AltSpaceVR is the first cross-platform social VR application that supports both the Gear VR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive. Now that all of these VR headsets have had their consumer launch, then AltSpace VR has been one of the top places in VR to have social interactions.
I had chance to catch up with Bruce Wooden (aka “Cymatic Bruce”) at SVVR 2016 to talk about what types of events they’ve been holding, what types of emergent social behaviors he’s seeing, and how they’ve been teaching VR etiquette within their welcome spaces for new users. We also talk about some of the social dynamics that occur when they mix together the full range of interaction fidelity between hand-tracked Vive, Leap Motion hands in the Rift, and just the head rotation of the Gear VR. There is a bit of a power dynamic that emerges where people with tracked hands can be more expressive and have more attention and power in a conversation, and so we talk a bit about the implications of that including whether or not it makes Gear VR users feel more like consumers than creatives, producers, or equal participants.
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AltSpaceVR has focused on building out different games and things to do in VR that allow users to participate in an activity while socializing with other people, and they are also starting to hold bigger events. One of the more successful AltSpace events was bringing comedians from the JASH festival to do Improv Comedy inside Virtual Reality featuring Josh Brekhus, Beth Lepley, Danny Cohen and Ali Ghandour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OjWsxYqi1I&t=11m4s
Comedy in VR tends to work particularly well because you get a lot more social presence when you hear other people laugh, and so they’re using that success to hold what could end up being the largest VR event up to this point with Reggie Watts live in AltSpace VR on May 26, 2016 at 8pm PST.
.@reggiewatts performs in AltspaceVR 5/26, 8pm PST! Get a front row seat here: https://t.co/YuRZnfJQUe #VRcomedy pic.twitter.com/58DCixkLgT
— AltspaceVR (@AltspaceVR) May 6, 2016
Bruce said that one of his personal highlights was having meeting Reggie when he did a comedy and music set in VR, and I had a chance to interview Reggie about his VR film at Sundance where I discovered that he’s a huge VR geek.
My avatar I’ll be sporting for my #VRcomedy set looks better than I do! pic.twitter.com/9x3KGMTbdL
— reggie watts (@reggiewatts) May 12, 2016
The release of consumer VR has made social VR spaces like AltSpaceVR a lot less lonely, and they are likely to have some of the bigger VR events given their cross platform capabilities. It will be interesting to see if catering to the Gear VR users as their main target demographic will limit features that might be Vive or Rift specific. Right now, being inclusive of all of the VR headsets is proving to foster a lot of diversity of participation of users that go beyond the VR enthusiast community and into mainstream Gear VR users, who may have received a free headset with a their S7 pre-order.
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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. My name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. Today I talk to Somatic Bruce Wooden, who is the Developer Relations Representative at AltspaceVR. So AltspaceVR is this social VR startup, and I've had a chance to talk to Somatic Bruce three or four different times since the very first Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference back in 2014. And so I've kind of been tracking this evolution of social VR through these different interviews with Bruce. And so it was really interesting to talk to Bruce this time, because now both the Gear VR and Oculus Rift, as well as the HTC Vive, are all released and have integrations into this social VR platform. It's really one of the first cross-platform social VR spaces that is out there. And so I'll be talking to Bruce about all the different events and new users and different dynamics that they're finding within the social VR spaces and some of their lessons learned so far and where they're going here in the future. But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by the Virtual World Society. The Virtual World Society wants to use VR to change the world. So they are interested in bridging the gap between communities in need with researchers, with creative communities, as well with community of providers who could help deliver these VR experiences to the communities. If you're interested in getting more involved in virtual reality and want to help make a difference in the world, then sign up at virtualworldsociety.org and start to get more involved. Check out the Virtual World Society booth at the Augmented World Expo, June 1st and 2nd. So this interview with Symatic Bruce happened at the third annual Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference at the end of April at the San Jose Convention Center. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:02.761] Bruce Wooden: I am Bruce Wooden, also known as Symatic Bruce in VR circles. I'm co-founder of SVVR, so I'm emceeing here, mostly in the SVVR role, but also head of development and community relations at AllSpaceVR, which is great.
[00:02:15.570] Kent Bye: So I know the last time that we chatted, I think it was probably maybe at Oculus Connect 2 or I'm not sure exactly when, but I know since then you've been on the road evangelizing virtual reality all over the world. So tell me a bit about what some highlights of that have been and what you were doing there.
[00:02:30.896] Bruce Wooden: Yeah, absolutely. So it was pretty much a two-month road tour, 17 cities, US and Canada, mainly hitting up events and developer meetups, explaining about our JavaScript SDK, what's going on, our developer initiative program that we have going on, we have monies for developers to build stuff on top of Altspace, letting them know, hey, what is Altspace up to, what are the new features and what is the SDK actually good for and what it's doing. So that was kind of the focus and it was also good to, you know, connect with the community. I think it goes right back to building community with AltspaceVR. With all these VR platforms, they're trying to build a following or build communities or when this user base is kind of compact and small, reaching out to people directly to let them know what you're about, where you're going, and so it's a part of it as well.
[00:03:16.162] Kent Bye: Do you have any stories or memories of starting to cultivate relationships with people purely from a virtual world like Altspace?
[00:03:23.349] Bruce Wooden: Oh man, yes. There's been some very interesting goings-on. We have events and I get swarmed because my avatar looks a little unique. So people are like, hey, what's that? It's everything from You have dreads, why?" to, oh my gosh, it's Bruce, and all these people kind of gather around, so that's been very fun. Singing has been going on in AltSpaceVR, so we've got a shout out to Crystal, who's my little singing buddy in AltSpaceVR in there, and we're all like, so cool. So that's been a lot of fun. We've had an open mic, which was actually super fun. So that's been really cool to see some people actually start to organize around some of those things. So we have like Proxide and Crystal and Ben, some other folks in AltSpace have been really taking a charge and forming their own communities and their own kind of VR parties and VR shows that are not even, you know, we're just like enabling them basically and be like, oh, go for it. Awesome. That sounds cool. So that's been lots of fun.
[00:04:20.450] Kent Bye: What are some of those events that they've been doing, just on their own behalf?
[00:04:23.471] Bruce Wooden: Yeah, so there's definitely been some parties where they're just hanging out for hours. They've got music playing, people are talking, and just kind of socializing in general. So really, just how you would imagine a house party would go on. We have one of our own, Echo. It's the Echo space. So that's definitely more music-inclined as well. Got a playlist going. He's kind of the DJ, but he also has an avatar with a little skateboard. So he uses a perception neuron kind of emulate skateboarding around the space, which has been pretty cool. And Proxide has also done some kind of parties and discussions and things like that, which has been really cool. So we've started to see these people just kind of carve out their own little corner of alt space, which has been really pleasing. Even some of the language nights, there's an Arabic language night that was actually driven by a user and not us, which was cool. So it was really cool to see these things start to pop up and it just gets more numerous as more people get a hold of their headsets, which is cool.
[00:05:17.858] Kent Bye: Yeah, so I think also since the last time we talked, you've launched on the Gear VR as well as on the Oculus Rift and the Vive. I mean, we have consumer VR since the last time we chatted.
[00:05:27.226] Bruce Wooden: Absolutely. That's been the most exciting thing, I think, for us at Altspace. Since we've released on Gear VR, Altspace has not been empty. 24-7, we have people in Altspace hanging out. I've popped in at 3 in the morning and there's some random folks talking in Arabic or French or something. I'm like, oh, bonjour. And it's really wild. And it's just increased as more Gear VRs are out there. People have their Vives arriving at their doors, their CV1s arriving at their doors. And so we're seeing kind of this critical mass of folks where there's always someone in alt space and thus people see that and then they also come and so it's kind of this snowball effect where we're seeing people in there and then finding out what they're doing and what they're up to and doing our best to kind of keep up and engage and also enable users to engage themselves really because it can't be all up to us.
[00:06:15.703] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I know at the very beginning of the Gear VR launch, you had a lot of very different specific types of events where different things would be happening. So maybe as you were launching, what were some of those big events that people were going into these virtual worlds of Altspace to be able to experience together?
[00:06:31.446] Bruce Wooden: Absolutely, there have been a number of things that we've just been throwing out there for people to check out from stand-up comedy shows, improv comedy shows. What's been cool is that even if there's a user in Perception Neuron using a Vive or an Oculus Rift, the Gear VR user can see them fully, so it's cross-platform. So that Gear VR user can come in and enjoy what other people are doing. We've had kind of music performances, tech talks and panels have been going on. We've really kind of generated events around the features we already have, like a lot of the games and apps we have in Altspace. And we've like, hey, we have this air hockey app, which is really cool. We're having a tournament around this. We have this app that was called Sketchy Quiz, partly generated with our SDK, and it's kind of a pub quiz show. So we've had events around that that have been led by a moderator, which has been really cool. Sketch Off is another one. So it's been quite a few of these types of events. Some of them that we put on ourselves and some of them that it's just stuff that's out there where we have an event to get community awareness around. Hey, there's this art gallery. We're going to have this artist come in, explain their work, explain their creative process. And then after that, the art gallery is now open for you to explore. a lot of launching things with events as well to let people know, hey, this is some of the things that you can do and hopefully inspiring people to pursue those things themselves in AltSpace too.
[00:07:51.191] Kent Bye: Yeah, I had this interesting experience of AltSpace, which was that, you know, I do the Voices of VR podcast. I do these super deep dive, intense discussions and go into lots of wormholes. But when I go into AltSpace, it's like this open environment and people are kind of teleporting around and I kind of almost have like this anxiety towards approaching people in some ways, because it's not like a closed context. It's sort of like an open world exploration. there's the ability to start to have emergent social behaviors by allowing people to move around as opposed to some of the oculus social where you're just basically sitting in a semicircle and you are just locked into place you have no ability to move around and so I think there's a lot of really interesting social behaviors that come from a more contained space like that but there's a trade-off there I see between like the level of fidelity of communication and locomotion and emergent behaviors that come from locomotion but yet It's like, where's the sweet spot? And you have, like, different contexts where, like, you go and sit in a living room where it's like you're more constrained, but that constraints can actually change the nature of the conversation.
[00:08:54.911] Bruce Wooden: Indeed, we've definitely explored that a little bit. I think right now we have kept the locomotion in, no matter what you're doing or how you are in alt space, where people are able to get around, they're able to explore the environment, although the emphasis is on the communication, what you're doing or how you're connecting with other people. But exploration has been a slice of that. So being able to engage is kind of like this double-edged sword, where I can feel a sense of intimacy because I'm close to a person in virtual space. Or, you know, a couple of French users come in and they get in close on each other, right? But also there's a potential for a person to be uncomfortable by that ability, by that kind of freedom that's there. And I think it really boils down to the ways that people are using Altspace and how we're growing and maturing with those different ways. So there's kind of what you're describing, kind of just the public way. I'm going to drop in Altspace and see what's up. There's going to be a bunch of strangers in there. I may or may not trust them. I'm not sure what they're up to. Then we're going to move around this space and it's going to be a lot of freedom, but also there's a lot of risk. You risk some of that safety. It's kind of a public forum for VR, right? Versus an event where there's a lot more order. Especially if it's an event that we're putting on or, you know, we have some tools for users that are event organizers, so they're able to have a little more control over, hey, what's on the screen? What is the format of this event? And, hey, even if a person is being disruptive, we can get that person out of there, right? So there's a little more control over, I'm at this event with people of like minds, I want to listen to this speaker or engage with this VIP, and that changes the social nature where, you know, there's not a lot of movement, even you have the ability, but people just kind of sit or stand in place and listen to what's going on or witness what's going on, right, a performance or a talk or whatever it is. And kind of the next place where we're really growing is this, I just want to connect with people I already know, that I trust, and there's going to be a lot of variance there too. Whether I want to invite someone and we're going to explore the space together, or I'm going to invite someone and we're just going to sit in place and talk for an hour. And that becomes, like it explores a different nature of what you're using AltSpace for, and that's, we're trying to kind of encourage all three of those categories, so it's going to be up to the user, and it's really about putting more control in the hands of the user as we mature as well to make sure that their experience is what they want it to be and to kind of set those expectations as you're using AltSpace in these different ways.
[00:11:16.773] Kent Bye: And one of the interesting behaviors that I saw happening a lot with people who are just coming in and trying to test the boundaries of the system is that they would just walk right up into someone's personal space. And so that seems to be something that everybody just does right away. Can you talk a bit about that?
[00:11:32.186] Bruce Wooden: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely one of those things where VR is so new and people, even if they've read about it and are enthusiasts and they're on Subreddit, I mean, they don't really fully grasp it until they're in VR and experience for themselves. And it's kind of a novel thing at first when you're like, holy crap, I really feel like I'm in someone's face. And I was like, I'm going to do this more. And then along with VR behind the avatar, sometimes you have less inhibition, I think. So a person that wouldn't be going around SVVR conference getting in everyone's face and saying, hey, how does this feel? In VR, they're going to be like, whoa, this is so crazy, so trippy. And it's like, dude. So a part of that is we've been looking at what our first time user experience is like, and we've been experimenting with that quite a bit. and to make sure that when a new user comes in that they can be comfortable. Also kind of again setting expectations and setting a space for that where a person can kind of explore those boundaries just when you know you have a lot of users out of leap motions and they start to caress each other's faces and start to play rock-paper-scissors and these is it's a very childlike wonder that's happening where it's not necessarily a person that's trying to be you know annoying or malicious but it's just like it's this exploration where it's like wow I really have a hard time grasping of how much like real life this experience is even with these avatars so abstract and in this world doesn't you know look quite like the real world but as is this impact so we're definitely looking into some ways to again hand users control so they can have the experience they want and explore that. We don't want to limit users too much. I mean that wonder is part of the awesomeness of a shared VR experience. We want to make sure people don't get overwhelmed and experience that right when they drop in. So we're definitely experimenting on that front.
[00:13:18.127] Kent Bye: Yeah, and on one hand, it's part of the power of VR that if someone's right in my face that I have this kind of visceral reaction like, oh, that feels really bad. And it's like, yeah, when people are in my face that closely in real life, it doesn't feel good either. And so there's a sense of presence that happens there. But there's the larger issue of etiquette. Like, OK, you just don't do that. But there's a whole set of etiquette that I'm sure that's emerging in terms of how do you interact in social spaces. How would you go about starting to teach people these rules of etiquette in VR?
[00:13:48.728] Bruce Wooden: Yeah, a lot of that starts with our kind of front line. I have a road team. That's part of my role at AltspaceVR has been to facilitate this welcome wagon, as it were, it's concierge. I have a team of guys from all over the world that are in AltspaceVR 24-7 in the welcome space where people get in and They're kind of the folks that are in there and they're like, hey, welcome to Altspace VR. This is how you get around. They're also in there like, you know, if people are going just overboard with the personal space thing and be like, you know, hey, that makes some users uncomfortable, you know, could you please pull back on that a little bit and really kind of moderate that a little bit and educate the community and really kind of set the tone for what Altspace is. And it's really, you know, as a social and shared VR application, really, I thought it was most appropriate to have a person in there when you first come in to actually lead you along. And so I think that's part of the strategy. And again, a lot of other parts of that strategy will come in as we mature and it becomes clear that you can use all space in different ways, where if I'm connecting with someone I already know, that doesn't become much of an issue because it's like, hey it's me you I know Kent and if I'm playing around you feel comfortable enough to tell me dude okay that's enough of in my face stuff we can chuckle about it and we can get over it versus a stranger where it's like dude stop that and it might be you know some hostility or friction right but if I'm meeting with a group of friends I already know or someone I'm comfortable with that becomes much less of an issue as far as that potential discomfort right so But yeah, I think that first line of defense is really that road team and really getting in there and helping to help shape the community of AltSpaceVR and what it is and what people receive it to be.
[00:15:27.268] Kent Bye: Yeah, I remember I was at one of the early sketchy quiz nights and on stage talking to Lisa, and there was somebody who was going up to the control panel and just pushing the buttons, which were playing all these sound effects, which were global sound effects. And then, you know, I don't know if the person didn't realize that everybody was hearing these, but Lisa just kind of like, excuse me, could you not do that? That's very disruptive. And I just had this moment of like, wow, you have to have a lot of patience to be able to just deal with people who either are just so unaware they don't know what they're doing or they just perhaps lack empathy for the larger experience of everybody. And so I guess that goes to the question of like, what are the mechanisms of like, first, if you try to be courteous and engage in conversation, but how do you escalate in terms of dealing with people who are being extremely disruptive and not really respectful of the whole group?
[00:16:16.435] Bruce Wooden: Absolutely. You know, I think the first line and how we've attracted our road team is really start from a positive place. Really try to start with, you know, educating that person about, hey, what effect their behavior is having on the room, on other people. And it goes back to that kind of, you know, everyone becomes a five-year-old again when they're in VR. But this is the Internet and there are trolls and there are people that are out to just kind of look for ways to ruin the experience of others. And there's some tools that our road team has as admins to be able to I don't want to say police it, but to kind of enforce like, hey, you know, I would like to stop doing this and stop that behavior and really get to the point if it's a person that needs to be kicked from the service. And if it comes to that, we try to use that sparingly. We really are about having a great experience for everyone or redirecting someone is like, you want to go to a space where that behavior is going to be cool or have your conversation about whatever, do whatever you want. There's plenty of spaces that you can go to do that. And the other side of that, aside from us, because I really believe that it shouldn't be us being the police of Altspace, as Altspace admins and employees, and really putting tools in the hands of the users. So we have tools for a user that's creating their own space or creating their own event, and they can decide to mute or kick a person from their event, and that is a useful tool as well. then there's the ignore feature that every user has, where it's like, hey, I'm not comfortable with the interaction I'm having with this person. I can ignore this person. And then those users become essentially invisible to each other. So it kind of minimizes that. And it's by no means a comprehensive or complete situation. We're not like wiping our hands with it. I'm like, OK, we're done. It's a constant thing that we're looking at. We're evolving in our possible solutions that we might have. having lots of discussions at Altspace about, okay, as this issue progresses, as we get more users, as more people get their headsets, what are we doing to make sure, again, these new users that are coming in are getting the right impression of what it means to be in Altspace and really trying to influence the culture of alt space so it becomes a positive thing and not this asterisk that says oh yeah you're going to feel uncomfortable when dot dot dot really it's it's really attacking this issue in a way where preserving this friendly and positive atmosphere and making sure that again a user has expectation set so if they're going to go to a place where they might experience something weird or uncomfortable and there's space for that, but it's not going to be everywhere, right? So you have some choice on about where you go and what type of users you connect with, whether it's strangers or whether it's, you know, friends and family, right?
[00:18:55.116] Kent Bye: So. And so what have been some of your favorite memories or stories from your time in alt space then?
[00:19:00.460] Bruce Wooden: Oh man, there are so many. One of the most recent ones is actually on the stage at our talent show, or I guess it's called talent show open mic, I don't know what it was, but on Broadway, George Benson, that was hilarious. I had a mixer, got in the karaoke music and wailed and I was on stage. So that was fantastic. Before that, actually, we were in Southern California at JashFest. Jash is the comedy organization founded by Michael Cera and Silverman. And Reggie Watts, who's a personal hero of mine, absolutely love him, creative genius. We actually talked for a good while. He's a VR enthusiast. He came in, he's like, oh man, you guys have light and health tracking? What's going on here? popped him in AltSpace and he was in there for 20 minutes doing a little stand-up routine and engaging with our users. And that was magic. I hugged him after, our hair touched, it was amazing. So I was like, you know, Reggie Watts is just a great, great guy. You know, always kind of incorporating technology and music and comedy and kind of melding those things. So it was really cool to have him in VR and be a part of that experience, exposing him to AltSpace. So man, that was a really, really bright and awesome memory. So I love that. That was sweet.
[00:20:06.955] Kent Bye: Yeah, I had a chance to do an interview with Reggie Watts because he had a film at Sundance. And so I was just kind of struck with how big of a VR geek he was. And it was like, oh, wow. That kind of speaks to the other dimension of having people who are big names in other domains beyond just the technology or virtual reality. And so what kind of events have you had that have been able to kind of pull in a draw of people from different disciplines?
[00:20:29.566] Bruce Wooden: Yeah, it's been interesting. We've definitely tried to experiment with different type of events with notable characters, notable folks. So we had Brendan Eich, for example, the creator of JavaScript, come in and do a tech talk. And that was really interesting to have this notable figure and be like, you know, hey, all these people want to come in and check out what these people are about. We had Heather and Miles, who are a well-known improv troupe. Through our connection at JASH, we were able to get them in and do some improv comedy with their head-to-toe and perception neuron and had DK2s on. And that was actually an article in the Wall Street Journal that's in the Wall Street Journal today, actually, about it, which is really cool. But that was really cool to have these really professional and skilled improv comedians be on stage in VR and experience that for a first time and get that feedback from them too. To be like, hey, as a professional, as a person that's on the top of your field, what do you need? What was some of the things that were great and some of the things that you missed from this experience, right? Again, like having Reggie Watts and a host of other comedians from at JashFest that were just cycling through and doing those demos, VIPs, it was very interesting. So yeah, it's been stellar to kind of really get an interesting view of what it takes to get a VIP in VR and what the process is like, even before they get in VR, like logistically, explaining that to their entourage and their PR people. explaining to them, hey, this is what's going on, this is what the experience is like, and getting that feedback after the fact has been really interesting. Also looking at ways so we can get more people in there, because, hey, you get someone like Reggie Watts or Sarah Silverman, or you get one of these really notable, famous people in VR, there are probably thousands of people that want to come and check it out, right? And so at that point, we're looking at, hey, how do we make sure all of these people have access to this person if they're performing or engaging with the audience? So that becomes a nice, interesting problem to have for the future as well.
[00:22:22.923] Kent Bye: So because you're launching cross-platform, you have Gear VR with no hand-tracking, you have the Oculus Rift, which is primarily from a game controller interface, and then you have the HTC Vive, which is primarily room-scale with hand-tracking. And so, from your experience of going through and embodying an avatar within AltSpace, You have an experience of being able to taste what it feels like to be and the limitations and strengths of each of those platforms. So what have you found in terms of how that changes the social interactions, whether you're in a Gear VR, Oculus Rift, or HTC Vive?
[00:22:57.112] Bruce Wooden: That is very interesting. So I know me personally, if I'm in a gear, I feel limited because there's just, you know, I only have my head and haven't spent a lot of my time in Vive. Even in CV1 with Elite Motion on the front, it becomes, you know, I'm missing my hands or missing my ability to kind of emote, right? And that becomes an issue. But I think in general, how it's played out in alt space is that people gather around the person with the highest fidelity tech. where we have all these Gear VR users that are coming in that have no exposure to the, I mean, they got their Gear VR free with their S7, they have no idea what an HTC Vive is. So they're literally, I mean, I've heard this dozens of times now, a person looking at another person is like, what is that floating in front of you? Or those are like, these are my controllers, like, wait a minute, what do you got? And it becomes a situation where everyone's gathering around and being like, oh man, what is that? What do you mean you're using something, you don't have a Gear VR? Or, oh my gosh, you have hands. How do you do that? How do you got hands? They look so real. So all these conversations that are happening where people kind of gather around those people that have the high-end equipment and grill them on what their experience is like or end up a lot of sharing of information and VR education that ends up happening through the community. At this point, that's kind of what's happening. We'll see how it evolves in the future as the community at large is more educated. Is it going to really inspire those Gear VR folks to spring for more technology to upgrade to a Vive or CV1? Is it going to cause interesting social issues or inequalities? But right now, it's generating a lot of joy and questions at this point.
[00:24:35.698] Kent Bye: Yeah, this is a question that I've asked you last year and other times and my prediction was that there would be a power differential and that people who have that higher level interaction would, you know, have more power socially, more social capital because they have the ability to express themselves more. So, it is an interesting kind of peek into the future of the digital divide that really is explored within Ready Player One as well, like people having different levels of haptic suits and So I think it's just something to keep in mind that there's a power that comes with people who have resources and the ability and the means to be able to get these really high fidelity and that, you know, just thinking about how do you work around that or how do you address that in a way that you don't have these people who have an experience of feeling like they're not equal and don't have an equal voice because of that.
[00:25:20.181] Bruce Wooden: Absolutely, that's definitely something we keep in mind. I think the approach has been from a feature level, where we make sure as a platform, AltspaceVR is not leaving out the Gear VR user, right? And on the flip side of it, I think it's more of we're almost catering to the Gear VR user in a lot of ways because I think I'm looking at it like the Gear VR users, because of the nature of their technology that they're using, are kind of like the consumers in Altspace VR, and the people with the high-fidelity equipment, the high-end equipment, are almost like the creators. So it becomes this kind of relationship between, hey, there's these things in Altspace VR that everyone can do, but the people that are going to be planning events and in VR for hours are probably going to be people with Vives and CV1s and DK2s, right? So those are the people that are kind of leading the events, or those people that are planning things and putting on things, and all the happy Gear VR masses come in like, yeah, we're having a good time, right? So it becomes a value thing where all those, even though these Gear VR users are using mobile tech and it's less features maybe available to them from a technology standpoint, they're really valued as this is how my VR party becomes bumpin', because there's a lot more people that have Gear VRs than CV1s and Vives right now. So if I want my VR event to be a lively situation, I need those Gear VR people to be there and be comfortable and be happy, right? So, so far we've, from a feature standpoint, tried to make sure we're always inclusive and always making sure that, you know, if there's something that you can do in alt space that Gear VR can participate. I think we've done a pretty good job so far and from what the feedback we're getting, so it's good.
[00:26:54.577] Kent Bye: So two years ago I came to the first Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference, May 19th, 2014. We had an interview there, and then the next year we checked in. I think we've had maybe one or two other interviews as well. So we have like this little mile marker as this evolution of VR. And you know, you were actually one of the videos that I watched from the very beginning before I was kind of researching VR and it was like this top 20 list and Titans of Space was like number five of the best experiences and I just saw that when I saw that that's when I was like oh wow that's really interesting that all these gamers are choosing something it's kind of educational non-entertainment type of experience as the one of the top ones and that was one of the things that really got me into it but watching some of your early videos was sort of my pathway into VR before I even bought the Rift. But for you, you've been in this from the very beginning, since the Kickstarter, and so now that the Rift has launched, what is the story that you tell about this moment in time?
[00:27:50.365] Bruce Wooden: Man, I think I kind of reflect and look back and it's like, wow, everything has happened. I guess it's felt fast because the landscape has changed so much, even month to month. It seems like the whole landscape of the industry shifts in a major way, which has been very interesting. And it's so cool that consumer VR is actually now beginning, and I think initially maybe we even thought it was going to happen even faster. That we thought even it was going to be this very, it was going to happen faster, but very much more limited. Like it's going to be this gaming space thing that's going to be alright, you know, right after the Kickstarter. We're like, alright, next year we're going to have this thing, you know. And that has been interesting to see how it's been drawn out and magnified, and to see all this investment and growth, not only in the gaming space, but in film, in entertainment production, in AEC, the architecture engineering construction field, in medical, and see VR become this really huge thing that's been very, very exciting. I think we've been looking forward to this moment for such a long time to be like, oh man, there's consumer units coming and people are getting actual professional consumer polished VR units at their doors. But it's become so much more than I think we even expected at each time. And also some of the technology has happened faster than we even expected, like you know, what the Gear VR is capable of now. I thought, you know, it was going to be something that was going to be years down the line. Then even some of the things that are behind closed doors that are in beta right now, it's like, man, we thought that was going to be years down the line. This is stuff that's right around the corner. So that's really exciting.
[00:29:28.769] Kent Bye: And finally, what do you see is kind of the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what it might be able to enable Yeah, I think it was a talk earlier.
[00:29:37.973] Bruce Wooden: I can't remember which I put it really interestingly or saying that you know dreams are kind of our proof of VR I think this has been laying that actually said this but it's like I You know, dreams are proof that our brains can generate other realities, three-dimensional space, as it were, that our brain could be convinced that we are somewhere else doing something else, right? And I wonder if we'll just keep on going until we reach that threshold where we're able to, at this point, fool the sense of vision and the sense of hearing, for the most part, with the technology we have right now, and that we'll just keep on going until we can fool more and more of the human senses until we're able to generate a reality that's indistinguishable. I think that's definitely, now that we have this milestone and now that VR looks like it's in this position to be this billion dollar industry and to keep growing, that this is the natural hard problem that people want to solve, right? even in the gaming space where you have these graphics cards companies are like okay we're able to generate these video cards I can do 60 frames a second 1080p or 4k what's the next step and then VR provides this huge challenge where it's now it's seven times the fidelity that you need it's stereo and like the the amount of pixels you're pushing, the latency that needs to be so low becomes this huge, interesting, and compelling problem for engineers to solve, right? So, yeah, I think we keep going until we're able to tap into dreamland.
[00:31:12.302] Kent Bye: Anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say?
[00:31:14.890] Bruce Wooden: Man, I just, hey, I want to thank you, Ken, for being such a great voice and advocate for VR, for diving deep into these issues. They just not set up, but you are definitely appreciated. So it's happy to talk to you once again, and yeah, see you in VR, outside of VR, all over the place, and that'll be awesome.
[00:31:33.218] Kent Bye: Okay. Thanks a lot, Bruce. All right. Thank you. So that was Bruce Wooden, also known as Somatic Bruce within the VR community. And he is the head of developer and community relations at AltspaceVR, as well as the co-founder of the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Meetup and Conference. And so there's a couple of interesting takeaways from this interview is that, first of all, I think it's really amazing that AltspaceVR has been able to create a cross-platform social VR space. And so it's allowing these gear VR users who have never really had any interaction with anybody who's doing anything in VR other than through their mobile phone and through virtual reality. And so It's really interesting to start to hear that people are in Altspace all the time, 24-7, given that they're using a mobile Gear VR headset. Now, because there aren't as many Vives as well as Oculus Rifts, there's way more Gear VRs. I think it'll be interesting to see over time whether or not Altspace VR continues to specifically cater to the lowest common denominator of the Gear VR, but it's allowing them to really have these really big events that have this full spectrum of diversity within the VR community. But the downside is that there are different various issues of power and privilege and access when you have people who have higher levels of fidelity of interaction and emotional expression. And people who don't have that may start to feel this power differential that becomes intractable, but it's bringing a larger diversity of people within the VR community, which is awesome and great. And I think another thing that really stuck out to me is how Bruce was really talking about doing different activities with people and being able to go to different places within the social VR experience. And so in some experiences like Oculus Social, you're really confined to a fixed space. And having that constraint actually changes the quality of a conversation. And having limited mobility actually forces you to have a little bit more deeper and intimate connection. being able to kind of just teleport and hop in and out makes it a little bit more difficult and ephemeral to be able to have different types of conversations. So that said, I think they're going for this unique mix of social and active presence by doing different activities together. And so it could be that if you want to play Frisbee golf or air hockey and kind of hang out with somebody, then all space PR might be a great opportunity. And if you wanted to have more intimate connections. And maybe there'll be more specific applications or rooms or contexts that emerge that are more focused towards having different levels of fidelity of communication within social VR. And one final thought is that it seems like these comedy routines were something that actually worked really super well within VR. And so since this interview, Altspace actually announced that they're doing a whole huge event with Reggie Watts that is happening on May 26th. 2016 that's a Thursday and it's happening in virtual reality and all space VR were from 8 p.m. To 9 p.m. Pacific time Reggie Watts is going to come into alt space and do a whole performance and so it'll be interesting to see what kind of things they do to be able to support really what I think is going to be one of the biggest VR events that we've had so far so I Be sure to mark your calendars. I think it's going to be a historic event to go check out Reggie Watts at AllSpaceVR on May 26, 2016 from 8 to 9. And if you haven't heard the interview that I did with Reggie Watts at Sundance in episode 285, then go back and have a listen. You know, he's got a lot of really interesting ideas and thoughts, and he's actually a huge VR geek. So check that out. And I'm super excited about his performance that's coming up. So with that, if you do enjoy the Voices of VR podcast, then please tell your friends, spread the word, leave some reviews on iTunes, and consider becoming a contributor to my Patreon at patreon.com slash Voices of VR.
