An Update on the Social VR Platform NeosVR and the Neos Discord Server

I wanted to share with you some news I recently received about the social VR platform NeosVR, which I have written about often in the past on this blog (here’s a link to all the previous blog posts, plus this one).

On September 21st, 2023 Veer, a member of the developer team, posted the following message to the NeosVR Discord server:

Hello everyone.

For many months, the Neos Development Team has been engaged in negotiations with Mr. Karel Hulec, attempting to resolve the conflict that has been at the center of the current development freeze. Unfortunately, today we are here to announce that the negotiations have failed to produce an agreement satisfactory to both parties.

Mr. Karel Hulec has recently listed on the Neos Wiki several members of the Development Team as contributors to a new project titled the “Neos Foundation”. None of the listed team members were contacted at any point concerning the listing of their names on the Neos Wikis, nor have any of them agreed to work with Mr. Karel Hulec in the Neos Foundation or any other project.

Following the negotiations, on April 24th, 2023, and due to increasing difficulties in establishing the trust necessary to continue his partnership with Mr. Karel Hulec, Frooxius resigned from his position at Solirax LTD. We no longer see a path to successful reconciliation, so the remaining Development Team, including the leads of the moderation and quality control teams, the content team, and the support team, are now officially resigning from our roles as part of this community.

We understand this has been a period of intense frustration for some members of the community, as the lack of updates and communication from the Development Team led to uncertainty about the future of your projects and Neos as a platform. We apologize for our silence, it was due to legal advice we had received, and our attempt to keep the ongoing conflict resolution as professional as possible. Unfortunately, an understanding could not be found that would allow us to continue to work with the Neos community. The disagreements we had with Mr. Karel Hulec were too far-reaching and too significant to allow for a compromise. His conduct and lack of professionalism soured opportunities to resolve our differences. We hope you will continue to make wonderful projects in the future, wherever those future efforts lie.

We understand you may have many questions for the Development Team, but as we are removing ourselves from our positions within the Neos community, we will be limiting our presence on this Discord server going forward. Any questions for individuals formerly on the team will need to be sent through direct messages or other personal channels.

On October 7th, 2023, Veer posted:

Hey everyone, as there is no longer moderation administration present in this unofficial discord, we’ll be locking down the channels from further communication. This is to prevent the server from becoming unsafe to users, any projects or brands, and other entities due to unmoderated discourse.

I take this to mean that the NeosVR Discord is now officially closed, and indeed, no more messages can be posted in any of the channels. (I hope that this Discord remains, if for no other reason than historical purposes.)

This marks the end of a decade-long era, and the conclusion of a long period of uncertainty as to the future of the project. Many people might not realize that the roots of NeosVR date as far back to 2014, with a project named World of Comenius (you can learn more here, in part one of what was originally intended to be a multi-part series of blogposts about the history of NeosVR, which unfortunately I never got around to completing due to my full-time paying job as an academic librarian).

I wish all involved with NeosVR success in their future endeavours!

I leave you with a 20-minute YouTube video by VR pundit ThrillSeeker, done last year, which goes into some of the details of what went wrong with NeosVR:

NEW! The RyanSchultz.com Blog Joins the Fediverse

The various platforms of the fediverse, as well as other federated networks, visualised as a tree (image by Per Axbom, source)

Today, I am happy to announce that my blog has finally joined the fediverse! I have installed a brand-new ActivityPub plug-in that was just made available today for hosted, WordPress.com blogs like this one (it’s been available for self-hosted, WordPress.org blogs for a while now).

I’m going to let the developer, Matthias Pfefferle, do the explaining (here’s his full post):

Exciting times are here for all WordPress.com users! The revolutionary ActivityPub feature is now available across all WordPress.com plans, unlocking a world of engagement and interaction for your blog. Your blogs can now be part of the rapidly expanding fediverse, which enables you to connect with a broader audience and attract more followers.

Let’s dive into what this means for all WordPress.com blogs.

The fediverse consists of federated platforms like Mastodon, which are networks of independent websites or servers that can communicate with each other while still operating individually. It’s much like email; you can send emails to users with accounts on different services (like Gmail, Yahoo, etc.), yet all of them can interact seamlessly. Similarly, federated platforms enable users to follow, share, and interact with content across different services in a unified network.

ActivityPub is a WordPress plugin that facilitates seamless integration between your blog and a host of federated platforms, including Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica, and more [see the diagram at the top of this blogpost]. This plugin empowers your readers to follow your blog posts on these platforms. 

In addition, replies to your posts from these platforms are automatically turned into comments on your WordPress blog, creating a more interactive and dynamic conversation around your content. Synchronicity for the win!

So, if you (like me) are on Mastodon, you can now choose to follow my blog in exactly the same way that you would follow any other Mastodon user! My blog’s username is:

@ryanschultz@ryanschultz.com

And the URL to my blog’s profile is:

https://ryanschultz.com/@ryanschultz

Matthias goes on to say:

Your WordPress blog can now become a profile for the fediverse. This means your readers can follow you and receive all the latest posts from your blog directly on their preferred platform. More so, they can engage in enriching conversations by replying to your posts, with their replies reflecting as comments on your blog post, creating a synchronized and interactive experience.

Now, this is all very new to me, so I’m probably still going to have to work out a few kinks in the system, but I’m actually pretty excited! For now, I have decided to keep the older WordPress plugin that I was using to automatically post my blogposts to my personal Mastodon account, which is:

@ryanschultz@mastodon.social

or, if you prefer the URL to my personal profile:

https://mastodon.social/@ryanschultz

You may notice that I have also upgraded my social media icons in the left-hand menu of the RyanSchultz.com blog (under the option to subscribe via email to my blog), adding a much better-looking Mastodon icon, which links directly to my personal Mastodon profile above. I still have to figure out the best way to integrate what are now two Mastodon profiles—one for my personal account, and one for my blog! For the moment, I will continue with both.

This wonderful, whimsical image is by DoodlebrinksArt, and you can purchase it here.

The Storyteller is Coming: Join Us for a Week of Events in Sinespace, October 2nd to 8th, 2023!

The Storyteller festival kicks off with Hakawati is the Storyteller on Monday, October 2nd

Mimi Marie, the tireless event organizer in the virtual world of Sinespace, pinged me to tell me about an exciting week of events taking place this coming week, from October 2nd to 8th, 2023. Here are the details from the official Sinespace blog:

Magic, Stories & Music. Carpet Rides & Genies. October 2nd – 8th

Stories: timeless knowledge-sharing tools from the caveman’s “How to Survive 101” to today’s “Culture for Dummies.” They kept early humans alive, shared values, and even sparked campfire karaoke. Today, they’re our wisdom-filled time capsules connecting past and present, shaping our history and our future. Have you talked to a friend today and told them something you did yesterday that amused you? Congratulations – that is the way we use storytelling every single day of our lives regardless of language, culture and location – we all do it – we all story-tell in our own way. 

So, if you ever doubted the power of storytelling, remember: it’s the original social network! October 2nd to 8th will be storytelling week and you are invited to join community events that celebrate authors, books, movies, or game stories.  You may even be invited to participate in story creation or share your own story if you feel inspired.

All times are in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time, also known as Greenwich Mean Time, or the time in London, England); use this converter to convert UTC times to Pacific Standard Time/PST, and this converter to convert UTC times to EST. The special story events are marked *STORY EVENT* below.

Monday, October 2nd, 2023

4 – 6pm – Ziggies with Jay and Les

10:30pm – 1am – Night Stories at Hakawati *STORY EVENT* Magic & Stories. Tunes With DJ Unruly Blues. Carpet Rides & Genies. Random Gifts. Join us at Hakawati, where magic and captivating tales await. DJ Unruly Blues will play his enchanting tunes, while the evening promises carpet rides, genies, and delightful surprises for all.

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023

10pm – Midnight  – The Sounds of Story With Ghaelen *STORY EVENT* Music, Dance, Chat and a Story Circle – Join us for “The Sounds of Story With Ghaelen,” a captivating blend of music, dance, chat, and a heartwarming story circle. Ghaelen’s music sets the stage for an enchanting event, and in the story circle, people from all walks of life share tales, personal narratives, and folklore, creating a vibrant tapestry of human experiences. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to be swept away by melodies and stories, celebrating the magic of connection and storytelling.

Midnight – 1am – Unruly Blues at Ice

Wednesday, October 4th, 2023

2 – 4pm – Buzzz at the Beautiful Region *STORY EVENT* “Island? Fun? Stories? We’ve got plenty!” – immerse yourself in Buzzz at the Beautiful Region, where island fun meets storytelling. Get ready for a dose of random gold and an abundance of captivating tales.

4 – 5pm  – Community Hour at localhost

10.30 – Midnight – Movie Night with Spi at Spirals Fractal region

Thursday, October 5th, 2023

10pm – Midnight UTC – Bingo, Stories & Arabian Nights Trivia at Hakawati. At Hakawati, join us for an entertaining evening of Bingo, stories, and Arabian Nights trivia from 10 PM to midnight UTC. Win exciting gold and silver prizes while enjoying the company of friends and the delightful tunes spun by DJ Mizz, who will also be playing Timeless Tales. 

Midnight – 2am – Unruly Blues at the WC

Friday, October 6th, 2023

9 – 10pm – Embark on a captivating journey to “Treasure Island” narrated by the renowned real-life storyteller, Andy Jennings. *STORY EVENT* His enchanting storytelling prowess will transport you to the heart of adventure and intrigue. Don’t miss this opportunity to be spellbound by Andy’s storytelling magic. Discover more about him at https://www.andythestoryteller.com.

10pm – Midnight – Ziggies 

Midnight – 2am – Ambient Lounge Bingo

Saturday, October 7th, 2023

2 – 4am UTC – Hoedown with snowtracks.

10pm – Midnight UTC – 381 Club with Kat

Midnight – 2am UTC – Ziggies

Sunday, October 8th, 2023

10pm – Midnight UTC – 381 Club with Kat

Midnight – 1am UTC – Les in the WC

Monday 1 – 3 a.m. UTC – UnoSi & Arabian Nights Trivia at Hakawati *STORY EVENT* Join us at Hakawati for UnoSi and Arabian Nights Trivia. Win dazzling gold and silver prizes, enjoy a great time with your friends, and groove to DJ Mizz’s tunes.

Mimi tells me, “the event hosts are Ghaelen D’Lareh, Mizz and Mimi. Also a brand new feature. A magic carpet ride!”

She adds, “Sinespace is on a roll! if you ever get a free moment log into Sinespace and visit the region called Fireside Chat. Josh and others have created reactors [interactive elements] that are so cool!”

I am planning to attend as many of the Storytelling week events as possible, unless I have schedule conflicts with my full-time paying job as an academic librarian. Hope to see you there! For more information on Sinespace and to download a client, please visit their website.

Meta Connect 2023: The Post-Keynote Conversation Between Michael Abrash and Andrew “Boz” Bosworth

Andrew Bosworth and Michael Abrash

At yesterday’s Meta Connect 2023 event, after Mark Zuckerberg and a parade of Meta employees extolling the wonders of Meta products and services, there was a post-keynote, a conversation between Michael Abrash (the Chief Scientist of Meta’s Reality Labs) and Andrew “Boz” Bosworth (Meta’s CTO and Head of Reality Labs). I hadn’t had a chance to watch this yesterday because I was so busy, but I did have some time today to watch. Here are my notes.

First off, I was pissed off that the only way I could watch this conversation was via Facebook. This is so typical of the gatekeeping that Meta engages in: forcing you to connect to a Facebook website, where you aren’t given the option of disabling any cookies that are set. At least I was able to use Firefox browser’s Facebook Container plug-in to mitigate things somewhat, but yes, I was irritated. Believe me, if I could have found this conversation on YouTube or elsewhere, I would have watched it there!

To give another example, Meta has the gall to say that they’re embracing “open source”, yet they pull stunts like making several of their newly-announced games for the Meta Quest 2 and 3 exclusive to the Quest ecosystem, and unavailable to, say, Steam players. Not cool. But I disgress; let’s get back to the topic at hand: the conversation between Boz and Michael.

Michael Abrash talked about codec avatars and how they’re not quite yet at the place where your brain is fooled that you are looking at a real person (in the same way that, perhaps, a well-designed virtual space feels “real” and immersive to your brain, and not just an image you are looking at, something many of us have experienced). Here’s a recent example to give you a sense of just how quickly the technology is evolving (this is, to my knowledge, at a research stage only, and not yet commercially available):

Michael considers codec avatars to be something that will help the concept of the metaverse reach its full potential: a way to put people together in a virtual space that feels fully real.

When Boz asked Michael to reflect on what he’s working on that’s most inspiring to him, he replied with a beauty-pageant-contestant answer that everything they’ve been working on is important. Michael then replies:

If I had to pick one thing, I would say that the personalized, contextualized, ultra-low-friction, Ai interface is the thing that I find most exciting, and the reason is…the way that humans interact with the digital world has only changed once ever, and that really was Doug Engelbart, Xerox PARC, the Mac, and since then, we’ve been living in that world. And as we move into this world of mixing the real and virtual freely, we need a new way of interacting. And so I feel that that has to be this contextualized AI approach, and getting that to happen is the thing that I find most exciting. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the way that everybody lives.

Meta is playing a long game here; betting that the research work that they are doing now will lead to their dominating the virtual reality/augmented reality/mixed reality/extended reality marketplace, and it’s clear that they do see their AI work as being a key part of that. How that will play out remains to be seen, but it is fascinating to see two people talk about this in a public form (even if it is on Facebook!).

Let’s just hope and pray that this “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the way that everybody lives” does not become some corporate-run, surveillance-capitalism dystopia!

Following this was segment called the “Developer State of the Union,” a promised deeper dive into tools, programs and features for Meta ecosystem developers. Funny how “ecosystem” sounds so much friendlier than “walled garden.” 😉

But I am going to pause my cranky snark, hit publish on this blogpost, and call it a day.