Metaverse One

Spring is a time of new beginnings. Many plants begin to grow, flowers blossom, and the world comes out of winter hibernation. Yet it goes beyond a season and includes ideas of rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection and regrowth. In the tech scene, it is also the blossom of a busy conference season. Let's take a look at some of the 'flowers' that attracted this tech bee the past few months. We start with March. Game Developer Conference - San Francisco, USA The Game Developers Conference or GDC  is THE event for those in the gaming industry and related technologies. As an attendee, I saw plenty of virtual reality on the expo floor. Over the past few years it has been amazing to see how companies like Unity, Google, and Facebook have increased the size of their presence at GDC. VR Gaming Summit - San Francisco, USA Following GDC was the VR Gaming Summit . The VR Gaming Summit is a conference focused on VR gaming and entertainment trends. I was an invited s...

I just wrapped up a fun weekend at a Virtual Reality Hackathon here in San Francisco. Located at Galvanize's downtown campus , the event brought together the diehards of virtual reality this Memorial Day weekend. Folks came from all around to work together and create some pretty amazing VR projects.       The winners and categories were: Best Web-based VR Project Winners  1st place: Team VR Party 2nd place: Team Planet Chase Best Mobile-based VR Project Winners 1st place: Team OKVR 2nd place: Team GoPro on Steriods Best Looking VR Scene Winner 1st place: Team Mole Quest  2nd place: Team VRecover Best VR Project of Show Winner 1st place: Team Wilderness Road VR Best X3DOM VR Project Winner 1st place: Team Dog Chase Best Samsung GearVR Project Winner 1st place: Team VR Transit A big thanks to the amazing San Francisco VR community and the sponsors for making this another great hackathon. The next VR Hackat...

Over the past couple years, there has been a rise in groups that focus on virtual reality here in the SF Bay area (mainly due to Oculus' success).  It used to be just the Silicon Valley and San Francisco VR Meetup groups, but now there are at least half a dozen groups, and growing, focused on some element of the VR ecosystem. Normally VR meetups are 95% men that are the usual geeks and enthusiasts. I can say this because I am one of them and attend quit a variety of VR and related events.  One such Meetup group that is doing a great job of marketing VR to a much larger audience than the usual VR developer is UPLOAD VR . UPLOAD VR self proclamation is as, "An international VR community dedicated to accelerating the development of the virtual reality industry. We are an eclectic group of designers, developers, engineers, artists, entrepreneurs, educators, investors and innovators pioneering the future of virtual reality. We bring virtual reality to the masses...

So one of the organizations close to my heart is Architecture For Humanity  (AFH), a non-profit that seeks architectural solutions to humanitarian crises and brings professional design services to communities in need. While I am not an architect or designer, I do volunteer my time to the COLLAB (AFH office) and  local SF Chapter projects to help where I can. With that being said, I am excited to announce an augmented reality mural that I am working on with the local SF Chapter. The SOMA Mural Project looks to be an interactive piece that combines the beauty of city art with San Francisco's tech nature. Viewers of the mural will be able to use an augmented reality app to access additional storytelling information. I haven't selected the initial augmented reality platform yet, and in efforts to help my friends in the industry, the mural will be the marker for a variety of AR browser platforms that will share the chapter's message over time. Will this be the...

I got the opportunity to attend the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Launch Party in San Francisco. This was my first game launch party and what a fun time it was. The event was hosted by David Banner at the Mezzanine in downtown San Francisco. Music from DJ Qbert played to a packed house with live appearances from Hieroglyphics, Killah Priest and surprise guest Ghostface Killah. Pictures from the event can be seen here . Tak Hannah!!

A few months back a friend told me of a 3D city map app called UpNext . Naturally being a digital city geek I downloaded the app for my iPod Touch to give it a quick look-see. Launching the app gave me the choice of several 3D city maps (Austin, Boston, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.) to download that I could access offline which is a super plus for those with an iPod Touch. I selected San Francisco, which only took a few moments to download, and it didn't take long to become impressed with the app. Navigation uses standard Apple interface actions such as pinch to zoom, two finger drag to tilt the view, etc. As I zoomed in from the initial bird's eye view of the whole city, the app broke the city down into its neighborhoods. This was a nice surprise as I still don't know the exact locations of all the 'hoods' in SF. Zooming further down quickly loaded simple but nicely textured 3D building models with more levels of detail as I got closer to ...