Year: 2019

Cas and Chary Cover Five Social VR Platforms (Including Sansar)

Most of the people making YouTube videos about virtual reality hardware and software are men, so it is refreshing to find a new (well, new to me, anyways) channel about VR run by two women, called Cas and Chary VR.

Last week, Cas published a 10-minute YouTube video tour of five less popular social VR platforms, explaining:

So we all know VRChat, Rec Room, [and] AltspaceVR. This video isn’t about these games. It’s about 5 others that you might have missed.

The five platforms covered in this video include:

Videos like this are useful because they give viewers a look at platforms that they might not have had an opportunity to visit themselves. I was surprised to find that Sansar was a sponsor for this video. Cas says:

DISCLAIMER: This video was sponsored by Sansar. Per our guidelines, no review direction was received from them. Our opinions are our own.

I think it’s smart that Linden Lab is reaching out to YouTube influencers like Cas and Chary with sponsorship opportunities. As I have written before, social VR companies will likely have to turn to influencers more often in future to promote their products more effectively.

Clemson University Research Study into Social VR

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Researchers at Clemson University are conducting a paid research study on social VR. According to a post made to the SocialVR subReddit:

Hello! We are a group of academic researchers who are conducting a research project about social VR. The project is about understanding why people use social VR, how they interact with one another in social VR, and how social VR supports their social needs, identity construction, and relationship building. If you have experienced any social VR platforms/applications/environments and are willing to be interviewed, please contact us and we will send you the information sheet, which provides more details about this research. You will be paid a $20 Amazon gift card after the interview is completed. 

If you are interested, you can contact the researcher, Dr. Guo Freeman, via email at guof@clemson.edu.

Sansar Pick of the Day: Susan’s Diary

Today I went exploring in Sansar, and I came across a sinister world called Susan’s Diary, designed by Sergio Delacruz (who previously created worlds such as Day 24: The Escape and the creepy Orphanage of Angels).

Susan’s Diary consists of a series of puzzles that you have to solve, to figure out what happened to Susan and her dolls. Every so often, you will encounter a stray page from her diary, which you can pick up and read for clues.

The world is masterfully done, with all kinds of touches that add to the foreboding atmosphere, like flying crows and candles you can blow out and relight! (Here’s a hint to get you started: you’re going to need that well to find the first key.)

I would have been lost without the assistance of another person who had already been through the various steps. Even so, we struggled at times to solve the puzzles. (At one step, it helps if you can read music.) The fiendishly clever puzzles reminded me of the classic games Riven and Myst (high praise indeed!).

Be sure to put on your thinking cap and pay Susan’s Diary a visit! See if you can make it all the way to the end. There’s a very satisfying and dramatic conclusion.

Quote of the Day: “An Hour in the Metaverse…”

Image created by rawpixel.com – www.freepik.com

Dana Cowley, who is the senior marketing manager at Epic Games (the makers of the phenomenally successful Fortnite), made a great observation about the metaverse that I wanted to share with you:

She said (or perhaps quoted), as part of her notes on the recent SIGGRAPH presentation by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney:

An hour in the metaverse needs to be better than
– an hour on Facebook
– an hour on Instagram
– an hour on Twitter
– an hour on YouTube
– an hour on Netflix
– an hour in Fortnite
– an hour in anything we have now

In other words, the metaverse has to be so compelling—and offer something so different from what we have now—that people will inevitably flock to use it. It’s something to keep in mind as we look at the current landscape of social VR platforms and virtual worlds.