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metaverse-safety-week-2022

Metaverse Safety Week 2022

Last week saw the XR Safety Initiative’s third annual Metaverse Safety Week (formerly known as XR Safety Week). As ever, the week started on International Human Rights Day, December 10, and was followed by five days packed full of panels and talks, with each day having a different theme relating to safety in immersive environments.

We couldn’t attend all of the Metaverse Safety Week sessions live or watch the feeds fast enough to keep up with everything. But, this article presents some highlights of the event.

Kavya Pearlman’s Welcome to Metaverse Safety Week

Of course, the event started with an introduction by XRSI founder Kavya Pearlman. Pearlman addressed the audience through her AltspaceVR avatar in the virtual model of the Taj Mahal custom-made for the event by the design studio Chicken Waffle.

“On the seventy-fourth Human Rights Day, we’ve assembled world leaders, technology professionals, global regulators, policy experts, ethicists, ethics organizations, researchers, and under-represented voices,” said Pearlman. “Metaverse Safety Week is so important as a point of reflection for all of us. We’re bringing the world together to safeguard the metaverse.”

The “Pong” Version of the Metaverse

The first topic of discussion was Dr. Louis Rosenberg’s video on the metaverse for More Perfect Union. Following the video, Rosenberg appeared on stage to further address some of the key topics in metaverse safety.

“When thinking about human rights for the metaverse, I think it’s useful to just set the context a little bit into the future – think about the 2030s. I say that because the work we do today is really preparing us for the future,” said Rosenberg. “Today is really the ‘Pong’ version of the metaverse.”

A little later in the day, HTC’s China President and Global VP of Corporate Development, Alvin Wang Graylin, took the stage. Graylin’s presentation focused on lessons learned of immersive technology. According to Graylin, today’s excitement is the result of related technologies developing together – a condition which creates opportunities for good and bad.

“As an industry, we need to make sure to educate the world as well as watch out for bad actors and keep them from doing the wrong things,” said Graylin. “Instead of trying to create a closed world and take value off the table, we really need to work together to create open worlds that are interoperable.”

This same day saw the announcement of the XR 2030 Policy Fund from the Minderoo Foundation. The program “will award funding to researchers and civil society leaders who are advancing the next generation of digital media ecosystems to prioritize public interest values.”

Building a “Super World”

Day two opened with a discussion led by SuperWorld’s Hrish Lotlikar. Lotlikar told ARPost last summer that he wants the platform to be “the gateway” between the physical and the virtual worlds. At Metaverse Safety Week, he was addressing how emerging technologies can work together to make individuals feel more attached to the world around them.

“The importance of decentralization is that it allows us all to become stakeholders in the environments that we’re playing in, that we’re working in, that we’re building together,” said Lotlikar. “At SuperWorld, our vision is to enhance society and build a better world – and we can do that with these technologies.”

That morning also saw the launch of the “Metaverse for All” certificate program. Launching next year, the program will provide “An informative and enlightening course to shed light on the many ways in which the metaverse will change the world.”

How the Metaverse Will Impact the Young

Day three was all about metaverse safety for children and it kicked off with a talk by Representative Lori Trahan. Despite it being her first time in AltspaceVR, Trahan’s talk was moving.

XRSI- metaverse safety week - lori trahan

“Whenever we access the metaverse, data about ourselves can be stored, accessed, and used by people who will pay for our data to influence and manipulate us in real time. And, as we all know by now, it could even be shared with third parties and governments without our knowledge,” said Trahan. “That’s why we must pass comprehensive privacy legislation.”

Trahan pointed out that, while data is a common metaverse safety concern in the immersive technology community, it is an issue largely outside of the experiences themselves. We also need to be mindful of interactions within the immersive experiences as they occur.

“The high levels of harassment in social media and in video games have already become prevalent in the metaverse,” said Trahan. “In fact, the harms we know all too well from platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat can often be seen in the metaverse where immersion and a sense of physical presence can make these negative experiences even more visceral.”

And the Young Said…

Later that same day, a “Youth Panel” took the stage. The panel consisted of five members of the International Child Art Foundation (ICAF) between the ages of 13 and 23, and was moderated by the Foundation’s founder Ashfaq M. Ishaq. The panel presented a rare opportunity to hear young people speak for themselves on metaverse safety issues like the efficacy of age restrictions.

One speaker pointed out that, in her experience, VR motion sickness went away as she got older – so not exposing children to VR too young might help to give them a positive first impression. Another pointed out that age restrictions might be less helpful than a system of content warnings for VR experiences similar to those for films and television programs.

Perhaps the most engaging takeaway was that the metaverse might be about games or work for most people reading this but, for a growing number of young people, it’s also about socialization. That can introduce potential metaverse safety issues without immediate solutions.

“Not forming relationships through the metaverse is no longer an option. We have to rely on these new connections that we’re making to be able to reach out,” said ICAF member Alaalitya Acharya. “When you’re interacting with somebody through an avatar, what are some of the signs that you need to look out for in the same way as when you meet someone face-to-face?”

So. Much. Content.

We tried to bring you just about as much as possible from Metaverse Safety Week. And there’s so much more that would have been worth presenting. But alas, five days of sessions averaging about eight hours each doesn’t really fit into an article. If you want to explore it yourself, you can find the recordings on XRSI’s YouTube channel.

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snap-celebrates-the-fifth-annual-lens-fest

Snap Celebrates the Fifth Annual Lens Fest

 

Snap Lens Fest took place on December 6 and 7. The annual event is a celebration of the Snap Lens creator community, as well as an opportunity for the company to announce initiatives and software offerings. The event is also home to the Lens Fest Awards.

If you’re a Snapchat user, Lens Fest gives you an insight into what’s happening behind the lens and what’s coming next. If you aren’t a Snapchat user, you should still pay attention as Snap’s design tools are used by other organizations to develop their AR tools and games as well.

Welcome Back!

Four Snap leads used the keynote to set the stage for the rest of Lens Fest (as well as make the first major announcements). First, Snap Chief Technology Officer, Bobby Murphy, presented Lens Studio – Snap’s developer suite – as being an organic collaboration between the company and the users of the platform.

Lens Studio - Snap Lens Fest 2022

“We’re excited to be here to celebrate you, the global Lens developer community,” said Murphy. “We’re excited to continue developing Lens Studio along with you … There is so much opportunity ahead of us.”

To Murphy, this two-way development of Lens Studio is a major part of the development of AR as a whole. This draws on Snap’s longstanding position that AR is the future of immersive tech. It would come to be an ongoing theme for later presentations as well.

“The best and most engaging AR filters add to the world rather than replace it,” said Murphy. “Over time, we see the potential for wearable technology, like our Spectacles, to make it even more accessible.”

Updates and Opportunities

Following Murphy, Software Engineering Senior Manager, Trevor Stephenson, discussed some of the big updates to Lens Studio in the past year, including Ray Tracing. The feature, which was announced at Snap’s Partner Summit in April, is already in the hands of select partners but is coming to the platform more publicly next year.

Next, Joe Darko, Global Head of AR Developer Relations, spoke about learning and development opportunities culminating in a new “Lensathon.” The remote opportunity opened on the first day of Lens Fest and continues through the end of January. Following the event, a total of $200,000 will be awarded, including $40,000 to the top project.



The Future of Creator Monetization?

Finally, Director of AR Platform Partnerships and Ecosystems, Sophia Dominguez, took the virtual stage. She teased early experiments with creators to create AR items and assets available to Snap users in exchange for tokens – but didn’t suggest a release date. The coming feature, which was promoted as a creator monetization option, tied back into Murphy’s opening themes.

“We believe that as more developers like you establish businesses, we move closer to our wearable future,” said Dominguez. “We’re committed to pushing the AR industry forward alongside you.”

More on the Economic Future of AR

For the Lens Fest next session, a non-Snapchatter took the stage – Mike Boland of ARtillery Intelligence. He discussed the trajectory of AR as a market, specifically for advertising.

Boland likened AR to the early internet, saying that it will meet and even exceed all of our expectations provided that we remember that that kind of development will take time. Boland also said that, historically, emerging technologies had done well in market economic slowdowns as they cut their legacy ad spending while continuing to find the next big thing.

According to Boland, we’re already seeing signs of AR maturing as a market, such as the shift from the selfie cam to the world-facing cam. While Boland said that AR glasses are “years away,” he also pointed out that AR glasses only have world-facing cameras. He also pointed to the shift to more productive and informative AR lenses as a further sign of maturity.

“In addition to fun and whimsical lenses, we see an increase in practical lenses,” said Boland. “We’ll still see lots of fun and games in AR just like we do on the web today.”

“What’s New in Lens Studio”

The next Lens Fest session took a closer look at the more near-term future. Lens Studio Product Marketing Manager Leigh Brown and Product Manager Charmain Lee presented updates to Snap Lens Cloud and collision mesh software.

Lens Cloud was announced at the Partner Summit and allows lens creators to store assets remotely so that running a lens is less of a technical task for the device. An impending update to Lens Cloud will allow users to edit the live version of their lens by changing which assets are in the Lens Cloud version of the project.

Another coming update to Lens Studio can automatically make a collision mesh of both virtual objects and the physical world. There will also be new filters for finding a mesh that will provide just the right collision.

The Lens Fest Awards

This is the Fifth annual Lens Fest, but only the second annual Lens Fest Awards. The event recognized 50 finalists across five categories with one winner in each. Hosting the Awards was Snap’s European AR Developer Relations Lead, Oscar Falmer. Once again, judges came from across Snap, though the categories were different this year.

“We’re thrilled to be here today to celebrate the year’s most creative lenses and the developers who build them,” said Falmer. “All great AR begins with the creativity of Lens developers and creators.”

Play

The first category recognized lenses “that use gaming or entertainment to enhance how we experience the world” and the award went to Table Trenches: Operation Living Room by DB Creations. The multi-player game uses scans of a player’s environment to create a reactive map for a tower-defense-style strategy game.

The Lens Fest Awards - Table Trenches

“Thanks so much to everyone who helped us make this game a reality,” said DB Creations co-founder Dustin Kochensparger. “I can’t wait to show you what we’re working on next.”

Fashion

The Fashion category recognized lenses that “revolutionize the world of personal style.” The award went to Vishal Yadav’s Flux Fashion, a lens that allows users to customize a virtual garment using colors sourced from their physical environments.

The Lens Fest Awards - Vishal Yadav’s Flux Fashion

Yadav, also a nominee in the Wellness category, expressed gratitude at recognition of his lens saying, “It means a lot to me.”

Education

The Education category “celebrates lenses that raise awareness for important causes or foster knowledge through AR.” The award went to Inna Horobchuk for Sky Map. Sky Map is an interactive annotated map of stars and constellations – something that took a whole dedicated app when this XR journalist started writing.

“I’m super excited that people from all around the globe can engage with my lens and learn about stars and constellations in AR,” said Horobchuk, who was also a nominee for the Wellness category.

Wellness

The Wellness category celebrated “lenses that contribute to physical and mental well-being” and was awarded to Soft Drink Info by Wasim Ghole.

The lens displays nutrition information for a number of popular sodas and energy drinks. Ghole thanked Snap for recognizing the lens, and for providing the tools to create and distribute it.

Moonshot

The final Lens Fest Award category “highlights creators who have seen the limitless potential of AR and have challenged themselves to do something that has never been done before.” The award went to Dennis Rossiev’s Imaginary Friends, which allows users to turn scans of objects in their environment into cartoon companions.

The Lens Fest Awards - Dennis Rossiev Imaginary Friends

“With machine learning, I was able to build a lens that I’ve been dreaming about for so long,” said Rossiev. In addition to having been a nominee in two other categories this year, Rossiev also won in an “originality” category at last year’s Lens Fest Awards.

The Camera That Keeps on Giving

For the outfit that still calls itself a “camera company,” Snap is leaning more into AR than ever before. Dedicated specifically to Lenses, Lens Fest is a necessarily AR-focused event. If the company stays consistent, the next Partner Summit should be in a few months to key us into other elements of the company’s strategy.

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Zappar Presents AR Pioneers 2022

 

Last week saw Zappar’s second annual AR Pioneers event. The two-day event started last year to celebrate the WebXR company’s 10th anniversary but continued on as part industry summit and part company product showcase. We couldn’t watch all of the sessions, but we have some highlights.

“Everyone Is Invited”

“It is great to be back and fantastic to see the level of engagement with this event once again,” Zappar CEO and co-founder, Caspar Thykier, said in a welcome address on the morning of day one. “Everyone is invited as this is all about our continued mission to democratize AR. . . .  It’s a chance to give back to the AR community.”

While there were some interesting panel discussions, some of the most engaging conversations for Zappar and potentially the community were an update to the Zapbox timeline, the announcement of an as-yet-unnamed developers tool, and more information on Zapvision.

Zapbox: Mixed Reality for Everyone

Zappar started developing a Google Cardboard-inspired MR headset in 2016. With that extra Zappar flair, the mobile phone adapter also came with printable “controllers” that really just allowed image-based hand tracking.

Zappar AR Pioneers 2022 - Zapbox

However, a more robust version appeared on Kickstarter four years later. The new and improved Zapbox would come with plastic parts, including a halo-style headset and a fisheye lens adapter to increase the field of view of the mobile device. After passing Kickstarter, the headset went to preorder at last year’s AR Pioneers event.

Zappar AR Pioneers 2022 - Zapbox

This year’s event saw updates to the Zapbox design and roadmap, as well as the first demos of in-app use. The biggest hardware update is that the controllers are no longer passive trackers. Rather they have input modeled after that of the Meta Quest 2 to encourage content porting. A future update may also allow the Zapbox to play streaming PCVR content.

We also saw the first gameplay within the headset: a multi-player AR billiards game. The presentation included footage of two Zappar product designers playing the game together while one was in London and one was in Scotland. Further, one played on Zapbox’s mobile AR and one played on a Quest 2 via passthrough.

Zappar AR Pioneers 2022 - Zapbox

Further, we have a release target for buyers that missed the Kickstarter and preorders. Expect Zapbox to be available for sale early next year for $80.

The Next Generation of AR Creative Tooling

The other big announcement for the event was the generation of Zappar’s XR offering software. So far, that’s a full creator studio as well as an SDK for publishing within the web – both of which won Auggies this spring in Santa Clara. Trying to get the best of both of these tools in a single package is leading to “StudioTNG.”

Here, “TNG” stands for “the next generation.” It’s a working title, and the project won’t go into beta until early next year. The browser-based tool for building 3D content for Web3D, AR, MR, and VR experiences brings a number of powerhouse tools including:

  • Physically-based lighting and dynamic shadows;
  • Custom shaders;
  • glTF support;
  • Fully configurable rendering engine support;
  • Hot loading local and remote live previews;
  • Real-time collaboration;
  • “First-class animation” tools.

Zappar AR Pioneers 2022 - StudioTNG

Updates to Existing Zappar Toolsets

For the near future, at least, Zappar’s more familiar authoring tools are still the way to go. And, while we wait for The Next Generation, we get some updates to these platforms.

First off, Zappar now supports curved surface targets. While a number of AR experiences no longer require targets at all, sometimes launching from a target is the way to go. And, until now, those targets needed to be flat. Now, they can be curved – for example, on cups, cans, etc. It might not be thrilling for all readers, but I guarantee some are just thrilled about this development.

Next, Zappar builders can now embed AR and 3D products directly into their webpages. This allows users to interact with 3D models on a desktop or when they can’t use mobile AR for whatever reason. This includes exploring models of products, configurators, and other options for product education.

Zapvision

Unilever leads Sarah Masters and Mark Hewitt talked with Thykier about working with Zapvision, a Zappar tool that uses beefed-up QR codes and computer vision to provide accessible product information to people with vision impairment. An interdepartmental project within Uniliver is working on rolling out Zapvision on their product packaging.

Zappar AR Pioneers 2022 - zapvision panel - Sarah Masters, Mark Hewitt and Caspar Thykier

“Neither Mark nor I are anything like accessibility specialists,” said Masters. “Through the connected pack project, people started talking that might not otherwise have worked together.”

“Connected pack” or “connected packaging” is the move toward using images on packaging to bring consumers to information and experiences hosted online, usually through QR codes or other image targets. One of the reasons that Zapvision has so much promise is that it’s not that much more space on a pack than a conventional QR code, which a lot of packers already use.

“The solution you guys came up with at Zappar really helped us solve a number of our business challenges,” said Hewitt. “Hopefully, by Q1, we will be in a position where – from our Unilever point of view – we can start promoting this.”

Zapvision, which started life as a testing accident that developers realized they could use for good, has been a passion project with Unilever as well as within Zappar. Thykier in particular is thrilled to see it moving forward.

“This is where the heft of a brand like Unilever can do a lot of good . . . this is the power of brands to move forward,” said Thykier. “We really want to get to the point where all [consumer packaged goods] brands are asking themselves why they aren’t doing this.”

Lessons Learned

Not everything at AR Pioneers was about things coming next year. The event also featured a number of panel discussions on how companies and individuals are already using AR.

One trending point of discussion was that users still need to be told why to open an experience, or many will ignore experience launchers like connected packaging targets.

“When we are inviting consumers to an experience, we have to tell them what they are doing,” said Gabriela Coroa, Head of Consumer Experience Lab at Pernod Ricard.

Further, companies still lack meaningful metrics for tracking whether or not XR experiences are “successful” from a business perspective.

“How do I know that the user being there for 15 minutes impacts my sales?” asked Ares Subira, an AR/VR technology specialist and Product Manager AR/VR at Nestlé.

The point was also raised by Rikard Wikander, Global Head of Customer Experience, Kidswear, at H&M.

“We want to create an experience, not just transactions all the time,” said Wikander. “AR is still not easy to explain to a stakeholder who has never seen it.”

Stakeholders should also understand that XR is still a learning experience for many, and that’s okay. Companies can keep their plays relatively small and remember that they can reuse assets and work projects in together instead of creating a series of potentially costly one-off experiences.

“To me, the successful people are those that have dipped their toes into the pool in a lot of different places and have learned from what happened,” said Accenture Global Consumer Metaverse Technology Lead Fadi Chehimi. “You can work with consumer markets and not sell to the consumer.”

See You Next Year

By the numbers, this two-day event spanned 28 sessions by 45 speakers and over one thousand hours of content viewed by over one thousand virtual attendees. So, yes, the company is planning on bringing the conference back next year.

If you missed this year’s event and want to catch up, fear not – recordings will be made available on the Zappar website in the next few days.

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