I will try to start doing these every month or so to give updates on what's going on.

WTF is UNAVI??

UNAVI is an open-source VR social platform I've been working on. Some of the key features include self-hostable servers, moddable clients, a powerful WASM scripting environment, VRM avatars, and a self-sovereign identity layer using DIDs.

These features are combined into a standardized protocol called The Wired. This is to ensure compatibility and interoperability between different clients and servers, and leaves the door open for people to experiment with new features and build out services that integrate with the wider ecosystem.

To keep a long story short, the project has gone through a complete re-design and re-write over the past 2-3 months. This has been a very productive time for both me as a developer and the project, and I am very optimistic about its future.

Current Status

Almost all parts of UNAVI are written in Rust. The main app is built using Bevy, an awesome open-source data-driven Rust game engine. The target platform is VR, but a web build and native desktop app will also be supported.

There is not currently a deployed app for you to check out 😓 but the foundations are starting to come together.

gltf_kun

gltf_kun is a library I created for working with glTF files, and will be very important going into the future as the glTF format is used for all 3D models within UNAVI. More specifically UNAVI uses the .vrm format for avatars, and the .glxf format for scene composition, both of which are built on top of glTF.

This library aims to make working with glTF easier by creating a graph-based representation of the format. This graph can be created from or exported to any given format, including IO with Bevy. Arbitrary extensions are also supported, which can be used to store additional information in the glTF file. Some extensions are provided by the library, such as OMI_physics.

Future work includes a framework for creating and running "transform" functions over a given model, allowing us to compress textures or optimize meshes on the fly. Additionally there are many more extensions that would be great to support.

bevy_vrm

bevy_vrm is a library I created to bring VRM support to Bevy. There is still a lot of work to be done as currently the library only covers the basics of loading a model.

Future work includes finishing the implementation of the VRM and MToon specifications, as well as exploration into using gltf_kun for model loading.

dwn

dwn is a Rust implementation of a Decentralized Web Node (DWN) that I created. The DWN specification is still fairly new, but will be a core part of the UNAVI social layer.

With this system, your identity is stored on a self-hostable mesh network of DWN servers. These servers store your data and act as an endpoint for others to interact with you. DWNs are build upon Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), which provide a flexible identity layer and gives you a lot of freedom as an end user.

You can control and manage your own identity independent of any external party, or you can use a fully centralized service and log in to UNAVI as you would with any typical app, or you can use some combination of the two.

Currently the basics of dwn are set up, with a variety of features like DID authorization working. The next steps are to finish support for data storage and retrieval, then start using it within the UNAVI app.

bevy_oxr

bevy_oxr is a project bringing OpenXR (and eventually WebXR) support to Bevy. I have not been involved in work on it so far (I don't own a working VR headset currently 😥), but I felt it was worth mentioning as a VR app using Bevy would not be possible without it. Great progress is being made here, so go check it out and help out if you can!

WASM Component Model

The Web Assembly (WASM) component model is the core of the UNAVI scripting system. WASM provides a sand-boxed execution environment for user scripts, and the component model provides a way for these scripts to interact with one another. Support for the component model has been making great progress in the past few months, and a workable implementation should now be possible for both the native and web builds of the UNAVI client.

A basic workflow for creating and running UNAVI scripts has been developed, and a WIT specification defining the platform APIs scripts can interact with has been prototyped.

Future work includes building out the APIs to allow for more useful user scripts, and finishing the runtime environment within the UNAVI client so that it works for both native and web builds. There are many more planned features I could list here as WASM scripts are one of the most unique and important parts of UNAVI, but for now the focus is on the basics.

The Future

With all that out of the way, what does the future of UNAVI look like?

My goal is to have a “solid” desktop app up within the next month or two. This is intentionally a bit vague, but I have a general idea of the features and level of polish I'm aiming for. Much of the work up until this point has been on the above mentioned libraries, learning Rust, and exploring the tech to figure out what this all will look like - but now its time to put everything together into a working app.

My VR headset was broken in a tragic accident that can only be explained as an act of God, but I should hopefully be getting a Bigscreen Beyond within the next ~2 months. One this happens I can begin adding VR support to the app.

The goal of UNAVI is not to create an open-source version of other platforms like VRChat or Resonite. There is a lot to learn from current platforms, but I often feel they don’t venture out far enough to really explore the landscape of virtual spaces and push the limits of whats possible. Ultimately this comes down to what I believe is the most exciting part of UNAVI - the ability to experiment and build upon it in a way not possible anywhere else due to the closed-source, proprietary nature of traditional apps. With UNAVI the code is open-source, the network is an open architecture, and the protocol is extendable.

If any of this interests you, come join the UNAVI Discord! Lot's of awesome people like myself hang out there.

🫡

See you next time.

-- kayh

People often find themselves spending thousands of hours in VR - talking with friends, playing games, listening to music, attending live events; and even when not in VR, many spend just as much time creating VR content - worlds, avatars, games, videos, clothing, posters, magazines, or even their own video streaming infrastructure for events.

I love it.

There is nothing I find more inspirational than seeing someone else creating out of passion; whether they’re experts in the field pushing the limits of their medium, or just opened blender for the first time and have no idea what they’re doing.

The Problem

But there is one thing that has always irked me - and this is not just a problem with VR - for all of the personal investment we give to these platforms; for all of the content and tools we create - we own nothing. The company behind the platform has absolute control, profits off our work, and we have no other option but to comply by their decisions because the code (and often the very game engine itself) is proprietary.

Imagine the company decides to, oh I don’t know, ban all mods for their app; including the accessibility mods you rely on to even use the platform. You would be left with a choice - either break the rules and find a way to continue using the mods (if you even can), hoping you don’t get permanently banned - or leave the platform entirely, losing touch with many of the friends you’ve made on it over the years.

What if this didn’t have to be the case? What if we could have applications that were built on open standards, instead of proprietary engines? What if we could run our own servers, and host our own content? What if we could avoid the extortionate fees from app stores, who take a 30% cut of every purchase?

Spoiler alert: the tools to do this already exist on every device you own - its called the web.

The Web

An open philosophy

The underlying philosophy of a technology has a massive influence over what is built on top of it. Linux was built on the UNIX philosophy of small, composable programs - and while not everything follows it, the culture lives on in many to this day. In the same manor, if a platform is built using a closed source, proprietary engine it will breed that same culture - leading to a “locking down” of the platform over time as invasive anti cheats are added (yes I’m still salty about mods being banned), restrictions are imposed, and user privacy is thrown out the window.

The web brings a different philosophy. In an age where mobile devices are blocking competition in their app stores; and Microsoft is continually trying to monopolize Windows - the web somehow continues on as an open platform. You do not need approval from the tech overlords to create a website.

The web is not perfect (it has it’s own monopoly problems, 80% of people use Chrome) - but I believe the open, interconnected network of self-hosted content that the web has historically been can live on in new applications built on top of it. And while the web has not historically been a platform for 3D content - let alone VR content - this has been changing over time as web standards evolve. Modern web browsers are surprisingly powerful.

The following APIs are some of the standards that enable VR applications to run in the web. I include these because it is important to understand the effects of the web philosophy - an open base layer leads to the development of open standards that benefit everyone.

WebXR

The WebXR API is a cross-device API that allows browsers to run VR and AR applications. WebXR has been around for years, but it is only enabled by default in Chrome; in Firefox you must enable an experimental flag; and soon Safari is getting WebXR support, thanks to the Apple Vision Pro. VR is either already supported by your browser, or coming to it soon.

WebGPU

WebGPU is a powerful new API giving web applications better access to the GPU. Historically browsers have used WebGL - an OpenGL-inspired API that has become increasingly outdated. WebGPU can run on any device - both inside the web or outside of it in native applications.

WebGPU has landed in Chrome, after years of work behind an experimental flag. We don’t have much information on when other browsers will support WebGPU, though realistically it may be years away. Still, WebGPU is an exciting development that is allowing even more powerful applications to be built in the web.

WebAssembly

WebAssembly is a portable compilation target for programming languages that can be run on nearly any device. WebAssembly is an exciting development in many areas of computing, but in the context of the web it allows us to write web applications in languages other than JavaScript. This has speed benefits, and allows us to compile heavy applications - such as physics engines - for use in the web.

WebAssembly is in use by many applications today, and the specification is still evolving with lots of work being done to improve it.

Progressive Web Apps

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are essentially just websites that can be installed as native applications on your mobile or desktop device. PWAs are becoming increasingly popular, as they give web applications many of the benefits that native applications have - such as being downloadable from app stores, being accessible from the user’s home screen or desktop, as well as better support for features like push notifications.

Many mobile applications today are being written as PWAs, largely thanks to the cross-platform nature of web apps making development significantly easier; because despite the walled gardens these locked down devices try to create (looking at you Apple) - open standards are good for developers, are good for end users, and will ultimately win out in the end.

Open Source - The final piece

The web is awesome; it is the driving force behind powerful standards like WebGPU and WebAssembly - but there is one thing I believe more important than anything else in an application: open source.

More than any shared standard, open source software empowers users. It gives users the freedom to make changes to their application and build upon it; it gives the community the power to choose which direction a platform goes.

This is not just about taking power back from companies in some democratic ideal - open source software, freedom of modification, and everything else in this spirit benefits the community, the underlying applications, and the companies behind them. The gaming industry knows this well with franchises like Dota starting out as mods, or the massive modding communities built around games like Minecraft.

And this open spirit is why I believe the web is the future of VR. The pieces are coming together for a new type of VR application to be built - one built on an open network; one built as an open source, moddable platform that out-performs all competition because it embraces the chaotic passion of the community - instead of exploiting it while hiding behind a proprietary moat.

UNAVI

This dream is what I’m building at UNAVI - an open source, decentralized, web-based VR social platform. Things are still early, but I encourage you to check it out, drop a GitHub star, and leave some feedback on what you think about it in the Discord. Come say hi!

Preface

“Our fathers were our models for God. And, if our fathers bailed, what does that tell us about God?” — Tyler Durden

This is the statement I want to tackle in this article. Watch the clip above, its 2 minutes. I’ll give some background to the question he asks, then move on to an answer.

The Father God

Our father is a model for God. Or as Freud stated, “God is a projection of the human father.”

When we are young, our father protects us. He brings order to the chaos, certainty to the unknown world. Some kids bullying you at school? He tells you what to do, how to fight back. He tells you what reality is and how it works.

We in turn view him as God. Or rather, view God as him.

But as we get older, things change. After a certain point, he no longer solves our problems. You got a cut from running around outside? Suck it up. Go wash it off yourself. Rather than having dad solve all our problems, we have to solve the problems ourselves.

We begin to take responsibility for what happens to us.

This is a crucial moment in maturity. In primitive tribes, this is when the child undergoes initiation.

Initiation

During initiation the child is ripped from his mother’s arms and forced to fight. No longer can he hide in her comfort, no longer does he have the father’s protection.

For the first time, he must fight for his survival — he must fight nature.

This may be the elders of the tribe wearing masks of the gods, brutally beating him until he fights back. This may be the child going out into the woods and surviving on his own.

Whatever the specific ritual is, its what happens during the initiation that is of extreme importance — It’s when the child becomes a man.

The father is gone. The child is on his own and must learn to make sense of the world himself — to bring order to the chaos just like his father did. He is thrown against the rules of nature and they become ingrained in his soul:

1. Its kill or be killed.

2. You're on your own, nobody will save you.

3. Everything dies. Including you.

4. Eat and drink or you die.

5. etc.

And with these rules, forced onto him, he now has order. He has done the job his father once did for him — bringing certainty to the uncertain, forming a narrative about the world, a set of beliefs that can be built upon.

Beliefs that can be trusted with an unwavering loyalty.

He is one of the adults now. He understands reality in the same way all the elders do. The brutal game of life and death they face every day.

The Transition

“If our fathers bailed, what does that tell us about God?” — Tyler Durden

So back to Fight Club.

As we grow up, the father will no longer protect us. We’re on our own. This is the abandonment of the father Tyler speaks of (though his abandonment was premature, his father was never there in the first place).

With no father to protect you, your problems are up to you to figure out.

Through initiation, we learn how to do this. We learn to solve our problems and understand the world. The man we once viewed as God is just that, a man. A mortal creature just like us who will die one day.

But what happens to God during this transition? Where does he go? Lets rewind.

The Projection

“God is a projection of the father” — Freud

Let’s look at this again. We view God in the image of our father, but what does this look like from the father’s perspective?

The father channels God through his words, he taps into the divine masculine and delivers it to his child. It’s not magic, but a psychological instinct to play the father character — an instinct to teach his child the ways of the world.

Through his stories, the father gives the child a foundation to understand the world from. It gives the child a framework to take in information and sort it into categories that he can comprehend.

It is through this communication that the child comes to know God. God is not the story the father tells, but the truth behind the story. God is the rules of nature the father tries to convey to the child.

The child doesn't learn the truth of God, only a second hand image his father creates. Thus the child must go through initiation and learn of God directly. But this is why the child views God as his father — the foundation of his beliefs is built upon his father’s stories.

We now have a definition of God. God is the set of foundational beliefs, the rules of nature. He is all of the objective facts of the world.

God is gravity, God is death, God is musical harmony, God is hunger.

God is the set of all of these objective facts of reality that we build our understanding of the world upon.

Recap

So let’s recap.

In youth, the father tells us stories, and from these stories we build our understanding of the world. Animals come out at night, kids bully you if you don’t fight back, etc.

He also physically protects us, solving our problems, and appears unstoppable. Dad can fix anything.

Our image of God is then shaped after our father. Our father created the fundamental truths we believe, he is all powerful, and protects us. When the child imagines God, he sees a figure strikingly similar to his father.

The father attempts to teach the child about the world, but he can only do so much with words. A father can tell his son “it’s kill or be killed”, but it’s only in a life or death fight that the child will fully understand what that means.

As the child comes of age, the father God begins to die. His father no longer protects him — the child must protect himself. He must solve his own problems. It is at this time that the child is sent through initiation.

Initiation shows him how to make sense of the world in the way his father did. It shows him the rules of nature, the fundamental truths of his reality. Through this process he becomes an adult, abandoning his old way of viewing the world and following these new principles.

Since nature is now the one that created the fundamental truths the child believes, not his father, the image of God changes in the now initiated child’s head. God is no longer shaped like his father, but is shaped like nature.

God is gravity and death and pain and all the other facts of reality we can observe, and he did observe, in initiation.

Armed with these new unbreakable truths, a new foundation, the child can build his understanding of the world. He can learn to navigate the unknown and bring certainty to himself and others.

Chemical Burn

“If our fathers bailed, what does that tell us about God?” — Tyler Durden

So back to Fight Club (again).

This initiation of the child, where we must grapple with nature and learn it’s way. Where we must tame the beast of uncertainty just as our father did for us. Where we must find a new God.

This is exactly what Tyler Durden is doing with the chemicals.

Tyler undergoes an initiation. He looks pain in the eyes and learns from it. The chemical burn grounds Tyler in his physical reality and teaches him a fundamental truth of nature, a fragment of God.

You are a living being that feels pain. You are mortal. You will die.

Its one thing to say it, but to be in that moment, to feel the pain in your hand, to stare it down and accept it, to understand that fact of reality. That's what initiation is, and that’s what happened to Tyler.

The New God

The child’s initiation is is not an abandonment of God, a loss of truth — it is the grappling with a new truth, a truer truth. A new God.

The God we knew is dead, but there is a new God to take his place — the God we discovered during initiation. He is no longer personified by the father figure. He is no longer solving your problems. The new God doesn’t care about you. The new God is the tough reality of the real world.

And a new God really is out there in nature, but you have to discover him yourself.

Zeus lived way up on mount Olympus, he didn't care what was happening in human lives. Moses had to climb a mountain to talk to God. But, when Moses did climb up that mountain, when he fasted for 40 days — pushing himself to his limits — God rewarded him.

Through initiation we discover God, and to be rewarded by God you must play by his rules. The rules are what you build your understanding of everything upon, thus by following these rules, by following God, you will be rewarded.

Take music for example. A fundamental rule of music is the harmony. A physical phenomenon that the human mind recognizes. Certain notes sound good together, so by following that rule in creating your music, your music will sound good.

The Modern Problem

In modern day we don't have initiations, at least not explicitly.

This is a problem. Without our initiation we are left abandoned. As we grow up the father God dies off, and without the discovery of a new God through initiation, we are alone. We have no foundation to build our beliefs upon. We are left out in an ocean of uncertainty without a ship to navigate it. We are left in total nihilism.

We can see this happening today. Without a set of beliefs people become lost in the noise of consumerism, a post-modern whatever the fuck they call it that leaves people hollow. An empty existence with nothing inside. No beliefs to guide us, no framework we can fall back on. The best we can do is create a facade to put in front of the mirror, but none of it is real. This empty existence drives people to suicide.

This is what Tyler was avoiding with those chemicals. He was escaping consumerism through an act of initiation. He was discovering the foundational beliefs of nature that he could build his world on top of.

This is what you must do.

You must be like Tyler and stare down the pain, stay with it, and accept it.

You can form complicated systems in your head to cope with it and try to justify it— but the pain is right there, in your hand, and you cannot escape it. There is no justification, no reason behind it, only the reality of pain in that moment.

You are mortal. You will die. You failed out of school and ruined your life. The world sucks.

Accept it.

“First you have to give up. First you have to know, not fear, know, that some day you’re gonna die.” — Tyler Durden

And finally, by abandoning your past self’s childish thoughts.

By accepting the world as it is.

By accepting your new God of nature and all the objective facts of your situation.

By building your thoughts upon this new foundation.

You can finally move forward. You can finally believe in something. You can create a place of order.

You can create a way out of the noise.

But you have to create it. God only rewards those that climb the mountain.

xoxoxo

— kayh