This week I’ve been in San Francisco for the first annual Virtual Reality Developers Conference (VRDC) a new event from the people behind GDC. I’m here exploring how VR developers and studios can leverage the technology we’ve built at Fashion Metric to generate realistic avatars in virtual reality. The experience has been amazing and the community more inspiring than I could have ever imagined.
The photo above is from a party hosted by Twitter and Upload Collective last night, it was pretty amazing – think periscope VR. While everything is still fresh in my mind I thought I’d share some reflections on the last couple of days.
The first thing that really hit me this week is the amount of incredible creative talent that is converging in the VR space. From brilliant developers to incredibly talented designers, sound engineers, and storytellers, the combination of people, all with different skills, but all working together is amazing.
Last night I spent about half an hour talking to two sound designers from Sweden (they did the sound for games like Battlefield) and today I had the chance to sit down and talk with Andrew Willans, the Lead Game Designer for EVE Valkyrie, one of the most popular VR titles to date.
Andrew has worked on a slew of games for Ubisoft and now spends his time building a virtual world in space for all of us to play and interact in together with EVE Valkyrie. His talk was one of the most interesting sessions I attended this week, it’s amazing the detail they put into actually making you as a gamer feel like you’re actually having a real battle in space.
Another huge highlight was Morph3D, a company that is defining the term “persistent identity” and allowing you to build truly lifelike avatars in VR. They showed off their latest Avatar-builder which honestly is like something from Minority Report. Couple this with their massive asset store packed with some of the most incredible assets to outfit your avatar to make it truly your own.
Which brings me to my major takeaway, and the one I’ve been hoping to have for a long time. Ever since I read the book Snowcrash I’ve been hoping to be able to live to see the metaverse. Well, I’m excited to say, the metaverse is here, you can interact in it, meet in it and play in it. The best part is, the people who are making the metaverse a reality are some of the most innovative, creative, and forward-thinking people I’ve ever met.
It’s also an incredible feeling to think that what we’ve built at Fashion Metric will help people truly be themselves in the metaverse. It’s a big deal, and you might not see it yet, but like smartphones, this is no fad, the world is changing and I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of that change.
