Month: July 2018

UPDATED: Cryptovoxels, A Brief Introduction

What? What’s that you say??

You say you’ve got Ethereum burning a hole in your pocket, and you’re actively searching for a monochrome, voxel-based virtual world that supports both virtual reality and is on the blockchain? Well, have I got an offer for you! Take a gander at the sexy monochrome website of Cryptovoxels!!

Cryptovoxels 5 July 2018

But wait, there’s more! There’s a YouTube video showing you just how visually exciting the virtual world of Cryptovoxels really can be!!

C’mon, admit it! Doesn’t that make you want to immediately break open your wallet and part with some hard-earned cryptocurrency to buy your very own monochrome, voxel world? (Hey, c’mon!! It’s way better than Decentraland! You can actually visit it!!)

*sigh* Blockchain-based VR has officially jumped the shark.

UPDATE July 8th: I chatted very briefly today with the developer of Cryptovoxels via Twitter, and I know he’s disappointed that I’ve judged his platform so harshly. It’s an interesting project, and I’m sure that it’s been fun to work on. But honestly, compared to what most of the other metaverse platforms are offering, Cryptovoxels doesn’t stand a chance. I did a quick calculation, and in order to buy a piece of land to build my voxels on, it would cost me at least 0.1 Ethereum, which works out to CDN$64.00:

eth.png

Sorry, but I’m not buying, and I don’t think that many other people will choose to invest either. There’s just too many other platforms out there that offer a lot more, for less money. Sansar is offering up to three 4 km by 4 km experiences, for FREE, and you can build in colour! Sinespace is offering one region, which can be up to 32 km by 32 km, for FREE, and you can also build things in colour! Both platforms also allow you to create more than just blocks! You can import mesh objects of just about any complexity you desire.

And if you compare it with Minecraft, a similar voxel-building virtual world, well, that’s only CDN$35.00, half the price of the cheapest plot of Cryptovoxels land, and with much more functionality.

And frankly, I am getting totally fed up with all this blockchain-based virtual reality nonsense. People are putting blockchain into projects where it is a solution hunting around for a problem to solve. I am so sick of the blockchain hype already!

Maybe I’m wrong; maybe Cryptovoxels will be successful. But I doubt it, based on what I have seen so far, and comparing it with other products already on the marketplace. Your mileage may vary.

A Detailed List of VR Cryptocurrencies

VRCryptocurrencies 4 July 2018.pngThere’s a new website called VRCryptocurrencies.com, which has published a list of VR cryptocurrencies. If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll see a lot of familiar names on that list:

Plus a whole bunch of new ones I had never heard of before:

Now, some of these do not appear to be social VR apps, so I won’t bother covering them on this blog. But there are a few interesting ones that merit further investigation!

The VRCurrencies website has a blog as well, which looks like it could be a good place to keep abreast of news regarding virtual reality-based cryptocurrency/blockchain projects in future. As I have stated before, I am extremely wary of crypto/blockchain VR projects at this point:

…I refuse to put one cent of my own money into any cryptocurrency at this point, and I advise anybody who wishes to do so, to do every single scrap of their homework before investing in any product or service. It’s simply too risky.

…

The actions of a few bad apples (both individuals and companies) are threatening to spoil the entire barrel. Also, greed is driving investors into ill-informed and risky speculation, and currently, there is a crypto feeding frenzy that is starting to remind me of Shark Week. I fear that this is a financial bubble that will hurt many investors when it implodes. Caveat emptor!

Kitely: A Brief Introduction

kitely.png

Kitely is another OpenSim-based virtual world that I haven’t visited in quite a while. According to its Company Overview:

Kitely is the biggest commercial provider of OpenSim regions, hosting more than 17,000 regions (as of January 2018). Kitely is considered to have the most user-friendly administration tools in the entire OpenSim hosting industry.

Work on Kitely began in 2008, with the vision of enabling people to use virtual worlds as an on-demand utility. It took the company more than two years of intensive development until it was ready to start its public beta in March 2011. Kitely is now the leading provider of affordable high-performance OpenSim hosting solutions.

As of today (July 4th, 2018), Kitely has 103,725 registered users and 17,549 sims or regions, according to the statistics on their login screen. They seem to have a healthy marketplace, with thousands of items for sale. Kitely has their own currency, called Kitely Credits, which you can use to buy things.

The one thing that drives me crazy about Kitely is that many unvisited sims are stored offline, and you quite often get the following message when you try to teleport from one place to another in-world:

Kitely 4 July 2018.png

Basically, you have to wait until the sim you want to visit is restarted, and then you are teleported to it automatically. The delay is usually less than a minute, though sometimes it takes longer. But I still do find it annoying, especially after years of being able to teleport instantly to other locations on other virtual world platforms like Second Life. The tagline for Kitely is “Virtual Worlds on Demand”. and they aren’t kidding about the “on demand” part!

Kitely is an interesting take on OpenSim, and they have a small but active community. You can find out more about Kitely from their website, their Facebook page, or their Google+ community.

Kitely 2 4 July 2018.png
The Kitely Welcome Center

Sansar Pick of the Day: Beat Blocks

Beat Blocks 4 July 2018.png

Beat Blocks is music creation experience created by GranddadGotMojo, which allows you to easily build a music track using blocks (hence the name). According to the instructions that GranddadGotMojo placed on GitHub:

Beat Blocks is an experience in Sansar where you can do you own Live DJing. You can create music by adding beats to build up a song. The main component for building up a song is the Beat Block. A Beat Block is a 1/2 meter cube that is initially stored on shelves that are in the Sample Warehouse. These shelves are on the right hand side when you enter the Experience. Each Beat Block contains a sample which is basically a short recording of music. Examples of samples are drum beats, bass lines, guitar riffs, keyboard riffs, lead riffs, pads, risers, etc. All the basics of modern Electronic Music. There are over 400 Beat Blocks and corresponding samples in the Techno Experience using Beat Blocks. These samples are arranged on Shelves by Instrument Type. There is a shelf for Drums, Bass, Guitar & Keyboard Instruments, Leads & Vocals, Effects and Pads (Strings and Ambiance).

Essentially, you pick blocks from the supermarket-like shelves on your right, and place them on special shelves on the left in order to activate them. It’s very easy to use!

Here is an 11-minute YouTube video that GranddadGotMojo created to explain in more detail how Beat Blocks works:

Next to the spot where you assemble techno tracks is a spacious dance floor, where your friends can dance to the grooves you create! Beat Blocks is great fun, and I would encourage you to visit this Sansar experience and try it out for yourself.