Can High Fidelity & Sansar Win the Social VR War?

Upload VR's Alice Bonasio has a good write-up of the increasingly crowded market for new or upcoming social spaces optimized/solely intended for virtual reality devices that local favorites High Fidelity (from SL co-founder Philip Rosedale) and Sansar (from Linden Lab) are competing against. They include:

• "Altspace VR is betting that the future of VR experiences will center around communications, and its CEO and Founder Eric Romo believes that Google’s Daydream will be the catalyst for that to happen on a large scale.
• VR Chat "already has hundreds of fully fleshed user-created worlds. The next step is to make that creation process much more social and accessible, giving users clear and easy ways to share that content."
• HelloVR, which is creating a 10,000 square-mile MetaWorld described as the first-ever massive, physics-based virtual social space of its kind. It exists in a shared space, populated by all its members, with each member having their own private “volume” where they can decorate and create whatever and however they want."

Interestingly, none of the competitors are as technically or conceptually ambitious as High Fidelity, or approach High Fidelity's level of avatar realism and expressiveness (see above). And based on previews, that also seems to be true of Sansar, which also seems to have the best overall graphics. None of the competitors (far as I know) have plans to create a virtual currency-to-real currency market like High Fidelity and Sansar.

The real question though, is whether graphics, expressiveness, ambition, and commerce are what will carry the day:

I mean, when Second Life first gained traction, I never would have guessed it would be far outpaced by Minecraft, but here we are. Based on that lesson, I'd say the social VR platform that's easiest to use and has the most engaging game-like mechanics will dominate. Then again, given the small userbase of actual VR headset owners, they're all just as likely to cannibalize each other into obscurity. Your guess?

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Comments

[Carlos Loff]

yes yes, go go, race race, and when the hype is over Opensim will have many more members because they just got tired of the hyped race race race, go go go, LOL

[Connie Arida]

Ok, I will stick my neck out. What will win the day? Avatar customisation. All else is window dressing.

[JohnC]

Although I agree with your comment to some degree, it is a sickening observation upon the narcissistic nature of humanity. Were it possible, I would henceforth make it impossible for anyone to create anything other than Avatar related content in VR. A total ban on anything environment related. So that Avatars might dwell in pure black, or maybe white environments, where only their own amazing narcissistic natures might be displayed, unhindered by pathetic backdrops created by meaningless minions.

[jarjar]

I heard the white supremacists are setting up shops in VR worlds to help spread hate and indoctrinate the young.

So there is your VR growth for ya.

[Clara Seller]

I agree with Connie. The avatar will be the centerpiece and everything else will gather from there. It's not that it's the only important thing. This is the crowd pleaser, the cash cow, and what the corporate money chasers always seem to get wrong. Yes, people want to travel the universe, perform their jobs well, and have all kinds of cool experiences. But at the heart of it all, people want to feel good about themselves.

[Adeon Writer]

"yes yes, go go, race race, and when the hype is over Opensim will have many more members because they just got tired of the hyped race race race, go go go, LOL"

Well, I can't fault VR enthusaists from being detached from reality.

[Adeon Writer]

@JohnC The most popular location in the Metaverse was The Black Sun, which opped to make everything in the enviornment pure black, so that the rendering engine could focus 100% on people's avatars, which is all anyone cared about seeing.

[JohnC]

Bridges are useful things,they help us cross difficult or impassable obstacles. No one needs to explain this. When VR becomes like a bridge then everyone will use it and recognize it's it's worth.

[JohnC]

Metaverse? I take it you mean OS? that desolate barren empty desert backwater. Try inviting the multi millions of game players who the VR companies are attempting to lure into VR to OS. Most would die laughing. Truly, they would die laughing. Now it may be that in the end the SL and OS users are really the hard core VR users, but it will be a long time, and a very cold day in hell before VR companies arrive at that conclusion.

[Graham Mills]

Black Sun as in Snow Crash, I suspect.

Great to see Google Cardboard support arrive for SL and OpenSim courtesy of Alina Lyvette and the Lumiya viewer on Android Marshmallow .

[metacam oh]

JohnC, you seem to know everything about all virtual world platforms yet cannot spot a Snow Crash reference? shame. shame. shame.

[JohnC]

I know nothing about Virtual worlds except what I have experienced for myself. I do not read books about VR, or study or care much of what anyone else has to say. I say what I see. Which is all anyone does in the end.

[NeilCanham]

Right now it is a small and distorted market. Many of the people who own the hardware to experience decent VR experiences are also likely to be creators or at least very tech-savvy tinkerers. A lot of the folk I've met in VRChat or Altspace fit that description. Assuming more hardware gets into the hands of consumers, then I suspect whoever can create a platform that allows the creators to easily control the monetisation of their content and experiences will succeed. Make it easy for people to sign up and enter your experience whilst giving a route to profit from it all whilst providing a high quality social, graphical and audio experience. As yet it isn't clear who the winner is going to be.

[gfcprogramer]

Its true that this VR can really be forgotten or end up for geeks like PC games.
I dont believe they will reach markets now. My phone is expensive to BR standards, and most, I say mine phone and most phones like china don$t even have giroscope. Most people dont have PCs today. Cmon. Where they are pointing at?
Someone will make a scalable technology that works within the limits of any device. And use the device power. From there, better grafics, but anyone can be invited no matter they "car" is a classic, we will see some success that will force these directors change mind, or be far behind.