New World Notes

Quest 2's Install Base Confirmed as "About 4 Million" Due to Face Rash Recall - UPDATE: 4M May Refer Only to US-Based Quest 2s

Update, 7:18pm PT: While a Facebook spokesperson says this recall impacts Quest 2 owners "globally", it's unclear if "about 4 million" refers to the total install base worldwide, or just US-based owners. In a discussion on this post among VR developers (ironically on Facebook), Adam Frisby estimates the total Quest 2 install base worldwide to be around 5 million.

Last April many VR enthusiasts were seriously skeptical when I estimated that Facebook had sold about 3-4 million Quest 2 sets (extrapolating from Facebook's extremely coy revenue reports). Today we have official confirmation that this install range estimate is accurate, due to the most hilariously ironic turn of events --Facebook gave people a face rash:

Facebook says it is “participating in a voluntary recall of the Quest 2 removable facial interface in coordination with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).” The CPSC said about “4 million” facial interfaces are affected by the recall, plus 172,600 in Canada, sold between October 2020 and July 2021 — the interfaces come with each headset sold as well as sold separately for $20 or for $40 as part of a Fit Pack...

[A Facebook spokesperson said:] "That is why we started our voluntary facial interface replacement program in December, and are now rolling out the silicone cover for all Quest 2 and Quest 2 Fit Kit owners globally.”

Well, not so hilarious if you're one of the Quest 2 owners now with dealing with a face rash. (Pro-tip: Target has a good deal on hydrocortisone cream.)

4 million is relatively good install base for a VR product only on the market since late last year -- but is still far from Zuckerberg's 10 million install base goal. (Which is still many tens of millions less than the install base for current video game consoles, but leave that go for now.)

Now that we know this, perhaps Facebook will be more open about their Quest sales in future shareholder reports.

Facebook Moving Oculus to Support Industry Standard OpenXR

I usually blog any Facebook/Oculus news with this irresistible pic of Zuckerberg striding like a dictator through the opiated masses in VR, but I'll give him some credit in this case:

VRChat User Survey Results: Profile of a Passionate Virtual World Community

Here's the key results of my VRChat user survey with beloved VRC reporter Syrmor, primarily drawn from subscribers of his YouTube channel and my virtual world blog New World Notes. While it's not wholly scientific and has a relatively small sample size of 165 respondents, it is (I believe!) the first public survey of the rapidly growing and evolving virtual world community. 

Which takes us right to the question above: Asked what they most love about VRChat, respondents overwhelmingly selected "Community":

"Personally I can say that VRChat has made life better for me as a whole," as user Fryman574 puts it. "I've had the ability to join communities I would have never known about if it weren't for VRC... [and] I've been able to meet so many cool people; like one of the best things to do in VRChat in my opinion is finding someone who has a story to tell and spend your day talking to this person. That's actually how I was able to meet my boyfriend of 6 months now."

Like this person and many others, VRC user Flamant says this community has offered social connections that have been difficult to find in the material world:

"I can be myself around other people in VRChat which is something i have always struggled with, with my social anxiety. And in that way it has helped me forge an identity as a person, now being able to be vulnerable and open myself up to others without fear. I have met some truly kind people in this virtual world that has come to feel more like a home than my actual surroundings..."

Next up: Avatar/ real life gender identity, how they first discovered VRChat, other virtual worlds VRC users play, VR usage, and much more:

VRChat Raises $80 Million in Venture Funding, Proving the Metaverse is So Far VR's Most Successful Application

For some reason this huge news hasn't yet been picked up by any of the major tech outlets that I can see, but VRChat just raised $80 million in funding:

The VRChat team is excited to announce that we have closed an $80M Series D investment round. This latest financing was led by Anthos Capital, alongside existing investors Makers Fund, GFR fund and others. We welcome Anthos and are proud to have them on board!

This new investment will allow us to expand the VRChat team, iterate on the platform and grow our community. This includes the ability for creators to earn and enable more people around the world to access VRChat. Partners like Anthos Capital open unique opportunities to help us further our goal as a virtual universe.

As a reference point to how huge this funding round is, consider the fact that in 2017, VRChat only raised $4 million. Defying the bearish performance of nearly all other VR-related startups since then, usage has continued to grow since then, with monthly active users I'd estimate to be in the low six figures -- and even more notable, 1 in 3 daily users (i.e. about 40,000-100,000) logged in via HMDs, With VRChat concurrent numbers starting to pass Second Life's CCU this year, I'd estimate VRChat now has over 1 million monthly active users (and that's probably a conservative guess).

Looking at larger market, VRChat is one of the most-used VR applications, easily eclipsing usage of high-end games like Half Life: Alyx and indie hits like Beat Saber. And far as funding goes,  take a look at this:

Quest Owner Survey: 74% Say They Probably or Definitely Won't Buy VR Apps Which Have Ads -- But I Doubt Facebook Cares

Here's results of my survey aimed at Quest owners, asking if they would buy VR apps for their headset if it contains ads. (As Facebook recently announced would start happening soon.)

Of the 50 respondents, a majority answered that they would never buy or use a Quest app with ads, while a much smaller 18% answered that they are less likely to buy/use an app with ads. That effectively comes out to 3 in 4 Quest owners surveyed who are negative about ads.

By contrast, only 10% of respondents said they were receptive to Quest app ads if this made a given app lower cost or free.  (I'm personally somewhat surprised more did not answer this way.)

So Quest owners are overwhelmingly negative about ads in their apps! However, I doubt Oculus owner Facebook cares all that much:

Quest Owner Survey: Will Ads in Apps Change Which Ones You Buy & Use?

As you likely saw yesterday, Facebook inevitably announced plans to test VR ads in Quest apps:

We’re starting a small test of in-headset ads with a few developers in the coming weeks. We want to help developers generate revenue and help people find great experiences at better prices—this is a part of how we’ll create a healthy, self-sustaining platform for everyone.  

Rather than editorialize on the policy itself, I'm curious what this means for Quest owners. If you own a Quest or definitely plan to buy one soon, please answer this survey. 

How to Import a Minecraft World Into NeosVR With Mineways; UPDATE: Added GitHub Resource

Update, 6/9: This is the Substrate fork on Github that Frooxius created for this Minecraft import.

Here's more info on how Frooxius, lead developer of the crowd-funded social VR project NeosVR, seemingly reverse engineered a version of Minecraft and imported it into his world:  He didn't actually reverse engineer a version of Minecraft.

"It's using a Substrate C# library called Substrate (with some updates from me) to read the data [link above - WJA] and figure out which chunks are in the file and then uses another community tool called Mineways to export the chunks as geometry," he explains. "That geometry is then imported into Neos and post-processed with materials, positioning, adding some extra things like light sources where torches are and a culling system to handle large worlds."

And here's how other Neos users can try this out:

NeosVR Can Now Import Minecraft Worlds (Though I'm Not Sure How)

Hopefully I'll hear back soon from Frooxius, lead developer of the crowd-funded social VR project NeosVR, but apparently, he's figured out how to reverse engineer a version of Minecraft and import it into his world. (And apparently did so as a three day project.) My go-to VR expert Adeon speculates that Frooxius may be parsing a Minecraft save file and making a voxel renderer to interpret it internally, separate from Minecraft. (Or something like that!)

While it only has a few hundred daily users (at least on Steam), this is yet another example of how NeosVR seems to be on the vanguard of innovation in social VR. More example below:

Pet the Dog in VR: Adorable, AI-Powered Pooches Arrive in VRChat, a Free Public Demo of a Upcoming Research Project

The dogs in Happy Hill Dog Park are waiting for you to come play! Available now on #VRChat for both PC and Quest.

Environment and animation design by @jendaviswilson , AI & logic by @CyanLaser . pic.twitter.com/mpJ87FXXx7

— Studio CyFi (@StudioCyfi) May 19, 2021

Click here to visit Happy Hill Dog Park in VRChat, the latest, impressive user-made project on the platform -- not just virtual dogs, but dogs you can interact with in full VR.

That's right: Pet the dog in VR. And feel yourself petting them too.

"Basically the controller vibrates if you pet the dog, and they'll follow you around if you're holding like a stick or a tennis ball," VRCer Ben Rainwolf tells me.

The immersive effect of the dogs' AI, matched to the VR experience seems pretty compelling: "The cute dogs never stop wanting attention and I feel terrible if I don't give it to them," as another player put it. "It's like an adorable trap that you can't leave."

"The dogs gain trust with you over interactions and change their animations and wagging the more you interact," project designer Jen Davis-Wilson of Studio CyFyi tells me. (Her co-founder Cyan Laser created the dog AI.)  "The conditionals of going home, interacting, petting, etc. does get a bit complex with multiplayer networking. But this was a fairly small job."

Studio CyFi, as regular readers may remember, was founded to turn a popular VRChat world into a standalone Oculus Quest game. This dog park, however, was not mainly created for entertainment:

Rec Room Creation Community & Development Features More Powerful & Robust Than Many Assume, Argues Rec Room Creator

In response to my post on VRChat's impressive creative community, a Rec Room creator recently sent me this strong case for their own platform of choice, and included the videos featuring great user-created contest in Rec Room seen here.

"There is amazing work and talent there, and it was all built in game. ALL of it. All of the modeling, texturing, animations, programming, costumes, etc. To me that's the magic of Rec Room," they told me.

This and Rec Room's multi-user collaboration aspect, they argue, is in sharp contrast to worlds with tool sets that are tightly integrated with a 3D engine and require a lot of offline, solo creativity:

"For most other things like VRChat," as they put it, "you'll be in Unity for days doing all of that stuff. In Rec Room, you're doing it with up to 40 people across almost any platform, voice chatting and co-building and hanging out the entire time. You don't have the friction of needing to go download Unity or ROBLOX Studio and learn all of this dev tool stuff on your own. Plus other Rec Room users will teach you how to build in real time."

As evidence of all that, this Rec Room creator pointed me to the world's highly active Discord channel for creators, then went on: