Apparently, they received over one hundred entries to the contest, and it looks like the judges are going to have a hard time selecting winners. I see lots of interactive games! And did I catch a glimpse of a three-dimensional virtual recreation of the Van Gogh painting Bedroom in Arles? (They have one similar to that in NeosVR, too.)
You might remember that I coined an acronym which I hope starts to catch on in the industry: YARTVRA, which stands for Yet Another Remote Teams Virtual Reality App. This is an emerging use for VR, and I have compiled a list of YARTVRA apps in this recent blogpost.
Well, it would appear that LearnBrite (which I have blogged about before), the company behind Zoom (the well-known, popular remote conferencing service) wants to embrace virtual reality, and hop into the nascent YARTVRA marketplace.
It looks like they are offering a couple of different ways to represent each remote participant. Take a gander at the following one-minute video, showing three men communicating via flat-screen video “avatars” in a 3D photograph of an office:
Watching this, I ask myself: why would anybody want to do this? What benefits does this bring? Sorry, but this is just weird. No avatars at all? Horse confetti?!??
Here’s another one-minute video showing you not only the flat-screen video “avatars”, but also a tantalizing glimpse of an actual, 3D avatar:
In the first part of this video, Zoom again eschews user avatars completely, choosing instead to have each participant displayed in a video screen in a 3D virtual conference room. However, notice at the 0:38 mark in this video, someone puts on an Oculus Quest VR headset, and you can then see his three-dimensional avatar standing in one corner of the conference room.
Here’s another one-minute video (no audio) that shows you a bit more of the setup for the Oculus Quest:
Now, it’s not clear to me if this is a real avatar that you can embody, able to move around the room, or if it is just a stationary object, a placeholder that merely represents the user. Unfortunately, there’s not enough in these videos to be able to tell!
LearnBrite already includes tightly integrated WebRTC conferencing capabilities such as audio, video, VR presence and dial-in by phone.
In some enterprise environments it may be preferable to leverage the tools already in place, this helps with costs and also managing change in an organization. If everyone is already familiar with using Zoom, then adding VR to it can get better user “buy-in” than asking them to use a new or different solution.
But whether or not this is actually something that is going to be truly useful, something that adds a real benefit to remote work team collaboration, remains to be seen. So I’m a little skeptical, and frankly, I want to see more of this in action before I pronounce final judgement (especially how they implement 3D avatars).
As far as I can tell right now, this half-baked solution just gives LearnBrite the bragging rights that they now support Zoom in VR, without a lot of the features seen in competing YARTVRA products. Sorry, but I’m not impressed. This looks like a cheap gimmick to me.
I am still experimenting with Bakes on Mesh on a couple of my Second Life avatars, rummaging through my inventory, and I am having a blast!
Here’s Vanity Fair, wearing a Chai system skin called Crush on her Maitreya Lara mesh body and Catwa Kimberly mesh head, and an old system outfit that I had completely forgotten I had: Audrey Hepburn’s Ascot outfit from My Fair Lady! I literally haven’t worn this in years!
Chai was one of those skin stores which used to regularly offer free gift certificates, so I picked up pretty much their entire line of skins for free! This was back in the days when the makeup was an integral part of the skin, in those pre-mesh, pre-appliers days. As you can see, the skin still works well with my mesh avatar, using one of the free set of League nailbase tattoos to fix the fingers around the nails (which I talk about here). I wanted something that would “pop” with this monochrome outfit, and Chai Crush certainly does the job! (I suppose I could have gone for a nude look to match Audrey Hepburn in the movie better.)
This marvelous outfit came from a store called Cartunno Couture, and although they are no longer in world, they do still sell some My Fair Lady -based outfits on the SL Marketplace (but alas, not the one I am wearing). The whole store is well worth a browse, just to see all the fun costumes they sell, from many different movies like Cabaret and Gone with the Wind. There are dozens of stores selling older system-layer-and-prim outfits which might even see a sort of sales renaissance for mesh body avatars, now that we have Bakes on Mesh!
My Fair Lady is probably my favourite movie musical. Here are a few reminders of why it’s still my fave. The movie studio spent a small fortune just on the actors’ costumes for the Ascot race day scenes!
This man is Dr. Soni Avileva, the former proprietor of the 1951 bar (he made his own mesh body and got this skin from a Japanese skin maker who has since left the grid). A charming man who runs a classy establishment, set to a swinging soundtrack of jazz vocalists! I often just park Coupon and use the bar as my radio station 😉
Well, the good Doctor has set up a whole new bar! This time, it’s called The 1969 Bar (a.k.a. The Wrong Hole), and that is where you can now find Coupon Clip, once again dancing for tips. Here’s a selfie shot:
