Yes, Vanity Fair is also in Sinespace! This is her default, “before” look.She is wearing the Tiredi dress by ELL (10 different colours, only 99 Gold each colour), plus Misty ballet slippers by BlakOpal Designs (5 different colours, also 99 Gold each). The golden Crescent Hoop Earrings are also by BlakOpal Designs, and they are only 39 Gold.
Not bad, but I wanted to see if I could make her look more like a fashion model today—really pull out all the stops!
Luckily, I was able to find a brand new content creator in Sinespace, named Gaby, whose brand is called Anatomy (website), that sells six different kinds of female mesh bodies: Classic and Curvy, both of which comes in three different bust shape options: classic, perky, and push-up:
The two types of Anatomy bodies: Curvy and ClassicThe three bust types of the Anatomy bodies: Classic, Perky, Push-UpAll told, there are six different Anatomy bodies
So, I bought the Curvy body with a Classic bust (499 Gold), the Emma head shape (699 Gold), and the Emma skin in vanilla (649 Gold), all from Anatomy. I also replaced Vanity’s hairstyle with the Dream Glory hair in brown by Newsea (only 99 Gold).
The vendor recommends that before (or after) you wear any of these new bodies, that you reset the body sliders so you get a clean canvas to start with your new body shape. To do this, just go to the avatar editor (click on the Outfit button), then click on the Body section and click on the Reset button up top:
Here is what Vanity Fair looks like after her complete model makeover! All I kept from her Before look were the dress and shoes. I kept all the default face and body slider settings after the above reset, only making her bust slightly larger and her hands smaller (for some reason, the default Sinespace avatars all have huge hands!).
The following poses are part of a single animated gesture you can buy on the Sinespace Shop, called Ladies Fashion Poses Gesture by De Landria Creations (only 75 Gold). It slowly and smoothly moves the avatar through a number of different model poses, allowing you time to take pictures. Here are just three of the poses included:
Looking good! Tools like this pose set are going to prove popular among the growing number of fashion bloggers in Sinespace, and I am very glad to see them make an appearance! Hopefully we will be getting more fashion bloggers in Sinespace to showcase the amazing work that so many talented designers are creating.
I also bought a Catwalk Linear 101 gesture from Trilo Byte Design (only 59 Gold), which is a simple model catwalk runway animation: walk to the front of the catwalk, pause, pose, and walk back. To demonstrate it, I had Vanity model a gown I had blogged about before on the official Sinespace blog, the beautiful, flowing Allegro gown in cream, created by BlakOpal Designs. This garment, which comes in 10 different colours, actually has full in-world cloth physics enabled!
Below is short promotional video from the creators, BlakOpal Designs, showing just how naturally this garment moves with the wearer (and it even includes a very useful tip on how to fix the skirt, if it should snag somewhere on your avatar).
So, Vanity Fair is finally a full-fledged model in Sinespace! Expect more reports on the ever-growing fashion market in Sinespace, for both male and female avatars.
This blogpost is sponsored by Sinespace, and was written in my role as an embedded reporter for this virtual world (more details here).
At a special event in Taipei, Taiwan, HTC cofounder and former CEO Peter Chou today revealed the first products from the new startup XRSPACE. It’s serving up both its own 5G-enabled standalone VR headset as well as a new social VR platform which appears to compete with Facebook Horizon.
Chou sees XRSpace serving the upcoming era of widespread 5G; much like smartphones first arrived on the back of the 2.5G network in the early 2000s, the former HTC CEO sees the company’s headset, Mova, and its social VR platform, Manova, taking human interaction “to a new level” and offering more connectivity on a person-to-person level. And XRSpace planning to bring it to the mass market.
XRSpace Announces the Social VR Platform Manova and the Wireless VR Headset Mova
Mova is a wireless VR headset like the Oculus Quest, which uses optical hand tracking instead of physical hand controllers. Engadget reports:
The Mova will ship with a single controller for gaming purposes, but it’s designed to be used with hand tracking as the primary control method. This, in theory, would lower the learning barrier for most people, and they would probably use the headset more often because of its less fiddly nature. But the company wants hand gestures to be a core interaction in its virtual world, Manova. And this is where things get different from VR headsets that we’ve seen already.
Once you’re inside one of the Manova spaces…you can toggle most common social gestures with natural movements: you can shake hands with other avatars, give high fives, do fist bumps or toast with a glass. You can even grab and throw objects, meaning you can shoot hoops or throw darts with your buddies who are actually miles away in real life. There’s also a gesture for teleportation: tap in the air with your index finger to toggle an arrow, then point at your desired spot and tap again to teleport.
The two-minute promotional video focuses on the social VR platform, called XRSPace Manova.
This video mentions something called MagicLOHAS, which describes itself on its separate website as:
Employing matured XR technology, computer vision, 5G, 3D real-time interactive, and visualization of full-body avatar, MagicLOHAS achieves a healthy life that is not limited by time and place. We offer a variety of applications from meditation, body training, brain training, and more, to bring new lifestyles of health and sustainability to the mass market through virtual reality.
Here are some first pictures of the Manova social VR platform and avatars (source). I’ll tell you one thing, the Manotva avatars sure look one hell of a lot better than what Facebook Horizon is planning to offer:
Manova is a combination of private and public spaces, and during my demo, I see both. When I put on the headset, I’m in the private sphere, a minimalist home. I can sit on the couch in my living room and watch a movie by myself or invite friends to join me. The next moment, I follow my XRSpace guide to zap myself to a T-Mobile-branded sports arena to watch a basketball game from the center court line. The game is real, with real players, and I have the best seat.
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The private spaces include not only your home but also classrooms and meeting rooms for those water cooler conversations or hour-long meetings that used to take place in person in real offices. The public Manova realm has a central city center hub to play games or watch big entertainment events.
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For the initial launch, XRSpace has signed on six education companies that do things like teach English; game developers like Futuretown and Rovio’s Angry Birds; live-streaming companies like Insta360’s travel video; GQ and Vogue with fashion content; YC House for virtual Taiwanese real-estate tours; Bank SinoPac for corporate training; and the Taiwanese record label Wind Music.
The wireless Mova headset is expected to ship sometime in the third quarter of 2020, at a price of US$599. Apparently, only Mova headset users will be able to access the Manova social VR platform, which sounds a bit like a jazzed-up version of Oculus Home for Oculus Quest and Rift users. And it’s an intriguing approach: bundling the social VR platform with the VR headset (which, of course, is exactly what Facebook wants to do with its Oculus line of headsets and Facebook Horizon).
Mova and Manova are a package deal: XRSpace’s world is only available through its headset, and the headset won’t support other VR storefronts. XRSpace is also supposed to have its own accessory ecosystem, including optional hand controllers and tracking sensors, which are described as much smaller versions of HTC’s Vive Tracker.
I haven’t seen either product in action, so it’s possible XRSpace will deliver on its promises. That said, this seems like a significant risk for the company and anybody who buys the headset, even making the huge assumption that its hardware is on par with existing devices like the Quest.
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Meanwhile, many companies have failed to launch Manova-like virtual worlds, including Second Life operator Linden Lab with Sansar and Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale with the largely shuttered High Fidelity. Chou believes Manova can succeed where Sansar and High Fidelity failed because of its “fine-tuned” nature.
“I think the difference is they designed those things based on the PC first and then they tried to put it on VR,” he says. “They don’t have a good digital avatar and they don’t have a holistic consideration of the mass-market consumer using it.” But that’s still an iffy bet, especially for a device that costs far more than the highly capable $399 Oculus Quest.
And I have to say that Chou (XRSpace CEO and former HTC head Peter Chou) is wrong; both Sansar and High Fidelity were designed from the beginning to support the first generation of consumer VR headsets (notably the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift). The problem happened when both Linden Lab and High Fidelity bet the farm that there would be massive consumer uptake of virtual reality by now, which so far has failed to happen. This is what led to the essential shuttering of High Fidelity and the sale of Sansar by Linden Lab to Wookey (a company which specializes in buying up distressed companies and trying to turn them around).
I wonder if Peter Chou has ever actually sat down and talked with Ebbe Altberg or Philip Rosedale…judging by his quote above, and his lack of knowledge about Sansar and High Fidelity, probably not. Both Ebbe and Philip would be the first to tell him that “fine tuning” a platform is absolutely no guarantee of its popularity and success, based on their own bitter experience.
Exclusively bundling a full-blown, high-end social VR platform with a particular, as-yet-untested brand of VR headset is a huge gamble, though. If a battle for marketshare erupts between XRSpace and Facebook, Facebook is by far the stronger opponent here. (For example, while XRSpace has the rights to offer the Angry Birds game, Facebook already owns the phenomenally successful and popular juggernaut of Beat Saber! You can bet that Beat Saber will not be appearing in Manova anytime soon.)
UPDATE Nov. 6th, 2020: I find myself thinking about the XRSpace project from time to time, and to be honest, the longer I ponder it (especially in light of the new, cheaper Oculus Quest 2 wireless headset from Facebook), the more skeptical I feel about the chances for success of the Manova headset (formerly called Mova, and now available for preorder, with no pricing details) and the associated Manova social VR platform.
I also forgot to include this YouTube video of the XRSpace announcement, which you might find of interest, as I did:
I wish XRSpace luck; going up against the Facebook Oculus 2 and Facebook Horizon, they’re going to sorely need it.
