The latest Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories (FIVARS) starts today in a hybrid exhibition of 65 immersive stories until September 19 in Toronto and until October 3 with an online exhibition of spherical video and cinematic VR. I had a chance to sit down with FIVARS founder Keram Malicki-Sánchez to get a little bit of a sneak peak of this year's selection. There is over 24 hours worth of content, which is too much to be able to cover in one conversation, but Malicki-Sánchez shares the deeper inspiration and motivation that's driving the underlying independent and experimental spirit of this festival.

We also talk about the fragility of what it means to be an immersive creator in this day and age, especially in light of Unity's controversial runtime fees that were announced earlier this week raising a lot of deeper concerns for the long-term viability of using Unity in the eyes of VR content creators. We talk about the open source game engine alternatives like Godot, but also the broader challenges for producing, distributing, and receiving feedback on immersive narratives created with an independent spirit or experimental edge. If you're in the Toronto area, then be sure to get a ticket to check out the interactive portions of the 2023 program. And if you're remote, then be sure to check out the hybrid portion with 20-30 different 360 videos that should be made available to be seen within their WebXR theatre viewable with a Quest Browser.

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Music: Fatality