AltspaceVR brings out new tools to make it easy for anybody to make and share their own personalized virtual environments.

Recently unveiled updates to Microsoft’s social VR platform will allow anyone to build customizable VR spaces. The two new world-building kits are based on Altspace’s most popular environments: Campfire and Alien World /Origin but Microsoft says they’re aiming to release more kits soon, as well as allowing for more customization options.

“This is step one of a greater plan to make sure our community can help build AltspaceVR with us,” says Katie Kelly, Head of Engagement for AltspaceVR. “The experience is fun and easy no matter what level you’re at. We’re so excited to see the new worlds our users build in reality.”

After you choose one of the kits you can add assets from the curated library of shapes, structures and flora to build custom worlds and virtual hangouts. Once you’re done, simply save your version of that world and it’s then ready to share with whomever you like via a link.

These updates to Microsoft’s social VR platform will allow anyone to build customizable VR spaces
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Updates also include the ability to create labels and text to guide your guests through your creations, host multiplayer social games in VR, plus import and showcase in-world photography snaps. Most interesting from a social VR perspective, however, is the functionality to link these custom spaces by adding teleporters that take you straight to common spaces or your friends’ worlds. Creating your own virtual network of connected spaces certainly opens up some interesting possibilities.

My favorite picture from the @AltspaceVR after party today… what do you think? pic.twitter.com/0kCRU8PmG5

— Alex Kipman (@akipman) August 10, 2018

Also, considering what a big part Spatial Sound plays in Microsoft’s Mixed Reality hardware, it’s not surprising to see them baking the ability to experiment with custom sound as well as 3D design in these toolkits.

To start building, login or create an AltspaceVR account, then:

• Select << Worlds >> on your menu.
• Select << Create >> to start on a new World. Or continue to edit a World you built.
• Give your World a name, a profile picture, and choose a starting environment. Templates include: Base Worlds and SDK Playground Worlds. Virtual spaces for both newbies and creative developers to build custom Worlds.
• Once in-world, click on << Spawner >> to activate your dashboard

Creating your own virtual network of connected spaces certainly opens up interesting possibilities
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Kelly promises to keep an eye on user’s creations and to feature the best ones on @AltspaceVR Twitter and Facebook, emphasizing their focus on building a tight-knit community rather than monetizing the platform at this stage. She adds that they’re particularly keen to have users create spaces with “structure, design, and purpose.”

Kelly promises to keep an eye on user’s creations and to feature the best ones on @AltspaceVR Twitter
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As part of its efforts to make Mixed Reality content cross-platform Microsoft has kept all AltspaceVR places and experiences accessible not only in Virtual Reality (AltspaceVR is compatible with most headsets including Daydream, HTC VIVE, Oculus and Samsung Gear VR, as well as all the Windows Mixed Reality HMDs) but also via Desktop or Mobile app.

This feels in step with Microsoft’s broader Mixed Reality strategy, keeping its eye on the long-term prize and building the infrastructure that will allow for scaling and adaptation
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Overall, it feels like an announcement firmly in step with the company’s broader Mixed Reality strategy, keeping its eye firmly on the long-term prize and building the infrastructure that will allow for scaling and adaptation, depending on how the technology develops and what consumers demand. It will be interesting to see not only how engaged the existing community gets with these new tools, but if they manage to entice some new users to the platform as more people buy their first HMDs and look for content and experiences. Watch this space.

This article originally appeared on VRScout

AltspaceVR Releases New World-Building Kits via @alicebonasio https://t.co/SOuFANjeY5 pic.twitter.com/q9Ei5ewLoT

— VRScout (@VRScout) August 10, 2018

For companies looking to get into VR/AR/MR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance on how these technologies can enhance and support your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Building New Worlds in Virtual Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

Could Decentralised ownership using blockchain technology help kickstart the social VR revolution? Emerging platforms are looking to democratise ownership of immersive environments.

VR has often been considered something of a solitary experience, but that’s changing fast. Social VR platforms are on the rise, and as the acquisition of AltspaceVR by Microsoft shows, major players in that space are taking notice.

AltspaceVR was recently acquired by Microsoft
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In the VR gold rush a spate of social VR platforms have proliferated. High Fidelity, for example, is a sandbox environment allowing players to create their own avatars and social worlds and explore others all interconnected in one limitless Metaverse. It also features a marketplace where you can purchase avatars and additional 3D building elements.

VR Social platforms have proliferated
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Vtime is a stationary platform which offers fully rendered interesting environments for up to 4 people at a time wherein they can interact. One unique feature of the Vtime platform is the vCast feature which allows you to host and record your own chat show in VR. With around $1.5 million in venture funding VR Chat is developing a sandbox platform that allows you to interact and explore virtual worlds. VR Chat features full body and lip sync and eye tracking as well as a SDK that allows you to create your own worlds and avatars.

Supported by $5 million of funding, RecRoom from Against Gravity has also become a popular platform for social VR recreation featuring a games room where people can join and play games against each other in VR from all around the world. Noted for its great sense of community it makes great use of its touch and vive controllers in such games as golf, paddle ball or charades.

Momentum is building around social VR
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This shows how momentum is building around social VR, and although it’s unlikely that such platforms will replace social media in terms of popularity overnight, the question is certainly being asked about who will emerge as “Facebook of VR.”

Facebook itself is keen to be the Facebook of VR
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With Mark Zuckerberg announcing a year ago a host of new Social VR features at the Oculus Connect 3 keynote (such as the ability to create ‘parties’ and ‘rooms’ wherein friends can gather in VR environments), appointing Rachel Rubin – previously vice president and executive producer of The Sims 4 at Electronic Arts – as the head of Social VR and subsequently channeling $250 million into VR development, it seems clear that Facebook itself is keen to step up to that plate.

Tech giants have so far shirked the responsibility which comes with their vast power
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Yet as the ongoing revelations about Russia’s use of platforms like Google and Facebook to influence elections in the US and elsewhere show, allowing any one company such widespread reach gives it extraordinary power. And tech companies have not so far shown that they accept the responsibilities that come with such great power. A possible alternative? Decentralized ownership.

“We believe virtual reality will flourish once users have a more prominent role in controlling their creations. Currently, the companies that create the virtual worlds own all of the content built by the users. They are the ones who profit, reap the benefits from the network effects, and have the power to undo, change or censor what happens within the world itself. The true potential of VR might be realized, and certainly surpass what already exists, if this power were put into the hands of the users instead,” believes Ariel Meilich, founder of blockchain-based virtual platform Decentraland.

A blockchain is a digitized, decentralized public ledger of cryptocurrency transactions. Essentially each ‘block’ is like an individual bank statement. Completed ‘blocks’ (the most recent transactions) are added in chronological order allowing market participants to keep track of the transactions without the need for central record keeping. Just as Bitcoin eliminates the need for a third party to process or store payments, and isn’t regulated by a central authority, users in any blockchain structure are responsible for validating transactions whenever one party pays another for goods or services.

Decentraland started as an open source initiative in 2015
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Meilich says that the project began in 2015 as an open source initiative to build a virtual world, before pivoting into a blockchain tokenization model. Earlier this year, the company’s ICO (Initial Coin Offering) raised over $25M USD – in less than a minute. They are now planning to launch in early 2018 following its first land auction which will take place in December.

The notion of monetising Virtual Real Estate and assets is well established
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The notion of monetising Virtual Real Estate and assets is far from new, however. Second Life (SL), the longest enduring commercial virtual world launched back in 2003 thrives on the principle of enabling users to make money from digital assets.

Decentraland users will collectively own and regulate the platform
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Monetization was a bit aspect of the platform from the outset, incentivizing users to create high-quality content by allowing users to retain copyright for these virtual goods. The profits stemming from this virtual economy are very much real, with many SL users deriving a regular income from such activities, and Linden Lab itself being a financially independent company thanks to the fees and commission it makes from these.

Monetisation has been a big aspect of social VR platforms like Sansar
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With Sansar, Linden Lab is now laying its own stake to that next-generation of virtual worlds by offering similar functions to High Fidelity in terms of development, yet taking a more user-centric approach which also focuses on enabling monetization for individual users, who can earn Sansar Dollar (S$) for their VR creations. This in-world currency can be cashed into various currencies via PayPal and traded on a dedicated online exchange called the Sandex. This built-in economy with real-world application is borrowed directly from Second Life and its Linden Dollar (L$).

“If I can make an experience by building just a few original content assets and buy the other stuff, I can do way more interesting experiences at a much faster pace, because I don’t have to build everything from scratch. In the real world you see companies and brands specializing in certain types of content, and it’s no different in virtual worlds, we’ve seen this in Second Life,” explains Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg.“

What makes Decentraland fundamentally different from other virtual platforms is that it’s not only the content that will be owned by users, but the platform itself. This means the community will also have collective responsibility for regulating it. According to its creators, the blockchain structure – which uses the Ethereum network – creates a mechanism for consensus among strangers that allows this to work at scale.

“The networks provides landowners with actual ownership over their property and the creations that reside on it,” explains Meilich. “As is it decentralized and the content does not reside on our servers, we do not have the power to modify it or censor it. At some point, we could turn off our servers and the world would keep running.”

This all opens up new and interesting possibilities for users to communicate with each other, as well as new business models that enable them to create, share and monetize immersive content and experiences. But so far we haven’t seen any one model emerge as a clear winner and claim that crucial “first mover advantage” in the social VR space. The race is, by all accounts, still wide open, which is what makes for such exciting watching.

This article was originally published on The Next Web

Will blockchain help make Virtual Reality more social? https://t.co/G5CAeBhxhg

— TNW Contributors (@TNWcontributors) November 6, 2017

To find out how to leverage VR/AR/MR in your enterprise, Tech Trends offers bespoke Virtual Reality Consultancy support

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Democratising Social VR with Blockchain appeared first on Tech Trends.

Is VR going to bring a new boom to the virtual gambling industry?

Virtual Reality is transforming every single entertainment industry out there, from movies to book publishing, music, videogames, animation, and yes, even Porn.

VR and AR (Augmented Reality) – which are increasingly overlapping onto what Microsoft refers to as the Mixed Reality spectrum – are going to continue to disrupt and change the way we do things and interact with each other – both online and offline. So it is hardly surprising to find that online gambling is also predicted to become a part of this newly forming ecosystem. In fact, some are predicting that VR is going to cause a boom in the casino industry, specifically with regard to slot arcades.

Virtual Reality has disrupted every one of the entertainment industries
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An early example of this was CasinoVR, where you could play poker in a virtual casino accessible via Samsung Gear or Oculus. As you can see from the video below, it isn’t exactly the most mind-blowing virtual experience you’re likely to come across – the action is limited to handling digital cards, interacting with a dealer, and looking around a room, so don’t expect the plot of a Scorsese film.

Simple and casual gaming experiences often attract the most users
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Strangely though, in VR it’s often the simple and mundane experiences that prove the most compelling for users; I remember talking to the guys at Linden Lab a while back about their recently launched social VR platform Sansar, and they described that in early demos the most popular activity people chose was picking up and fluffing Ikea pillows scattered on a virtual sofa. A lot of the time it also comes down to the ability to interact with others, and the game let you play in real time with friends, in VR.

But of course the potential of casino gaming moving onto the Virtual Reality space is much bigger than: CNBC recently reported an estimate that VR gaming wagers would rise by a staggering 800 percent in the next five years, with an anticipated volume of bets exceeding $520 million by 2021. Even if these numbers turn out to be on the optimistic side, it is clear that this is a market that will not be ignored.

We will start seeing more sophisticated virtual gambling experiences
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With technology advancing in leaps and bounds, we will surely start seeing much more sophisticated gaming experiences across the board, which will not be restricted to card playing. In fact, slot machines are likely to play a big part in this landscape. Like in gaming, it is often easy to focus on the blockbuster-type experiences which overwhelm you with state-of-the-art graphics, but it’s simple, casual games like Candy Crush, FarmVille and Pokémon GO that attract the most users and consequently rake in the most revenue. The same holds true for gambling, where slot machines are consistently the most sought-after activity, both offline and online. In fact, a 2015 report indicated that nearly half of all gaming revenue in Las Vegas came from slots.

Nearly half of the revenues in Vegas come from slot machines
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People who aren’t attached to this particular gaming genre may be surprised at the variety of popular slot titles on the web, but things these days go well beyond the basic 7’s, BAR icons and cherries you might picture. There are vivid games featuring fun animation built on themes ranging from superheroes to made up characters to rock bands. In short, there’s enough variety to keep things interesting – and this is likely to increase significantly in virtual reality.

We could soon experience a boom in Virtual slots arcades
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As much as poker defines the allure of casino, as easy as blackjack is to try out, and as much fun as games like baccarat, craps, and roulette look even to amateurs, it’s the slot machines that are doing the most business. There’s really no reason for that to change when the industry moves into more immersive formats such as VR.

Tech Trends offers comprehensive Virtual Reality Consultancy services to support businesses looking to adopt VR/AR/MR technologies into their brand and communications strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post How Far Are We From Virtual Vegas? appeared first on Tech Trends.

VR weddings will soon become commonplace, but we are yet to figure out the legalities of what that will mean for love and relationships in the virtual age.

On May 25th, 2017, bride and groom Elisa Evans and Martin Shervington will get together with friends and family at one of their favorite hangout spots: a quirky florist that doubles up as a bar in the Welsh city of Cardiff. They will then don their HMDs, and join the remainder of their guests scattered all around the globe for the world’s first official VR wedding ceremony of its kind.

The value of VR is its ability to allow people to connect emotionally with one another
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“The value of VR is its ability to allow people to connect emotionally with one another,” says  Gerald Gottheil from AltspaceVR, the social platform which is facilitating this. “What’s interesting about doing a wedding is that while other social VR events might bring people together, they’re focused on the event itself – we’re watching a film, a show, playing a game – in a wedding the whole purpose of having this event is to connect emotionally by showing support between friends and family for the couple who are making that commitment to each other. It’s the purest example of using VR to connect people.”

Read the full story on UploadVR

A Love Story: @AltspaceVR is hosting the world’s first virtual reality wedding. via @alicebonasio #ValentinesDay #VR https://t.co/gvil2Xn1fJ pic.twitter.com/Thu0lh1ZvN

— Upload (@UploadVR) February 15, 2017

Tech Trends’  Virtual Reality Consultancy services offers support for companies looking to enhance brand strategy with immersive technologies such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Getting Married in Virtual Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

AltspaceVR wants to enable people to attend live events in virtual reality.

AltspaceVR's strategy is increasingly focusing on live events
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With mounting competition from platforms like Sansar and High Fidelity (both of which are in Beta at the moment but planning public releases for 2017), it seems like AltspaceVR’s strategy is increasingly focusing on live events as their unique selling proposition in the Social VR Space.

AltspaceVR held the first UK live comedy show in virtual reality, which marks a significant strategic move for the company as it tries to prove the case for enabling people to attend live events in virtual reality.

With mounting competition from platforms like Sansar and High Fidelity (both of which are in Beta at the moment but planning public releases for 2017), it seems like AltspaceVR’s strategy is increasingly focusing on live events as their unique selling proposition in the Social VR Space.

The strategy of building on geographical clusters makes sense in the context of trying to grow a social-based product
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But why hold such a milestone event in London if the company is still firmly based in Redwood City, CA? It’s actually part of their broader European expansion plan, explains Head of International Market Development Debby Shepard, who has just relocated from San Francisco to London to spearhead that.

With around 30 percent of their current base made up of European users, AltspaceVR hopes to significantly grow that by providing greater support and expanded programming. That strategy of building on geographical clusters makes sense in the context of trying to grow a social-based product, since we’re much more likely to engage with those sort of experiences if our friends are already on board.

The demand for live events in VR is driven by the same desire that people have to attend festivals, concerts, comedy clubs—the shared live experience of performer and audience
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Although the potential of using VR’s immersiveness to make live experiences available to larger audiences is certainly clear, it’s also quite obvious that it’s still very early days for this technology
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The live show featured two very well-known names in the vibrant comedy circuit, Ian Stone (ranked among the top ten stand-ups in Britain by The Independent and a member of the Comedy Store’s ‘Cutting Edge’ team) and Ben Norris (who apart from being the cousin of actor Martin Freeman, is a regular on popular UK television shows such as Mock the Week and Never Mind the Buzzcocks). I was told that attendance for such events ranges/has ranged up into the thousands, and an encore presentation should be available on Dec. 26 at 7 pm Pacific here.

AltspaceVR’s live event capture technology launched in November and can capture live events in full VR, so users can either watch a performance live or an encore after the event (or both). Previously they had tested some of this functionality in a partnership with SyFy for their show Halcyon, where they showed the first episode in VR and hosted a virtual reality international press junket on the platform. The benefits of that for a global audience are clear, as it transcends the need (and associated cost) of travel and lets them do so at a convenient time for them while keeping the social and interactive aspects you don’t get with simply watching a recorded show on TV.

“The demand for live events in VR is driven by the same desire that people have to attend festivals, concerts, comedy clubs—the shared live experience of performer and audience,” says Shepard. “VR uniquely brings the performer and audience into the same space, replicating the live performance experience. With AltspaceVR’s FrontRow, it’s now possible to deliver it to an unlimited number of people simultaneously from around the world.”

This FrontRow technology means that only a fraction of the attendees are visible in these images, explains Gerald Gottheil from AltspaceVR’s marketing team. The idea, presumably, is that no matter how many people sign up to participate in an event, you never get your view blocked by that annoying tall, hat-wearing person standing right in front of you.

Although the potential of using VR’s immersiveness to make live experiences available to larger audiences is certainly clear, it’s also quite obvious that it’s still very early days for this technology. For one, the AltspaceVR avatars still have that characteristic cartoon woodiness that have been a staple of such platforms since the ’90s. That, however, might soon be set to change, especially if they manage to plug into some of the bolder advances in personalized-avatar technology we’ve seen emerging in the space recently.

No matter how many people sign up to an event, you'll never get your view blocked by that tall, hat-wearing person standing right in front of you
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Another interesting aspect of this announcement was the way it overlapped the real and virtual worlds by offering audiences based in London the chance to gather in a physical space to watch a virtual reality performance together with their friends at Camden Square’s recently opened Virtually Reality space.

This represents a new concept that not only plugs into London’s  thriving VR start-up community to help bring their products to market, but also provides ordinary consumers with a physical and social space which invites them to experience and learn about VR and discover its possibilities through hands-on play.  Touting themselves as the “UK’s first virtual reality retail and experience space,” they started out as a stall on Portobello Road selling mobile VR headsets, and managed to capture the imagination of enough passers-by to fund their next move into its current trendy Camden base. It will be really interesting to see how many more such spaces start cropping up in major cities in 2017 as VR takes off.

This article originally appeared on UploadVR

Live comedy shows in @AltspaceVR are growing! https://t.co/S5gJiX7YaY via @alicebonasio #VR

— Upload (@UploadVR) December 23, 2016

Tech Trends’  Virtual Reality Consultancy services offers support for companies looking to enhance brand strategy with immersive technologies such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Are VRlive Events Becoming a Thing? appeared first on Tech Trends.

I remember it as if it was yesterday, even though it was (holy mother of all yikes!) 20 years ago…

The first time I played Resident Evil changed the way I thought about videogames forever. Sure, I’d had fun with them before, but this was something else entirely. I struggled with the unnatural controls as that first zombie staggered through the dimly lit corridor towards me, and the panic I felt was like the paralysis of a nightmare. That, in other words, was some good s**t right there.

Resident Evil changed the way I thought about Videogames. Could it do the same for VR?
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These days I’m still a sucker for survival horror, although I sadly lack the leisure my teenage self had to indulge in it properly. So many zombies, so little time… Still, when I watch The Walking Dead I know I’d be great in the Zombiepocalypse. I had plenty of practice blowing the heads off the undead hordes.

Looking back at it now, we’ve sure come a long way (See below for a couple of then-and-now shots). Gone is the hilariously bad scripting (fans will fondly remember Barry’s classic line: “Here, Jill, take this lock pick…”) but the truth is that as crude as the graphics might seem now, they truly were nothing short of revolutionary, as was the theme and the gameplay.

There are, however, some serious obstacles to making that work. It is unlikely that we will be able to play a whole game like this in VR any time soon, it’s simply too intense and disorientating, and even veterans have reported feeling sick when demoing it.

There are still issues to iron out if we are to play such long intense games as RE on VR
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Which is why it makes sense for there to be such hype around the fact that Resident Evil 7 – due for release in January – will be one of the flagship titles of the PlayStation VR. If any title could leverage the immersion and presence of VR to make us pee our pants in terror, it should be RE.

Sony really needs to get around to sending me a PlayStation VR headset #HINT
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There are, however, some serious obstacles to making that work. It is unlikely that we will be able to play a whole game like this in VR any time soon, it’s simply too intense and disorientating, and even veterans have reported feeling sick when demoing it.

It is unlikely that we will be able to play a whole game like this in VR any time soon, it’s simply too intense and disorientating, and even veterans have reported feeling sick when demoing it
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Being very susceptible to the curse of VR nausea myself, I’m curious to see how I bear up – #HINT: Sony really needs to send me that headset to try as they promised, theirs is the only major gear I’m yet to try out! – but the videos and screenshots so far really have got me excited. The mixture of the familiar and the cutting edge seem to be there, and if they get it right, Capcom could well revolutionize gaming (and horror) all over again for a new generation of bloodthirsty teenagers. And about time too.

For companies looking to get into VR/AR/MR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance on how these technologies can enhance and support your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Resident Evil Takes Horror to Virtual Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

What are the major platforms preparing the ground to let us socialise in Virtual Reality? We talk to the major players already emerging in this space.

Several VR platforms are lining up to stake their claim in the social space
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Virtual Reality is quickly moving beyond novelty experiences and showing its potential for enabling new types of social interaction. But which platform(s) will be the one to make that happen? What sort of experiences will they enable, and will those turn out to be the kind of experiences we actually want?

It’s unlikely that VR will replace social media as such. In some ways social VR has more in common with offline experiences than it does with traditional social media. In VR, people come together and have natural conversations much as they would face-to-face, rather than communicating about the experience or sharing snippets of it. But as VR experiences become more commonplace, they will provide content that we will want to share through social media, much like our real-world experiences do. What we will need to figure out is how this interplay between existing social platforms and VR will play out.

Virtual Reality is quickly moving beyond novelty experiences and showing its potential for enabling new types of social interaction
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The key question therefore is who will be “the Facebook of VR,” mainly because Facebook itself is keen to be just that, recently announcing a host of new Social VR features at Oculus Connect 3 (such as the ability to create “parties” and “rooms” where friends can gather together in VR), appointing Rachel Rubin – who previously worked on The Sims – as their Head of Social VR, and earmarking a $250 million budget to further VR development.

There’s still a huge opportunity for incumbents in that space though, and several platforms with big ambitions are gearing up to launch products that promise to enable user-generated content and social interaction in VR. We caught up with some of them to get a glimpse of what the virtual-social future might look like.

VR as a Communication Tool

AltspaceVR

Altspace VR is betting that the future of VR experiences will center around communication
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Altspace VR is betting that the future of VR experiences will center around communication, and its CEO and Founder Eric Romo believes that Google’s Daydream will be the catalyst for that to happen on a large scale.

“As people get connected and have a network of VR friends, communicating with social VR could become commonplace. Most of our communication is with friends, colleagues, and family, and for specific purposes. With no indication that this will change, AltspaceVR developed a new UI (which launched in August) that makes it easier to start activities in VR with friends. Fundamentally, we are focused on people connecting with people they know to do things they would ordinarily do in real life. Have a game of chess. See a comedy show, watch some videos.”

They see VR fitting in between other forms of electronic communication on one side, and in-person meetings on the other. Romo says that when you want to connect with someone you will choose the most appropriate method – which could be text, videochat, phone or VR – and there will be more interplay between them as VR becomes pervasive.

When you want to connect with someone you will choose the most appropriate method – which could be text, videochat, phone or VR – and there will be more interplay between them as VR becomes pervasive.
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Live events are a huge potential market for VR expansion
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But while one side of Altspace VR is very much about those ordinary experiences, there is also a huge market in virtualizing extraordinary ones. Live events are a huge potential market for VR expansion; in the US alone, live music grossed nearly $10 Billion in revenue last year, which shows that fans are certainly willing to pay a premium for the experience of being in the presence of their favourite artists.

“The advantage of VR is that users can actually do things together. With our FrontRow technology we’re able to accommodate any number of participants simultaneously, and this has led to record-setting events.  We are seeing the entertainment industry moving to adopt social VR. For example, NBC Universal developed Halcyon, a hybrid TV/VR series to bring fans from different countries together to view the premiere and interact live in VR with cast and crew members.”

VR can make such previously exclusive experiences easily available to a global audience, unrestricted by geographical location and venue capacity. This combination of unlimited reach with the sense of immediacy and personal connection – both with the artists and between fans – is what makes such social experiences so appealing.

VR can make such previously exclusive experiences easily available to a global audience, unrestricted by geographical location and venue capacity
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VRChat

Although still in alpha, VRChat already has hundreds of fully fleshed user-created worlds. The next step is to make that creation process much more social and accessible, giving users clear and easy ways to share that content.

“We see enabling social creation and user-generated content as one of the bedrocks upon which Social VR will be built on, and want to give our users the power to completely mold their environments and avatars,” says their Chief Creative Officer Ron Millar.

The focus of their roadmap – which includes a major update planned for the end of this year – is on providing highly customizable avatars and environments.

“This style of democratized creation and massive social community has been proven to be incredibly powerful in games like Minecraft.  There’s nothing quite like creating in real time with other people, Social Sculpting is a ton of fun!” says Millar.

VRChat sees their product integrating into social media platforms rather than competing directly with them
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VRChat sees their product integrating into social media platforms rather than competing directly with them, and is looking into ways of plugging into features such as Oculus Avatars, Touch and Audio SDK.

“We’re observing a trend that points toward an increasing number of users sharing on social media from within VR and linking back into VR from those same social platforms. Fully connecting with social networks such as Oculus, Steam and Facebook will help further open Social VR up to a broader audience,” predicts Millar, explaining that PlayStation VR and mobile integration are also a big part of their strategy: “The release of PlayStation VR will expose a player base of over 50 million people to VR, so we expect that will also push a lot more users into Social VR.”

Hardware developments such as self-contained, untethered headsets and powerful, more responsive hand controllers will accelerate the mass adoption of social VR, yet the real tipping point will only come when we’re able to feel truly present with friends in a virtual environment.

“When users have the ability to convey emotion without thinking about it the magic really happens,” Millar concludes. “Imagine being able to emote with your voice, face, hands and whole body! Add to that the ability to do wild and cool things that you can only do in VR and we’re going to see a revolution of communication.”

Endless Worlds

Improbable

Improbable’s unique feature, according to its CEO and Founder Herman Narula, is collaborative persistence. Just like in the real world, you’re all sharing the same environment, and your actions within that environment have enduring consequences. The difference, however, is that there will be a lot more environments and possibilities, a multitude of different worlds – which  users will be able to develop continuously – together. Naturally, this has significant implications for social interaction in VR. “Facebook is the social network of this reality. We want to enable thousands of new realities,” says Narula.

It’s about multiple worlds rather than parallel universes, however, as was keen to stress. “If we’re all in parallel universes we can have fun experiences, but we’re not truly connected. Not with the world and not with each other.”

What they’re doing is, in his words, is “Building the actual Matrix.” The infrastructure under the hood to enable the building and maintaining of persistence in those types of environments. This is done through a distributed operating system called SpatialOS which harnesses the power of thousands of cloud servers in a single interwoven fabric, allowing for real-time, high fidelity simulations. “We’re talking thousands of people and millions of persistent objects, interacting in the same world, at the same time.”

One of the developers they partnered with on the social space is HelloVR, which is creating a 10,000 square-mile MetaWorld described as the first-ever massive, physics-based virtual social space of its kind. It exists in a shared space, populated by all its members, with each member having their own private “volume” where they can decorate and create whatever and however they want. The computer-generated world is always on and will feature cognitive wildlife with cognitive behaviors controlled by IBM Watson.

The real tipping point will only come when we’re able to feel truly present with friends in a virtual environment
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“Creating a social VR experience poses new challenges like head-tracking on a massive scale, and networked physics so people can realistically interact in a persistent shared space,” says Dedric Reid, founder and CEO of HelloVR.

They’re currently in closed alpha, but later in the year they will release their Pioneer Edition, aiming to get early adopters to start populating and shaping that vast environment. Visitors will be able to participate in outdoor physics simulations including: camping, fishing, farming, archery, hot air balloon flights, road trips, meditation retreats and more. An extended suite of creative tools for building and making in the MetaWorld will follow next year.

High Fidelity is an open-source platform where people can deploy their own servers, and collaboratively live-edit it simultaneously
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High Fidelity

High Fidelity is an open-source platform where people can deploy their own servers, and collaboratively live-edit it simultaneously. It looks and feels much like a Virtual Reality version of Second Life, but that “VRSL” vibe is no coincidence, as High Fidelity the brainchild of its founder Philip Rosedale.

“We focus 100 percent on tech that enables the VR spaces to be completely under the creative control of their users,” confirms Rosedale. His vision essentially amounts to building a Virtual Reality version of the Web, and this is how he plans on eventually monetizing.

“We believe that VR servers will scale to the volume of Web servers. We’re building the open source server (and client) software to enable that, and we plan to offer useful global services like marketplaces, identity systems, currency systems, and DNS/placenames. Not everyone will need or use these services, but enough people will to make it a great business for us.”

VR works differently from social media because instead of constructing and sending data over a network of connections between people, it creates 3D spaces that people can occupy together
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According to Rosedale, VR works differently from social media because instead of constructing and sending data over a network of connections between people, it creates 3D spaces that people can occupy together, which makes it a lot more addictive. But for Social VR to take off, we’ll need to figure out a way to visualize social network data in 3D, and also for a high percentage of your friends and connections to be using it, which won’t be for a while yet.

“It will happen in 3-4 years, when majority adoption occurs – the point where everyone feels they have to have a VR device, and use it daily,” predicts Rosedale. “This was the same thing that happened on the smart phone – apps like Facebook that required majority adoption had to wait until the latter half of the cycle. We believe that VR will ramp in similar manner because if offers great and immediate utility, both as a change in computing paradigm and in human communication. So this would suggest that, like the smart phone, we will see growth to Internet/mainstream scale (billions of users) in 7-10 years.”

Creating Your Own Experience

Social VR will impact nearly everything, because just about everything that humans do boils down to creating a space and socializing with others
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Sansar

“Social VR will impact nearly everything, because just about everything that humans do boils down to creating a space and socializing with others in that context, and social VR allows us to do that without the limitations of the physical world,” says Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg.

With Sansar, he want to open up VR to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to participate as creators and make it easy for those new creators to reach their audiences for their experiences. Social media is one obvious way for them to do that: For example, I might spot a tweet from someone I follow that points me to a YouTube video showing off a Sansar experience; I’d follow a link to go experience it in VR, and then might share a snapshot to Facebook with an invitation to friends to join me there.

Sansar allows you to replicate each experience in your own image
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Instead of creating massive persistent worlds for users to share like High Fidelity and Improbable, Sansar focuses on allowing people to make and share their own experiences, whether from scratch or copying and personalizing templates. When I had a hands-on demo of the platform last month, Linden Lab’s VP of Product Bjorn Laurin took me through the UI for the creation tool, which was extremely intuitive, even for a non-technical person. Within minutes I was able to personalize a landscape – which looked rather like the Scottish Highlands  – making rocks larger, trees smaller, adding various objects and sound effects, making the fog thicker, and changing the color and direction of the light.

Sansar allows you to basically replicate each experience in your own image, customize it like you want, and share it – or not – as you please. Of all the Social VR platforms I looked at, they come closest to Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One Oasis vision. You can have your own universe all to yourself, share it with friends, or with everyone.

They’re currently in creator preview, working with a small group of developer partners selected from over 10,000 applications of interest received since they announced Sansar earlier this year. They’ll be inviting further creators to join on a running basis up until the public release scheduled for early 2017.

“Great content and experiences will drive adoption; ultimately VR needs to cut cords and be mobile, but right now mobile VR is not ready for immersive social VR. The start will feel a bit slow, but over several years, and within a couple of generations of new hardware, software, and content, VR is going to be huge.”

Sansar already has some impressive social features, such as voice-recognition that analyzes sound to translate it into facial expression and lip-sync movements very accurately
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Even in its current pilot stage, however, Sansar already has some impressive social features, such as voice-recognition that analyzes sound to translate it into facial expression and lip-sync movements very accurately (regardless of what language you’re speaking). This is similar to what Facebook is said to be deploying for Oculus Avatars.

There is also an emphasis on user’s ability to monetize content.  “Sansar creators will sell virtual items to other users, sell or rent entire experiences they create, charge for entry to events, and more. In Second Life, where creators can only sell virtual items (vs. entire experiences), we’ve sustained a thriving user-to-user economy for many years.”

Indeed, where it comes to monetization, Altberg speaks with a certain authority. Last year alone, creators redeemed about $60 million (USD) from the Second Life economy.

Another area that Linden Lab has a lot of experience in bringing people together in an unfamiliar medium. At a time when the Internet was still a novelty, Second Life attracted a huge number of dedicated users. 13 years on, it still boasts a die-hard base of about a million people. Having spoken to many of them, it is clear that they have a real, emotional and enduring attachment not only to the platform, but to other users within it. And it is this sense of bonding and community that people will have to feel before Social VR becomes a reality.

“Socializing in VR is an amazing experience, but if the people I want to connect with aren’t equipped to join me in VR, we’ll connect in a different way,” says Altberg. Our interview in VR was a much better experience (and certainly a lot more fun!) than just a phone call, but if you didn’t have an HMD, we would have settled for the phone. As hardware becomes more accessible and the sense that you’re missing out on something essential if you’re not participating in VR grows, we’ll hit that tipping point.”

Mixing it Up

One final thing worth noting when speculating about the future direction of travel for this virtual-social landscape is that Augmented/Mixed reality will likely play a bigger part. At the moment we have neither an emerging platform nor a commercially available headset that makes this a viable proposition, but my recent Microsoft HoloLens demo uncovered some tantalizing possibilities. Even at this early stage where social features are not a priority in their development roadmap, it is clear how you can connect headsets so that different people (either in the same room or in different parts of the world) can look at the same holographic content at the same time. You can continue to see and hear both the people and environment around you even as you interact with the virtual elements.

The proof will be in the proverbial pudding though. The nature of such products is that you often don’t know how they’re going to be used until they go live. Since none of those platforms have actually been released to the public yet, it’s anybody’s guess which will manage to hit that Social Chemistry sweet spot.

This article was originally published on UploadVR

When it comes to social VR, there’s only one question: Who is going to “get it right”?
via @alicebonasio #VR https://t.co/M15ySX1oG7 pic.twitter.com/lj3xeCADkc

— Upload (@UploadVR) November 22, 2016

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Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post When Will VR Go Social? appeared first on Tech Trends.