Which Social VR Platform is Best for Content Creation? Award-Winning Developer Tries the Chair Test in Seven, Including Sansar & High Fidelity

Jessica Outlaw, winner of the 2017 Oculus Launch Pad contest, recently came up with an elegant test of the building tools in the many social VR platforms out there: How fun and easy is it to build a 3D chair in each? She ran this test on seven well-known platforms: AltSpace VR, Facebook Spaces, High Fidelity, Oculus Medium, NormalVR, Sansar, and VR Chat.

"My favorites were the ones where the tools were immediately available to me and it was obvious how to start drawing," she tells me. "VR Chat, Normal VR, Facebook Spaces, and Oculus Medium all made tool acquisition extremely easy and had the tools exposed to me easily." 

Here's her in-depth reaction to those and others, including Second Life spinoffs High Fidelity and Sansar:

running an experiment where I build a chair in every social VR platform to test the build capabilities. first up is @highfidelityinc. they have a feature where the colors autochange pic.twitter.com/sVRKoiKbIM

— Jessica Outlaw (no GDC 4 me) (@theextendedmind) March 16, 2018

“I liked the overall vibe of the High Fidelity Maker world. It was inviting to visit the Maker Lodge and have different scenes where you could hang out. It's like an entire world dedicated to different types of makings and I even talked with a person there. The worlds offered by AltSpace and VRChat seemed much more like a vacuum where the only thing to do with use a brush.”

drew a chair inside of @normalvr. used a paintbrush and it was really fun to change colors on their exposed palatte so it's very multi-colored. love the ghibli feel of normal vr @ghostmeat @EricaLayton @mxweas pic.twitter.com/MNVBFCfxvN

— Jessica Outlaw (no GDC 4 me) (@theextendedmind) March 16, 2018

"Of the ones that were my favorite though, I think that Normal VR should get a shoutout because their color change option was the most visually appealing...

chair experiment recap - of the 7 VR platforms that I tested for "how quickly can i built something?" there was only 1 that let me change color with 1 hand and not having to look at a different screen. it was @normalvr who puts the palette on my hand. pick color with thumbstick pic.twitter.com/vSS3vW8VEA

— Jessica Outlaw (no GDC 4 me) (@theextendedmind) March 20, 2018

"Your palette is on the same hand as your brush whereas in many other experiences you have to look elsewhere to change the color or use your other hand to change the color and that's annoying and distracting... NormalVR also made a open source keyboard for VR - it's a cool (but very small) team."

tested @SansarOfficial as the 3rd social VR platform today. but woomp woomp, it was too many steps so i just gave up. there's no default building objects available. i went to the sansar store to buy blocks, but i had to log in and i forgot my password so i just left. no chair pic.twitter.com/CtnIHAtwMf

— Jessica Outlaw (no GDC 4 me) (@theextendedmind) March 16, 2018

"So Sansar was my least favorite because I couldn't figure out how to build something. I tried exploring existing worlds called 'Creator Academy: The Hall of Materials' and 'Toppleton Toy Town' because I thought each of those worlds would give me items to build with. However, I couldn't figure it out. I also tried building my own world in Sansar to see if I could build a chair, but to do so, I would have had to remove my HMD and visit the Sansar store to acquire blocks or something else. I just gave up."

Time to prototype, Facebook Spaces edition. I drew this chair using the pencil app. Drawing was easy and pencil was easy to find. But the only way i could find to export was via Facebook Wall! pic.twitter.com/BHVzcUxVsI

— Jessica Outlaw (no GDC 4 me) (@theextendedmind) March 20, 2018

"Oculus Medium also had a really good UI, but it's not really fair to compare Oculus Medium which is a building tool first with other social VR platforms that put social world building first."

Her VRChat and Altspace chairs below. Interesting that instead of all the highly-funded platforms she tried out, it was Normal VR from a tiny team she liked the most; definitely makes me more interested in finding out more.

and here's the last of my chair test for now. @VRChatNet has a #SculptingStudio where when you hold the trigger button it generates cubes thought spheres also appeared to be an option. it generated pano photos. i made a tiny green rocking chair (perfect for a doll!) pic.twitter.com/k6aFOrjUgn

— Jessica Outlaw (no GDC 4 me) (@theextendedmind) March 20, 2018

Jessica builds a chair experiment continues. Here from @AltspaceVR sculpting tool. I got a little more creative here making the back and bottom closed with pink ribbons pic.twitter.com/u0bLjKgySP

— Jessica Outlaw (no GDC 4 me) (@theextendedmind) March 20, 2018

Comments

[Pulsar]

Fascinating. Maybe it's because NormalVR was (from their about page) "founded by award-winning artist and entrepreneur Max Weisel" instead of managers with a big budget. I bet creative people know what creative people would like, as for a social VR platform for creators.

[Filthy Larry]

"Facebook Spaces" could you imagine if it got popular how many people would die because of it?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2154624/A-Facebook-crime-40-minutes-12-300-cases-linked-site.html

In America alone 5 people are murdered everyday due to some event that started on that site, 25 women are also raped every single day again tracing the connection to that site, over 40 children or molested or abducted due to Facebook encounters daily!!!

Say no to Facebook!!!

#FacebookSpacesNotInMyBackyard

[Skygirl Kline]

I would like to try NormalVR but i cannot find a download anywhere.