Mike Nisbet

Don't let billionaires convince you slop is the future. They're used to managing & directing, not making things themselves. Of course they can't see the difference. They don't understand your love for the craft. Keep making personal, beautiful games. You've got my support 💖

This would be a truly terrible idea, decimating the heat pump industry and leaving UK climate and energy policy in disarray www.nesta.org.uk/blog/four-re...

SRC changed their terms of use yesterday, and released a news post with an FAQ. They make it sound like not a big deal. It's a big deal. The Creative Commons licence is gone. They claim ownership over the data now. Thread about what this means, and what we can do about it 🧵

SCOOP: 404 Media placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it. What did we find? It ended up at an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books. Yes. This is literally the logo outside the Amazon warehouse door. Read now:

Friday night’s aurora!

VICTORY! Government to open up the Land Registry - bringing to an end a thousand years of secrecy shrouding who owns England. I’ve been campaigning for this for ten years: the new Land Use Framework, published later today, makes it government policy. 1/ www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Let's do this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9...

Beyond proud to see Heatly as a case study in the Warm Homes Plan, especially our AR Room Scanner which I worked on! 🎉 You can find us on page 141 amongst some other great companies pushing forward the transition 🍃

The press release for the Warm Homes Plan - the long-awaited Warm Homes Plan! - is out www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Delighted to publish this personal essay by me and John: Getting Britain out of the hole. We wanted to write something quite readable that covers the big picture of the UK’s economic struggles. Hopefully we’ve managed at least one of those! @johnspringford.bsky.social getting-out-of-the-hole.uk

The UK’s first National Emergency Briefing on the #Climate & Nature crisis was held on the 27th November. Sign an open letter to Keir Starmer on the climate crisis. www.nebriefing.org/open-letter-...

Heat pumps news! DESNZ is expanding the Boiler Upgrade Scheme to cover air to air heat pumps and heat batteries. Both will be eligible for a £2,500 grant if it fully replaces a gas or oil boiler… www.businessgreen.com/news/4521952...

I know it's not the coolest thing to bring up and not many people seem to care, but my website is hosted in a local datacenter powered entirely by wind energy and certified under ISO-14001. So my #gameassets are a good choice if you care about the environment 🌲

We sneaked out support for Gaussian Splats using the very groovy three.js plugin Spark: icosa.gallery/view/ZTLkNjE...

Wow, @openbrush.app name dropped by @valvesoftware.com in this interview as already working with Steam Frame! 🥳 Please still send us dev kits… www.pcgamer.com/hardware/vr-...

Announcing: New @steampowered.com Hardware, coming in 2026: Steam Controller Steam Machine Steam Frame.  Watch our jazzy announcement video and wishlist now: steampowered.com/hardware

It is with shock and genuine sadness that I learn of the passing of my good friend, long time colleage and just a really kind man, Quentin Willson. He will be sorely missed by many who knew and worked with him.

Further exploration of some topics I pondered in the recent Almost Breaking News episode. llewellyn.substack.com/p/two-ideas-...

Igalia is excited to announce a new commission from the Sovereign Tech Fund to advance the Servo web engine. www.igalia.com/2025/10/09/I...

Evolution (abridged)

KA-KAWWW! In case you missed out on our booth at PAX West, our company has taken up bird watching... kinda. Peep Birdseed, a cozy nature-focused VR game where your goal is to snap the rarest birds in the most majestic (or wacky) poses. Learn more about Birdseed ➡️ buff.ly/VDJqFxG #gamedev #indiedev

Announcement! I've been working on Unity support for the new OpenXR Spatial Entities extensions, and today we shipped a public native API in OpenXR Plug-in 1.16.0-pre.1: docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com... This API is a pure C# port of the OpenXR spec, currently limited to spatial entities.

Yes, I finally got all the software I need to be a VR developer!

I did a bigger write-up on linked-in but I can finally go public with what I've been working on for the past 3 or so months. OpenXR 1.1.49 adds the much awaited spatial entities extension. Thanks to funding from Khronos, Godot will support this API "today". github.com/godotengine/...

I can finally talk about this in the open, HURRAY! OpenXR 1.1.49 dropped today and one of the two big things I've had a small hand in is Spatial Entities support. Watch this space for more news soon! www.khronos.org/blog/openxr-...

Guess who is now live in the Meta Horizon Store? 👉😂🌱👈 www.meta.com/en-gb/experi... #VR #Vivarium #MetaQuest #VRgames #VirtualReality

Multiplayer painting is now live! Collaborate, chat, draw with friends, show off or just allow others to explore your worlds. Cross platform, free and open source forever. Get it on Steam, Meta, Itch and other stores. #vr #vrart #tiltbrush #openbrush

Teaser... Coming soon: docs.openbrush.app/alternate-an... It's very cool and expands the features of Open Brush in a lot of interesting ways. We just want to get multiplayer officially released before we hit you all with this :-)

In light of this, I’m happy to announce I’ve received funding from my old employer, SideQuest, to expand my OpenXR Unity extension plugin further! Let’s all move away from vendor SDKs and make OpenXR truly cross platform. github.com/mikeskydev/u...

Promising, but I’ll reserve judgement until I see the changes they’ve made. In the meantime, I’m still working on my plugin to deploy a single binary for all VR headsets. H/T to @uploadvr.com, @kentbye.com, Guy and Matthieu for their work bringing this to light developers.meta.com/horizon/blog...

Meta's Unity and Unreal "OpenXR" SDKs block other PC VR headsets, going against the spirit of the standard, and developers aren't happy about it:

I dig into the allegation Meta has been deliberately undermining the @openxr.org standard by blocking apps on PCVR that are non-Meta HMDS or if they're not using Oculus Link. Virtual Desktop's Guy Godin corroborates many of the claims first made by Matthieu Bucchianeri voicesofvr.com/1526-allegat...

[1/5] PCVR journalists: when covering a headset software/firmware update, run the OpenXR Conformance Test Suite. If it fails, the headset/software/firmware *DOES NOT* support OpenXR and users should expect problems. The CTS is freely available on GitHub.

Even within the Unity ecosystem, Vendor SDKs aren't required, and working around them will make your app actually portable! See @openbrush.app and @mikesky.dev's work as an excellent example here.

Open Blocks, the open source rebirth of Google's Blocks, is now available on Quest in early access, following its release on Steam last year:

Open Blocks Early Access released for Quest! The most intuitive 3D modelling app is now available for standalone headsets. Free and open source forever. Full "publish and share" solution coming soon. www.meta.com/en-gb/experi... ` ` ` ` #openblocks #vr #vrart #lowpoly

I already mothballed my account on the other place but left it up so my followers could find me on here too. After today it’s now fully deleted, I would encourage anyone else still hanging on to do the same. It’s not worth it to continue propping up a platform full of hate.

With all the update issues Quests are having I’m genuinely dreading turning on my headsets after the holidays 😬 is it safe to play yet??

To all our intrepid beta users. Help us test the first release of the long-awaited multiplayer. It's fully cross-platform. Just switch to the beta version, pick a room name, tell others and you can start painting together. Merry XRmas to you all!.#vr #vrart #tiltbrush #openbrush

As soon as Meta started using an OpenXR backend, they could have their done stuff in a much more cross-platform manner and saved everyone a headache. I’m building github.com/mikeskydev/u... to prove that, and as a bonus @openbrush.app will now ship a single apk for Pico and Quest, with Passthrough!

StereoKit works out-of-box on AndroidXR :) No changes necessary! OpenXR is so kick-ass when used correctly.

Android XR is finally here! 🥳 Open Brush is *already* compatible thanks to the power of @openxr.bsky.social. See you there! blog.google/products/and...

Here's the list of new OpenXR extensions coming with AndroidXR, as well as the existing ones they support! developer.android.com/develop/xr/o...

We are delighted to welcome Google’s adoption of the OpenXR open standard. This milestone marks a win-win, empowering AndroidXR to harness a robust content ecosystem while offering OpenXR developers access to a significantly broader audience. Learn more about AndroidXR: blog.google/products/and...

Android XR is finally here! It sensibly uses @openxr.bsky.social, so @openbrush.app is already, automatically ported 😁 Looking forward to distributing Open Brush and Open Blocks on Google platforms, they've gone full circle! blog.google/products/and... #OpenXR #AndroidXR

Hello 👋 We're excited to announce that Icosa Gallery is here on Bluesky. We've been busy behind the scenes, but launch updates are on the horizon. Stay tuned! 🚀 #IcosaGallery #StayTuned

We're hitting refresh on our posts here! 👋 After a bit of radio silence, we're back and ready to bring you a bunch of developments. #StayTuned #OpenBrush