Day: May 28, 2020

FRAME: A Brief Introduction to a New Browser-Based VR-Compatible Virtual World, by VirBELA

FRAME is a brand new product by the company that brought you VirBELA, a separate browser-based virtual world with VR support, built with open web technology (WebXR) instead of Unity (which VirBELA uses).

When you visit their website, instead of a flat website homepage, you are loaded directly into a three-dimensional space, a tutorial room which explains what FRAME is meant to be used for. You navigate using the mouse and the arrow keys of your keyboard, or you can click on the small VR icon in the bottom right-hand corner and put on your VR headset.

You are invited to create an account, using your existing Google, Microsoft or Facebook credentials, or create a new FRAME account using your email address. After registering an account via email, I got the following welcoming message:

Thanks for signing up for the FRAME beta! Frame lets you quickly create immersive meeting spaces and presentations and then invite others in with a link. No download or install needed – right from a browser on desktop, mobile, or VR.

We encourage you to create your own FRAMES and let us know if you have any feedback if you use it to hold your own meetings or presentations. We have a Discord group where you can ask us questions, give feedback, interact with the FRAME user community, and stay up to date. Check it out!

FRAME is evolving rapidly, and as such you might find occasional hiccups in our service. Please keep in mind that FRAME is still in beta and uses some cutting-edge technology. 

Finally – if you need a version of FRAME with custom features or designs that you aren’t able to build yourself in FRAME, we would be happy to discuss that with you. 

We’re here to help if you have any questions or thoughts, and we can’t wait to show you what’s coming next for FRAME. 

Gabe and Dan,
The FRAME Team

You can browse through the FRAME NEXUS user documentation to get up to speed. There’s even something called the FRAME ACADEMY to help teach WebXR, with online lessons and projects, and even hands-on workshops!

If you want learn more about FRAME, I invite you to visit their website, join their new Discord server, or follow the project on social media via Twitter and Facebook.

I will be adding FRAME to my ever-expanding list of social VR platforms and virtual worlds.

2020.exe Has Stopped Working

Ryan pokes his nose outside of the self-imposed news blackout of his pandemic bunker…

Looks at today’s reporting on the Twitter/Facebook/Zuckerberg/Trump dumpster fire:

… and Ryan hurriedly retreats back into “social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse”, slamming the door shut behind him, until at least 2021.

Editorial: The Wall Street Journal Looks at Breakroom and Other Virtual Office Spaces as an Emerging Business Trend

Yesterday, in an article titled Miss Your Office? Some Companies Are Building Virtual Replicas, the American financial newspaper The Wall Street Journal took a look at a current trend: businesses setting up virtual office spaces for their employees who are working remotely because of the pandemic:

Stay-home orders and the shuttering of workplaces have given corporate employees some respite from getting dragged into time-wasting water-cooler conversations.

But some companies and their employees don’t want to leave everything about the office behind, it turns out, and are replicating their offices in “SimCity”-like simulations online.

And, among the companies that WSJ reporter Katie Deighton spoke to was Sine Wave Entertainment, the makers of Sinespace and Breakroom:

Sine Wave Entertainment Ltd. last month introduced Breakroom, a virtual-world product for remote workforces. It can accommodate all-hands meetings, secure one-on-ones and document sharing. Clients of the product include Virgin Group Ltd. and Torque Esports Corp.

Many customers initially assume they will recreate their offices, then realize they can make tweaks that would be impossible in the real world, said Sine Wave CEO Rohan Freeman.

“We spend our lives wishing we were working in open, sunny campuses with butterflies outside,” Mr. Freeman said. “Here you can realize that dream.”

Although clients can use Breakroom to create their office utopia, the platform also enables real-world elements such additional privileges for senior staff. In Sine Wave’s own virtual world, senior members can lock the boardroom, which is located on top of a hill overlooking the rest of the office.

A meeting in Breakroom (source: WSJ)

The Wall Street Journal article is a signal that corporate America—and indeed, businesses in countries around the world—are increasingly interested in virtual worlds. As the saying goes, “A rising tide lifts all boats“. I predict that Breakroom and a host of competing YARTVRA* firms are going to see a continuing boom in interest and inquires as the coronavirus pandemic drags on.

*YARTVRA is an acronym I coined that stands for Yet Another Remote Teamwork Virtual Reality App, which I am still hoping will catch on!

This blogpost is sponsored by Sinespace, and was written in my role as an embedded reporter for this virtual world (more details here). 

NFT Estate: A New Website Examining Blockchain-Based Virtual Worlds

The NFT Estate Website Home Page

There’s a new website which examines and analyzes the various blockchain-based virtual land platforms that have been springing up, called NFT Estate. (NFT, of course, stands for Non-Fungible Tokens, the concept that blockchain-based property is a unique, distinguishable, indivisible blockchain-based asset which has some sort of monetary value, usually denoted in a cryptocurrency like ETH).

As far as I am aware, the website is not tracking those platforms which have a cryptocurrency, but do not have blockchain-based virtual land for sale (for example, NeosVR). The focus here appears to be squarely on blockchain-based property.

The mission of NFT Estate is:

Our mission here at NFT.estate is to help showcase and introduce our exciting new world, to the rest of the world. We believe that the NFT space has so much potential in the coming years and that the more people who join us on that journey ahead the better for the whole space. At NFT.estate we strive to introduce the best of  the well established as well as the new, up and coming projects, creators and innovators of the non fungible world.

So far, the website has profiled four such platforms:

The site also attempts to do a head-to-head comparison of these four platforms:

The data includes charts with seven-day trading volumes scraped from OpenSea:

Looking at this chart, I do find it interesting that Somnium Space (the green bar) has seen a surge in trading activity in the most recent week, outstripping even Decentraland (the red bar)! It will be interesting to see if this trend continues.

If you want to know more about NFT Estate, you can visit their website, join their Discord server, or follow them on social media: Telegram, Twitter, and Instagram.