Philip Rosedale Launches Limited Early-Access to 3D Audio/2D World Experience for Massive Live Events on Any Device

After months or more of relative secrecy and silence, High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale just unveiled Limited Early-Access invites to a 3D audio version of his virtual world platform, writing on his Facebook wall:

We now have a way to bring people together using 3D Audio. It's a lot easier to try than to explain, but the basic idea is you can get in with one click on any computer or phone, no download. You can move around in a big space where all the audio is High Fidelity (haha but very true) and in 3D. So everyone can talk together at the same time and you hear them all, or you can break off into discussion groups, or use different areas for different purposes.

This work is part of a larger project to build a whole new huge virtual world that is accessible from any device, but COVID made us decide to release what we had working. You can use it for things like performing live DJ/Music, events, family gathering, all-hands meetings, or whatever you can think up. The experience is very warm and connected - and very different than video conferencing.

Go here to sign up to request access, which I just requested myself. Philip describes it to me as "Audio plus 2D world".  I've always said High Fidelity's spacial audio (demo below) was among the most impressive things about the platform, and now, he seems to be leaning into that. What's just as interesting is he's been showing it off to top musicians like Thievery Corporation's Rob Garza, who's quoted on the High Fidelity site about how impressed he was with the experience, using it to play and share music from his latest album.

"We've had a bunch of underground music parties to get warmed up," Philip tells me. "It's going to be really fun.  So rewarding to make something that is instant-on and works for everyone!" He says more DJ parties are coming up soon, and that the technology can eventually handle massive audience events: "Servers support 100 people concurrent right now, and will be able to support thousands very soon."

Comments

[Joey1058]

I hope this becomes successful enough that HiFi gets reinstated fully. I really don't want to rain on Philip's parade, here. But this is an old concept. I've included two links to "the virtual barbershop". The first one is the Internet Archive webcrawl where I first heard it, just to kind of point out this has been around. It was originally a flash recording. The Second is from YouTube. Make sure you have headphones on.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110715093647/http://ccgi.bluerabbit.plus.com/virtualbarbershop/">http://ccgi.bluerabbit.plus.com/virtualbarbershop/">https://web.archive.org/web/20110715093647/http://ccgi.bluerabbit.plus.com/virtualbarbershop/

https://youtu.be/IUDTlvagjJA

[Keiko Takamura]

Just signed up. :3 Fingers crossed!

[Paul Cohen]

Definitely not new: https://town.siempre.io/