New World Notes

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:

The New Yorker Takes Wry Trip Through World of VR, Including Visit to High Fidelity Hosted by "Danish Movie Star"-Like Philip Rosedale

The latest New Yorker takes a fun trip through the world of VR as documented by longtime staff writer and humorist Patricia Marx, who not being a hardcore, wide-eyed technologist, takes some detours others might not choose. (For instance, into AltSpace VR, one of the lesser used social VR platforms, while only briefly mentioning the far larger and probably more interesting VRChat.) Fellow virtual world blogger Ryan Schultz gets a good if candid shout-out ("'Describing himself in the realm outside his Oculus, he wrote, 'To be honest, I kinda suck at this whole reality business.'”), while Philip Rosedale and High Fidelity gets a whole section devoted to him:

Why VR/AR Devs Should Stop Referencing Minority Report-ish Gesture Control

"Why Sci-Fi Is Bad for Design" is a new Modus essay (reg. req.) by my colleague Amber Case (a fellow at the Institute for the Future) delving into some classic science fiction movie and TV tropes -- such as Jarvis from Iron Man and Star Trek-esque voice control AI -- that have infected the tech industry for the worse. Another trope she discusses is seriously significant for AR and VR developers: Minority Report-esque gesture control. Here's the problem with that, as she sees it:

Since its debut in 2002, Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report has been an archetypal reference point for technologists enthralled by the way Tom Cruise could manipulate complex data with dramatic swipes of his hands.

But what looks amazing for a few minutes of screentime doesn’t necessarily perform as well offscreen. Can you imagine how sore your muscles would be after using this system for eight hours a day?

And as it happens, she can:

Carmack Quitting Corporate Life or Creating AI to Make VR Great? Readers Debate VR Pioneer's Withdrawal from VR

Some interesting thoughts from readers on news that John Carmack is almost completely quitting Oculus to work on artificial intelligence. My take was this:

It's hard to escape the conclusion that Carmack has decided that virtual reality won't or can't be improved, or sufficiently matured into a mass market product, within the span of his career...

The statements also stand in sharp contrast to how Carmack fairly recently described the importance of bringing VR to the masses -- as "a moral imperative"... Somewhere since then, it seems, that moral imperative became less imperative. It's possible he still believes in VR with the same zeal, but just lost interest in developing it on a daily basis. 

In Comments, VR blogger "Grey" has a more quotidian ass theory which is possibly more plausible -- Carmack just got sick of corporate life at Oculus:

What I'm "reading between the lines" is that Carmack feels constrained by the "corporate" culture a Facebook, one in which he's held back from working on truly next gen products.

Take the cancellation of the Rift 2, and all the work going into Oculus Link after it was decided not to put dedicated hardware in the Quest for connecting to a PC.

Carmack admits he's grumpy at work, which is a very good sign it's time to move on.

And with that in mind, given that he likely has a non-compete clause, what can he do?

What is the next most exciting computer and programming technology he could work on?

AI seems like the most obvious choice.

That's certainly likely! However, if Carmack really wanted to quit day-to-day activity at Oculus but still work on truly next gen VR products in the quiet of his own home on his own schedule, I'm sure the company would gladly let him do so. And so I'm not convinced this is the reason. 

VR developer Kim Baumann Larsen believes Carmack's move to AI is actually part of his ambitions with VR:

John Carmack, VR Pioneer Who Once Described Developing VR as a "Moral Imperative", No Longer Focused on Developing VR

Oculus CTO and VR pioneer John Carmack is stepping almost completely away from the company and virtual reality development in general to go in a totally different direction:

Starting this week, I’m moving to a "Consulting CTO” position with Oculus.

I will still have a voice in the development work, but it will only be consuming a modest slice of my time.

As for what I am going to be doing with the rest of my time: When I think back over everything I have done across games, aerospace, and VR, I have always felt that I had at least a vague “line of sight” to the solutions, even if they were unconventional or unproven. I have sometimes wondered how I would fare with a problem where the solution really isn’t in sight. I decided that I should give it a try before I get too old. I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence (AGI).

I'm not sure how many people in the VR industry grasp the significance of this move. The announcement comes only days after Carmack said this about the current state of VR:

"I'm often kind of grumpy around the office because I really haven't been satisfied with the pace of progress that we've been making. When I'm in VR I see the magic there, but my brain is always throwing up these giant 'to do' Post-It Notes on top of everything, reminding me of all the work that's yet to be done."

Putting the two statements together, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Carmack has decided that virtual reality won't or can't be improved, or sufficiently matured into a mass market product, within the span of his career. And so instead, he's devoting the rest of his work energies to developing AI.

The statements also stand in sharp contrast to how Carmack fairly recently described the importance of bringing VR to the masses -- as "a moral imperative".

As he explained to me for my Wired article back in 2016:

VR Install Base as of Q3 2019: Oculus Quest Just Below Half a Million, PSVR On Track to Pass 5 Million By the New Year

SuperData just published a new report on the state of the VR industry, and gave me a sneak preview. The most important data point (as always) is the total install base of premium VR headsets -- see above. While PSVR is way ahead, Oculus Quest has so far seen relatively strong sales... relative being the operative word:

Oculus Quest sold 180K units during the quarter [Q3 2019], nearly double the combined sales figures for the Oculus Rift S and Oculus Go. It's clear Facebook's VR efforts in the near-term will be focused on its high-end standalone device. Lifetime sales for the device reached nearly 400,000 units through the end of Q3.

This is a bit slower than I forecast last August, when the numbers suggested Oculus Quest would reach an install base of 1 million by the end of 2019. That might happen, given the holiday season -- as SuperData's report notes, the Quest is the ideal gift, since it's ready to be played right out of the box -- but that's still far from clear. Take a look at the momentum of the Quest, versus PSVR:

Social VR Stats: Closer Look at Usage Trends for Sansar, Rec Room, VRChat

Good points by "Pulsar" in this comment on our social VR infographic, which suggests that Sansar is in third place, in terms of peak concurrency on Steam:

[T]he "concurrency that averaged" gives a better idea of the platform than a rare peak inflated by a special event; like High Fidelity did, reaching over 300 during events, when usually there was just a handful of people online outside those events. Sansar is doing the same.

And this was another of the biased and deceiving answers that Linden Lab staff gave in the previous AMA on Reddit, as well as when they answered the adult content in SL is "under 5%". While they make events in Sansar that reach those peaks, it remains true that normally there are only few people online.

I don't know if it's fair to say it's "deceiving" to report peak concurrency, as that's a reflection of how many people have installed the program and used it at least once -- it helps show us the total reach of the platform. But to Pulsar's point, average concurrency is also important to know. Here's why (as he explains):

VirtualCast: Social VR for Streamers With Avatar & Room Customization, Audience Interaction, Increased Brain Juice

VirtualCast is a free, new-ish social VR app on Steam from a Japanese company but it comes with rudimentary (and inadvertently comical) English localization. To judge by the trailer, it comes with avatar and room customization (including importable, user-created objects), enables socialization with several avatars, and helps increase "brain juice". Yes.

Unlike other social VR apps, it's targeted specifically at game streamers, since it outputs live video from a user's room to the web, where viewers can interact with him/her. That includes a nifty feature: Viewers can send text comments to the VirtualCast user -- and those words show up in their room as 3D objects.

I probably should have added VirtualCast to this week's infographic on social VR, because it's actually more popular than some of the more well known platforms:

Facebook Horizon Is Social VR Inspired By Second Life -- Which Seems to Be Making Some of Second Life's Key Mistakes

We saw some signs last February that this was coming and now it's here: Facebook just unveiled its new social VR world, called Horizon:

Starting with a bustling town square where people will meet and mingle, the Horizon experience then expands to an interconnected world where people can explore new places, play games, build communities, and even create their own new experiences.

Before stepping into Horizon for the first time, people will design their own avatars from an array of style and body options to ensure everyone can fully express their individuality. From there, magic-like portals—called telepods—will transport people from public spaces to new worlds filled with adventure and exploration. At first, people will hop into games and experiences built by Facebook, like Wing Strikers, a multiplayer aerial experience.

Go here to request early access. (If you have Oculus Rift or Oculus Quest, that is, but more on that later). If talk of Horizon's "telepods" eerily reminds you of Second Life's early "telehubs", and Horizon's staff being called "Locals" is reminiscent of Second Life users being called Residents, that's no surprise. There's a lot of Second Life's DNA in Oculus' VR efforts, which are driven in significant part by some early Linden Lab staff who joined Facebook/Oculus. (Facebook's acquisition of Oculus in the first place was led by Second Life's co-founder.)

And it looks appealing in many ways! For instance, the Pixar-like human avatars will likely appeal to a mass market. Their lack of legs may seem off-putting to virtual world veterans, but it's a solution to an uncomfortable problem: Very few people in the world are skilled at navigating a fully articulated avatar, let alone while trying to do that in VR.

At the same time -- and this may totally change with future updates -- I also spy some potential problems with Horizon that still stymie Second Life and keep it a niche product. For instance:

Why Apple Owns the AR Industry Even Without Owning AR Glasses (Comment of the Week)

"Joey1058" has an excellent rant responding to my speculation on just when (probably not any time soon) Apple will announce the launch of its much-awaited augmented reality glasses. To which he replies:  

HMDs do exist in the wild. A company called Vuzix has been tackling hardware issues for decades. Their flagship product is called the Vuzix Blade. [Pictured here] In my humble opinion, their glasses are every bit as good as Magic Leap, Hololens, or the current darling that is sparkling everyone's eyes, Nreal. The hardware isn't an issue. My issue is Apple.

For some ungodly reason, the industry has taken a "wait-and-see" approach in development that centers around Apple. We all know that Apple has been working on developing AR for some number of years. At first, buying up companies and patents. Then releasing ARKit. And now the buzz is all about its U1 chip and Ultra Wideband tech. But somehow, they've been dragging their butts in releasing an HMD. So in the meantime, smaller companies are developing on what already exists.

That's not to ignore the big tech company other than Google (LOL Glass) which jumped into AR early: