The Return of Clippy📎, the Secret to Metaverse Mass Adoption, Epic Games vs Microsoft, and China's 'Live Free Die or Hard' Espionage Strategy.

But First…Cool if Real

Shelby Church post this video on X 2+ years ago and at the time the robot was CGI. Fast forward to 2024 and the Tesla Optimus robot is a reality. The Optimi (Optomuses?) are remotely assisted and controlled by a human right now, but they still stole the show at last week's We Robot event in LA.

Updates and Wins

• Who remembers Microsoft's Clippy? Those who learned Microsoft programs in the 90s were greeted by an AI chatbot predecessor, Clippy. To help guide newcomers to the metaverse we made our version of Clippy for our Katana app to help people navigate around.

• For the metaverse to hit mass adoption, apps must be cross-platform. In the biz, we call this "hardware agnostic" and it's a value coded in our software's DNA. True to our company values we released our Aura app on a headset we’ve never touched but was on our roadmap for early 2025. And we deployed in less than a week because we didn't lock ourselves into a single platform during initial development. It's a strategy that is more expensive but has a great ROI. App store listing coming soon.

Industry News

• Last week we said Goodbye to the HoloLens, this week we’re saying adios to a headset that we were excited about never shipped. RIP Spacetop, we hardly knew thee.

• 75% less training time and 40% less rework from shifting to XR-based training may sound too good to be true, but those in the industry know it's possible across a wide range of use cases. Learn more about how those stats were tracked and more in a new white paper published by the VR/AR Association (VRARA) 

• A judge ruled that from November 2024 to November 2027 Google has to allow developers access to payment options outside the Play Store and circumvent the 30% app tax. Is the Apple App Store next?

Recently Played >

What our founders listened to this week:

• Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on Audible

• Chinese Hackers Spying on US Internet Traffic - The Journal Podcast by The Wall Street Journal. Honestly, this sounds like the plot to Live Free or Die Hard.

Overhead on Slack

Enter the chat. What our devs are talking about…

• “BRB going to install hurricane shutters” - preparing for Milton in Tampa

• “Game Engine 'Option A' reminds of you of the joy of development but always leaves you thirsty for more/stronger features. Game Engine 'Option B' makes you feel a little dead inside, but you always come crawling back to it because it never fails” - the trial and tribulations of engine selection

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