Video by FINOS via YouTube
On the APS30F Zenith Call, James Ashley shares his XR background from Kinect and HoloLens through Magic Leap, Walmart, CVS, Fidelity, and SteelBlue, with recent work focused on Apple Vision Pro since late 2023. The discussion argues XR momentum is shifting from feature-heavy headsets back toward lighter glasses, influenced by devices like Ray-Ban glasses and a growing focus on comfort. They explore how AI coding could accelerate XR by making difficult mixed reality development easier, enabling faster iteration and reducing barriers to building apps, though market economics and small device adoption still limit investment. James suggests killer apps must deliver unique value beyond porting phone experiences, highlights Apple’s SharePlay infrastructure while noting shared experiences are complex, and proposes education-focused 3D learning (e.g., making quaternions intuitive) as promising. They debate isomorphic vs infographic-style UI, discuss VR’s focus benefits for training, and describe Blender MCP as a powerful AI-to-app integration that can rapidly generate and refine 3D scenes and even update tooling.
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00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
00:20 James Ashley XR Journey
02:53 Back to Smart Glasses
05:14 AI Accelerates XR Apps
08:05 Hunting the Killer App
10:24 SharePlay and Learning in XR
13:33 Design Philosophy in MR
16:26 Focus and VR Training
18:27 Star Wars vs Star Trek AI Lens
21:21 Will Developers Still Matter
23:38 AI Lowers the XR Barrier
26:40 Fragments and MR Storytelling
27:52 Blender MCP Breakthrough
32:26 Parting Advice and Closing