Month: February 2018

A Weird Promotional Video for Mark Space

Mark Space is lauded in a very strange video by a YouTube user channel called BuzzStyle, promoting the company’s apartment decoration contest. Jaguar and Land Rover are among the many companies name-dropped in this video as having “cooperation agreements” with Mark Space (whatever that means).

In this promotional video, read from what appears to be a press release by a creepy computerized British male voice, Mark Space is referred to as “VR startup”. As I already noted in a previous blogpost, arranging flat images of furniture within 360-degree photographs is NOT virtual reality! Visit my apartment in Mark Space and see for yourself. That’s all there is to see right now, just 360-degree photographs. No actual 3D spaces.

Why people are investing in this virtual world start-up is a mystery to me. Again, as with Decentraland, it seems to come down to people jumping aboard when they hear the magic word “blockchain”. They’ve already raised a fair bit of cryptocurrency, according to this screen capture from their website:

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According to this page from their website, Mark Space has already raised over 8 million dollars (US):

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And, unlike Decentraland, Mark Space actually has places you can visit now. But what they are currently offering is not terribly appealing. I don’t get it. I really don’t see what the attraction is here, why people are investing millions of dollars. Compared to what virtual worlds like Sansar, High Fidelity and even 14-year-old Second Life has to offer, this is a product of questionable utility. How are the trendy boutiques in the Mark Space demo any better than a fully-featured website using Shopify?

Mark Space is another blockchain-based virtual world to watch, from the sidelines, as it evolves over time. I wish them well, but like Decentraland, I predict a bumpy road ahead.

Sansar Pick of the Day: HoverDerby

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Daisy Gator Standing in Front of the HoverDerby Welcome Sign

A common complaint I hear about Sansar is that it’s pretty, but there isn’t a lot to do yet. Experiences like HoverDerby (put together by Galen, Jasmine, and Drax) are going a long way to counteract the suggestion that there isn’t anything to do in Sansar! It’s the first competitive team sport in Sansar (well, if you don’t count the 5-A-Side Soccer Stadium) and it’s great fun to play, or even to watch!

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Watching a Two-on-Two HoverDerby Match

HoverDerby is still in beta; Galen and Jasmine are still working on it, but it is already playable. The game is pretty simple. Step on one of the red or blue teleporter pads to join a team (red or blue) and get onto the playing field.

You hover around the field, using the triggers on your hand controllers to fire at the other team members (if you’re in desktop mode, press the Spacebar or the F key to fire). If you hit your opponents, they can no longer fire at you or anybody else, and they have to get back to their circle of safety before they can fire again. The navigation takes a little getting used to, but you quickly get the hang of it.

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Matches last five minutes. The team that has captured the most opponents wins (in case of a tie, the next capture decides who is the winner).

Note that you do not need to have a VR headset to play HoverDerby; can also play in desktop mode as well as in VR. Full instructions are on the board next to the blue and red teleporters.

Every weekday morning at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time/Sansar Time, a group gathers at HoverDerby to practice their game. Drax sometimes livestreams the games too. Hope to see you there soon! As I said, it’s great fun!

UPDATE 1:41 p.m.: Turns out there is already a website for HoverDerby!

AltspaceVR: A Brief Introduction

Nobody was more surprised than I was when Microsoft stepped in at the last minute to save AltspaceVR. Most people assumed the virtual world was doomed when they announced last July that they had run out of money. But obviously, Microsoft felt that the product was worth saving, as their potential foot in the door in the increasingly crowded room of social VR apps. God knows they have enough money to do something interesting with it. God knows AltspaceVR needs someone to pour money into it.

AltspaceVR is a California-based company which was founded in 2013, and which launched its social VR application in May 2015. So they’ve been around for a while now.

My biggest problem with AltspaceVR is the platform’s avatars. They are dreadfully cartoony. I can only assume that they made this deliberate design decision so the avatars are very quick and easy to render on a platform that supports not only the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets, but also Google Daydream, Samsung Gear VR, and the numerous Windows Mixed Reality headsets, plus Windows computer desktop users. But I find them to be butt-ugly, and terribly unappealing. Let’s hope Microsoft has plans to upgrade them.

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I personally found it extremely funny that Microsoft felt they had to tart up the default AltspaceVR avatars in the following promotional video titled “Ushering in the era of Windows Mixed Reality”, issued in October 2017, shortly after they bought AltspaceVR.

If you click on the following YouTube video, it should start around the 15:40 minute mark, which is where the AltspaceVR segment occurs. I can assure you that the avatars used in this Microsoft promotional video were ones with completely redesigned and customized heads, which are NOT available to current AltspaceVR users! User avatar customization options in AltspaceVR are very limited, still. Truth in advertising, hmmm…

There are a few interesting regular events happening in AltspaceVR, notably VR Church, an initiative launched by Pastor D.J. Soto (WIRED article), which I wrote about in an earlier blogpost on religion, spirituality and virtual reality. (SacredVR also holds weekly guided meditation events in AltspaceVR.) Of course, religious events are hardly new to virtual worlds; Second Life has had churches operating almost from the very beginning.

AltspaceVR is worth keeping an eye on, if for no other reason than to see what Microsoft plans to do with their acquisition.

Sinespace: A Brief Introduction

Sinespace is a new virtual world created by a company called Sine Wave Entertainment, whose CEO is Adam Frisby. Adam is a well-known figure in virtual worlds. Before joining Sine Wave Entertainment, he founded the Azure Islands, a community with a peak of 400 regions in Second Life, and DeepThink, a leading virtual world development company. He was also one of the founding developers of OpenSimulator, the popular open source platform used by countless virtual worlds. (I also believe that Sine Wave is the same company which sells avatar animations in Second Life, although I need to confirm this with Adam.)

Sinespace is based on Unity, which is a cross-platform game engine used to develop both three-dimensional and two-dimensional video games and simulations. This is a different approach from Sansar, which is building its own engine from scratch.

Here’s a few things you might not know about Sinespace:

  • Sinespace already has cloth physics! Yes, you can wear a skirt which moves as your avatar does. Here’s a short video demonstrating this feature:
  • Sinespace has an experimental VR viewer! Adam let me try it out. Unfortunately, I can’t get it to work properly yet with my Oculus Rift headset. But virtual reality support for Sinespace is coming soon.
  • Like Sansar, Sinespace regions can be quite large. Adam gifted me a dune buggy and I drove endlessly through their Grand Canyon sim! (They also have great vehicle physics.)
  • Sinespace is home to a speaker series called The Delphi Talks, which consist of live interviews and discussions about art, games and stories. Here’s a YouTube playlist of recent Delphi Talks.
    Screenshot 2018-2-18-08-54-45
    The site of the Delphi Talks in Sinespace

    To learn more about Sinespace, here’s their user forums, their Facebook, their Twitter, and their Google+ group. Go explore!