I first heard about LivCloser through a post somebody made to Strawberry Singh’s Discord server. I was intrigued and joined LivCloser’s Discord server, where I found a link to download an alpha version of the software and try it out.
As you might guess from the promotional picture above, there will be adult content in LivCloser, although that hasn’t been set up yet. (I did have a good laugh when I went into male avatar customization section and there was a whole section of sliders for the penis! Obviously, the developer is planning ahead.)
This is clearly still a very early-stage alpha version of the software. The French developer, who calls himself GameMaster on the Discord server, is essentially a one-person company, and he is actively looking for help:
Hello, I have some request of people that wish to help for the game in [private message] so … to make things clear and easier I will put a list here of actual needs for the game and then people will be able to apply for them. Actual needs :
– Someone good with animations (many animations to clean and fix)
– Level designer
The company started building LivCloser on the Unity game engine, but they are now porting all their work over to Unreal Engine.
Here’s a short, 40-second video showing you my avatar standing in one of the four initial experiences in LivCloser, a casino interior (I apologize for the music being too loud):
As you can see, the basic avatar mesh actually looks pretty good. (The limited hair options were all hideous, though, so I left him bald!) The casino interior is also fairly well done. By building off Unity/Unreal, they have a head start in some respects.
If you’re interested in exploring LivCloser, join their official Discord server. There’s a channel called #testgame_alpha where you can download a zipped version of their alpha software (you’ll need at least 10 GB of free hard drive space to install it). Be warned though, that it is still very much an alpha and lacks a lot of features! And if you want to help the company out, there’s also an #apply-helpers channel.
They also have a few videos in their official YouTube channel, and a Facebook page.
Thank you for blogging about this. I had heard rumors didn’t even have the name. I’m not interested in the “adult” aspect of it but I am very intrigued with their avatars which appear to be the best in VR so far – by a mile! I have no idea why the other next-gen worlds are neglecting their avatars but LivCloser certainly isn’t! I almost wish that Sansar would buy them and adapt their avatars 🙂
Since sex and porn are what drives early computer applications I’m surprised it took this long for an adult VR world to appear. I won’t be making an account but I’m also sure that won’t affect the success of LivCloser.
You are right the avatar looks pretty good. Thank you for this post.