In an industry where the limelight often falls on influencers and public figures, the real minds driving VR/AR/MR/XR development forward can go unnoticed. They're the brains refining our tech to be more immersive, enjoyable, and user-friendly. And their drive? They're not just doing it for personal success. They're committed to achieving a grander, more collaborative XR ecosystem. That's why we shift public focus to recognize these professionals, celebrating the 'By Developers, For Developers' visionaries shaping our spatial worlds.
Our criteria for chosing the below individuals?
If you’re working in the VR (Virtual Reality)/AR (Augmented Reality) industry, you should not miss the chance to follow these individuals on their respective channels!
The content they share is truly inspirational. But see for yourself why we selected the following 18 individuals as outstanding members of the XR community. However, sometimes it's difficult to find the most current information on famous personalities, that's why descriptions vary in length, please reach out if you'd like to add or edit information!
Alex Coulombe is an XR architect, and the founder of Agile Lens, a creative studio known for immersive design. His immersive storytelling work is acclaimed, especially within live theater. He introduced Heavenue, a high-fidelity cloud platform, that connects performers and metaverse audiences. This platform primarily serves the needs of performing artists in the virtual space. Alex's contributions are highlighted in global conferences. He has taught VR performance at NYU Tisch, Unity3D at Syracuse University, and now instructs on Unreal Engine, as an authorized partner of Epic Games.
Why did we select him?
Alex’s work in Unreal Engine and XR-chitecture truly is amazing. He also posts really useful VR tutorials on YouTube.
Famous clients:
Unreal Engine, Intel, Samsung, Unity, Nvidia, IBM, T-Mobile
Follow Alex here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexcoulombe/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/iBrews
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ibrews
Portfoilo: https://www.agilelens.com/media.html
Superpowers:
Alex is probably the most experienced and qualified XR-chitect in the industry.
Antonia Forster is Senior XR Technical Specialist at Unity with expertise in hand-tracking, body-tracking, and haptics. She is an advocate for women, LGBTQ+ people, and marginalized voices in tech and has created the world’s first LGBTQ+ VR museum – a virtual space built around a collection of artworks and stories, providing a platform for representation of the LGBTQ+ community. She discovered that lack of exposure to queer stories is a strong predictor of homophobia - and created a cutting-edge virtual reality project to address this.
Why did we select her?
Antonia inspires hundreds of developers through her talks on practical development with Unity and tutorials about multiplayer and digital twin projects.
Famous projects and clients:
LGBTQ+ VR Museum, NASA, Stanford University, Yahoo!, AstraZeneca
Follow Antonia here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonia-forster/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AntoniaRForster
LGBTQ+ VR Museum: https://lgbtqvrmuseum.com/
Superpowers:
Unity Asset Creation, Haptic array, Volumetric Video, Ultraleap Leap Motion Controller, Holographic Displays, Eye, Hand and Full-Body tracking. She also has created a particle system in Unity that emulates the topography and colour of each point using LiDAR.
Alexandria Heston has been involved in the concept of how Human-Computer Interaction and Immersive Computing are combined together. She is based out of Indiana, United States and is currently working as UX Prototyper at Apple. Prior to that she worked as a UX Designer at Niantic Inc. where she was responsible for designing intuitive UI, creating interaction flows, and helping with the direction of the products to merge the virtual with the real world. She also worked as UI/UX Visual Designer at Magic Leap where she was involved in creating the UI, UX, and Interaction Design for Studios' First Party applications presented on the Magic Leap One headset.
Famous Clients and Projects:
Pokemon Go Mobile, Pokemon Go Hololens Demo, Pancake Pals
Follow Alexandria here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandria-heston-a42204a0
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ali_heston
Superpowers: User experience design, User research, User centered design, Virtual reality, User engagement, Virtual art
Andrew is a VR and Game developer. He has been creating simulations and games for almost a decade! In 2017, he began to create video tutorials to share his gaming experience and knowledge. He currently creates semi-regular videos that are released on his YouTube channel every Monday. These videos may be a tutorial or trending news and development on games and VR.
Why did we select him?
Over the past decade, Andrew has been actively involved in game and simulation development, accumulating a wealth of expertise in the field.
Follow Andrew here:
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/VRwithAndrew/playlists
Superpowers: VR Optimization and Performance
Dinesh Punni is an Educator, Public Speaker, and Content Creator. He teaches AR and VR Development and Design at local meetups, conferences, in live workshops, and on his online course platform Immersive Insiders.
Why did we select him?
He’s a great spreader and teacher of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Extended Reality.
Follow Dinesh here:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dineshpunni
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DineshPunni
Superpowers: Hand Tracking and Eye-Tracking sensors
Dilmer Valecillos is famous on YouTube for his educational VR/AR content! He created over 100 open-source projects on GitHub and is the founder of LearnXR, where he teaches XR Development by offering AR, VR, and programming courses. In addition, I he has worked with large enterprise clients on a variety of XR projects.
Why did we select him?
Dilmer is a recognized extended reality development expert and currently has over 100 GitHub open-source repositories and more than 600 videos on his YouTube site with 60K followers.
Famous Clients and Projects:
Meta, Magic Leap, Qualcomm, Niantic, etc
Follow Dilmer here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dilmerv/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dilmerv
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/dilmerv
Superpowers:
Teaching XR!
Eric is Staff Research Engineer at Unity Labs working on XR Interactions such as scroll view, poke components, and manipulation. He has also worked on Unity Slices: Table, a proof of concept to show how Passthrough VR can support mixed-reality social experiences, allowing people in VR to interact with physical objects or interfaces in the real world. It has some interesting features like tactile interactions and hand-tracking.
Why did we select him?
Eric is the creator of MRTK-Quest, the most popular open-source MRTK extension designed to bring the full support of Microsoft interaction library to the Oculus ecosystem.
Famous Clients and Projects:
Unity XR Interaction Toolkit, MetaXRI, HandshakeVR, MTRK- Quest, MRTK-Magic Leap
Follow Eric here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/provencher/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pvncher
Superpowers:
He specializes in hand-tracking interaction UX (User Experience).
Jesse Schell is the CEO of Schell Games, a game design and development company for education and entertainment. Under his leadership, Schell Games has produced an amazing array of award-winning educational and entertainment experiences, including the ‘I Expect You To Die’ franchise, ‘Happy Atoms’, ‘Until You Fall’, and some of the most popular interactive theme park attractions in the world. He is best known for his award-winning book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses and his predictions about the future of gaming technology.
Famous Clients and Projects:
Disney Fairies MMO, Pixie Hollow, Toy Story Mania TV Game, Among US VR
Follow Jesse here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesseschell/
Justin P. Barnett is a VR evangelist and founder of VR Creator Academy, a self-paced VR development course that has taught over 700 students the fundamentals of making games.
Why did we select him?
We just love XR educators! Justin has taught thousands of beginner VR developers through his Youtube channel and is on a mission to make open metaverse a reality.
Famous Clients and Projects:
These Four Walls, VR County Fair, Escape the Tank
Follow Justin here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-p-barnett/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JustinPBarnett
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/JustinPBarnett
Website: https://www.vrcreators.io/
Superpowers: Storytelling & Content Creation
Lucas Rizzotto is the mastermind behind the most exciting futuristic projects online. His creations span everything from VR/AR to A.I. and have been seen by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. He is currently leading a new Mixed Reality + A.I. startup named Pillow and advising some of the world’s biggest companies on how to best embrace emerging technologies. He is the creator behind the VR experience ‘Where Thoughts Go', an emotional VR experience where you can discover the dreams, fears, and secrets of others.
Why did we select him?
Lucas creates content that is thought-provoking. Whether it's the Holographic Chemistry app, VR Time Machine, or Where Thoughts Go, his VR experiences consistently incorporate elements of storytelling and education.
Famous Clients and Projects:
Where Thoughts Go, Time Machine, Holographic Chemistry App
Follow Lucas here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucasrizzotto/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_LucasRizzotto
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LucasRizzotto
Superpowers: Interaction and Communication modalities, Spatial-audio
Mathew Hellberg is a YouTuber who is well known for his speculative cutting-edge prototypes and demos that feature the most recent technologies available in the field of XR. He is currently working as a design engineer at Snap.Inc. He has developed various AR experimental projects from coronavirus data in AR to AR Photoshop plugins.
Why did we select him?
Matthew's technical expertise not only caters to the technical side but also fosters interest among designers. He collaborates with aspiring developers and assists them in building solutions, showing his commitment to growing a community around XR technology.
Follow Matthew here:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/matthew-hallberg-49645292
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewHallberg
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MatthewHallberg
Superpowers: C++, Java, and Python
Quentin Valembois is the creator of Valem, a youtube channel about VR development. He is best known for his VR tutorial series on Youtube on how to make your own VR application and games, which covers topics such as VR setup, Teleportation, Continuous Movement, Grab, and Ray interaction. He has developed a wide range of experimental projects from Bennet Foddy's ‘Getting Over It’ in VR to a massive outdoor VR racing game on a race track. Moreover, he launched a channel called the ‘Valem Patreon’ for those who want to delve into advanced VR/AR concepts.
Why did we select him?
Valembois is a self-taught VR developer who believes in democratizing advanced VR tutorials for those who want to learn VR development.
Follow Quentin here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/quentin-valembois/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/valemvr?lang=en
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ValemTutorials
Superpowers: Valembois developed a VR game for the Meta Quest 2 in 24 hours, everything from conceptualizing to coding, entirely in VR headset.
Dennys Kuhnert has a unique background in biomedical engineering and XR development. He won the Top Indie Creator and Best Game Auggie Award and was nominated for the Best VR Game Unity Award for his groundbreaking work on Hand Physics Lab, a game with one of the best hand-tracking systems in VR. He is the Co-founder of Holonautic, a company utilizing re-animation simulation and virtual physics in VR games. He’s also teaching the Advanced VR Interactions Master Class at XR Bootcamp.
Why did we select him?
Not only is Dennys famous for his hundreds of XR experiments he’s sharing on twitter, but also because of his exceptional XR dev capabilities - the physics and hand tracking he’s showcasing in his games, are next level!
Famous games:
Hand Physics Lab, Surgineer, Holoception, Cybrix
Follow and connect with Dennys:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennyskuhnert/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DennysKuhnert
Holonautic: https://www.holonautic.com/
Superpowers: Hand-tracking technology, Spatial Computing, Unity 3D and Immersive Interaction
Stephen Rogers is a programmer and game designer who specializes in VR/AR development. He is currently the founder of 4th Wall Breaker, a self-owned video game studio that primarily focuses on developing VR titles. He is a winner of the Presence Platform Hackathon hosted by Meta for its mixed-reality game Submersed, where users have to quickly make their way around the room to apply duct tape and ensure the water level doesn’t surpass their height.
Why did we select him?
Stephen is known for his experimental XR projects. He created a prototype called ‘Shared Wall’ which allows people to hang-out with co-workers through a portal, and pass virtual objects back and forth. He’s also part of the XR Pro Collective and support XR Bootcamp as Master Trainer.
Follow Stephen here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-rogers-6b7203152/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheCaptainSpain
Superpowers: Hand-tracking, Computer Vision, Machine Learning
Tevfik is best known for educating thousands of VR developers through his courses on Udemy. His contribution enabled many aspiring developers to learn VR development easily and make use of their talent in the industry. He is the founder of Ironhead Games, a VR Game Development Studio, and co-founder of Mindway VR, a wellness application.
Why did we select him?
Thousands of developers learned XR through his courses on Udemy. 3 out of the Top 4 most in-demand VR courses are produced by him.
Famous projects:
Ironhead Games, Mindway VR, Udemy Courses about VR development
Follow Tevfik here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tevfik-ufuk-demirbaş-85332857/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tevfikufuk
Superpowers:
All the ins and outs of Unity and Unreal Engine, creating educational content and course related to VR
Joost Van Schaik has been working as a software architect, developer, storyteller, and inventor. Currently, he is a lead unity developer for a mixed reality software package supporting neurosurgeons with brain tumor assessment and actual brain surgery. Prior, he was a lead architect and developer building self-serving Mixed Reality training software in the health and safety field. He is also a long-time avid XR blogger where he shares a collection of how-to examples in the Microsoft software stack and now shares more than 130 repositories at Githhub.
Why did we select him?
He is one of the most influential names when it comes to MR, interactions and different use cases around it.
Famous Clients and Projects:
HoloATC, Jumbo Maritime, Boston, QR Code Service MRTK, Hololens projects for Schiphol Airport, Dutch Railways
Follow Joost here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joostvanschaik/
Website: https://localjoost.github.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/localjoost
Superpowers: HoloLens, Magic Leap, Unity, Mixed Reality, C#, Web Services, GEO ICT, Geodata, Microsoft MVP
Dominque Wu has been working in UX Design Experience for 3D spaces over a decade, and now she is the founder of Hummingbirdsday Design Studio where she creates immersive and engaging XR solutions for various industries and domains. She is an expert in developing VR Unity prototypes, designing XR user interfaces and interactions, and conducting XR user research and testing. Building her career thoroughly from UX designer to grafting Mixed Reality, Dominique now works to facilitate creators’ entry into the Spatial Computing era through the establishment of XREality Pro, an XR community conducting workshops, and events, organizing hackathons, and even offering personalized 1-on-1 mentorship.
Why did we select her?
She has created tons of content around XR interfaces and UX design. She has created workshops and youtube content that inspires hundreds of dev around the world.
Famous Clients and Projects:
XReality Pro, Hummingbirdsday Design Studio
Follow Dominique here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominiquewu/recent-activity/all/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04F-G0rTeYA
Superpowers: Unity, User Experience Design (UED), Mobile Application Development
Sean Ong is a thought leader who has published on topics ranging from holographic computing to the economics of clean energy systems.
He has co-founded several XR startups, including Dimension XR, a premier virtual experience center, Laborbot, a telepresence robotics company, Manuvr Entertainment Inc, a VR location-based entertainment platform company, and Inflexion Point Inc., an XR app creation platform company. He is also the creator of the first location-based full MR Multiplayer Game with Inside-Out Tracking Creator and has authored a book titled 'Beginning Windows Mixed Reality Programming: For HoloLens and Mixed Reality Headsets.'
As founder of the tech company Ong Innovations, Sean and his team actively work with clients around the globe to push the boundaries of mixed reality and holographic computing.
Why did we select him?
Sean has 10+ years of Engineering experience and built a successful Mixed Reality consulting business with clients from all over the world. He’s also one of the Master Tainers at XR Bootcamp.
Famous Clients and Projects:
Limitless VR, Re-Coil
Follow Sean here:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/seanong
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SeanOng/videos
Superpowers: Unity, HoloLens, Mixed Reality, Holographic computing
This is not the end! Based on our community feedback, we would like to give special mention to these superb XR industry contributors.
Andy Fidel, Founder & Creative Lead at PLAYSCAPE STUDIO
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-fidel/
Andreea Ion CojoCaru, Co-founder & CEO at NUMENA
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreeacojocaru/
Thanks for scrolling through our list of VIPs of XR!
Curious to follow and be inspired by more technical XR Master Minds? Feel free to check our list of technical Master Minds here: https://xrbootcamp.com/top-15-xr-master-minds/
Let us know who to add, and why!
We'd love to make this list as complete as possible :)
This blog article was co-funded by the European Union’s Single Market Programme.
