Category: Metaverse (General)

Heated Rivalry is Brokeback Mountain All Over Again (and How Coming Out Applies to Virtual Worlds, Social VR, and Other Forms of the Metaverse)

WARNING: This, my final post for 2025, is a long, meandering, and sometimes painfully personal blogpost. Consider yourself forewarned! 😉

Have you read this 2017 blogpost? Sex and Gender Issues in Virtual Worlds: “The male/female dichotomy was viewed as binary and the technology (literally) codified that concept.”

Top picture: Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar and Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack Twist in the movie Brokeback Mountain. Bottom picture: Hudson Williams as Shane Hollander and Connor Storrie as Ilya Rozanov in the TV series Heated Rivalry (based on the novel of the same name, from the Game Changer series of novels written by Rachel Reid)

According to Google, the movie Brokeback Mountain was released in Canadian theatres on December 23rd, 2005, almost exactly 20 years ago from today, as I write this blogpost:

I did not go into the movie theatre to see Brokeback Mountain until 2006, accompanied by a couple of gay friends. At the time, I was aged 42, and still somewhat new to being an out, gay man—at least, compared to those who came out in their teens and twenties. I went in cracking jokes, but by the end of that movie, I was sobbing in my theatre seat. Brokeback Mountain touched me, moved me, and spoke to me in a way few other movies ever have. (I later bought it in DVD, but I still cannot bear to rewatch it, even twenty years later. At times, I felt as though I was suffocating while watching Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar navigate a clandestine gay relationship in rural Wyoming over the decades from the 1960s to the 1980s.)

You see, I grew up following the dictates and expectations of my family and my church, and I married a woman I knew from my Lutheran church youth group when I was 24 and still a virgin. We lived through a disastrous two-year marriage in Toronto, until we separated. I came home to Winnipeg, landed a job with the University of Manitoba, and continued to suppress my sexuality by throwing myself into my work, until I experienced my first serious job burnout, and landed up in psych ward for treatment of clinical depression.

Afterward, with the help of regular talk therapy with a psychiatrist, I finally faced the truth that I was gay, coming out to myself first, and then coming out to my friends and family in my early thirties. I had had what so many people in my age group experienced—a truly wrenching coming out experience, where I felt that something was wrong with me, that I had something shameful to hide. Watching Brokeback Mountain brought all that back to me, to work through again, perhaps on a deeper level the second time. Great art has that ability to awaken feelings inside of you that you never knew you had. (Brokeback Mountain should have won best picture at the 2006 Oscars, instead of Crash, and you absolutely cannot convince me otherwise.)

Fan Fiction: stories involving popular fictional characters that are written by fans and often posted on the Internet (called also fanfic).

Slash Fiction: is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex (also known as slashfic).

Brokeback Mountain ignited an absolute firestorm of fan fiction and, of course, the characters of Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar were tailor-made for slash fiction writers and readers (ironically, many of whom were straight white women). The slashfic varied in quality from transcendent to abysmal, but the most popular stories (often posted to Livejournal, and running to dozens of chapters, even full-length novels at times) had thousands of passionate readers leaving comments, sparking long discussions.

During 2006 and 2007, before I had ever heard of a virtual world called Second Life, I dove deeply into the Brokeback Mountain fanfic community. While I was tempted to write my own slashfic, I knew that I could not compete against so many amazing, beautiful stories I had read on Livejournal—stories that brought me to both chills and tears at times. Instead, armed with plentiful screen captures of movie stills, and a rudimentary knowledge of PhotoShop, I turned my hand to creating tribute images (sometimes serious, sometimes funny). Below is one example; you can read this 2019 blogpost to see the rest.

Yes, I was obsessed. So, shortly after I first discovered Second Life (in a story I recount here), I found a service in SL that generated a classic system (i.e. non-mesh) avatar skin based on a single selfie, a full front-facing head shot. You can probably guess what happened next, right?…

Yep. I fed the best photos of actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger that I could find on the internet into this SL service to create Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar avatars for role-play purposes! The results were pretty poor compared to modern, fully-mesh Second Life avatars, but more than sufficient for my purposes. Eventually, I decided to delete my Jack and Ennis avatars, once the fanfic fever had passed, and I had taken sufficient amusing pictures, and engaged in some Brokeback Mountain role play with other Second Life users (one memorable highlight was encountering a French-speaking group of Brokeback fans who threw Jack and Ennis the wedding they never could have in the movie!). I am sure that I still have the pictures from that crazy event tucked away somewhere, but I can’t be bothered to dig through all my hard drives to find them and post them here. Just use your imagination; I sure did. 😉

I have often written before on this blog about how Second Life (and other metaverse platforms) tend to be havens for LGBTQIA+ people, particularly for those who have not completely come out of the closet as queer people, for personal safety or for other reasons. This is especially true in an era where trans people’s rights are being attacked in particular. Here are links to a few blog posts I have written in the past:

One of the interesting aspects of Second Life (and indeed, most virtual worlds, even games like Fortnite) is that your world (or game) persona can be completely divorced from who you are in real life. You play under a name that is different from your own, and often you choose a look for your avatar that is utterly different from how you look in real life. In Second Life, most players maintain a strict separation between SL (Second Life) and RL (real life), where the people you play with online never get to know aspects of who you are in reality: where you live, what you look like, what you do for a living, etc.

So “coming out” has multiple meanings in the metaverse. It’s not just about embracing your sexuality and whom you’re attracted to, and whom you fall in love with; it can also be about sharing aspects of your real life with people who only know you virtually, as avatars. Many lasting friendships and relationships have had their unlikely but powerful start in Second Life (or some other virtual world or game), as players slowly get to know each other, first only via words between avatars, then perhaps actually meeting up in person. In fact, there is a whole 12-video YouTube series by Draxtor Despres titled Love Made in Second Life, where Drax profiles couples who first met each other in Second Life, and went on to have real-life relationships!

In fact, I first “met” Drax (Bernhard Drax in real life, who lives in Germany) when he and I were both part of the social VR platform Sansar, and participated in his regular Sunday morning explorations of various worlds built there, along with many other people. But although we have had many conversations, and each know who we are in real life, we’ve never met in person, face-to-face. Sansar was just one of those places where it was not unusual for players to “come out” to each other, and reveal the real person behind the avatar, unlike Second Life, where it is still relatively uncommon.

In fact, I very carefully kept SL and RL separate for most of the first, early years when I played, only gradually beginning to associate certain avatars (like my main one, Vanity Fair), with the real-life Ryan Schultz after starting to write about Second Life on this blog. Is it a risk? Well, yes, of course; coming out always involves some element of risk. But by a certain point, I decided that it didn’t make sense for me, as a metaverse blogger writing under my own name, to disassociate myself from many of the avatars I used to explore (and report on) those same virtual worlds and social VR platforms. In some cases, on some platforms (e.g. Sansar), I even took the same avatar name, Ryan Schultz, if it was available.

And so it was, that my Second Life freebie fashionista friend and partner in crime, whom I only know by their avatar name, Dreamer Pixelmaid, messaged me via Discord and asked me if I had watched Heated Rivalry yet. I had not. (Tonight I am finishing my second rewatch. I am hooked.) Dreamer is one of those people where I actually know little about their real life—and I am okay with that! Dreamer and I keep running into each other at Pride events in Second Life (so I assume they are a aprt of the LGBTQIA+ community as well), so I was not too surprised when they reached out to me about Heated Rivalry.

It turns out that Dreamer and I not only have a shared interest in ferreting out fabulous Second Life freebies and bargains (something we both happen to be very good at!); we also shared an interest in same-sex romance fan fiction! Soon we were exchanging links to YouTube videos, Tumblr posts, and podcast links, all to do with the outsized reaction which a small Canadian TV show about a gay romance in the professional hockey world (actually, not one but two such romances) was causing, both among the gays and the straights. Dreamer shared the following powerful fan-created music video with me, with a new-to-me song that I have been listening to on repeat:

By the way, the song used in this fan-edited video is a remix/cover song made with the assistance of AI, and it is so good that it actually gives me brain/body chills! This is a first for me: an AI-assisted song that I actually like to listen to, over and over again! Because this cover will be hard to find, here’s the link to the original posted to YouTube by the remixer, YZRmusic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I43A6HHF8Vw). Even if you don’t watch the video, go and listen to this cover version, it is AMAZING!!

I cannot help but compare and contrast what is happening now with Heated Rivalry with what happened with Brokeback Mountain 20 years ago. Both were stories about a secret same-sex relationship developing over time in an unlikely and unfriendly place: 1960s Wyoming for BM and contemporary professional hockey for HR.

But what is different is this: the ripples from Brokeback Mountain were isolated to the queer and slash/fanfic communities, and the movie became the punchline to a joke in the rest of the world, and in much of the mainstream media at the time. But I don’t see that happening with Heated Rivalry; if anything, it seems to be getting some attention from the straight community, as well as the LGBTQIA+ folk and the fanfic/slashfic writers. Even straight hockey podcasters are watching the series and commenting on it. The ripples seem to be stronger, and they are going out further.

Another difference is that Brokeback Mountain ultimately ended in heartbreak, whereas Heated Rivalry ends on a much more hopeful note (SPOILER ALERT: even though the two hockey players are still in the closet, at least they are no longer lying to themselves and each other, they have a plan for the future where they can be together, and they have the full support of one player’s parents).

The show, in fact, has been so successful that a second season has already been greenlit by Crave/CTV, based on a second, already-written follow-up novel about the further relationship between these two hockey players. So yay, we are getting more Canadian-funded ice hockey yaoi! 🎉🏳️‍🌈🏒

As usual, it’s taken me a long time to get to the point, so here it is.

When you come down to it, virtual worlds, social VR, and other forms of the metaverse are all about identity and relationships: who you are on the inside, how you present yourself on the outside, and how you reconcile any tension between the two; whom you choose to be friends with and why, whom you choose to love, and why you love them; and how you navigate the network of relationships around you, both virtual and real. Revealing any of these things to another person (either virtual avatar or flesh-and-blood human being powering that avatar), is a form of coming out, where you might risk rejection—but also, risk gaining a deeper connection, possibly lifelong. Life’s too short. Take that chance.

Twenty years ago, Brokeback Mountain reinforced in me the pain and despair of a closeted life and its soul-killing compromises. Tonight, New Year’s Eve, Heated Rivalry teaches me that it is never too late to find deep, meaningful friendships and yes, perhaps even romantic love! It was a message which I needed to hear. I am no longer willing to cut down my life to fit other people’s comfort levels. In fact, it wasn’t until I finished watching the series that I realized that I had even been doing so, and to what extent. (Again, great art makes you realize things about yourself.)

I am going to ask all of you reading these words, my final words to you in 2025, to sit down and watch all six episodes of Heated Rivalry, on whatever television station in your country carries it (Crave here in Canada; HBO Max in the USA, etc.). It’s even more important that you do it if you’re heterosexual, and don’t consider yourself part of the LGBTQIA+ community to which I proudly belong. In particular, episodes 5 and 6 might just be some of the best television ever made, in my opinion (and yes, I am heavily biased!)

If you’re straight, just think of it as a homework assignment. I want it to spark conversations with your friends and family about how the need for love and belonging is universal, regardless of the gender and sexual orientation of the lovers; what it means to be LGBTQIA+ in a still sometimes-unfriendly society; and what it means to navigate that coming-out process, both internal and external.

Have a happy new year! See you in 2026.

Sorry, but you’ll only get the joke if you’ve watched season one of the hit Crave/HBO Max television series Heated Rivalry (if you know, you know).

With many thanks to Dreamer Pixelmaid for introducing me to my new favourite TV show! One more fan-edited music video featuring scenes from Heated Rivalry:

UPDATE Jan. 9th, 2026: Here’s another beautiful fan-edited music video, featuring clips from Heated Rilvary‘s two same-sex romances set to a song from the musical Hamilton:

Editorial: Changing Gears, Letting Go, and Embracing Change

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

NOTICE: Except where explicitly stated in this blogpost, I have not used AI to write this editorial. This is me, Ryan, writing (and yes, I have been using em-dashes long, long before ChatGPT was a thing—and I will continue to do so!). See what I just did there? 😉

While my continuing neck and shoulder pain unfortunately limits the amount of time that I can spend sitting in front of a desktop computer (both at work and at home), I wanted to set aside some of my precious “good neck” time to talk a little bit about this past twelve months, and where I am planning on taking this blog in the future. Because, yes, I do have plans moving forward. (Update: as it turns out, because of my neck and shoulder pain, I had to split up the writing of this post over a couple of days, rather than one hours-long marathon sesssion.)

As many of you know, I took a lengthy hiatus from blogging, starting late last year, up until very recently. Part of the reason was that I was juggling a lot of responsibilities at work, notably being part of a virtual reality lab which was being set up in one of the libraries of the university library system in which I have been working for the past 30-odd years (yes, it’s really been that long; I started in 1992!).

I am happy to report that, although I am no longer involved with that particular project, the virtual reality lab at my university library system has already had a successful soft opening, with a dedicated staff person hired to manage it (not me; as I said, I already have my hands full being a liaison librarian for both the faculty of agricultural and food sciences and the computer science department at my university!). In fact, I have been so busy at work that I haven’t even had time to sit down and use any of the equipment in the new lab, although I have chatted a few times with the new manager. Everything is moving along fine without me.

As part of my responsibilities as agriculture librarian, I had volunteered to give a presentation to an upcoming faculty council meeting about artificial intelligence in general, and generative AI in particular. I have only myself to blame for getting myself into this situation! You see, the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Manitoba still has an active library committee, and at a recent in-person meeting, I was talking about how I have had to add a few slides to the PowerPoint presentation which I give to students about how to use the U of M Libraries, talking about AI. One thing led to another, and lo and behold, yesterday afternoon, I gave a half-hour presentation on artificial intelligence in general, and generative AI in particular, to a room full of agriculture and food science professors!

I spent a significant chunk of my summer reading through books and websites, working through online courses, and essentially getting myself up to speed (it helps that this librarian has an undergraduate degree in computer science!). And I had the good fortune to be able to give a version of my presentation to a class of graduate student advisors, and to a class of graduate students, as part of a series of special courses targeted to U of M grad students, before yesterday afternoon’s talk. Both times it was well received, as it was yesterday. (I have already shared my slides and notes with my fellow librarians and agriculture professors, and I might decide to also share a version of them with you, my faithful blog readers, as I have done in the past with presentations about virtual reality in higher education, and the virtual world of Second Life. But I think I will make that a separate blogpost, perhaps my next one.)

At this point, I will draw your attention to the tagline of my blog in the upper left-hand corner of the screen if you are looking at this page on a desktop computer. You might notice that it has changed.

It used to read, pretty much since I began this blog in 2017:

News and Views on Social VR, Virtual Worlds, and the Metaverse

As of yesterday, it now says:

News and Views on Social VR, Virtual Worlds, and the Metaverse, plus Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI’s Impact on the Metaverse

Now, that’s rather a mouthful (and yes, I might need to edit it a bit), but essentially, it’s all a part of the “embracing change” which I mentioned in the title of this blogpost.

As a matter of fact, I was having a bit of a brain fart coming up with a suitable title, so to assist me with the wording of the title of this blog post (and only that), I pulled up Anthropic’s generative AI tool, Claude, for a little chat, asking it:

I need a way of saying “to add something new” to contrast with the opposite idea of “letting go of something.” What are some ways that I could say that?

And here are screen captures of the resulting conversation:

Now, could I have done this without generative AI? Absolutely; thesaurus websites have been around since the earliest days of the World Wide Web (trust me, I was around then!). But I doubt I could have actually had a back-and-forth conversation with a tool that presented the information in such a helpful, tabular way, prior to November 2022, when the first public version of ChapGPT was unleashed upon an unsuspecting public. I could pose my question in dozens of different ways, asking for countless ways of expressing the concept of “letting go of something,” and the Claude GenAI (generative AI) tool never gets bored or impatient or irritated with me.

Simply put, I will now be writing about artificial intelligence in general, and the new wave of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude in particular, as part of the RyanSchultz.com blog. In particular, I will talk about how these fast-developing and evolving tools will inevitably impact the metaverse.

I will give two quick examples of how GenAI is already impacting the metaverse. First, in my recent write-up of virtual sessions I attended as part of the Berlin-based Immersive X metaverse conference i attended a couple of weeks ago, there was a proof-of-concept working demonstration of a generative-AI-driven virtual diabetes counselor in a virtual world platform called Foretell Reality.

Second, were you aware that there is already a website called MeshZEUS, which will create a three-dimensional object for you from a text description, in a format ready to be uploaded to Second Life and sold on the SL Marketplace or an in-world store?

The MeshZEUS website

Yes, that’s right! You may choose, if you wish, to no longer work your way up the rather steep learning curve of Blender or Maya or 3Ds Max to painstakingly create an object from scratch; instead, all you have to do is describe your desired 3D object in enough detail, and hey presto, it gets delivered to you! (Provided you buy enough credits, and have enough patience to go through multiple iterations of text prompting, that is. But we’ll also leave that discussion, plus the whole enchilada of issues that using a GenAI tool like this raises, for another day, shall we? Trust, there’s lots to talk about.)

It’s now pretty obvious to me that the current hype cycle of artificial intelligence, which was ignited by startling new leaps forward in the capabilities of AI tools since 2022, is going to have an impact on the metaverse. And, unlike the previous short-lived hype cycle of the metaverse itself (which, hello, I was around for—beginning, middle, and end!— documented on this very blog), this new, AI-powered hype cycle might actually have a more direct impact on society than the still-somewhat-nebulous concept of the metaverse, sooner than any of us might have expected. Buckle up, folks, I predict that things are about to get deeply, deeply weird.

So, I have talked about changing gears for the RyanSchultz.com blog, returning to blogging, and also about embracing change, i.e., adding the topic of AI and GenAI to the subjects I will write about. Now I come to the part where I talk about letting something go.

Unfortunately, because of my neck and shoulder pain, I regret that I must conserve the time that I can spend productively sitting in front of a desktop PC. Obviously, first priority goes to the paying job, which keeps the lights on, the internet bill paid, and puts food in my belly and gas in my car. Second priority will likely be writing this blog, now that I have decided to keep blogging. Between these two, that probably is the limit of what I can reasonably accomplish.

What I am choosing to let go of is writing aboutt the virtual world of Second Life on this blog (in particular, reporting on fashionista freebies and bargains). I have made a similar announcement on Primfeed, which over the past year is where I have usually posted my freebie fashionista finds rather than on my blog. Because my Primfeed account is deliberately set to private (i.e., you need to have a Second Life account to join Primfeed, follow me, and read what I post there), I have done a screen capture of that particular post, plus a transcription:

Every December, I try to juggle four tasks (not very successfully, mind you):

1, Drag my small army of alts through a curated selection of Advent and 12 Days of Christmas calendars to vacuum up some fabulous gifts, every day from December 1st to December 25th;

2. Do the same thing at the annual Holiday Shop and Hop event;

3. Pick up free heads and skins during the LeLutka December event; and

4. Navigate real-life Christmas events, shopping, and other obligations. (My family, God bless them, finds #1-3 above to be very amusing, and last Christmas, they all chipped in to give me a cash-filled envelope marked “L$”, since they couldn’t actually buy me a gift card to buy Linden dollars. (Second Life, you need to look into this! There’s an untapped market here.)

I’m sure some of you here on Primfeed can relate to this! Often I ask myself: why am I doing this? But I still do get a great deal of personal satisfaction and fulfillment from designing a complete avatar look from head to toe, looking great while doing it as inexpensively as possible. And in order to do that, you need to acquire the knowledge and expertise to sniff out freebies and bargains (which I have often shared with you, either here on Primfeed or via my blog). I’ve loved doing it for years!

But, as I said, something has to give. I can no longer spend extended hours sitting in front of a desktop PC without significant, and sometimes severe, neck and shoulder pain. Therefore, in addition to NOT doing as much of numbers 1 through 3 as in previous years, I have made the difficult decision to cut back on telling all of you about the great deals I find. It’s not a decision I take lightly, but I do need to listen to my body, and my body is telling me to rest. And I need to pay attention.

So if you don’t see me post as often here, that’s why. ❤️ I’m just trying to rebalance my life a little better, that’s all. I’ll still be around, reading, scrolling, liking posts, following people and stores, but not posting so much. Thanks for understanding.

Don’t get me wrong; I am not leaving Second Life! In fact, I need SL as a sort of counter-balance to deal with all the batshit-craziness happening in my real life. Second Life is my temporary escape from the hamster-wheel of worry, anxiety, and despair inside my head, where I can reliably get into a pleasant flow state for an hour or two, and escape from the real world (where I have little to no control over what is happening).

In fact, one of the reasons I love SL so much is that it is such a vast, three-dimensional creative canvas over which I have so much control over what happens, where I choose to go, who I choose to interact with, and even what I look like to others! I still derive an inordinate amount of personal satisfaction from styling a complete avatar look from head to toe, as inexpensively as possible while still looking fabulous, darling! I call it “digital drag” 💅 (and yes, I do have a drag queen alt, whom I have written about numerous times on my blog, and who is about to embark on various antics, drama, and misadventures in a roleplaying region based on the U.S. Deep South). To my friends and acquiantances in Second Life: I am not going anywhere. I’m just not going to write about it here any more, that’s all. (I’m also cutting back on my Primfeed posting, but I’ll still be there, too.)

So, to sum up:

Yes, I am back.

Yes I will be blogging about the metaverse in all its forms and manifestations again, but with the added wrinkle of AI/GenAI and its potential impact.

No, I will no longer be writing about Second Life, although yes, I still will be playing it.

Stick around, folks, this should be both entertaining and educational! As RuPaul herself said:

UPDATED! A New Comparison Chart of 15 Social VR Platforms (Last Update: April 9th, 2024)

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

I have—finally!— had an opportunity to update my Google spreadsheet of social VR platforms, removing those which are no longer around, and adding a few new ones since the last update, which was several years ago. Please note that this spreadsheet is focused solely on metaverse platforms which support virtual reality, i.e. social VR. If a platform is flatscreen access only (e.g. Second Life), it is not included in this spreadsheet.

Please also note that I will no longer be writing about any metaverse platform which incorporates blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and/or Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

If you are associated with any of these social VR platforms, I would appreciate it if you could please check the entries in the following spreadsheet for any omissions or errors. I will eneavour to keep this spreadsheet as up-to-date as I possibly can. Thanks!

Also, you will note that I have a long, long, alphabetical list of potential social VR platforms which I am planning to add to this spreadsheet, located at the very bottom. If you know of any other social VR platforms that should be added to this list, please contact me with any pertinent details (name of platform, company building it, website, etc.).

Thank you for any assistance you can provide!

Comparison Chart of 15 Social VR Platforms © Ryan Schultz, Published to RyanSchultz.com (Google Sheets version)

Please note: any changes made to this spreadsheet are done in real-time, as information comes in; this link will automatically update every five minutes.

Comparison Chart of 15 Social VR Platforms © Ryan Schultz, Published to RyanSchultz.com, Date of Last Update 9 April 2024 (PDF version)

Comparison-Chart-of-15-Social-VR-Platforms-Last-Update-9-April-2024-Sheet1Download

Please note: this PDF has to be generated by hand, and I will only do it once per day, near the end of the day, if there have been any changes made that day, Therefore, you should consider the Google spreadsheet link to be the most up-to-date content!

UPDATE April 17th, 2024: Upon request, I have slightly updated the Google Sheets spreadsheet so that the column header text now always displays at the top of your screen, even when you scroll down! This means you don’t have to keep scrolling up and down to figure out what a spreadsheet cell value refers to.

Thank you to Mat of the XR Live Discord server for the suggestion, and the explanation of how to set it up! I learned something new today. 🙂

X-HOUR Virtual Reality Showcase Series Taking Place in Austin, Texas and Online During SXSW 2024, March 7th to 11th

VenusSX, one of the participants, sent me a press release about this series showcasing the state of the art in VR, taking place on the sidelines of the actual SXSW 2024 conference taking place in Austin, Texas this week and weekend (I will assume that this series is not part of the official SXSW event). According to the press release:

The organizers of the VR conference IMMERSIVE X, together with Innovation Bridge Europe, are presenting a five-part series of events called “X-HOUR” from March 7th to 11th on the sidelines of SXSW 2024 in Austin, Texas. The series will showcase outstanding and award-winning VR projects from around the world. The hour-long sessions can be experienced Onsite in Austin, in Virtual Reality and via Livestream. Registration is available at https://immersive-x.de/x-hour.

While the Metaverse is often presented as a vision of the distant future, its many possibilities can be experienced even today. This is possible thanks to a creative scene of pioneers around the world who have set out to explore this space and bring it to life with groundbreaking ideas and bold initiatives. The lineup includes the award-winning experiences “Dragon Magic: Freedom Giants” by Juliana Loh and Mada de Leeuw and “Nymphs” by ShuShuVR and Niko Lang, as well as a live DJ set by XR pioneer Celeste Lear, will demonstrate how Virtual Reality enables the expression of cultural creativity. The session “VR for Social Change” will showcase the Africa VR Campus and Center to demonstrate how immersive technologies can promote social empowerment.

IMMERSIVE X and Innovation Bridge Europe have teamed up to present some of the most cutting-edge projects at this year’s tech festival in Austin. The selection of presenters is designed to give a vivid sense of the disruptive energy that Virtual Reality has in store for social and cultural spheres. “Immersive technologies will fundamentally change the way we experience content and interact with each other in the future”, says Thomas Zorbach, managing director of vm-people and initiator of IMMERSIVE X. ”As we enter the age of digital relationships, the Metaverse offers new modes of creative expression and interactivity, and we are revealing the empowerment of somatic experiential learning in a virtual environment.”, adds VenusSX, Virtual Sensory Designer and presenter of the X-Hour session “Unlock Our Potential: PlayroomSX and the VR Somatic Experience”.

There are three different ways to attend the X-HOUR sessions:

  1. Onsite via a rental VR headset in the following location: Innovation Bridge Europe House at the Thompson Hotel, 4th floor rooftop, 506 San Jacinto Blvd, Austin, TX 78701, USA.
  2. Virtual Reality via your own VR headset: If you have your own VR glasses, such as Quest 2, 3 & Pro, Pico Neo 2, or HTC Vive Focus, you can join our sessions from a remote location.
  3. Livestream via YouTube: If you are not in Austin and do not have a VR headset, you can watch the X-HOUR sessions via livestream. Location: https://www.youtube.com/@vmpeople

While the constant capitalization of the word metaverse in this press release makes my right eye twitch, I did sign up for the in-VR sessions, and registration was free. For more details on this series, and to register yourself, please see the X-HOUR website.