Sanny Yoshikawa が、New World Notesのなかから、毎月おすすめのバーチャルワールドニュースを日本語で紹介します
Sanny Yoshikawa covers the monthly virtual world highlights from New World Notes for virtual Japan.
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- Apple Vision Pro's High Price Is Not A Problem Because It's A COMPUTER, Not A Peripheral — Jeff Yang
- Vision Pro Developer Avi Bar-Zeev On Apple's Spatial Computing / Personas Model Vs. The Metaverse Vs. Metaverse/Avatars Vision
- CONFIRMED: Apple Quietly Promoting Full VR Applications On Vision Pro To Devs, Working Directly With Metaverse Platform Rec Room
- Photos From REN, An Island In Second Life Where The Flora Cycles Monthly To Follow The Seasons
- I Am Vainly Begging The Media With Tears In My Eyes Not To Confuse Apple Vision Pro With The Metaverse The Way You Confused Meta With The Metaverse
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Apple Vision Pro’s High Price is Not a Problem Because It’s a COMPUTER, not a Peripheral — Jeff Yang
Before we close out this week of Apple Vision Pro, here’s a really good point that’s not being covered much (at all?) from my colleague and IFTF research head, Jeff Yang:
Still can’t get over how much people miss the point of Apple Vision Pro. It isn’t a peripheral like Quest. It’s a FULL COMPUTER. You don’t need any other device to use it—though it’s integrated with the Apple ecosystem.
$3500 for a COMPUTER isn’t outrageous.
Apple has built a mobile spatial computer that you could (supposedly) comfortably use for a full work day. To use their own (kind of cringey brand language), this is meant to be MacBook Air Nano — but Pro Max.
None of this would be possible without massive AI advances, Apple’s huge investment in biometrics, screen optimization, sensor integration and custom chips, and yes, its single-minded emphasis on privacy.
These are all things that Meta has not pursued or prioritized, which is why Zuck doesn’t get what Apple is doing.
He’s referring to Zuckerberg’s first thoughts on the Vision Pro sent to Meta employees:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Cheap Whim Chameleon is a Japanese fashion blog by Emily Nuyasaka. You will need Google translate for this one because she does more than post pictures and credits, she tells you about her styling and her life. Her styles are wild and inventive and each post is a compendium of outfits.
Post #119 has fourteen different outfits and not slapdash, tossing on whatever is in a prepackaged outfit, but unique styling that mixes things from many creators.
She also writes about her outfits, giving some background to her thought process. I was drawn by the human disco ball. Right after she styled this she found Dayah Modo on Instagram, real life disco ball human. It must have been fate.
Shopping details for this outfit after the break, plus another Emily look:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Noa Cloud is an extraordinary landscape photographer in Second Life. He also runs an art galley featured in the Destination Guide, his equally extraordinary sim, REN, where the flora are cycled monthly to follow the season’s bloom. I always love it when we get some fauna with the flora as in this “Cloven Forest” picture with a bunny casting a come-hither glance over the shoulder at the other bunny. This was taken at a sim that closed June 1st, alas.
For more picturesque scenes, click here:
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Avi Bar-Zeev led Experience Prototyping for Vision Pro at Apple, where he was most recently a Senior Manager; he just shared some intriguing observations on Apple's Vision Pro reveal:
The word "Metaverse" didn't appear once in Apple's WWDC thus far. 3rd party apps may espouse that next-gen internet vision later. But I'd argue it's much better to start with smaller conversations, consensual, collaborative and co-present.
The word "Avatar" is thankfully going away. It's a cultural misappropriation implying some sort of god-hood for hidden people and throw-away status for the digital skin. "Personas" is much better, partly because it reminds us that these are real people and our interactions matter.
The most important term invoked was "Spatial Computing." The earliest reference I know of is from my former CEO, Robert Jacobson, Ph.D., and friends around 1992 in a company called WorldDesign. I have a slide that suggests we wanted to trademark it but never did. Does anyone have earlier references to update my chart?
Is there a better or more genuinely descriptive term that isn't already polluted with schemes and extrapolations? Yes, it's broad. The universe is spatial. People are spatial. Computing should be spatial too.
It is literally "the fusion of the digital world and the real one."
Is this the term we've been looking for?
This image (above) is from 1992/93. As far as I can tell, Robert Jacobson, Ph.D. (and friends) first used the term "Spatial Computing" in our startup Worldesign (never trademarked). Bob had been at the HIT Lab with Tom Furness prior and I wonder if anyone else had used it there?
Before anyone mints themselves a new "spatial computing expert," or accuses Apple of copying others who came before, keep in mind that some of us in the field have been trying to bring about these changes for at least 30 years.
As far back as 1968 (also the year I was born), there were two competing visions introduced in the same year: 2D windows+mice (from Englebart and company), and what Ivan Sutherland called "The Ultimate Display" (later termed "augmented reality" by Ronald Azuma).
The former ideas proved much easier to mass-adopt from the 90s to today, while the later has taken 50+ years to get right.
Avi, notably, was also a very early Second Life developer at Linden Lab, and as I write in Making a Metaverse That Matters, was literally in the room where it happened — that is, when the Metaverse started going from Neal Stephenson's science fiction vision to becoming a de facto product roadmap in the early 90s:
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At right: Video from Apple's WWDC 2023 developer page
After some tantalizing hints on Monday, I can confirm that Apple is indeed working directly with leading metaverse platform Rec Room on being a full VR application for Vision Pro. You can see for yourself by going to this WWDC 2023 developer page, where Apple devs feature Rec Room as a key Unity application for use on Vision Pro.
To put it another way: Apple is quietly promoting Vision Pro for full VR use, including on metaverse platform.
I say "quietly", because if you look at the major WWDC presentation hosted by Tim Cook, there's very little about bringing 3D AR experiences into Vision Pro, and literally nothing about VR. (As in the words "virtual reality" neve once leave Cook's lips.)
Apple seems to be smartly employing a mullet strategy for Vision Pro: Business, productivity, and everyday iPhone-like augmented reality applications for wealthy mainstream consumers in front — full virtual reality party for hardcore VR / metaverse geeks in back.
Speaking of which, here's VR influencer Nathie showing off Rec Room in full VR in Apple Vision Pro:
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//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.jsCajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Babylon Ravenhurst’s “Prince Goldfish” is a lovely and cool respite when Portland’s temperature rose to 94° (34.5° elsewhere) in my offline home. The rain would refresh the air and the goldfish would certainly entertain my cat who is howling for attention while I write.
When the real world weather gets hot, I look for Second Life pictures where the weather is cold. I was going to search for polar bears in Second Life, but this was refreshing enough.
For more Coolness, click here:
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I love waking up to a New York Times story that cheerfully gets three things wrong in just the headline. We've been doing variations of this since at least 2021, when Zuckerberg changed Facebook's name to Meta, announced it was making the Metaverse without clearly defining it, sucking most of the media into a vortex of circular logic where the Metaverse more or less becomes, "Whatever Meta is making — I guess it's VR like the Quest?"
Please let's not do this again.
To start from the beginning, the Metaverse is roughly defined this way:
A vast, immersive virtual world simultaneously accessible by millions of users through VR and other devices, highly customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools. It is integrated with the real world economy and compatible with external technology.
And as I explain in my book, the Metaverse of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash is not simply a fanciful obscure science fiction idea, but a direct reference and inspiration to many multiple virtual world platforms and startups.
At a conservative estimate, 600 million people are already active in a metaverse platform which basically fits that definition.
The metaverse industry is thriving so much, it includes a startup founded by Neal Stephenson himself.
Who has since been at pains to explain that no, the Metaverse does not even require AR/VR:
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Screengrab via Rec Room's Shawn Whiting
Update, 4:00pm: Shawn tells me he can't comment beyond the tweet featuring Rec Room in the VisionPro menu, but then adds: "might be more tomorrow too :)"
While Apple VisionPro may not be primarily targeted at or architected for VR/virtual world/Metaverse usage, it may still become an interesting niche peripheral for them. It looks like Apple very much knows and is preparing for that — evidenced by this intriguing screengrab from the WWDC reveal, showing VisionPro being used in the App Store's premium Apps and Games We Love section. (See above.)
Top selection among those apps, even above Zoom: Rec Room, the highly popular, multi-device metaverse platform.
This is very likely no accident, especially when the VisionPro presentation is the most highly anticipated and carefully prepared in all technology. Even more intriguingly, the screen grab was first posted on Twitter… by Rec Room head Shawn Whiting! With a sunglasses emoji no less:
