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Welcome back to Spatial Beats. Two things we can’t stop talking about: the company formerly known as Facebook and the Metaverse. AI and machine learning are feeling left out as Meta, The Metaverse, Crypto, NFTs, and new play-to-earn NFT games won’t stop dominating the tech news. The hype train just left for the NFT art show in crazytown sur la mer, aka Art Baisel Miami, where jet-setting cognoscenti scope out the next Beeple.
Meta just released new software updates for the Quest 2, just in time for Christmas. Users can now sync smartphones (iPhone X), to create a mixed reality view of the user inside the game. Cross-platform communication with Messenger, multi-user app sharing, cloud backup, and Horizon workrooms were also included. How do you spend ten billion dollars a year? By checking off everything on the product roadmap.
Investors Snap Up Metaverse Real Estate in a Virtual Land Boom. From the NY Times Business section. Real estate in the metaverse is going fast, even though there’s unlimited supply, and no one knows which platforms will survive. Is that a bubble? We’ll soon find out. Metaverse Group has virtual headquarters in a world called Decentraland in a place within it called Crypto Valley. The Toronto virtual real estate division of the real real estate investment trust plans to build a portfolio of properties in Decentraland, Somnium Space, Sandbox and Upland. “It’s inevitable that the metaverse will be the No. 1 social network in the world,” said a virtual real estate investor who has apparently never heard of Second Life. I remember reading that exact quote in 2008. Just saying.
Dreamscape Immersive and Zoe Immersive Partner to Simplify 3D Creation Dreamscape Immersive, which is in location-based entertainment, education and defense contracting, and Zoe Immersive, which is a VR creation tool that enables low skilled users to create VR environments, announced a deal to use Zoe’s tools to enable Dreamscape Learn users to create their own virtual spaces like VR classrooms.
Award Winning Masterpiece Studio Pro Now Available FREE for non-commercial users. Masterpiece Studio Pro will continue to be a subscription service for professionals. The free version has the same feature set which allows users to draw, sculpt, texture, optimize, rig, skin, and animate in VR.
‘MissionX’ Arena-Scale VR Laser Tag Out Now On App Lab. This arena-scale free-roam VR experience that turns any open space into any kind of play space with five virtual laser tag arenas Up to 10 players can compete in spaces as big as 32’x65’.
6 Lessons on the Future of the Metaverse From the Creator of Second Life (Andrew Show/Yahoo)
This Week in XR is now a podcast hosted by Paramount’s Futurist Ted Schilowitz and Charlie Fink, the author of this weekly column. You can find it on podcasting platforms Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube. Watch the latest episode below.
Charlie Fink is an author and futurist focused on spatial computing. See his books here. Spatial Beats contains insights and inputs from Fink’s collaborators including Paramount Pictures futurist Ted Shilowitz.
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