New World Notes

Watch Why I Think the VR Game Audica from the Creators of Guitar Hero Becomes a Huge Mixed Reality Hit

When the VR game Beat Saber came out, the pitch for it was often, "It's like Guitar Hero meets light sabers".  Well the game Audica is actually made by the creator of Guitar Hero, and it looks incredibly fun. And even moreso than Beat Saber, the gameplay is integrated with the music, so that the player looks less like he's shooting every beat, but orchestrating it like a DJ, along with an incredibly hypnotic light show. Which is another way of saying this would be a great game feature in dance clubs and at parties, right next to the actual DJ --- or perhaps better yet, Audica players themselves can become the DJ, playing the music in a very literal way.

Bigscreen, Social VR for Consuming Media Together, Gets Big Update

I just mentioned that Bigscreen VR is starting to see some usergrowth, and right on time, the experience-2D-media-together social VR platform just announced a big update:

Over the past year, we’ve been working on a massive new update for Bigscreen with real-time raytracing lighting effects, new environments, new avatars, new VR UI, a Windows audio driver, and more. This update has many user-requested features and fixes some of the biggest bugs & problems that our users have experienced.

Download links at the bottom of the blog post, trailer above. I remain skeptical that there's much of a market to consume passive media in VR, but a lot of Bigscreen's features, like the avatar creation system, are worth a look. Upcoming features also notable, including:

Social VR Stats: Concurrency Rates for VRChat & Rec Room Remain Stable -- Big Screen Sees Slight Growth Bump

New stats of social VR usage on Steam (via SteamDB): As of last weekend, the top two next gen leaders, VRChat and Rec Room, are maintaining their peak concurrency rates of high four figures/low five figures and mid three figures, respectively. Vexingly, peak concurrency rates for Sansar and High Fidelity remain in the two figures. Perhaps Sansar's live stand-up comedy event today at 5pm PST, may bump that up a bit. (But with tickets selling for $4.99-9.99, that may be a challenge.)

Another entry worth keeping an eye on is Bigscreen, which turns social VR into a theatrical viewing experience: "Play your favorite PC video games on a huge screen. Hangout in social VR chat rooms. Events like weekly 3D Movie Nights and VR LAN parties." In recent weeks it's been attracting peak daily concurrency rates of 100+, a very slight upward trend of 2-3 dozen users. (Which probably translates into monthly active users in the low four figures.) That might not seem like a lot, but then again, back in the Summer of 2017, VRChat was also getting peak concurrencies of 100+, but only a few months later, those numbers totally changed. That in mind, check out Bigscreen's latest teaser trailer:

High Fidelity Hiring Educator to Teach WWII History in Virtual Reality

New World Notes is lucky to have a lot of readers who are educators interested in the use of virtual worlds/VR as a pedagogic tool, so for many of them, this new position from High Fidelity looks like a dream job:

High Fidelity is looking for a trained historian, seasoned hobbyist, or passionate collector to act as World War II memorabilia docent and educator for a virtual reality project. The project has the potential to run for several months and involve weekly scheduled presentations to online students and learners. This position is ideal for residents local to the Bay Area [see update] with the ability to travel to our San Francisco office during designated tour times...

Required Background: Extensive knowledge of World War II aircrafts, weaponry and tactics to provide an in-depth tour of visual memorabilia. Ability to convey information and answer questions to groups of up to 25.

This position is an extension of High Fidelity's education program, which began with a virtual recreation of a tomb in ancient Egypt. "Jobs in VR are going to a big part of our future," as CEO Philip Rosedale explains. "There are four Egyptologists leading sold out tours, and growing. [Video below.] We thought World War II was the right next thing to try."

Really interested to see what kind of installation High Fidelity is planning. WWII remains a central facet of popular culture, especially as a stage for 3D online games (most recently with Dice/Electronic Arts' Battlefield V, pictured above), so it should draw quite a lot of interest. It would be wonderful if HiFi could find World War II veterans to participate in the program, and bring their precious first-hand memories into this new, immersive platform. (As of late last year, there are about half a million US vets who are still alive, but we lose so many to old age every month.)

Facebook Creating Virtual Game World With NPCs, Stories, Levels

Well this is an interesting job post Facebook uploaded just a few hours ago -- some kind of narrative designer for a "game world" or "interactive world" that connect between different levels and an overall story conveyed at least in part by NPCs (i.e. "characters in-game"). Facebook has long been a platform for social games, but hasn't really gotten so directly involved in game publication before. My guess is this will become some kind of portal to multiple games in Facebook Spaces, the social network's VR-based chatroom -- which the lead developer fully admitted last year that there isn't much there there to do. A kind of casual MMO experience linked to multiple games or levels would certainly change that.

More details hopefully soon!

30% of VRChat's Daily Users Wear HMDs -- That's About 40,000-100,000 Monthly VR Users, Which Would Make VRChat the Most-Used VR Game!

Quick update to Monday's story that VRChat is now boasting 10,000+ daily peak concurrent users. The most noteworthy stat reported by VRChat is how daily users are logging in with a VR headset. Some experts have estimated that only 5-10% VRChat users are actually wearing HMDs -- but VRChat reports that it's nearly 1 in 3 daily users, 30%. Since daily peak concurrency is 10,000+, that suggests about 40,000-100,000 VRChat daily users in HMD rigs.

Which is crazy big. That strongly suggests VRChat is the most used game among VR headset owners.(By contrast, single-player VR hit Beat Saber is currently getting daily peaks of 4000+, i.e. about 16-40K DAU.) In other words, VRChat is likely the most used VR game on the market.

The other noteworthy point from these stats is how many total people regularly use VRChat:

Jesse Damiani's Mixed Reality Trends for 2019: AI, Location, Theater

Three big trends I’m excited to see emerging in the XR community in 2019:

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
2. Physical Installation
3. Immersive Theatre

👇

— Jesse Damiani (@JesseDamiani) January 30, 2019

This is an excellent Twitter thread on 2019 AR/VR/AI trends from mixed reality thought leader* Jesse Damiani. I agree with him that immersive theater and art installations incorporating VR will enjoy a fairly strong wave of interest, because art patrons tend to have greater patience for new/novel experiences, and are a smaller audience that's easier to on-ramp. (As anyone who's tried out a VR demo in a gallery, the set-up time is inevitably irksome and time consuming.)

I'm more skeptical VR/AR physical installations for a mass market will gain traction, notwithstanding the huge VR investment in Sandbox VR -- again, the basic friction of setting up thousands of people to experience VR a day will likely kill the novelty factor quick, especially for a price point of $20-40. (And once again, even in Los Angeles, name brand IMAX couldn't attract an audience to its VR experiences that was larger than the audience for a single small movie theater.)

VR Innovator Jon Brouchoud Launches Acadicus, Customizable Platform for Multiuser Training

Acadicus is a new multi-user VR platform that's lead developed by Jon Brouchoud, who's been creating award-winning virtual world-based projects for real world work for well over a decade. Acadicus has already won last year's best in show award from the International Meeting for Simulation in Healthcare, and as that suggests, medical training is one its top use cases -- honed by a doctor his team worked closely with:

"Our goal with Acadicus is to provide a VR Sim Lab where we're not providing any instruction," Jon tells me, "but are instead giving medical schools and experts the ability to create their own simulation environments.  We're drawing heavily on our architectural and virtual worlds experience to focus on building this platform, and collaborate with Dr. Eric B. Bauman who serves as our medical subject matter expert.  He also brings experience with virtual worlds and game based learning, so it's been a very powerful partnership. Dr. Bauman has also been our client on several healthcare and medical VR simulations as well."

Watch the trailer video below. Unlike most other VR training platforms, Acadicus is very much a multiuser experience, a feature which Jon says has excited medical professionals:

Location-Based, Instagram-Friendly VR Startup Gets $68M from Andreessen

SandboxVR just got a massive funding round of $68 million from top VC firm Andreessen Horowitz at a time when other virtual reality startups are struggling for capital, so it's worth looking at what they're doing that others are not. It doesn't depend on consumers adoption of VR headsets and it's not targeting gamers per se; instead, what they're going for is a kind of "Holodeck for Instagram":

Sandbox VR provides a virtual-reality experience — you and your friends gear up, donning some of the latest VR headsets and high-tech computer backpacks, and are dropped into a virtual world, whether it's a pirate ship, a zombie invasion, or a vision of what Hong Kong could look like in 2088. It costs about $40 per person for an hourlong experience, which you book online. Sandbox VR plans to use its Series A to expand to new locations and create different experiences — games — for people to play at Sandbox locations...

Part of how Sandbox VR markets itself is through social media. Participants get video of themselves all rigged up and can share clips of themselves as the characters inside the game. "Seeing it on Instagram is going to be one of the really killer secrets of this business," said Andrew Chen, an Andreessen Horowitz partner. "When you are having such a good time, and it creates a video of you and all your friends screaming and ducking and like all this happening, and it's so fun, that's this leap that so many people share."

I can see this working! Then again (as I'm sure Sandbox VR and Andreesen Horowitz also know), VR-driven content can only remain popular on Instagram with constantly refreshed and updated content (lest people get bored with it), and Snapchat's augmented reality features which enable sharing virtualized experiences with friends haven't exactly helped the app maintain momentum. And far as location-based VR go, name brand IMAX couldn't attract an audience to its VR experiences that was larger than the audience for a single small movie theater. 

All that to one side, here's hoping Sandbox VR created a winning alchemy . Watch the trailer below:

Social VR Steam Stats: VRChat Peak Concurrency Grows Strongly to 10,000+; Strongly Suggests Monthly Active Users in the Low Six Figures

New stats of social VR usage on Steam (via SteamDB): In the last few weeks, VRChat (by far the market leader) has seen a substantial growth spurt in peak concurrency rates. After a giant spike of usage during its Ugandan Knuckles-flavored viral video peak in December 2017/January 2018, peak concurrency rates fell to around 6000-8000 from June to October. Since then, however, VRChat has been steadily picking its usage rates, and last month, saw a substantial jump, peaking at just under 11,000 on New Year's Day. (Lots of virtual parties to celebrate the New Year, looks like.) It's pretty typical for gaming to peak during in the holidays, but VRChat has sustained that momentum into the rest of January, peaking over 10,000 in concurrency every week.

10,000 is quite a lot. As a point of contrast, last generation's virtual world leader, Second Life, still gets peek concurrencies between 41,000-53,000 (this month) from a monthly active user base of about 600,000. So it's likely that VRChat has monthly active users in the low six figures -- between 100,000-250,000 is a safe estimate, a thriving community. (As for why it is thriving, Kermit the Frog may have a clue.) 

By contrast, the two official, VR-centric heirs to Second Life are not doing anywhere near as well on Steam: