ShapesXR for Mixed Reality Collaboration

Update: I've now produced a Substack post which describes my experiences to date in mixed reality /XR wargaming with ShapesXR and other platforms.

I've been playing around with ShapesXR for the last couple of weeks and its looking really good as a general purpose MR collaboration platform. There is something very different, but also incredibly natural about having collaborators present in your own physical space but working with a mutual virtual toolset. The images below show Andy Fawkes (co-author of the forthcoming The Military Metaverse) and I testing out some prototype manual wargames in my office/game room and his VR space. But with the core ability to import 3D objects, rez objects from a library, move and place objects and add annotations ShapesXR could be used for a wide variety of use cases and is certainly the easiest to use that I've found so far for MR.

Note that both of use can scale, rotate and place the shared environment wherever we want in our own physical spaces, so at one point I had it scaled large and placed on my 8' x 6' table, where he had it shrunk down and sat on his lap. You can also use the scaling so that you can experience any build at eye-level/subjective mode, or loom over it in a more objective/god mode.

More posts (and maybe even some video) of our experiences in MR to follow.

Andy adding objects to the build

Ignore the spurious grey avatar, but Andy's scaled down avatar is visible just in front - so to him the build is scaled right up and he's getting a street level view

Andy scaled up to "god" mode looking down upon creation!

My first playable MR manual wargame - a WW1 dogfight!

Andy's view of me in VR mode. You can toggle at will between MR and VR. I can see the VR mode being the equivalent of blurring your background in Zoom.

Military Metaverse pre-launch announcement - and cover reveal!

 

Taylor & Francis have now listed the Military Metaverse book on their web site at https://www.routledge.com/The-Military-Metaverse/Fawkes-Burden/p/book/9781032600512.

Pre-orders open on 10 April 2025, and publishing is expected on 1 May 2025.

Here's the blurb...

The Military Metaverse explores the impact that the Metaverse is having today on how the world's militaries procure, maintain, train, plan and fight, and how the Metaverse presents new challenges and opportunities for future conflict.

The military were early adopters of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality technologies and wider simulation systems. Before 2010 they were one of the few sectors that could afford the technology, and millions of military R&D dollars went into developing and understanding these technologies. However, as the democratisation of metaverse technologies has happened over the past decade there is a danger that militaries have been overtaken and caught short, encumbered with expensive legacy systems, sold and maintained by expensive prime contractors, whilst the gaming and consumer market has cheaper and more innovative and agile systems. The book provides a history of the use of metaverse technologies in the military, particularly in the areas of design, maintenance, training, planning and operations. It then examines the current state of the art in these areas and the opportunities that are available from the current generation of consumer-driven approaches. The drivers for, challenges to, and paths towards an enterprise approach to the Military Metaverse are then presented. The book explores the military use of social virtual worlds, of early work done by defence and security organisations in worlds such as Second Life, and how such environments could become important for intelligence as well as influence operations in the future. Finally, the book will consider what war in the Metaverse might look like, both in terms on in-world activities and the impact of cyber-war on the Metaverse itself.

It should be of interest to all militaries across the world, the industries that support them, and those in academia and the wider public with an interest in the military and defence.

Contents

The chapters in the book are:

Introduction  

1. An Early History of the Military Metaverse  

2. The Military Metaverse after Snow Crash  

3. Military Metaverse Building Blocks  

4. The Military Metaverse for Capability Acquisition and Support  

5. The Metaverse for Individual Training & Education  

6. The Metaverse for Team & Collective Training  

7. The Metaverse for Analysis and Planning  

8. The Military Metaverse for Operations  

9. Social Virtual Worlds  

10. Convergence: An Enterprise Military Metaverse  

11. War in the Metaverse  

Bibliography  

Glossary

The link at the sidebar left (coming soon!) provides more information about the book and supporting contents, and a link to out Military Metaverse microverse!

February 2025 - Metaverse News and Links

 

Stories that have caught our eye about what is going on in the Metaverse right now.

• Microsoft moving away from Hololens and XR hardware - with Palmer Luckey's Anduril taking it forward for military use in the US Army's IVAS project, which we cover in The Military Metaverse
• Open-Verse has been set up as an EU funded project to promote "open, and ethically responsible European Virtual Worlds" and metaverse companies
• Schools use virtual reality to tackle gang culture - BBC News report of a project in a Birmingham school around knife crime - sounds very similar to a project we did in Lanarkshire in 2010 on knife crime and youth culture - creating NPC avatars that intimidated the player avatars was a challenge, but we did it.

- Not a great fan of out-of-world editors, but Meta has launched a desktop editor for their Horizon Worlds which may offer the potential for more democratic creativity and more interesting worlds to be created, might even give it  ago myself.

As ever, good sources for these and other stories are:

• Immersive Wire
• Simulation.news

January 2025 - Metaverse News and Links

 

This seemed to work OK last year so will continue to do it. One post per month, updating each month as we find links and news relevant to the series.

- Microsoft Introduces Trellis — An AI Model That Turns An Image Into 3D Objects - via Medium

Military Metaverse proof returned

 Andy and I have finished responding to the copy editors comments and sent the manuscript back, along with a couple of image tweaks. Next step will be when T&F send us a set of the "voucher proofs" - the book laid out ready for print as PDF and we get one final chance to spot any typos! That will be mid Feb, and then we should be on track for a May release.

Military Metaverse copyediting

 

(placeholder book cover image)

Andy Fawkes and I are now hard at work going through the copyeditor's comments for the Military Metaverse book, which will probably be out in May 2025. The contents look like this:

• Chapter 1 – An Early History of the Military Metaverse
• Chapter 2 – A Recent History of the Military Metaverse
• Chapter 3 – What is the Military Metaverse?
• Chapter 4 – The Metaverse for Capability Acquisition and Support
• Chapter 5 – The Metaverse for Individual Training & Education
• Chapter 6 – The Metaverse for Team and Collective Training
• Chapter 7 – The Metaverse for Analysis and Planning
• Chapter 8 – The Metaverse for Operations
• Chapter 9 – Social Virtual Worlds
• Chapter 10 – An Enterprise Military Metaverse
• Chapter 11 – War in the Metaverse

The Military Metaverse explores the impact that the Metaverse is having today on how the world's militaries procure, maintain, train, plan and fight, and how the Metaverse presents new challenges and opportunities for future conflict.

The military were early adopters of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality technologies and wider simulation systems. Before 2010 they were one of the few sectors that could afford the technology, and millions of military R&D dollars went into developing and understanding these technologies. However, as the democratisation of metaverse technologies has happened over the past decade there is a danger that militaries have been overtaken and caught short, encumbered with expensive legacy systems, sold and maintained by expensive prime contractors, whilst the gaming and consumer market has cheaper and more innovative and agile systems. The book provides a history of the use of metaverse technologies in the military, particularly in the areas of design, maintenance, training, planning and operations. It then examines the current state of the art in these areas and the opportunities that are available from the current generation of consumer-driven approaches. The drivers for, challenges to, and paths towards an enterprise approach to the Military Metaverse are then presented. The book explores the military use of social virtual worlds, of early work done by defence and security organisations in worlds such as Second Life, and how such environments could become important for intelligence as well as influence operations in the future. Finally, the book will consider what war in the Metaverse might look like, both in terms on in-world activities and the impact of cyber-war on the Metaverse itself.

It should be of interest to all militaries across the world, the industries that support them and those in academic and the wider public with an interest in the military and defence. 

 

December 2024 - Metaverse News and Links

 

• Decentraland's 2025 Vision
• Taiwan virtual world GOXR has closed, with the parent company focussing on its brand-new community platform XRSPACE. GOXR had a very nice 3D floor model of Taiwan and an AI driven avatar guide.