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 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:
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:
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:
"If you care about VR and visual programming," tweets artist Evelyn Eastmond, "did you know that Rec Room (of all things!?) has this totally wacky in-game, spatial, embodied, dataflow programming language?"
An in-world, spatial, embodied, dataflow programming language has been a kind of Holy Grail in the world of VR for decades, so I'm grateful she's pointing out Rec Room's version of that, as rudimentary as it may be. Documentation available here:
Circuits are editable networks of Chips, Circuit Boards, Gizmos, other gadgets, and dynamic props that can be used in Custom Rooms to execute more or less complex programs. These programs can control animated and interactive elements of a room, for example, animated or interactive spot lights, sound effects, holotar projections, or complete games.
Since writing about Dreams, the upcoming sandbox platform game for PS4, this scene by freelance artist Martin Nebelong is among the most amazing early access content I've seen so far. Also notable: he built all this with PlayStation Move motion montrollers. (Watch him building in the video below.)
"Another example of how spoiled we are as artists today, with such great tools available to us," he just enthused on Twitter. "Making art in VR, making art on a console and being able to tell stories in new ways!"
Most of this scene is made by him, but, he tells me, he can also draw from the user community to incorporate other assets:
Watch some early user video below. Interesting that it seems to be a first-person only experience, so that the mobile version isn't too different from the full VR version. Some Rec Room community members have grumbled that the game seems to be moving away from being VR centric, but if the iOS version drives much more usage, I think it's likely those complaints will die down.
"On Ultra quality and 256m view distance it was a bit too low frame rate and was a bit choppy, but it worked fine at 'High' quality settings and 128m draw distance. On my rig I was getting 40 frames per second in VR mode. Images attached for you." (See above.)
So those look like the settings for optimal results. To be sure, he got them thanks in great part to very good hardware (see his specs below), but the bottom line is this VR viewer is more or less WYSIWYG compared to the PC-based Firestorm:
The new VR HMD sales estimate from Superdata* is pretty good news for Oculus Quest: The standalone device sold 347,000+ units in its first two months on the market. (It went on sale in late May of this year.) Safely assuming those sales numbers stay at least as steady throughout the rest of the year -- and Zuckerberg claims** the Quest is selling "as fast as we make them"-- Oculus Quest will not only continue to sell faster than PSVR, but it'll easily reach an install base over 1 million by the end of this year.
Which is not bad! That would place the Quest second only to PSVR in terms of install base size, which leads the industry by far with about 5 million units sold so far. (Sony reported 4.2 million sales last March.)
While Second Life isn't social VR per se, it remains the largest, content rich social virtual world space with (relatively) high end graphics that can be explored in a VR rig.
As you might expect, Austin tells me/warns me that graphics performance does take a hit in virtual reality:
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:
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):
Continue reading "Social VR Stats: Closer Look at Usage Trends for Sansar, Rec Room, VRChat" »
Posted on Monday, October 07, 2019 at 04:56 PM in Comment of the Week, Virtual Reality | Permalink | Comments (7)
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