XR AI Spotlight - The easiest way to stay up to date in 3D, XR, and AI
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XR AI Spotlight helps you cut through the hype by providing in-depth content around 3D, XR, and AI. By subscribing you get (i) the top 10 tools, apps or product updates of the week hard to find anywhere else (ii) weekly in-depth interviews with Founders and Makers at the intersection of XR and AI (iii) the Handbook on Gaussian Splatting with best practices, tools and plugins to get started on 3DGS or figure out everything you missed.
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Weekly “top 10” in XR, 3D, and AI hits a scale wall fast: tool churn, duplicate announcements, and link rot can turn curation into noisy, non-reproducible picks.
Best practice is a structured ingestion + diff pipeline (GitHub releases, arXiv, vendor changelogs) with embeddings-based clustering for dedupe, source credibility scoring, and a human verification pass on anything you recommend for production.
How are you detecting meaningful updates versus rebrands, and will Pro members get personalization (tags like 3DGS, WebXR, Vision Pro) or an exportable feed so teams can track only what matters to them?
@ryan_thill THIS IS AN AMAZING POINT. If you want to build this at scale and automate it, I completely agree with you. You would probably also end up with a MASSIVE list that a human would need to filter and curate and even after that such a compilation will likely feel overwhelming.
I decided to take a human-first approach. I would rather select what I find and share it as a valuable snapshot of interesting things people can try and discover. Sure, links might break and the number of entries is going to be lower (probably also more manageable for Pro members).
The idea of tags is very good and I thought about it. The problem is that I would need to build a different infrastructure when sharing these resources. Right now, based on my knowledge this is not something that can be easily set up in Substack. I will think about it
I worked with Gab during the first years at ShapesXR, trying to define the product market fit and his knowledge and experience in the field have been expanding enormously.
I also had a chance to join his podcast and talk about XR Design as a journey and career. The discussion felt more like a collaboration than an interview, a genuine exchange about how to break into XR design and how emerging technologies like AI are reshaping the way we think, create, and connect.
@mo_sayyar it was a real pleasure to work and collaborate on so many fronts. Hoping for more opportunities at the intersection of XR and AI
Are the interviews shared on YouTube different from the articles shared in the free newsletter?
@rouzbeh_s_ essentially they are the same. The written interviews tend to be more concise and with direct hyperlinks to various additional resources. The video interviews are more "demanding" but a great format for a podcast-like experience.
Some people prefer to read some prefer to listen/watch.
I would really like to see the Gaussian splatting handbook (did a review and an upvote already ;-). Is there a subject on selecting the best workflow/pipeline for after doing the scan with let's say a portalcam?
@henk_kruizinga Workflows are very use-case dependent and getting into details is hard without knowing the final objective. You will often end up needing to clean, get a mesh and/or share the splat on the web. For those usecases and more there are various tools and plugins suggested that you can use. To get an impression of the handbook, you can still subscribe to the Free tier and you will get one chapter for free.
I’ve been loving the interviews around Gaussian Splatting. Getting to know the founders who are building these tools has been incredibly valuable.
@min_vasquez I also learned so much from them. The beauty of these conversations is that I get the chance to ask the questions nobody is asking and YOU as the audience can hear those answers as well.
Thank you for doing it Gabriele! Finding the most valuable pieces of information is the hard work, and I appreciate that you keep delivering it to keep us up to date with latest innovations.
@dmitrykornilov1 I honestly thought this would be hard and time consuming.... it IS time-consuming, but I am actually having fun scraping and curating resources I am proud to share
Congrats on the launch! XR AI Spotlight looks like a solid way to cut through the noise and focus on tools and insights you can actually use. How do you decide what’s worth including each week versus what’s just hype?
@vik_sh I mostly look at the things that people can try or learn from. This includes apps, tech demos and sometimes case studies from creatives. This makes the content very actionable... I hope 😉
This is a super valuable resource. I always get lost in my newsletters and this condense everything I need in something I can quickly read through.
@avi_vasquez That is truly the idea. Resources are so scattered that is hard to make sense of it. Glad you enjoy the packaging
I have been following this for a while and I really enjoy the questions you ask during the interview. Keep up the good work!
@nimrangel Thanks for following along. Preparing the questions and digging deeper when needed is a part of the job I especially enjoy 😉
I've been hugely inspired by Gabriele's persistent work - interview podcasts, hackathon mentorship, conference speeches, ... I'm so excited to see this launch, and know it will definitely be great!
Will you talk about World Models sometimes? Perhaps it's a natural spot where 3D, XR, and AI collide.
@liv_jy_yu 100 % There is also a section in the handbook provided that does some comparison between world models like Marbles, SHARP and World mirror. That space is also very exciting and I am actively looking for guests to dive deeper into this topic. I have already eyed someone 😉