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Dean Takahashi's VentureBeat has an in-depth, tech-heavy review of Spielberg's Ready Player One (with some spoilers!) which features an infographic I helped put together with a former analyst who has worked with Deloitte and Forrester and who's now with Sinespace (a media partner with NWN). Here's the infographic showing as many of the key players as possible, including VRChat, SteamVR Home, Sinespace, Sansar, Rec Room, High Fidelity, Facebook Spaces, and AltspaceVR.
Here's a feature comparison chart, so you can compare and contrast features such as platform compatibility, user-generated content options, and in-world economy - below:
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I'd love to see a discussion around these; these are very much part of an evolving study, subject to change in the very near future. Please let us know in comments how we can improve on the next version!
I feel like sinespace is the odd man out of this list because it doesn't have VR.I mean I think out of the list it is the most like a second life 2 that I've tried and has potential/is very enjoyable to use. It's the best "next gen" virtual world desktop application of them by far.
Of the VR options the only ones that feel like a true virtual world and not just a chat space are Sansar and High fi. High fi is the most fully realized feature wise (in VR at least) however it's desktop version leaves a lot to be desired. Sansar I think is lacking a lot feature wise and it feels like you can't interact with much but the desktop app works very well and as far as I can tell most of the feature options in VR have a desktop equivalent. I will say I have not yet tried the VR version of Sansar (though I plan to very soon) so I maybe be missing out.I also think the small user base for High Fi and Sansar are very passionate about the platforms and there respective developers seem to be receptive to the communities suggestions and are working hard on them.
VRchat, facebook spaces feel more like a chat room as apposed to a world. VR chat at least has the ability to build things so it's kind of in a in between place but I think it's name is going to hold it back from being a actual virtual world to most users because they'll always see it as a chat room. Facebook spaces has no ability to create custom rooms or anything you'd traditionally think of in terms of a virtual world. It's more a chat program that allows you to view 360 images and videos with friends.
RecRoom is what I would consider more a traditional online game. You have a preset room, games, and furniture. You can not really add or change anything substantial. It's more for getting together some friends and playing a game. It's understandable why it has no custom content because it's on PlayStation VR and PlayStation does not allow mods with any custom content in them that the game does not already have. It being on PlayStation VR means that it's not going to allow users to create there own content for the most part.
As far as altspace is concerned I can't really speak to that one since I've never "played" it.
That's my two cents on these games/worlds anyway.
Posted by: madeline blackbart | Friday, March 30, 2018 at 02:59 AM
Good analysis! They all have a VR option, btw, that was one of the requirements for being in the chart -- Sinespace launched a VR client last month.
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Friday, March 30, 2018 at 10:34 AM
As for discerning between chat rooms and virtual worlds, if we are talking about single scenes (more or less large) vs. a single instanced and contiguous world, where you can freely travel from location to location, then I don't know if any of the above could be called a virtual world. Second Life is more like that, with a single grid map, although not all the "continents" are directly reachable from each other, and there are also "isles" (unconnected regions) and mini-continents that are worlds apart, especially the roleplay ones. But SL feels more like a world than, for example, IMVU.
Every metaverse above has a different approach.
Facebook Spaces is more a chat with Facebook friends, as blackbart says, but with a fun 3D drawing.
VRChat is chat oriented, but besides the name, it features also vehicles (the ones I saw were quite basic), games, complex buildings, 3D drawing as well, and you can customize avatars and scenes.
HiFi is open source, it has a bunch of cool ideas, and you can see that Rosedale has a vision, they try to create interaction all within the environment like you would do in real life. I don't know if that will work for its success or not, but it's pretty original.
Sinespace is a bit original too, with native quests and related interfaces, so it looks a bit more gaming oriented.
Sansar, tries to look more "serious" and easy to use, but essentially (compared to the above ones) it's nothing so new, it's more like SL, as for originality and formula (and SL is used for art, education and other non gaming activities too). Sure, it's still in early development, it still lacks many things and fine touches too. e.g. metaverses like VRChat and Sinespace load their avatars in the scene after the scene has been loaded and it's being showed, while Sansar shows nothing until everything is loaded, prolonging the waits even more.
Posted by: Pulsar | Friday, March 30, 2018 at 05:31 PM
@madeline blackbart
Rec Room has been focusing on allowing user generated content for the last couple months, allowing users to create custom rooms and implementing logic using circuits. If you haven't played in a while, you should check it out! It even works on PSVR!
Posted by: Jake | Friday, March 30, 2018 at 06:27 PM
Second Life still comes pretty close in terms of social interaction and proper persistence... if we just had a VR viewer... though CtrlAltviewer manages to get 100fps on simpler (lower draw distance like a chat area) scenes and still does today even though its based on older viewer code now.
I think that Unity3d is a good base for content creation and allows much freer content formats and that bodes well for some of the new platforms like Sinespace.
Sansar and High Fidelity are developing but have some way to go. Content needs to be within narrow bands to be accepted. And we still can’t sit on seats in Sansar! An essential feature for me :-)
Posted by: Ai Austin | Saturday, March 31, 2018 at 02:05 PM
@jake I've actually played it the other day. As far as I can see the user created content is just like "remixes" of the already existing content/furniture/places in the game unless I'm misunderstanding it. I suppose when I say "user created content" in this case I'm specifically referring to it as models and textures created by the user. I just started playing it the other day so I'm no expert on Recroom and I could be misunderstanding it.
@Hamlet Cool to know I'll have to check it out!
@Pulsar I dunno I suppose I don't have a concrete definition of what a virtual world vs a chat room is. For me it's a combo of how the community treats it and the intent of the developers. Though continuous instances/worlds versus just scenes help give the feel of a "world" as opposed to a chat room for sure.I do agree with your assesments of the metaverses though. Well put.
Posted by: madeline blackbart | Sunday, April 01, 2018 at 12:06 AM
Where is #Decentraland??? It's not a full map of the projects without DCL!!!
Posted by: Decentraland_ru | Monday, April 02, 2018 at 04:08 AM
@madeline blackbart
It's true that you can't upload any geometry or textures to the game, but players can use the 'Maker Pen' to create things out of basic building blocks geometry like boxes, cylinders, spheres, etc.
Here's an example of the possibilities: Roman Colosseum
Posted by: Jake | Monday, April 02, 2018 at 10:21 AM
Honestly I think Cloud Party was the closest, before it got bought out, in order to be shut down.
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Saturday, April 07, 2018 at 08:36 AM
Another one would be neos vr
Posted by: Nexulan | Wednesday, May 16, 2018 at 06:08 PM