New World Notes

Play Among Us in VRChat: New Fan-Made Version Adds Visual Tasks & VR-Based Body Language Gameplay to the Original

Attention AOC and other Among Us fans: There's a new community-fan, playable version of the hit deception and backstabbing game in VRChat: Click here to play. (No, not the horror-themed fan version of Among Us I mentioned the other week, that's another project still in development.)

While this VRChat version of Among Us is faithful to official original game, longtime reader Adeon Writer tells me, adds some new and interesting gameplay features only possible in a 3D, VR-enabled world:

"We had a group play it for about 3.5 hours straight." (Highlights in the video above.) "If you're one of the impostors in this one, you actually have to fake doing your tasks and stuff since everyone can see what you're doing with your hands and such, which is unexpected if you're used to the original, but kind of great. If you've got good players it opens up a whole new aspect of trying to deduct who's faking everything."

Here's how:

Among Us Inspires Full VR, Horror-Themed Version of Hit Game in VRChat

If anyone is interested, we are working on a VR Chat map based on #AmongUs Come check it out and join our discord! We would love to know what everyone thinks of it! https://t.co/cCfMGjaLSl#VRChat #VR #amongusfanart #AmongUsMeme pic.twitter.com/lGPtsyE3BN

— Shoobly (@Shooobly) September 25, 2020

Among Us, the wacky sci-fi party hit game of deception and betrayal, has quickly become the Fortnite of 2020. And because user-generated content communities inevitably schloop up and synthesize the interactive zeitgeist, it should be no surprise that a group of ten or so VRChat community developers have already been hard at work creating a fully playable VR-based version of the hit game. "Fully playable" might seem like hyperbole, but among the lead developers is "Markcreator", who also created this fully playable version of  Minecraft in VRChat:

"I'm working with a team of artists to make a realistic VR rendition of the game, fully playable using Udon scripting magic," he tells me. (Udon being VRChat's scripting system.) In other words, don't confuse it for Among Us-themed roleplay in VRChat.

In fact, to judge by the teaser video above and screenshots below, Mark and friends are turning Among Us into a game of goofball fun into a foreboding space survival game with the added suspense of being in immersive VR, with VRChat's voice communication enabled. (In VRChat space, everyone can hear you scream.)

Will Edge Computing Give Us the Edge to Create Sunglass-Sized VR HMD?

Will we ever really reach a VR experience where the headset is the size and weight of sunglasses -- you know, the Holy Grail form factor envisioned by Neal Stephenson in Snowcrash decades ago?  I explore this topic in my new article for Samsung NEXT's Component magazine, where some experts argue that edge computing will make this possible:

In theory, edge computing could obviate the latency issues associated with moving large amounts of data back and forth from the cloud, particularly high-quality 3D graphics and other assets that would be used by low-profile form factors like glasses.

“Since HMD [head-mounted display] and other XR devices essentially become simple data input/output and rendering devices,” Theta’s Mitch Liu says, “their form factor can be vastly reduced.”

Infinite Retina’s Irena Cronin sees edge computing as a necessary condition for next-gen XR headsets. “When we’re talking about visuals especially,” she tells me, “without having these kinds of features, and the massive amounts of data that are going to be used having to do with spatial computing, it’s a non-starter,” she said.

Jeri Ellsworth (above), CEO of AR startup Tilt Five and someone who's been creating variations of the sunglasses-sized HMDs since her time at Valve in 2012, injects some caution into this vision:

Zuckerberg Wants Oculus Quest 2 to Sell 10 Million Units. The First Quest Hardly Sold 1 Million.

Admittedly I haven't been following the unveiling of Oculus Quest 2 and all of Facebook's other VR/AR-related announcements this week as closely as I once did. (Owing to, you know, their sheer and total Facebook-itude.) But I should note this interesting point CEO Mark Zuckerberg made in an interview with The Verge's Casey Newton:

Casey Newton: So where are you on this long road to making VR mainstream?

Mark Zuckerberg: VR, I think is well on its way. We had this milestone in our mind that first we needed to get the technology to the place where you could have a standalone headset, it could be portable, it could be high quality — do the tracking and all that. And Quest was the big milestone on that. Then, from an ecosystem perspective, we believed that if we get to 10 million units active, then that’s kind of a critical magic number.

At that point, you have a self-sustaining ecosystem. That’s the next big push: how do we get the technology to be more accessible to more people? A big part of that was driving it to be more affordable, and making it more portable. ... And we’re not at 10 million yet, but I’m optimistic that over the next few years, we’ll get there. And that will really be a new stage of VR.

Emphasis mine, because, wow. 10 million active users isn't even large compared to a single video game console. (Total sales of Nintendo Switch, after 3.5 years on the market: 61 million.) Even more key, the first Oculus Quest barely reached 1/10th those numbers:

Watch: Half-Life Alyx Running in an Open Source AR Headset (Kinda Sorta)

Half-life Alyx running on #ProjectNorthstar,

Lots of improvements to do with the steamVR driver itself, but it's so cool seeing it progress this far. pic.twitter.com/BP9QtFxLSq

— Bryan Chris Brown 🚀 (@BryanChrisBrown) September 12, 2020

One moment you're in your apartment, and then the next, boom, your reality gets merged with City 17. This clever hack from Bryan Chris Brown, community manager at North Star, an open source AR HMD from Leap Motion.

"Lots of improvements to do with the SteamVR driver itself," he reports, "but it's so cool seeing it progress this far."

And yes, you can even control Alyx with hand gestures.

Babbage is Back: Linden Lab Vet Jim Purbrick Leaves Oculus, Starts Sharing His Wisdom on Creating Virtual Worlds

"The Conversation Around Content" is a new blog post from Linden Lab veteran Jim "Babbage" Purbrick, who recently left a leadership role at Oculus to spend more time supporting XR, along with many other personal pursuits. Lucky for us, he's also publishing a series of blog posts that crystalize what he's learned over the last 14 or so years, developing virtual worlds. (Including a stint consulting with CCP, the developers of Eve Online.)

This new post, he tells me, is "inspired by conversations at Facebook about how to bring virtual worlds in to social networks and by conversations at CCP and Linden Lab about how to bring social networks in to virtual worlds. The same conversation, but starting at opposite ends."

For instance, here's Babbage on the importance of player-to-player conversation in MMOs, a feature that's often overshadowed by graphics, gameplay features, and so on:

Test Subjects in VR Recreation of Milgram’s Shock Experiment Still Become Traumatized, Even Knowing Their Electrocuted Victim is Only an Avatar

In the infamous Milgram’s Experiment from the 1960s, test subjects willingly followed an instructor’s orders to apply increasingly lethal shocks on a screaming victim in another room -- despite their concern for the person’s welfare, and their own stress over having to do such a horrible thing. (Both the “instructor” and “victim” were only actors, of course, secretly working for Dr. Milgram.) 

Dr. Mar Gonzalez-Franco at Microsoft Research and Dr. Mel Slater at the University of Barcelona recently recreated the Milgram Experiment in virtual reality -- but this time, instead of ordering their test subjects to shock a human victim in another room, they were instructed to electrocute an avatar displayed right in front of them. And even knowing that the victim was just a simulation, the test subjects were still traumatized:

Unlike in Milgram’s test, our participants were not deceived regarding the actual harm to the subject when his answers to the memory test were wrong—since he wasn’t a real person. Using this setup, we could ethically test how humans respond to authority.

The participants in the experiment nevertheless had difficulty with shocking the avatar: Although 85 percent of them completed the task, they exhibited measurable signs of stress. However, when we looked more closely at the actual interactions that people had with the virtual victim, we found that participants were trying to cheat, even if unconsciously, by giving cues to the avatar, signaling the right answers with a louder voice tone.

These findings were summarized in Scientific American last year, but I’ve since been talking with Dr. Gonzalez-Franco about its extraordinary implications. How is it even possible for people to feel empathy for a digital avatar?

Will The EU Protect Virtual Reality from Personal Data Scraping By Facebook?

News on the future VR from Germany to keep an eye on, albeit poorly translated via Google:

Oculus glasses: Facebook stops sales in Germany

The VR data from Oculus would add a new data dimension to the aforementioned super profiles - further problems with the cartel office and European data protection would be inevitable.

In addition, there is a coupling ban in Germany, which means that the use of one product must not be coupled with the use of another product from the same company if this is already dominant in the market. In the above-mentioned judgment of the BGH, the court also confirmed Facebook's dominant position in Germany. In this context, the German market for Facebook has a unique selling point in Europe.

This in contrast to the recent news that Facebook will soon require Facebook identity-based log-ins to use its VR devices, a sharp body blow to the future of virtual reality in general, not to mention extreme personal security concerns. But now, apparently, regulators in Germany (the European Union's wealthiest and most populous country) are putting the kibosh on that. 

If the EU as a whole follows suit, imposing similar protections on data usage on its half a billion citizens, I don't see how Oculus could sustain its Facebook log-in requirement. 

That might seem far-fetched, but have you noticed how, when you visit a website, you now have to click Accept to share your personal data? Even if you're in the United States, and even if it's a US-owned website? That's due to recently imposed EU regulations.

Are You Interested in Exploring Facebook Horizons, Despite Facebook?

Released last week in invite-only, I should be covering Facebook Horizons, because it's the kind of world that New World Notes was launched to cover -- a would-be metaverse with a heavy emphasis on user-generated content and virtual community, user-friendly avatars/UI, and games that should help it attract a crossover audience. Just look at the feature set:

By Making Facebook ID Mandatory, Oculus is Taking a High Risk Gamble on VR’s Entire Future as a Consumer Product

I’ve been thinking a lot about Robert Scoble’s guest post last week, in which he argues that Facebook and Apple are the only companies that can take VR mass market -- and therefore, that Oculus’ upcoming requirement of Facebook ID for log-in is a necessary evil to make it mainstream. (Or to soften the blow with corporate speak, a “strategy tax”.)

I don’t dispute Scoble’s analysis; in fact, insiders tell me it’s more or less what Facebook has in mind. But there’s a small problem with Facebook’s plan:

Oculus Quest -- by far its bestselling HMD -- has a tiny install base. Just barely one million. I don’t know if I can fully convey how small that is, but here’s one data point: While it took the Quest over a year just to sell one million units, the Nintendo Switch sold nearly 11 million units during the last holiday shopping season

There’s no evidence that the Quest/Quest 2 market can be expanded much further any time soon. And by insisting on Facebook ID log-in now, when the consumer base is so minuscule, the company runs the risk of totally alienating VR enthusiasts and the development community, further hurting its chances at mass growth.

And for VR developers, there’s really nowhere else to go. Because of the Quest’s small market, VR developers stand little chance of making money from their games -- unless they get funding and promotional help from Facebook: 

“If you want to develop in VR, you have to kiss Oculus or get out,” as a well-known game designer and passionate VR advocate told me recently. “I saw that coming and bailed. Facebook is giving [some developers] money but in the long run that just makes it harder for those not getting the cash. It is the problem when the sales don't cover development -- so quality is propped up by funding, which then makes those not getting funding compete against those hyped up games with no chance of making money.”

What about Vive and Steam VR? Or Sony’s PSVR, which actually has the largest install base for a premium HMD, with over 5 million sold?