Rapturous High Fidelity Review by VR Dev -- "[R]einforces the human experience more so than any other VR experience I've tried"

Fascinating and rapturous review of High Fidelity from Ursula Lane-Mullins, who's co-founder of a VR company, so knows from VR experiences. The way she describes High Fidelity in its current (open beta) form reminds me of the way I described Second Life in its very early incarnation, as underwater lucid dreaming with others. For instance, here's what it's like for her to visit High Fidelity's virtual Australia:

For some strange reason, we all try and get on the one bus in Australia, but its much more difficult than it seems. We all try and scale down our avatar, we are that desperate to get on the bus. As we are getting on the bus, the bus suddenly grows and becomes a walk in bus. Someone with us is changing the code on the fly and it is messing with our brains big time, but it’s also the best thing ever. He ends up expanding the bus so it becomes a ramp into infinity and we all just keep skipping up the plank into eternity, because we can, and because Australia.

For her, just as important as the dream-like experience is the sense of inhabiting a body and a social space with others, which she says High Fidelity manages to do like no other:

If anything, High Fidelity reinforces the human experience more so than any other VR experience I’ve tried. Not just through the ability to communicate with our faces and body language like we do in the real world, but the ability to experience personal transformation in a shared context. How do we learn, if not in tribes, classrooms and travel experiences? I love that — even in worlds made of donuts or fantastical deserts that spanned infinite space, we would all find ourselves standing around in a tight knit circle, or perhaps in another time, reflecting the human experience of sitting around the campfire, sharing each other’s presence and stories.

Much more to read here. I haven't puttered around in High Fidelity for maybe a year, but clearly another visit is in order soon.

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Comments

[Ugh]

Sounds promising.

[JC]

It's a bit depressing really. You read reviews like this and think "wow, I will go there right now and create a fantastic VR experience" But in reality the currant state of technology and the average users hardware setup means that what you end up with is something that looks not much better than SL ten years back. And I fear it will be this way for some time to come. There is a kind of childish fascination with VR headsets at the moment that will wear off very fast unless someone begins to create something with a little more guts than another visual chat room, this time with facial expressions. If I want to talk to my friend on the other side of the world why would I choose to talk to an animated avatar of them, no matter how expressive and life like, when I can see them in real time on my screen through skype etc.

[Wagner J Au]

System deleted a couple off-topic comments. I just created an weekend open forum thread, so please post there!

[jason]

I could've paid the writer more money than Phil and gotten a bad review of the site.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

ACME Virtual is a great name - sadly it is almost as virtual as its name. In existence for a couple of months and trying to establish some credibility by association with decent VR companies ...and get some interns to work for nothing. From her write-up it appears that the head of a company that "imagines, designs and builds virtual and augmented reality experiences for clients who want to connect with their audiences in more immersive and engaging ways" has never been inside the biggest virtual world of all time?