We’ve talked a lot about social virtual reality apps on this blog, and looked at numerous examples of social VR. But this one is a first: a social augmented reality (AR) app has been announced for the brand-new Magic Leap One headset!
Just announced via twitter by Savannah Miles, who is leading the social and avatar chat team at Magic Leap, Social is the name of a newly-announced Magic Leap One experience that is coming sometime later this year. According to the product page:
Build Connections
Share experiences, follow your friends and join other creators to explore this new frontier together. Build, personalize and accessorize your own custom avatars with a suite of creation tools. Soon, you’ll be able to hangout with people from around the world in the comfort of your home.
Make Magic Together
Spatial computing is meant to be shared. Soon, Cast will let people in the same room see what you see, when and where you see it. Plus, since with Avatar Chat you’ll basically be in the same room, they’ll be able to see the same content and applications, too.
Express Yourself Like Never Before
Coming this fall, Avatar Chat will take full advantage of Magic Leap One’s perception features such as 6DoF, headpose, eye tracking and hand tracking to create a feeling of real presence. So wink, wave or throw a high five because you’re going to meet some super expressive avatars.
Magic Leap is slowly broadening its app offerings, and as a part of the company’s next steps to move forward to a fully-fledged consumer product, the company today announced at L.E.A.P. Con, the company’s first developer conference, that Magic Leap One is getting a bit more social in the next few months.
Savannah Niles, Magic Leap’s Designer Lead of User Experience, took the stage today at L.E.A.P. Con to announce that the company will be rolling out “a suite of products” to enable multiuser experiences on Magic Leap One—something that’s been missing up until now.
The opening gambit: Avatar Chat, an AR chat app that allows multiple users to connect remotely, with the ability to be represented by customizable avatars.
Image courtesy Magic Leap
In the quick clip of Avatar Chat, we saw Magic Leap One detecting gestures, eye blinks, and the ability to manually select emotions, represented by emojis.
UPDATE Nov. 17th: Magic Leap has just released a new promotional video for Avatar Chat, which shows us a few more of its features:
When you’re feeling like you want some company in a virtual world, where do you go? Sometimes people choose to go to popular places, where they can be fairly certain to meet other avatars who are also in-world at the same time. What are the metaverse equivalents of the Cheers bar, where you can just drop in anytime?
Second Life
For example, sometimes when I’m bored I go visit the London City sims, which are always busy. Clubs such as Muddy’s, Big Daddy’s, Fogbound Blues, and Frank’s Place are always a popular choice when you want to be around other avatars in a social setting.
Second Life does have a Popular Places listing, but the truth is, most of the places listed are actually pretty deserted. Clubs, in particular, seem to come and go with surprising frequency. Sometimes you have to go by word of mouth to hear about popular spots.
Here’s an interesting canned search that pulls up a list of Second Life sims, sorted in descending order by “traffic”. However, you should know that Second Life is notorious for having sims that may look busy, but are actually populated by armies of bots hidden away somewhere in a platform in the sky, in an effort to game SL’s traffic measurement system, and therefore appear higher in the Search function under Places. So be skeptical when looking at traffic statistics; they often don’t tell the whole story.
But what about the newer virtual worlds and social VR spaces? Where are their Cheers?
Finding popular places in High Fidelity (aside from scheduled meetups and events) can be a bit of a head-scratcher. The social VR platform does have an upcoming events page in pinboard, agenda, or calendar month views. Unfortunately, there’s no events listing within their client (on their tablet), so you’ll have to rely on the website to get your information before you go in-world. If you search under Places in the tablet user interface, it will tell you how many other avatars are in other domains, though.
Sinespace
The most popular place in Sinespace (aside from special events such as speakers at the Delphi Talks) is invariably the Welcome Centre, where there is usually a small crowd of avatars sitting around and chatting.
VRChat
VRChat hosts many popular events such as the ENDGAME and Gunter’s Universe talk shows. The best way to find out when these are happening is to check out the handy VRChat Events calendar or join the VRChat Events Discord server. Again, sometimes the best thing to do when you’re simply looking for some company, is to open the Places menu and just pick a spot at random where there are a lot of other avatars gathered. You’re pretty much guaranteed to run into somebody to chat with.
What are your favourite places to go in the metaverse when you want to meet other avatars? Have you found a spot you like to go visit? Please leave a comment with your suggested places and strategies, thanks!
Magic Leap has generated a ton of media buzz and hype over the years. We’re finally getting our first independent hands-on looks at the product.
Magic Leap invited The Verge to Florida for a one-hour, hands-on demo of the Magic Leap One, an augmented reality (AR) headset that projects 3D images into reality. And the reviewer was disappointed in what she saw:
And the Magic Leap One, which is now available for sale in the United States only, is extremely pricey for new technology: starting at US$2,295, it’s easily more expensive than an entire computer set-up for the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive VR headsets. And, as the reviewer states in the video, there’s little content available for it, and what content there is demonstrates the drawbacks in the platform, such as the restricted field of view.
There’s one huge drawback to the entire experience of putting a Magic Leap One on my face: It doesn’t work with glasses. My handlers asked for my prescription before I arrived in Fort Lauderdale, and pop-in prescription lenses were supposed to be provided for my demo. But it turns out my prescription broke the mold. I’m -8.75 in one eye, -8.25 in the other — too strong.
The verdict? Interesting, but it’s probably best to check back in a year or two, unless you’re a fanatical early adopter. I’m quite content with my Oculus Rift headset, and I’m in no hurry to upgrade/switch.
UPDATE January 20th, 2021: I just did a quick spot-check and I can confirm that Oasis has indeed ceased operations. The Oasis website no longer exists.
Pornhub and HoloFilm Productions will tonight present the first episode of the inaugural Pornhub Games, hosted by Asa Akira and sponsored by Chaturbate.
The Pornhub Games consist of six episodes leading up to the Pornhub Awards on Thursday, Sept. 6, and are viewable on a new virtual platform called Oasis.
My ears perked up at the words “new virtual platform called Oasis”, so I put on my reporter’s hat, got out my notebook, and went exploring. (Oh, the things I do for you people!)
Please note that while you will be able to log in using the same credentials as RLC2, your RLC2 account is not linked to Oasis. RLC2 and Oasis are two different ‘service providers’ on the same network. Your login information is the same throughout the network, but your inventory, virtual currency balances*, settings and personalization are unique to each service provider and cannot be transferred between them.
RLC2 refers to the second version of Red Light Center, I guess? I really have no idea what’s going on. I never expected to ever have to use my RLC credentials again, I swear! I only created them for research! Research, I tell you!
Anyways, back to Oasis, and, by the way, whose bright idea was that particular name, I wonder? I wonder what the folks over at VIVEPORT think about that one, since they also have a VR experience called the Oasis…which makes it very difficult to actually find this newer Oasis platform using search engines like Google.
Here’s a one-minute promotional video from Vimeo:
So, “a better virtual reality is waiting for you”, eh? I decided to take them up on the offer.
Your avatar setup is pretty straightforward (but just what is the difference between “heavy” and “portly”, and “slim” and “skinny”, anyway?):
Once you have made some rough avatar adjustments, you arrive at the Welcome Tower, a dark urban rooftop with a large pool:
Your (cringe-inducing) orientation consists of finding and talking to Angela, who dispatches you to visit other bots in order to learn how to adjust and clothe your avatar:
Angela refers you to the “stylist”, Charlotte, a woman with a faux French accent whose own personal style could best be described as “Cheap French HOO-Kair” 😉
After fixing up my avatar and fetching myself a drink from Logan the bartender, here is what I looked like:
“Everlust”, indeed! (No, my avatar doesn’t look any better in good lighting. I checked.)
You can switch from desktop mode to VR mode by hitting the F12 function key on your keyboard. (You’re also supposed to be able to switch back by hitting F11, which never worked for me.)
In VR mode, I found I could teleport around, but not turn. And no matter what I did in VR mode, I could not get doors to open for me (i.e. teleport me to another experience). Let’s just say that VR support is super buggy and leave it at that.
Back to the whole Pornhub thing, where we started off in the first place with that NY Post article. Apparently, Oasis has decided that a partnership with the porn website Pornhub is just what is needed to promote the platform, according to this article from the website VR Room:
The Pornhub Games consist of six episodes leading up to the Pornhub Awards on Thursday, Sept. 6, and are viewable on a new virtual platform called Oasis.
“Tonight, is a special sneak preview of a project that I produced and directed called the Pornhub Games,” HoloFilm President Anna Lee told XBIZ. “The Games are a six-week, reality style competition where six contestants compete for the chance to be crowned the Pornhub Games Champion.”
According to Lee, each Thursday from now until Sept. 6, it will air a different episode and host a viewing party featuring a live Q&A session engaging fans and contestants.
The soft launch is intended to stress-test the platform prior to its official launch on Aug. 2, alongside an affiliate program for promoting the new platform.
“[We] would love to have some of you VR enthusiasts come check it out, help us load test and give us feedback on the platform,” Lee explains. “So, while the Games are some fun eye candy, the real purpose of tonight is to help us get Oasis totally on its feet.”
The doors open at 5 p.m. (PDT), with the event beginning at 5:30 p.m.
Oasis is available for any desktop computer, as well as Vive and Rift headsets, with mobile compatibility planned for a future release.
So, if you’re really interested in Oasis, here’s their website, have at it! Oh, and did I mention that one of their two in-game currencies is called “Booty”? (The other one is called “Rays”. The jokes just write themselves, people.)
You’ll be able to transfer (send and receive) virtual currency
Get discounts on experiences paid in Booty (like tattoos, change rooms, lap dances, etc.)
Sexy
See nudity
Get naked
Unlock intimate activities
Bling
Display a badge above your name indicating your VIP status
Your name colour will change to indicate your VIP status
Your chat text will also update to a new colour to indicate your VIP status
But, lemme tell ya, VIP membership ain’t cheap:
So, what do I think of all this? I think that any virtual world that wants to get into the sex market needs to have really good-looking, realistic avatars, and these… aren’t. The clothing I tried on, in particular, was very poorly made (I guess the point is, you’re not supposed to be wearing any?). And the addition of somewhat juvenile hunt games (e.g. help the madam find her champagne receipt she left at the café) seems completely out of place in a virtual world designed and intended for adults.
Oh, and the Pornhub tie-in? Basically, you’re sitting in a movie theatre, watching the individual weekly episodes of the “Pornhub Games” on a screen. It’s boring as hell, and why you would need or want to be in Oasis just to watch a video is beyond me. Why impose an extra layer of unnecessary technology to do something that can easily be done on the desktop?
The bottom line is, there’s really nothing that interesting in Oasis, even if you are a porn fan. Pass.
You can try Oasis for free to get a taste and if you decide you want more, a single payment of $20 will unlock all game features – forever! This offer won’t be around forever, though, so why don’t you give it a try now?
Oasis must really be hurting to switch from $20 per month to $20 for a lifetime membership. It’s a limited time offer, of course! There’s just a hint of desperation here.
Frankly, if you’re actually looking for a virtual world to fulfill your sexual fantasies, you’d be better off sticking with Second Life, the established front-runner with over 15 years experience. As I have said before, when writing about yet another adult virtual world, 3DX Chat (which frankly has much better-looking avatars than Oasis):
The biggest problem is that many of these newer adult/sex-based virtual worlds simply cannot compete with everything that the entrenched frontrunner Second Life, with a 15-year head start, has to offer:
SL now has extremely attractive, realistic-looking mesh avatars (male, female, and any mythical creature you could ever dream up), with a near-endless array of avatar customization options (hair, clothing, shoes, accessories, etc.). You can outfit your avatar to fit into any style or scene! No other virtual world can compete.
In-world stores and the SL Marketplace sell tens of thousands of different animations (dance, cuddle, sex, etc.); again, there’s something to suit every taste. Again, no other virtual world can compete with the endless selection.
Finally, Second Life offers hundreds of adult locations, many staffed with dozens of avatars who are ready, willing, and able to roleplay sexual scenes (via chat, voice, even webcam!). Again, no other sex-based virtual world comes even close.
Frankly, Oasis is a TERRIBLE name for a virtual world. It’s just too common a name for too many other things on the Internet. The company should strongly consider renaming it to make it easier for people to find. Then again, they’re not the first virtual world with a poorly-chosen name (remember There.com?).
