Will High Fidelity's Short Term Focus on Desktop Change the Future of Social VR? Readers, Users & VR Experts Debate

Lots of interesting conversation on Philip Rosedale's bombshell news late last week that High Fidelity would close down nearly all its hosted sites and devote much more attention to supporting its desktop clients -- both from readers and users, and experts in the VR industry. First, from readers and HiFi users in Comments:

Been saying this for years. There is no real uptake for the general population (gamers excepted.) How do we use social media? We 'dip' on our phones as we go about our day. Wearing a VR headset everywhere is not feasible, to access a system where many of our social circle may not even be... We keep trying but flat screens continue to win the game. - Dirk

Even gamer uptake is still remarkably slow. by the way. SuperHot VR sold 800,000 copies across all VR platforms but that and a few other hits are pretty much the high end. Now from some High Fidelity users:

High Fidelity's reputation wasn't helping itself either. The fact that some people have had no idea they can log in without a VR headset illustrates a major issue: failure to communicate that it does work fine without an HMD. This is just a single example out of many where things aren't communicated as well, and honestly that heavily lead to the downfall in the video. - FlameSoulis

I've been in High Fidelity since it went alpha (over five years ago), and I am sad about this turn of events. It feels as if people are pulling up stakes although we are still in there every day, the alphas, doing stuff, building stuff, and hanging together. We are a small group who believe in the vision.  Yes, Philip is correct. VR is not happening the way it seemed it might.  Will it? I think when the hardware is easier to use, and less restrictive, a few years away, I bet. - DrFran

On Twitter, there was a fair amount of conversation about this move from VR experts like Chet Faliszek (who helped Valve launch the Vive), Kent Bye (who hosts the influential Voices of VR Podcast), and Tipatat Chennavasin (a venture capitalist with the VR Fund). Roughly summarized, I think it's fair to say they think the problem is not social VR per se, but High Fidelity's approach to it:

Is it not sustainable or his version not sustainable? Thoughts? https://t.co/SgZYl8JoR4

— Chet Faliszek (@chetfaliszek) April 13, 2019

VRChat is succeeding if 1000 concurrent users is the benchmark since VRChat consistently hits that even with only 30% users playing in VR. Rec Room is also doing well since even though their Steam concurrency numbers aren’t that high, they are doing very well in PSVR and the user-generated content stuff is amazing. - Tipatat

I think the only thing that Philip Rosedale can really reliably speak about is what's happening at High Fidelity. Looking at Steam Spy concurrency numbers doesn't take into account what's happening on PSVR and so grand stories about the entire ecosystem of social VR are overblown. - Kent

As I point out in the thread, High Fidelity's shift should not necessarily be compared with VRChat, since Philip's goal is explicitly to create a full-fledged metaverse, and not just another light social app. Then again, if VRChat continues to draw engaged users, it'll be in a better position to roll out more and more metaverse-type features.

Comments

[Joe Nickence (Joey1058)]

Philip Rosedale started SL on the premise of "Creating the Metaverse". If he's still pursuing the vision that Neal Stephenson alluded to almost 27 years ago, then Phil needs to throw in the towel now. If it didn't happen in his mind with Second Life, it's not going to happen with High Fidelity now. The "Street" was a massive server that one tapped into using dial-up. The only difference between "The Street", and "The Oasis" is a name. Second Life achieved that server concept. But Phil couldn't see it because he's chasing an author's plotline that doesn't work in today's reality.

[vwfan]

"failure to communicate that it does work fine without an HMD"

It does work... to some extent.

I logged into HiFi via Desktop once because I was interested in a game tutorial they posted on their blog one day. After tinkering a bit, I realized that the game was made for VR only. I sort of implemented my own version of with some JavaScript to support Desktop, but still... If you're going to introduce gaming into a platform that supports both VR and Desktop, be prepared to make it work for Desktop as well. That's when I dropped HiFi realizing their primary focus was VR. When you put primary focus on HMD, you really can't say it works without it.

Sansar started with this very issue with desktop user interactivity. They addressed it at some point, but it still wasn't quite perfect last I tried it. Recent versions may have improved.

[Joe the Builder]

Maybe he should get the graphics good and team up with pornhub while stopping the PG nanny platform BS

[Pulsar]

I agree, VRChat does better, although their concurrency isn't stellar either, so the problem isn't just HiFi being VR-centric or not.

While HiFi has a vision, interesting ideas, interactivity, open source... the platform has some issue too:

1. tech issues
Too many crashes, glitches, etc. of which you can read on the reviews on Steam too. And perhaps HiFi has been exposed to the general public as alpha for a little too long.

2. user friendliness and user experience
Now installation may look simpler, especially since they went on Steam 2 years ago, but when they said you had to install a server, that may have scared someone away.
The user interface could be better (I'm fine with it personally, I'm even ok with Active Worlds, but I know that's a factor).
VRChat seems to do a better job with movement tracking, or at least arms and legs movements aren't as uncanny or clunky as HiFi.
These and other issues are all things that could be fixed or improved, but meanwhile these things didn't help to make HiFi more popular.

3. social dynamics
They are social virtual worlds, and when it's about "social", a lot more things matter than just features, numbers, vision or quality. Else Google+ would be more popular than Facebook now, instead of being shut down. Nor Whatsapp became popular thanks to its technical qualities since the beginning (it was even among the worsts security-wise).

It's not just matter of plain advertisement either. That may count, but none of the initiatives helped Sansar concurrency too so far. On HiFi people seem to log in mostly when there are special events with real life prizes, then it's a desert again (the guided tour of Queen Nefertari's Tomb may be a pretty nice experience though).
We all know that VRChat began to get more users thanks to that silly trolling and meme then uploaded on Youtube. But then the a number of them remained. HiFi tried out to upload some Simpson video on Youtube, but it didn't work so well. Maybe it wasn't so spontaneous.
VRChat has that crazy and funny atmosphere, that's a little like Second Life in the early years. Sometimes it's cute, other times it's a vortex of chaotic silliness. But VRChat feels alive.

By now VRChat has become the Whatsapp of these *new* social virtual worlds for longer than a year. At this point it's hard for competitors. The few VR social people and those interested in these new social virtual worlds are in VRChat by now. They know they can find people there, not elsewhere.

The reasons may not end here, but for sure HiFi isn't gaining any popularity not just because of the poor adoption of HMDs, but also for a number of other factors.

[Better then Ezra]

The word "social" is now aliened with Social justice nuts and socialism, it would be much better to term a new word or phrase like something old school like CreativeNow™ or ImagineNow™

Also if high fidelity is evolving consider changing the name of the product away from the parent.. Product: SpaceMe® by High Fidelity Research™ HFR Copyright 2019

[sirhc desantis]

"..if 1000 concurrent users is the benchmark .." made me pause a bit. All that money for so little traction? I went to look at the Kent Bye twatter and it seems a bit - well, sad. Not the guy himself, mind, but lots of chatter about monetisation (erm didn't we have this already? The whole redefining wealth part is entertaining at least), need for the killer app (sigh) and 'the future isn't here yet' (copyright 2019 The Bleedin' Obvious Corporation). Reminded me of ye olde dayes tech evangelists without the fire. Or any defined goals.

A lot seemed to be about 'well the numbers don't take into account the PSVR scene' so out of curiosity I checked local/Euro hardware. To have a play there would burn 2 months rent. For one player... Even Mozilla Hubs (complete with the S word) seems a bit more worth the effort now.

As for HiFi I thought it was always Rosedales intent that people would be hosting their own stuff with the company providing erm 'infrastructure' so not really a surprise there.