by 0x9a739c2e212754c3d8432cb717dc9437e5b3dfae (Sean#dfae)
Should the following Tier 6: up to $240,000 USD, 6 months vesting (1 month cliff) grant in the Platform Contributor category be approved?
Abstract
Decentraland can benefit from an immersive builder and viewer that empowers people to easily build environments and create interactive experiences within a VR and AR headset.
The developers of Byldr (https://www.byldr.app/) are requesting a grant to enable Byldr to create experiences for Decentraland and for it to be used to experience Decentraland in VR.
Byldr is a free, no-code immersive app and scene creation tool that is currently available for the Quest 2 and HoloLens 2 headsets. Having launched in 2020, it currently has over 5000+ downloads and has been used to create VR games and enterprise-grade applications. The Byldr team is excited to bring more VR and AR capabilities to Decentraland for a fully realized Metaverse experience.
Grant size
220,000 USD
Beneficiary address
0x9A739c2e212754c3d8432CB717dC9437e5b3Dfae
Description
Byldr’s creators believe that the future of computing involves the movement away from traditional 2D screens and towards immersive, 3D spatial computing. As of this writing, Decentraland is a 3D metaverse that ironically can only be experienced and built through a flat, 2D screen. Byldr was created for AR and VR applications to be created using AR and VR headsets rather than 2D PCs, thereby getting humanity one step closer to a mixed reality future. Byldr’s developers seek to further expand this progress by enabling creators to build experiences for Decentraland using VR and AR headsets. This allows creators to feel the scale of their creations while creating it, and accelerate the speed of creation using Byldr’s intuitive hand-tracking interactions and spatial tools. Creators will be able to see or preview their creations in-context within Decentraland using Byldr. This means that Byldr may also be used as a gateway to experience Decentraland using the Quest 2 and the HoloLens 2.
The Byldr development team is excited to bring our trusted immersive creation experience to Decentraland and would like to thank everyone in the Decentraland community for your support and the integral part you play in building the XR future for all generations to come.
Specification
Byldr’s development team proposes to integrate with Decentraland in the following ways:
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Allow experiences and scenes created using Byldr to be exported to Decentraland.
Byldr will be retooled to be able to export creations built using Byldr into Decentraland. After a user has created an interactive or static experience within Byldr, the user will have the option to export that experience to Decentraland, including where the experience will be placed. Users will also be able to edit or update these experiences after being published. Byldr will be updated to tightly integrate with Decentraland with the goal of making Byldr feel like a native extension for building Decentraland experiences. -
Allow users to experience Decentraland using VR and AR headsets. Although not the primary goal of this grant, re-tooling Byldr to create experiences for Decentraland will also involve the ability for users to experience Decentraland in AR and VR through Byldr (similar to how users can experience Decentraland through a browser such as Google Chrome on a PC.) It is understood that other parallel efforts are being made to enable VR support for Decentraland, so this project will focus primarily on content creation within AR and VR. That said, if these efforts by Byldr allow VR support for Decentraland to come sooner, it will be a win for the Decentraland community and provide additional means/devices to experience Decentraland (Byldr currently supports the Quest 2 and HoloLens 2 headsets.) We understand that rendering the Decentraland experience on mobile-grade XR devices like the Quest and HoloLens presents it’s own set of performance challenges. The Byldr team intends to utilize several XR optimization techniques to allow for Decentraland to be a performant experience on a mobile XR device while minimizing quality loss (compared to running on a PC browser with a dedicated graphics card.) Some of these techniques may involve more aggressive culling of faraway objects, using mobile-optimized shaders, distance-based level-of-detail (LOD) rendering, foveated rendering, and other techniques.
Personnel
The Byldr team comprises:
Sean Ong (Team technical lead / manager)
Stephen Clarke (Management)
Ketan Kapila (3D modeling/tooling)
Derek Bolton (Management)
Varun Siddaraju (Technical project manager and senior developer)
Clint Campbell (XR developer)
Paul Gumpert (XR developer)
Cole Astaire (Technical artist)
Clinton Reddie (XR developer)
VeeRuby Technologies (Byldr’s development partner)
AppVolks LLC (Byldr’s development partner)
XR Dev Studio (Byldr’s development partner)
Collectively, Byldr’s team members have over 100 person-years of XR development experience. Additional information on our company, team members, and partners can be found in the links below:
Roadmap and milestones
The Byldr team will report progress to the Decentraland community on a weekly basis and will monitor the project’s forum closely for questions or to provide updates as needed.
The proposed project will be completed within 6 months based on the following milestones and timeline:
January-February 2022: Retooling Byldr logic system and 3D model support for Decentraland integration.
March-April 2022: Initial, limited export-to-Decentraland functionality. User account integration. Initial ability to view creations in context within Decentraland in AR/VR device.
May-June 2022: Initial public alpha and beta tests expected. Testing, bug fixes, user feedback collection. Full release of Byldr with Decentraland support.