STYLY makes creation and distribution of cross-platform XR content easy

Hello Kevin, can you introduce yourself to my readers?

Hi everyone! I’m Kevin Joyce, Global Partner for Psychic VR Lab. I’ve been working in XR for close to a decade, and my current role involves helping to bring an innovative art and design platform, STYLY, to a wider XR audience, as well as building a community of XR creatives and developing educational programmes for XR art.

What is STYLY? Can you describe it?

STYLY is a platform for XR creatives – both experienced developers and those new to digital mediums. In the first instance, a creator familiar with Unity and 3D modelling softwares can create an XR scene and then upload to STYLY through our Unity Plugin, where a multiformat version of the scene will automatically be created and hosted, allowing anyone to view the scene using a VR HMD, AR smartphone or even WebXR through their browser. This allows for artists experienced in XR mediums to easily share their work with audiences who may be less familiar.

Additionally, STYLY presents the opportunity for creators to build directly in VR. If you’re unfamiliar with Unity or are looking for a no-code solution, you can use STYLY Studio (either in a browser or in VR) to import your assets and arrange via visual inputs. These scenes can be uploaded to the STYLY platform and shared in the exact same way as I described earlier.

Finally, there’s a whole host of supplementary features, such as STYLY Sessions (which allows for multiple users to enter a single scene simultaneously, including VOIP), and the forthcoming capability to map real-world locations with AR scenes that can be automatically populated (no need for QR codes, etc.). There’s also plenty of new features coming in 2022, so stay tuned!

What is STYLY’s backstory?

It’s an interesting backstory, actually. Back in 2016, a group of Japanese developers were working on a project with a local fashion designer who wanted to do a fashion show in an underwater environment. In physical reality this would be impossible, however they sought to use VR as means of achieving what the fashion designer wanted. So Psychic VR Lab was formed, and STYLY started as a VR solution for a fashion designer wanting to create an unforgettable experience. Of course, since then the STYLY platform has grown with the addition of new features that have been specifically designed for artists, designers, and other creatives. STYLY was designed to be a simplified solution for creatives that do not have the time to study difficult programming. The developers at Psychic VR Lab want people to focus on being creative, it is here that they believe the future of VR is.

What are the steps used to create a scene in STYLY?

This depends on where you’re beginning. If you have some basic knowledge of Unity, you can build your scene in Unity and use STYLY as a distribution platform (uploading your scene via STYLY’s Unity Plugin). However, if you’re unfamiliar with Unity you can use STYLY Studio to build your scene through a no-code solution. Simply create a STYLY account and upload your images and/or audio then manipulate them all through our very easy to understand GUI, then save your scene to make it viewable in the same fashion as those built in Unity.

Why should a creator use STYLY and not a powerful game engine like Unity?

If you’re already familiar with Unity then please do continue to use it! STYLY will remain available to you as a place to share the content you create across VR, AR and WebXR!

And why should a creator use STYLY and not a social VR world with building tools like Horizon Worlds or VRChat?

STYLY is not intended to act as a virtual world. It allows for artists to create and bespoke content without any predetermined rulesets. While we love applications like VRChat, they are pitched to a very different audience!

What do you think is the best feature of your software?

This would undoubtedly vary depending on who you spoke to in the company! STYLY is such a versatile platform with numerous features, it’s very hard to pick just one! If I had to, I’d probably go with the fact that anyone can create a piece of XR art and then share it via an automatically generated QR code, whether it’s AR, MR or VR. There’s no complicated processes, it’s simply build and share!

In what do you think you should improve instead?

We’re working hard to improve the AR aspect of STYLY. Right now, you can generate an AR experience by scanning the floor and placing an object, similar to most AR platforms. Creators can also use map data to create scenes across an entire area, provided the viewer scans a QR code at the start and walks a specific route through the area. These are great places to begin, but have too much friction for what we see as the future of AR – and we’ll be rolling out new updates that remove this friction in the coming weeks!

What are the supported VR platforms? And the supported creators tools?

We support all major VR platforms – including Oculus/Meta HMDs and Steam VR, Vive Flow, Nreal and Pico ecosystems – and below you can find a handy image demonstrating a selection of supported creation tools!

Can you give me a link to some of the best works done on your platform so that we can understand its potential?

“Best” is a very subjective term, but here’s some of my favourites!

• Birds of a Scape | STYLY
• Takkun Museum | STYLY
• Midnight Ghost Cafe | STYLY
• VR MANGA WORLD for STYLY | STYLY
• Piece of String | STYLY

I’ve seen you’ve held various contests on your platform, can you tell us something more about them?

We try to do a few contests throughout the year through our social media platforms. We are always trying to encourage new and experienced people to create amazing artwork in 3D space. We recently concluded a contest on our Instagram (styly.global) for a Christmas AR or VR scene, however, our biggest contest is actually a global award for XR. We host the annual NEWVIEW AWARDS for all creatives who want to submit their content on STYLY. We just finished the 4th annual awards and had a lot of amazing content submitted, with the winners set to be announced in late January at a ceremony in Tokyo, Japan. We encourage everyone to check out the STYLY Gallery to see some of the XR works that were finalists in the 2021 awards and also previous years. The gold prize is not a small award by any means: the winner receives $20,000 USD and also the possibility of professional collaboration with major companies.

What’s STYLY’s price?

STYLY is free! All of the features of STYLY that we have discussed today are completely free to everyone.

We do also offer a STYLY Pro tier which grants additional hosting features, direct support and more, however we recommend everyone sign up and get started with our free platform before deciding whether or not they need STYLY Pro.

What will be the future features of STYLY?

We recently released a real-world “metaverse” to users across the globe: this is an AR overlay that exists throughout the world and requires no additional input beyond loading the STYLY app on your AR device. STYLY continues to evolve with new features added almost monthly. We really care about making the STYLY platform an extremely accessible service so we are constantly listening to feedback from users about things they wish they could do in an AR or VR application. I actually encourage people to join our local STYLY communities all over the world to share ideas and also creative techniques. I guess to answer the question, we can’t comment directly about future features except that there will always be new and useful features released by Psychic VR Lab! 

Your company comes from Japan. How is the VR ecosystem in Japan, and how do you see it evolving in the upcoming months and years?

I come from London, however, Psychic VR Lab, the developing company behind STYLY, is from Tokyo, Japan. The CEO, Masahiro Yamaguchi, has always envisioned a world that has accepted VR as a mainstream media, communication, and entertainment source; where you regularly use XR as part of your lifestyle. Rather than creating a digital world with a personality separate from reality, the market will be larger if it is connected to the real world. I think this vision is also shared by numerous other CEOs and influencers in the VR industry. The VR ecosystem in Japan is growing strong, but like anything else there are cultural twists added to the VR content available in Japan.

STYLY is a very culturally driven platform. It is intended for artists, designers and creatives to share their inner worlds, which are often driven by their own environments and culture. To share this culturally driven content helps us to connect more as humans. STYLY can be used as a vessel to create borderless experiences across all cultures. Masahiro also believes that the definition of reality is also changing, and it is not just physical reality or informational reality, but the self and companies in the world that are using XR to provide feedback. It is more of a humancentric approach. Essentially, we want to focus on real people, and XR has given us a new perception. XR has given us new perceptions, and the world we can perceive ourselves has become a more advanced universe.

This VR movement is obviously already happening, however there is still not enough VR content to satisfy everyone. It was only a little over two decades ago that we started using smartphones, and now these devices can be found in the pockets of almost every human being on Earth. The usage and viewing time of VR could be just like the adoption of smartphones.

You work with WebXR. When do you think web-based XR content can reach the same high level of standalone content made with Unreal or Unity?

WebXR has developed rapidly over the last few years, but also very quietly. There are certain specific features that still elude WebXR – such as built-in clocks or microphone access, for example – however should these omissions be resolved then WebXR content could certainly stand alongside engine-creations in the near future. However, that being said, Unity and Unreal are also constantly accelerating, so it’s currently hard to see a time when WebXR parallels engine-created content exactly!

[The cool thing of the use of WebXR is that I can embed one of the Styly worlds suggested by Kevin here on my webpage! Click on the embed below and enjoy this manga world. Just beware that it can be pretty heavy]

What’s your take on the current “metaverse” hype?

Psychic VR Lab’s CEO, Masahiro Yamaguchi, is a firm believer in the metaverse. However, maybe not in the same fashion as other leaders believe it will evolve:

“Recently, the term ‘metaverse’ has become more widespread and I have seen it used in many ways. The term metaverse was coined from the words ‘meta’ (higher order) and ‘universe’ (cosmos), but how do we view the concept of a metaverse and what role should Psychic VR Lab play in the metaverse?” Comments Yamaguchi. “Our definition of the metaverse is not a 3D space that exists separately from reality, but a world that is inherent in us and that we can proactively construct, and the important thing is that the feedback from the metaverse influences the real us and evolves people and companies.“

“The evolution of XR technology, especially mixed reality (MR) hardware that can project information onto the physical real world, should enable us to use XR devices in our daily lifestyle in the near future. MR technology, which allows different layers of information to be superimposed on the same physical reality depending on the user, will provide a new perception of the physical world and further expand the world, the universe that exists within us – the metaverse – which we can proactively construct.”

“Through STYLY, we hope to create an era in which we can wear “space”, change our lifestyle, and create a new culture and industry.”

And what about the future of Low-code/no-code platforms?

No-code solutions will grow rapidly in the next few years – not just in XR, but in all industries! I’m not about to suggest there will ever be a time when programmers are no longer needed (someone needs to create the platforms that no-code solutions work on top of, after all!) but democratising content creation is very much a key to the future of many different mediums, and so removing the need knowledge of complex languages and systems is a vital stepping stone.

What would you love to see happening in XR in the future?

Personally, I want to see more people from all over the world, from all different kinds of backgrounds, creating and sharing their content in XR. That will come as part of a natural evolution and growth, but can certainly be accelerated with more access to no-code platforms – especially free ones like STYLY!

Anything else to add to this interview?

We’re very keen to reach out to XR creatives across the globe and build a community of artists; not just to promote STYLY, but as a crucial part of the growth of AR, MR and VR as new mediums. If you’re based in London or Toronto there are local meetup groups available to you (with more areas coming soon!) and also a number of STYLY Sessions are held every month, in which attendees tour as a group through some of the latest works – we invite you all to join our Discord to stay updated with the latest Session times!