Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · 1d

New game announcement soon!

It'll be desktop/mobile-only at launch for a change, but of course I had to develop a mixed reality "stunt capture app" for it using WebXR 🤷 Check out that process along w/ a sneak peak of my next original title, and keep an eye out for more

🏃‍➡️↗️➡️↘️🛏️

1 4

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · 8d

Sincerely doubt they have the organizational patience to make it successful at the scale they want. I bet they roll it up within a couple years. Everybody wants Roblox’s numbers but they don’t want to put in the decade-plus to build market share and platform

1 2

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · 18d

After two days at Meta Connect, where I tried on the new Meta Ray-Ban Display, I visited the Computer History Museum and saw relics like the first mouse and keyboard and the first web server. Just a few decades of steady, incremental progress separate these devices. Play the long game.

2

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · 19d

Pretty cool to walk around the Saint Louis Zoo’s free 90-acre campus and see users and signs for the one-of-a-kind 3D web map with search and GPS navigation that I architected, built and sold to this client using open source web tech - check it out: map.stlzoo.org

2

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · 21d

Amazing! I just went there yesterday for the first time. Thanks for your work on this!

3

Reposted by James Clifford Kane

Scott Stein 🥑 @scottstein.bsky.social · 23d

Meta says browser use in headset is up 28%

1 1 3

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · 25d

I'm heading to Meta Connect! Last year the game I directed was featured in the keynote and WebXR sessions. Will 'In Tirol' be recognized this year? Stay tuned, and let me know if you'll be in town!

2

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Sep 10

Cool to see WebGPU demos on iOS Safari without a flag! This is still beta but should ship widely next week. Considering Apple didn’t ship WebGL 2.0 until like 2021, this is great to see

Last barrier to me using it in production is the WebXR-to-WebGPU bindings, which I believe is in proposal phase?

2

Reposted by James Clifford Kane

Keiichi Matsuda @liquidcity.bsky.social · Sep 9

📡 We’re looking for a freelance mid-senior level Character Animator / Technical Artist to help bring a digital character to life across a series of VR prototypes, developed in Unity for Quest. Remote OK. Recommendations and signal boosts welcomed!

#XRJobs

liquidcity.notion.site/Character-An...

Character Animator / Technical Artist (VR) - Freelance | Notion

Liquid City is a speculative design studio working at the intersection of AI, spatial computing and immersive media. We prototype future interfaces, virtual characters and intelligent environments, co...

liquidcity.notion.site

7 3 9

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Sep 9

I actually love this b/c it’s only going to demonstrate that even with pro writing, a real production schedule and a legitimate Hollywood budget, this shit is still going to suck

Culture Crave 🍿 @culturecrave.co · Sep 8

OpenAI confirms they're helping make an AI-generated movie called 'Critterz'

• Goal is to finish production in 9 months
• Budget is ~$30M
• Plan is to debut the film at Canne
• 'Paddington 3' writers penned the script
• Art will be fed into Chat GPT 5 and other image models

(via WSJ)

1

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Sep 3

This has been my feeling for a couple years: LLMs are at or near their ceiling for capabilities, and will not improve dramatically from here, for reasons technical, practical, legal and economic. Recent evidence: arxiv.org/abs/2507.19703

The wall confronting large language models

We show that the scaling laws which determine the performance of large language models (LLMs) severely limit their ability to improve the uncertainty of their predictions. As a result, raising their r...

arxiv.org

1 1

Reposted by James Clifford Kane

m₂ @msub2.com · Sep 3

My game "Grappler's Gauntlet" is now live on @viverse.com! Use your grappling gun to pull yourself up to the top before anyone else can stop you! You can play now at worlds.viverse.com/QTrnrXw and join the Discord at discord.gg/ccWHZtBXpA.

1 2 6

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Sep 3

My keyboard has a tiny LED screen to display gifs and other info and it is admittedly dumb but also makes me happy

The overall look reminds me of my old DOS Tandy from the early 90’s, which is to say 🥵 www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZCMX4R...

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Sep 2

I'll be at Meta Connect in SF from Sept 16-20 talking #WebXR to anyone who'll listen, hope to see you there

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Aug 28

📢 Meta published my guest piece on their developer blog! I wrote about making ‘In Tirol’ as a one-man band, including inspiration, script, art, score, voiceover, development and launch at GDC: developers.meta.com/horizon/blog...

Go Behind the Scenes with James C. Kane to Explore the Road to ‘In Tirol’

Get an inside look at ‘In Tirol’ with Webby-winning developer James C. Kane as he shares his design and technical process for building the WebXR hit.

developers.meta.com

1

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Aug 28

📢 Meta published my guest piece on their developer blog! I wrote about making ‘In Tirol’ as a one-man band, including inspiration, script, art, score, voiceover, development and launch at GDC: developers.meta.com/horizon/blog...

Go Behind the Scenes with James C. Kane to Explore the Road to ‘In Tirol’

Get an inside look at ‘In Tirol’ with Webby-winning developer James C. Kane as he shares his design and technical process for building the WebXR hit.

developers.meta.com

1 1 3

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Aug 21

Whereabouts are you now? Closer to London? I will always have a fond memory of Lewes thanks to you!

1 1

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Aug 13

Cool to see Vienna among the top cities playing In Tirol globally each week

1

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Aug 6

I talk about this here, just came out: voicesofvr.com/1615-viverse...

#1615: Viverse’s WebXR Publishing Strategy with James C. Kane & “In Tirol” Game – Voices of VR Podcast

voicesofvr.com

2

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Aug 6

Monetization. They need an OS-level wallet that works in the browser - like how on Android/iOS you can purchase a product from Instagram within a webview in two clicks w/ a trusted interface. Vision Pro launched w/ this but has no users or content promo. Meta still has a pure gaming platform PoV

1 3

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Aug 6

My Voices of VR interview is out! I spoke to @kentbye.com at @awexr.com about my game, WebXR broadly, and publishing on @viverse.com. I'm a huge fan of this podcast b/c of Kent's journalistic objectivity and ethics, but also his genuine enthusiasm and deep experience

voicesofvr.com/1615-viverse...

#1615: Viverse’s WebXR Publishing Strategy with James C. Kane & “In Tirol” Game – Voices of VR Podcast

voicesofvr.com

6 13

Reposted by James Clifford Kane

Kent Bye (Voices of VR) @kentbye.com · Aug 3

I published 41 interviews from 2018 to 2025 on the Voices of VR covering Augmented World Expo Past & Present. I cover XR & AI like a hyperobject over space & time through the modality of oral history, and this series is 24.5 hours long spanning lots of topics. See my cheat sheet with tags & metadata

List of interviews in a 41-episode series on AWE Past and Present.

8 31

Reposted by James Clifford Kane

Bela Bohlender @belabohlender.bsky.social · Jul 28

Github Repo: github.com/pmndrs/viverse
Docs: pmndrs.github.io/viverse/

Super excited for this launch since it enables every threejs dev to get started with VIVERSE!

Let's show them the power of the threejs community ❤️

1 1 1

Reposted by James Clifford Kane

Bela Bohlender @belabohlender.bsky.social · Jul 28

Introducing pmndrs/viverse and react-three/viverse 🎉

A Toolkit for building @threejs.org and React Three Fiber Apps for VIVERSE and beyond with only a few lines of code ⟁

1 2 17

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Jul 18

It's just CapCut and a dream, @mattcool.tech, but thank you, I appreciate the encouragement!

2

James Clifford Kane @jamesckane.bsky.social · Jul 17

Art and inspiration for In Tirol

1 2