like 14, 20 games. And now these kids get to build and have experiences where they can scan their whole room and have their friends maybe in the future come over. I think that's just really incredible.
[00:33:21.567] Kent Bye: So we also had the announcements of the longer battery life for the Ray-Ban Meta glasses that have been out. And so as I'm speaking to both of you here at Meta Connect, you're both wearing your Ray-Ban Meta glasses. And so just curious to hear some thoughts on some of the new features that are announced, or if you've found new ways that you've been using your glasses.
[00:33:41.624] JDun: So I cannot wait for this conversation piece that they show where you can be talking to someone in any direction that you're talking. The AI is going to be able to kind of block out the noise. We could definitely use that for content in other cases, but that's one thing for sure. But like I said, I keep I'm not going to lie to you. The glasses are cool, but the display ones is the ones I want because it's like now that I've used these, I've used the AI, I've used live AI as well. Those sessions where you can have AI talk to you for a long time. Having that more battery life in the other Ray-Bans, like the newer version of the Ray-Bans is really great. But being able to see that context show up in my face and my eye view is going to be life changing. I think it's going to be really incredible.
[00:34:22.609] JoyReign: So basically, in short terms, JDun is just saying that it's time for an upgrade for us.
[00:34:28.693] Kent Bye: The 800 version, the $800 version. Yes.
[00:34:32.217] JDun: I'm like, you know, it's great. Hey, Meta, if you want to send us something, you know, absolutely. But we're definitely going to run and get those as soon as they are launched because we want to be, just like with Quest, we want to be first in line to experience these things and be able to report on them to showcase what they could do and also use them in our daily lives.
[00:34:50.353] Kent Bye: Well, they did announce that you can go actually have a demo of this, and that I think it might be only that you can buy them at a location. I'm not sure if you can buy them online. But, yeah, so if you didn't get a chance to try it here, you can maybe see if you can get a demo for wherever you live and go out and check it out. And I'm sure you'll be buying it either way, but it would be nice to see the experience.
[00:35:10.045] JDun: I told her. We were walking past her to say, I'm buying it anyway. It doesn't even matter. I'm getting it. I got to get it. We got to have it.
[00:35:16.849] Kent Bye: Yeah, just the whole interface of the neural band, I think, is pretty revelatory in terms of the gestures and where they're going to take that. And I think with all metaproducts, it's a little broken. And I had some experiences of that in my own demo experience. But I feel like over time, as long as the hardware is set, then the software updates will hopefully iron that out and more and more features
[00:35:37.475] JDun: We're in the early days of this. You know, we're still, you know, we were just watching the 2021 keynote where, you know, Facebook changed to meta and Mark was given this big vision of what, you know, 10 years down the road would be. We're only in 2025. You know, we're getting stuff that we didn't expect to get this early. So I'm okay with a few bugs as long as they're just going to continue to grow. You know, Boz made a joke on stage, you know, we're making fun of it, but it's my team that's got to go and figure out these bugs now, you know, and that's the excitement, but it's early days.
[00:36:05.765] Kent Bye: Right, and finally, what do you each think is the ultimate potential of virtuality, augmented reality, smart glasses, and AI thrown in the mix, and all these things together with XR and AI, and what they might be able to enable?
[00:36:18.536] JoyReign: I think that is going to change the world. It's going to, as long as we focus on helping people and the things that we really need that are problematic and we can offer a solution with these new technologies, it will definitely change the world. We have to encourage people to open their minds and be accessible to it. And, you know, I know change is, no one likes change. And it's inevitable, though. But I feel as though if we embrace these technologies and use them for good, it's gonna change the world.
[00:36:50.639] JDun: So VR, XR, MR, AI changed our lives. And we have dedicated the last five years of our life still with the same fire, still with the same excitement, still with the same drive to make this become an ordinary part of life that is the mission of getting to the metaverse to make the extraordinary metaverse an ordinary part of life and metaverse just simply means spatial computing xr vr all of those technologies put together and so we know it's going to change how people do business how it's going to change how we do social connection it's going to change how we do everything from doctor visits and things like that This technology is going to change everything. So we're dedicating everything. That's why we're here at Connect. That's why we're talking to you for the third year in a row, because we believe in this. And if you ask us next year, we hope we're back next year. We know we're going to be back next year to have this conversation with you again. And we're going to say the same thing when you ask us, because we believe in this technology so much that we're giving our all to it. We will die on that hill. We believe that this is going to change the world.
[00:37:54.653] Kent Bye: Anything else left unsaid to the broader Immersive community? Any final thoughts?
[00:37:59.618] JoyReign: Final thoughts? You can follow us on all social media platforms. I'm joyrainvr and yeah, that's it for me.
[00:38:10.429] JDun: And to the entire Immersive community, thank you that you asked that to us. We're in for a journey. We're still early days. Don't give up on the platforms. We still have cool new things coming from even other vendors that we're really excited about. We are not in our bad days. I think our bad days are behind us. We're heading towards a new journey. And so don't give up. Don't give in. Keep the fight. Hold on tight. The Titanic is not going to go down. That's enough of us to hold it all up until we get to the place where this is ubiquitous with everybody. So please, y'all, don't give up on VR. We won't give up on y'all. And you can follow me. and JDun rfp on all social media and of course subscribe to us on getting things done and make sure you subscribe to kim bob's podcast what are you doing what are you doing get on the patreon what are you doing
[00:38:56.607] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, JDun and JoyReign, thanks so much again for joining me here for the third year in a row to recap all your impressions from MetaConnect. And I can really feel the energy of that Amplify award awarded to you at the Summit for Meta Horizon Worlds. And very well deserved. And I can feel that enthusiasm in each of our conversations. And I always enjoy hearing your perspective of all the latest news and what's happening in the corner of Horizon Worlds and also in the broader XR community as well. So thanks again for joining me here on the podcast to help break it all down. absolutely man thank you for having us thank you thanks again for listening to this episode of the voices of your podcast and if you enjoy the podcast and please do spread the word tell your friends and consider becoming a member of the patreon this is a this is part of podcast and so i do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring this coverage so you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com voices of vr thanks for listening
