Voices of VR Podcast, an insatiably curious, XR oral historian, aspiring philosopher. Patreon patreon.com/voicesofvr bsky.app/profile/kentbye.com

Portland, OR
Kent Bye (Voices of VR) retweeted
One more thing I am working on! Hand Tracking on Steam Frame!!! runs locally, using the headsets front facing tracking cameras for hand tracking! It will be open source, it will take a while to get it better, likely to train custom models, but the proof of concept worked!
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This is a really great rundown of the experience of the Steam Frame from an XR dev perspective who has had it for the past four months. Digs into some aspects of what makes it a unique device, specifically the boundless potential of having an open Linux platform on an XR device
And for my first post on VRDev.Net , I wrote something I have been wanting to write for a while we got lots of Frame reviews recently, but they didnt hit a lot of things Frame can do, so I wrote up some of my experiences with the device! vrdev.net/projects/cadexrs-g…
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Participated in a #BasisLoadTest @BasisVR, an open source, social VR framework got 200+ people & 1630 people + bots into a single instance. Self-hosted instances make it feel like the early days of the Internet & what High Fidelity aspired to do but with VRChat culture to do it.
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Kent Bye (Voices of VR) retweeted
Meet FrameDrop: Your sideloading client for Steam Frame! Built from what I’ve learned over the last 4 months of owning a Steam Frame framedropvr.com (1/4)
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Kent Bye (Voices of VR) retweeted
.@Azadux really nails the existential malaise and sadness many of us feel about the XR space. In the early years (of this particular incarnation) we cut our teeth on building, evangelizing, sharing, making real and accessible, and ushering a spatial/immersive vision we all deeply believed in. And the general public has responded, again and again, in pretty clear ways. It's not about FoV or pixels or price points or - clearly! - ecosystems. It's about a deep, endemic, company-agnostic lack of product market fit; a problem that, at this point, every industry giant has taken a stab in - and failed to crack. Azad is not contending there's no hope (nor am I!) but any discourse on a shiny new product that doesn't acknowledge the staggering failures that have preceded it, and what it appears to be doing (or not!) to give it a fighting chance in light of the rich historical precedence of said failure - is misinformed at best and pure copium at worst.
why i'm sad about vr (and why there's still hope) piped.video/QjWgVKV4WKI
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Kent Bye (Voices of VR) retweeted
why i'm sad about vr (and why there's still hope) piped.video/QjWgVKV4WKI
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I just posted a pretty epic video on "Blending the Elements of Experiential Design. I'll be applying it to my coverage of immersive stories from Venice Immersive 2025 (30+ hours of oral history interviews) and SXSW Immersive 2026 (15+ hours) piped.video/01M5NcOYzx0
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Kent Bye (Voices of VR) retweeted
I finally released the LOD version of VRChat Gaussian splatting that supports 100M scale splats! Compared to v3 it has a huge changelist!
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Kent Bye (Voices of VR) retweeted
Collabora detailed the challenges they had to overcome, with Valve, to build the Linux ARM version of SteamOS on Frame “The primary aim is to keep up-to-date with the package revisions that are being used to develop future versions of the x86_64 SteamOS” collabora.com/news-and-blog/…
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Kent Bye (Voices of VR) retweeted
History IS cyclical. since the earliest days of computing, it’s been artist vs. the hacker. today, it’s experience first vs. freedom first. The tech changes, but the tension remains: curation vs. openness, polish vs. agency, appliance vs. computer.
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Kent Bye (Voices of VR) retweeted
Apple Vision Pro to Live MetaHuman... Phase 1
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Kent Bye (Voices of VR) retweeted
I was fortunate to catch a sneak peek at this and it is excellent ! Everyone in XR should read. Continues to astound me how much value Kent brings to our industry. Support him on patreon! patreon.com/voicesofvr
I wrote a 121-page report on the future of immersive storytelling and interactive art for @DocLab & @weareagog. There's an exciting indie XR distribution network that's emerging. There's also a section on AI Ethics where I share my personal takes on AI. professionals.idfa.nl/storie…
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Kent Bye (Voices of VR) retweeted
📣 This solo developer who currently works at Pixar as a Technical Director is building a VR rhythm game called Sock Puppet Superstar for Quest as an indie project, and over the last week he has been going viral on TikTok! 🤖Features/Tech: - Using Unity, OpenXR, hand tracking, and a custom voice synthesizer built in FMOD - Raise and lower your puppet to control the pitch - Works with hand tracking or controllers - Customize your sock puppet with colors, fabrics, accessories, and voices 📌 Devs can achieve this using the Meta XR Interaction SDK or Unity XR Toolkit (XR Hands) to add full hand support like what’s shown here. 🚀 Share this to give this solo indie dev more visibility! I’ll continue this bi-weekly with more indie devs who deserve the amplification!
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Kent Bye (Voices of VR) retweeted
A perspective as a top creator in Rec Room I joined Rec Room 1.5 years ago to participate in their avatar cosmetics program I made lots of items (2000~) honed my craft, became the number 1 seller on the entire platform, met awesome creatives & talked directly with the team 1/?
Rec Room is shutting down for good on June 1st “We never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business” “With the recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming — we've made the difficult decision to shut things down.”
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Pro-AI engineer reckons with the corrosive nature of LLM-coding leading to brainrot. Now entering Harm Reduction phase of weaning off magical ride of instant gratification addictive psychosis. Will inevitably lead to developing experiential & transformative economy projects
I was a 10x engineer. Now I'm useless.
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UFO-Related #SXSW sessions Keynote w Spielberg 3/13 1p schedule.sxsw.com/events/PP1… Historic Impact of @AgeofDisclosure Doc w @Dan_Farah, @jaystratton, @lesliekean, & Hal Puthoff, 3/13 4p schedule.sxsw.com/2026/event… @danielsheehan45 Podcast, 3/17 4p schedule.sxsw.com/events/PP1… #UFOTwitter
We’re excited to announce a @sxsw panel about The Age of Disclosure. Going to be a great day for disclosure! #AgeofDisclosure #SXSW
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See my long 2017 thread documenting the catalyst of the modern UAP disclosure movement. We’ll see what evidence the government actually has, what they are willing to share, if scientists get any data to peer review & independently validate, & NDAs are lifted for whistleblowers.
THREAD 1/ @tomdelonge's disclosure campaign has had the UFO community buzzing since leaked Wikileaks emails to @johnpodesta confirmed high-level contacts. I watched his @tothestarsinc presentation in October, & the recent articles in the NYT seem to confirm that it's happening.
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See the “The Prospect of Executive Branch Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Secrecy” white paper from @_SolFoundation for the mechanisms of UAP secrecy: thesolfoundation.org/publica… And here is the @ageofdisclosure Q&A that I recorded last year at the world premiere at #SXSW:
Q&A from The Age of Disclosure with @Dan_Farah and a number of participants. The film really ties together the story in a comprehensive way. For hardcore followers of this topic, there isn’t any “new” irrefutable evidence presented, however with 34 former USG officials, then there is a preponderance of evidence about a deeper context of all of the public facing testimony that has happened since the NYT article in 2017. In particular, Jay Stratton was able to provide key context about the behind-the-scenes of the UAP Task Force, Grusch testimony, and Eric Davis and Hal Puthoff also were able to share some new bits of their work with the DIA. Elizondo is the heart that also provides a strong narrative backbone, but the real new stars here some from Rubio and Rounds who provide real context that the language in the UAP Disclosure Act didn’t come out of nowhere. It also brilliantly weaves together lots of archival statements from other officials and former Presidents. The history of UFOlogy is fragmented and there is a lot of lore, and The Age of Disclosure ties it all together with some of the most authoritative and compelling evidence. It is the power of storytelling that brings a real emotional impact to these disparate facts. Also, this film is crossing the chasm from the innovators and early adopters who are credulous about this core UFO lore, and it brings all together within the context of a narrative is very digestible for mainstream audiences beyond the UFO true believers. They identify the behind-the-scenes dynamics shaping this story at the CIA, DoE, Air Force and defense contractors, and Farah says the new administration will be using this film as a part of their efforts. Definitely go check it out!
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