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Robert Long
@robertlong.me

My Twitter archive just finished and I'm finally deactivated! End of an era but happy to be here! A bit of an intro for all my new followers: Hi I'm Robert! I worked on a bunch of social VR things, made an award winning puzzle game for Apple Vision Pro, and now I do game tooling for non-VR stuff!

2 reposts47 likes

Robert Long
@robertlong.me

I've been a big fan of VR for a long time, I worked at AltSpaceVR, then Mozilla on Hubs, and then @matrix.org on ThirdRoom. Three similar social VR platforms with different approaches, all which ultimately "failed" but each had some very big wins as well. I'm happy that 2 of the 3 are open source!

Matthew Hodgson
@arathorn.net

it’s debatable on whether thirdroom failed; it’s in a very strange place where NATO are busy building out WebSG apps on it for geospatial viz - despite it being unfunded and unmaintained for the last 18 months. I’m still hoping I can find a way to get it back on track, somehow.

Matthew Hodgson
@arathorn.net

i just wish we had not got hit by the trifecta of macroeconomic crash, metaverse bubble burst, and yet another failed VR cycle. fwiw I’m still using it as a major showcase to try to get govts to invest in Matrix, and it never ceases to impress.

Robert Long
@robertlong.me

Yeah it's a really cool project! Hoping that you're able to keep it going or someone from the community picks it up! Glad it's open source so it's possible for that to happen. We built some really cool tech so it'd be a shame for that to go to waste!

Robert Long
@robertlong.me

I'm pretty burnt out on VR stuff now though. All my headsets are sitting in a box collecting dust. Yeah... even the $3500 Vision Pro. I love making games still though so I'm really excited to be working at Bezi on tools for making games!

Robert Long
@robertlong.me

I spend a lot of my time thinking about privacy in technology, public transportation (big train guy), and most recently responsible use of AI. I love decentralization as in bsky and Matrix not as in crypto and I'm stoked to be on a platform that feels as good as Twitter in its prime!