New World Notes

Watch: Oculus Quest Demo Virtually Recreates Developer's Apartment at 1:1 Scale, Adds Interactive Surfaces

Unity Labs developer Greg Madison created this seriously impressive Oculus Quest demo in which he mapped out* his real life apartment with a virtual, 1:1 scale recreation of that apartment -- including the flat surfaces. That way, if you're wearing the Quest, any surface can instantly become an interface for games or other interactive apps:

Was VR Hype Largely Driven By the End of Moore's Law? (Spoiler: Probably)

I've written a lot over recent years about how the hype over VR has failed in the face of modest consumer interest, but one question has been flickering in the back of my mind since then: Why did the hype start up again in the first place, after waning in the 90s? The Oculus Kickstarter got the momentum going, but that crowdfunder didn't even raise $2.5 million -- hardly an indication of mass market interest. And to be sure, there are many powerful applications of VR for training, therapy, and prototyping, but that alone doesn't justify the billions of dollars companies like Google and Facebook have poured into the technology.

Cory Doctorow recently suggested a likely explanation that surprised me at first -- that the hype was impelled in part by the end of Moore's Law:

The period in which Moore's Law had declined also overlapped with the period in which computing came to be dominated by a handful of applications that are famously parallel -- applications that have seemed overhyped even by the standards of the tech industry: VR, cryptocurrency mining, and machine learning...

It's possible that this is all a coincidence, but it really does feel like we're living in a world spawned by a Sand Hill Road VC in 2005 who wrote "What should we invest in to take advantage of improvements in parallel computing?" on top of a white-board.

Specifically, Cory expanded to me, "GPUs! Any 3D rendering." And for that matter, offloading most VR rendering to a connected PC, or through the cloud. "And the cloud," as Cory notes, "is mostly low-cost parallel processors!"

My working theory has always been VR hype was powered by the desire to create a successor to smartphones and the Valley's attachment to Snow Crash and other cyberpunk classics depicting virtual reality as The Future. But now I think Cory's explanation is a big piece of the puzzle. After all, some VCs who've invested in virtual reality, not to mention executives involved in VR, have made a similar point about the end of Moore's Law. For instance:

Why Sony Needs to Discount PSVR to $99 (Comment of the Week)

Reader Tyler D., who clearly knows their stuff, has good suggestions for Sony in the face of slow sales of the PSVR:

There's just no way around it: $299 is a lot for a console peripheral (it's more than the cost of the base PS4). Until Sony slashes the MSRP to $99 impulse buy / bundle pack-in pricing, I don't think they'll move many more units.

For people willing to spend $300+ on mid-range VR, the Quest now offers more flexibility and functionality (in an arguably better ecosystem) for ~$100 more-- as a complete standalone package.

That said, it's worth remembering that the PS4 is the 2nd best-selling console of all-time so a 5% install base isn't shabby in terms of units sold.

That all strikes me as true, and frankly I'm surprised Sony isn't so far willing to take a loss up front by deeply discounting the PSVR. (Though I wouldn't be surprised if a price cut is announced this year.) I think Tyler's right that anyone in the market for VR per se are going to consider Oculus Quest, not PSVR -- while PS4 owners not in the market for VR might still consider buying a $99 PSVR, if only because it gives them more life to the PS4 that they spent so much money on.

Bonus suggestions from Tyler for Microsoft, which has been floundering with its own VR efforts:

PSVR Sales Not Growing Much in Relation to Playstation 4 Install Base

This week Sony is touting strong sales for the Playstation 4, along with sales of its VR peripheral, the PSVR. As expected, the PSVR install base is now at 5 million, making it the most popular mid-to-premium virtual reality headset on the market. So that's a milestone of some kind. 

Then again, it also reveals a troubling pattern: The PSVR install base is not expanding. Look:

VRChat & Rec Room See Some Steam User Growth; Sansar, Not So Much

Nice to start the New Year with some good-ish news for social VR: We're seeing somewhat significant growth in usage among the leaders on Steam. Through most of 2019, peak daily concurrency for VRChat hovered between the 7000s and 8000s; in recent months, however, that's ticked up to the 9000s and 10,000s. 

Note that I said "leaders", because as you can see here, peak daily Steam concurrency for High Fidelity, Altspace VR,  Big Screen, and Sansar generously remain in the low three figures. (Or less generously, mostly in the one to two figures.)

However VRChat isn't the only one to see some growth on Steam:

Reviewing My Virtual World & VR Predictions For 2019 (3 for 4)!

SL photo by Ann Beedit

Here's what I predicted for 2019 made around this time last year, let's see how I did:

VR headset sales for the 2018 holiday season will be disappointing, below 10% growth for Q42018 compared to Q4 2017, with total Oculus/Vive sales in the six figures. Prepare for another round of "Is the VR hype truly over?" articles, though probably not by me (because why beat a dead virtual horse)?

That looks about right, with PSVR continuing to be the market leader by far.

Fortnite will deploy some kind of real money trading or monetization system for user-generated builds. 

Nope! I missed that one. On the other hand, last year Epic started giving away $3 million in prize money for Fornite Creative builds.

Two more below:

Superhot VR Probably Sold 1 Million+ Copies By Now, Joining Very Small Club

If you follow VR, you likely saw reports that Superhot VR grossed over $2 million in the last week of last December alone across all VR platforms it's on. That isn't all that impressive in itself: Assuming each copy sold for $21, on average -- it's currently selling for $24.99 on the Oculus Quest, while on PSVR, it's now discounted for $16.74 -- that means Superhot VR sold about 95,000 in that time period. That's decent for VR, but far below standard console/PC game sales of a hit game.

What's more notable is when you add those 95,000 in sales with the report back last April, when the developer announced selling 800,000 copies of Superhot VR across all platforms. So that's 895,000. Assuming a decent rate of sales between last April and the last week of December, it's safe to assume Superhot VR has probably sold over 1 million copies by now. (We'll probably see an official announcement to that effect any day now.)

Which is pretty good! That means Superhot VR joins a very small club of VR platinum hits:

Boneworks Physics Game Beats Beat Saber as Reigning VR Only Champ on Steam, Sells 200K+ Copies

For the longest time, Beat Saber has been the reigning VR-only game on Steam in terms of concurrent players, with other VR-only games trailing far behind. (It's also sold over 1 million copies on that platform alone.) For the first time in recent memory, however, there's a new concurrency champion since its launch last week, consistently hitting concurrent players in the low four figures and above Beat Saber: Boneworks, a VR-based physics game.

Not only that, it's sold between 200,000-500,000 copies on Steam -- quite impressive, as it retails for $29.99. It's still an open question whether there's a large enough VR install base to support VR-only games, but Bonework's success at least shows that that user base will pay for the right VR-only game.

Gameplay video below. Personally I'm glad Beat Saber is finally off the throne, because as fun as that game is, its gameplay has gotten pretty monotonous* -- how many boxes can you saber, really? -- while Boneworks seems to nail the gameplay experience of responsive physics in VR:

PSA: If You Don't Want Targeted Facebook Ads in Your Oculus, Don't Log Into Your Oculus Via Your Facebook Account

Huge scoop from Ian Hamilton of Upload VR just dropped -- confirming the fears of many, Facebook is now indeed using Oculus as a targeted ad platform:

The company is updating its privacy policy and rolling out new social VR features backed by your “Facebook identity” with the intention of “clarifying how Oculus data is shared with Facebook to inform ads when you log into Facebook on Oculus.”

With this most recent change “If you choose not to log into Facebook on Oculus, we won’t share data with Facebook to allow third parties to target advertisements to you based on your use of the Oculus Platform,” according to Facebook.

... Facebook suggests that for those who log into the account it will target “relevant content” based around “Oculus activity” including “which apps you use” with examples given including “Oculus Events you might like to attend or ads for VR apps available on the Oculus Store.”

The company says this “won’t affect your on-device data” which, based on our previous reporting, Facebook says is the location where “3D maps of your environment” are kept.

To be crystal clear, if an Oculus Quest user only uses their separate Oculus account to log-in, they are safe from Facebook ad targeting. (Unless or until Facebook updates its terms of service again, of course.)

This move is sure to be controversial, especially among the VR community who have been posting warnings like this one from virtual reality pioneer Ari Bar-Zeev about the massive potential for abuse via virtual reality usage data.  

Ian speculates that Facebook feels it needs to do this to maintain engagement across its platforms:

Interest in Half-Life: Alyx Trails Far Behind Other Anticipated 2020 Games

In case you missed it (and I'm sure you haven't), the Half-Life franchise is finally back with a VR-exclusive title featuring Alyx Vance, by far the most appealing character in the games. (Admit it, no one really likes that nerd Gordon.) The trailer has racked up nearly 9 million views, along with many industry stories asking variations of this question: Will Half-Life: Alyx be the game that finally makes VR a killer app? (As here, as here, as here, ad infinitum.)

I mean maybe? But if you compare interest in Half-Life: Alyx with other anticipated games for 2020 on the collective hive mind that is Google Trends, you get another story: