Month: November 2020

Pandemic Diary, November 10th, 2020: Feeling Absolutely F.U.C.Q.E.D.

I slept very badly last night, once again, and when I tested my blood sugar first thing this morning, it had been low, so I fixed myself some oatmeal with sugar and cinnamon, and made a pot of coffee. Yesterday and today I have been feeling vaguely unwell, with an upset stomach, and I actually Googled “COVID-19 gastrointestinal” to see if that was a symptom of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus (yes, in some people).

Last Friday, while I was pulling a stack of vintage cranberry Corning ware pots from a top shelf of my kitchen cupboards, I dropped one and it shattered into a million tiny pieces. In the process of trying to sweep up the mess, I cut one of my toes on a sharp shard and tracked blood all over the carpeting in my apartment. I then spent an hour scrubbing away at bloodstains on my carpet with Dove liquid detergent, leaving blue stains where before I had had red ones.

I am in a resolutely foul and cranky mood. (Yes, I should know better than to blog when I am feeling this way, but I am feeling depressed and isolated, and I need to use this blog to vent.)

It is now Day 240 since I first began working from home in self-isolation in my apartment for my university library system (March 16th, 2020).

Or, if you want to count it another way, 292 days since January 24th, 2020*, when I wrote my first blogpost† which mentioned what I then called “the Wuhan coronavirus”, where I said:

Throughout my life, I have had a somewhat lamentable tendency to go off on weird tangents.

And, back around 2006, my tangent was bird flu. I became obsessed with following and discussing the latest information about the H5N1 avian flu virus with other flu preppers (a.k.a. “flubies”), which for a time looked as though it would develop into a global pandemic. (I just checked, and I still remember my username and password from the FluTrackers.com discussion forum!)

Me and my fellow flubies were constantly worrying, analyzing, and obsessing over the latest case data and news reports. So, in an effort to inject some levity into what was a grave and potentially life-threatening situation, I began using my rudimentary Photoshop skills to create funny pictures to share with my fellow flubies.

Among those funny images I created about the H5N1 flu scare was the following (fictitious) government program:

Well, I am not laughing anymore. (And I no, I am no longer using my rudimentary PhotoShop skills to create funny images anymore. In fact, I recently cancelled my very expensive monthly subscription to PhotoShop and other Adobe products.)

I am feeling absolutely F.U.C.Q.E.D.: isolated, depressed, anxious, irritable, worrying about my friends and family, and wondering when this will all end, and our lives will go back to some semblance of normalcy.

And I am quite sure that many of you, reading this blogpost, are feeling much the same way, right about now. We are already seeing a tsunami of mental health issues affecting millions of people worldwide, who are beleaguered and bereft of hope.

What can I say that you don’t already know? Anybody can open their newsfeeds and spend hours doomscrolling the litany of bad news: spikes in COVID-19 infections all around the world, even here in Canada. The situation south of the border, in the United States, has never been more grave. Even worse, the next two-and-a-half months are *the* worst possible time for a lack of leadership in the United States, as the Trump administration focuses on spreading baseless claims of voter fraud, instead of dealing with the ongoing public health crisis. STAT reports:

From a public health standpoint, the presidential election could not have come at a worse time. Health officials have long warned of a devastating winter, and case totals and deaths have spiked just as millions of Americans are set to congregate with their families over the holidays. President Trump’s persistent downplaying of the crisis, experts say, will continue to have deadly consequences — and as a result, leave Biden to inherit a country experiencing its worst Covid-19 crisis since the first recorded U.S. cases in late January.

“So many of us are worried that now that Biden has won, the Trump administration is going to take a scorched-earth approach,” said Saskia Popescu, a University of Arizona epidemiology professor and biodefense expert. “It’s going to be very, very scary.”

And yet, many people are still downplaying, sidestepping, and belittling this crisis. Refusing to practice social distancing, stay home, or wear facemasks. Or subscribing to crazy conspiracy theories, many spread much more easily by social networks such as Facebook, either ignorantly or deliberately. All of us—but all levels of government, especially—must keep fighting to counteract this toxic cesspool of misinformation, rumours, and disinformation.

But it’s so hard to fight back when you’re feeling so beaten down.

One bright spot of hope is that one of the very first vaccine trial results (by Pfizer) seems to be 90% effective. But experts warn that there is still a long road ahead:

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer says early results from its coronavirus vaccine trial suggest a 90 per cent efficacy rate at preventing COVID-19, a number that has Canadian infectious disease experts cautiously optimistic that a viable shot can be rolled out by spring of 2021.

Jean-Paul Soucy, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, called Pfizer’s announcement “fantastic news (and) very encouraging,” but there are still questions to be answered.

And there are many steps between a vaccine’s approval and its actual rollout.

The only thing we know for certain is that Pfizer, and many multinational pharmaceutical corporations are going to get very, very rich.

God, I am so fucking tired of this shitshow.

UPDATE 11:43 a.m.: Minutes after I had published this blogpost, Manitoba announced that it was imposing an emergency, code-red lockdown on the entire province:

Widespread shutdowns are coming as Manitoba’s premier and top doctor order the entire province into the red, or critical, level of the provincial pandemic response plan.

Among the “short, sharp set of restrictions” is a ban on social gatherings of any kind starting Thursday that could last into December. Social contact must be reduced to members of your household only.

Brian Pallister made the announcement Tuesday morning alongside Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin. 

Non-essential retail stores, gyms, movie theatres, salons and churches will close. All recreational facilities and sports activities will be shut down, said Roussin, but schools and child-care centres will remain open.

Here’s a summary of all the latest changes:

  • Social contacts reduced to your household only. Social gatherings are not permitted.
  • Travel to and from northern Manitoba is restricted and non-essential travel is discouraged.
  • Retail businesses listed as critical services, such as grocery stores and pharmacies, can remain open at 25 per cent capacity.
  • Retail businesses not on the list are able to provide e-service, curbside pickup or delivery services.
  • All personal service businesses, including hair salons, barbers and sites offering manicures, pedicures and other esthetic services, must close.
  • Gyms and fitness centres must close.
  • Religious and cultural gatherings must close or be provided virtually only.
  • Restaurants must close to the public and may be open for delivery, drive-thru or takeout only.
  • All recreational activities, sports facilities, casinos, museums, galleries, libraries, movie theatres and concert halls must close.

Well, it’s official. We are all well and truly F.U.C.Q.E.D…

* Yes, I suspected strongly that we were going to have a pandemic on our hands, as far back as January 24th, 2020, based on my previous experience with Flu Trackers discussion group. Several people have since thanked me for using this blog to alert them to the possible danger, but I feel absolutely zero sense of pride over being among one of the first to predict a pandemic. On the very same day, I had also made a $50 bet with my best friend John that we were going to have a pandemic (which, of course, I won, although ironically, he wasn’t able to actually pay me until many months later because of the spring pandemic lockdown here in Manitoba).

† I cannot stress this any more strongly:

ALL OF THE IMAGES IN THIS BLOGPOST WERE CREATED FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, ABOUT THE H5N1 BIRD FLU SCARE WHICH TURNED OUT NOT TO BE A PANDEMIC. Absolutely NONE of these images pertain to the current Wuhan coronavirus / 2019-nCoV / SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 situation.

As of today, over 50 million people around the world have been infected with COVID-19, and over 1,200,000 have died. And yet there are still people out there who have chosen to belittle the most serious public health crisis in over a century. The current situation is absolutely nothing to laugh at!

50 million COVID-19 infections, and over 1,200,000 deaths worldwide (source)

The First User Reviews of Facebook Horizon Are Mixed

Wuhao from the RyanSchultz.com Discord server alerted me to the Oculus page for the invite-only beta version of Facebook’s new social VR platform, Facebook Horizon, where (much as they do on Steam) the first users have weighed in with their reviews.

As of this morning, there are 93 ratings in the Oculus five-star rating system, which break down as follows:

Half of the earliest reviewers give Horizon 5 out of 5 stars

One common complaint is that, while people liked the ease of use of the in-world building tools, Facebook Horizon lacks in tutorials and documentation for its scripting abilities. One user said:

The tutorials don’t go deep enough into using Scripts and Gizmos, and I have had to resort to deconstructing scripts inside the script example room. This is a horribly inefficient way to learn for a newbie. I find myself having to Google what some words mean (like [what the f*ck] is a Boolean?), and I’m having to connect the dots to figure out how variables and logic work inside the tools. A YouTube tutorial series, or even a series of help pages is sorely needed.

I met a man with experience in the game industry that said someone helped him learn how to build in Horizon over the last few months (he was in the Beta beta). Not all of us will be blessed with that opportunity to have a mentor.

I had to laugh at the Boolean comment; most people who have done even rudimentary computer programming know what Boolean logic is (AND, OR, NOT). But, of course, the target audience for Horizon is not computer programmers; it is the soccer moms of America, the millions of people who post cat pictures to their Facebook feeds and like other people’s posts. (Make that billions of people; Facebook has 2.7 billion monthly active users worldwide. That is whom Horizon is squarely aimed at. They’re not aiming this at the Second Life crowd, either, many of whom will not doubt be horrified that you can’t hide behind an avatar identity.)

And (of course) there are the usual complaints that are common to any brand-new social VR platform: not a lot of people (yet), and the usual severe gender imbalance, with way more men than women participating. One woman wrote in her review:

I have never been in an online community before, so this was a treat. It was pleasant talking to people and getting help on how to do things. My one criticism is that the few people there were all male. I was the only female there, and it would have been nice to have some female company, especially more mature women. I am 65. I visited some of the worlds and had fun shooting at a monster and a dragon, once I figured out how to make the weapons work (not much help from the app, but another player showed me how). One of the worlds where you build things out of building blocks needed multiple players, and I was the only one there. That was my other criticism: hardly any people were there. I guess that will be rectified once the app hits the market.

There are a few less-than-positive reviews:

Maybe I’m missing something but this felt like just another Rec Room, only far inferior, with other people’s avatars wandering around tring to work out what to do.

and…

Wasn’t that impressed was waiting and waiting for this thought it was gonna be something totally different than what was delivered. I’m not a tech nerd or a genius I couldn’t get anything to work in building mode I don’t know anything about coding or scripting I feel like if you want more people to contribute worlds and items your gonna have to dumb it down a little I actually only found the boomerang throw entertaining in the plaza. I’ve checked out a few worlds I thought some were kinda ok but nothing wow I might continue to pop in once in awhile to see what’s new but this isn’t my go to for fun.

and…

For anyone that has played Rec Room, they know that [it] is much better.

1. When you grab anything in here, the physics are terrible. Almost everything is going through your hand or not feeling realistic at all.
2. The graphics aren’t anything to be in awe of. Many other games have better and smoother graphics.
3. Almost no options for avatars. The avatar options are VERY limited.
4. I tried playing multiple games and I was the only person in any of them. Very very very boring.
5. Facebook takeover…talking about how much they monitor you. It’s just unsettling how they will record and watch and listen in on you and you won’t know.

And some people were just downright cranky:

Interesting. I liked the interaction as I first met up with older beings. But I’m hoping there are some filter/settings? to limit age groups? I think it would be a good idea to keep adults out of kids playing. (obvious reasons) and personally as a older man I had fun working with others until a young man (maybe 9 yr old?) joined us and though he was over all nice… I still got a head ache quickly with his noises and yapping and all around high pitched voice. Nothing wrong with that but it ruined my experience and the two other people I was working with on a puzzle… left. (I think for same reason). So I suggest adding a limit (who you see/join?) maybe setting a low limit of 18 and a higher limit of 40… or older folks like myself might want to limit 40-70. It just keeps those with more in common together and doesn’t let a youngster ruin a good thing like we had happen today. Personally I’d prefer 20+ and prefer no profanity. (maybe a setting). There were a couple of f’bombs and though I’m no prude… I’d prefer no hearing cursing unless it’s a slip.

One user felt that the actual product didn’t really match up to the advertising:

After spending a couple of days doing a little bit of everything, I have to say it’s not at all what I expected. Last year’s commercials set a much higher bar. However, world creation tools exceeded expectations as it almost seems to be a 3D modeling community more than anything else. (The problem with that is the majority of community members today are not modeling artists, so I miss the ‘consistently’ rich environments I get in Bigscreen for example.) IMO if the worlds could be made richer by novices then that would be spectacular! To do that I would suggest you offer room templates and a variety of editable objects like furniture and room boxes that we could customize —but it would be good if you could beat Rec Room’s childish templates, and get closer to the standard of last year’s Horizon commercials.

Here’s the commercial he was probably referring to:

But there are also many positive comments in the user reviews (and half of the earliest reviewers gave Facebook Horizon the highly favourable rating of five stars out of five):

After going through a couple hours of what Horizon has to offer I must say I’m very pleased and impressed by what I’ve seen so far. This definitely has a ton of room for all types of possibilities. I got one am very excited to see what will be coming as more and more developers contribute to this great app!!!

Of course, Facebook Horizon is still in an invite-only beta test mode, and is still very much a work-in-progress. Once Facebook adds to and refines the features of the product, and decides to open the doors to the general public, it will be very interesting to monitor this page over time, to see if the overall tone of the user reviews changes over time. (For example, Sansar has been absolutely crucified in its Steam reviews.)

Thank you to Wuhao for the heads-up!

iLRN Is Hosting the 19th IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2020) in VirBELA, November 9th to 13th, 2020

The IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) is the premier conference for Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR). ISMAR explores the advances in commercial and research activities related to AR and MR and Virtual Reality (VR) by continuing the expansion of its scope over the past several years. The symposium is organized and supported by the IEEE Computer Society, IEEE VGTC and ACM SIGGRAPH.

Here are the virtual conference details from an email I received:

The Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN) is proud to be hosting the 19th IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2020) on our iLRN Virtual Campus, powered by VirBELA, and to be supporting the conference as a Gold Sponsor. ISMAR is the premier technical and scientific research conference on AR and MR technologies. There is still time to register for this exciting conference!

Come along to learn from and interact with researchers from all over the world, who will be sharing the latest advances in the field. In addition, through an immersive experience, you will have the opportunity to enjoy Brazilian cultural attractions in a unique and unforgettable way!

Note: The iLRN Virtual Campus is accessible either (a) in desktop mode on a PC or Mac; or (b) using a tethered PC VR headset (HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest with Link Cable). Sessions will also be streamed on YouTube Live.

Here’s a link to the official conference website with all the details.

The cost to attend this virtual conference is only US$50 for IEEE members, and US$60 for non-members. Here is registration information for the conference.

VRChat Hits New Record of 24,000 Concurrent Users Over Halloween

Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash (edited in PhotoShop to add the VRChat logo)

The Road to VR website reported that social VR platform VRChat reached a new user concurrency record over Hallowe’en:

Following a big spike in usage in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, social VR app VRChat has reached a new record of 24,000 concurrent users. Its creators say the surge was driven in part by the launch of Quest 2 and virtual Halloween festivities.

…

Indeed, with more users joining VRChat from Quest and now Quest 2, the app reached a new record of 24,000 concurrent users over the Halloween weekend, CEO Graham Gaylor tells Road to VR. This eclipses the previous record of 20,000 concurrent users in early 2018 when the app went viral on Twitch.

It would appear that a great many people, who would normally socialize in person at parties and bars at Hallowe’en, chose instead to stay home and strap on their VR headsets, due to social gathering restrictions imposed by the pandemic. One poster on the Coronavirus subReddit commented:

Extrovert here and struggling. Thankfully buying a Quest 2 has ACTUALLY been quite the pleasantly surprisingly alternative for me. Especially the VRChat clubs which remind me of my nightlife. I know not everyone can do it but I wish my friends still travelling and partying would give it a shot too.

This new user concurrency figure smashed a two-year-old record, when VRChat suddenly and unexpectedly went viral back in 2018 (largely due to the influence of livestreamers and YouTubers such as PewDiePie), reaching a peak of 20,000 concurrent users on Steam.

You might be surprised to learn that only half of VRChat’s current users access the app via VR headset. Road to VR reported:

Of course it’s worth noting that VRChat is not exclusively a VR game; it supports VR and non-VR modes. Interestingly, Gaylor indicates the app’s share of VR users has actually grown significantly in the last few months. Earlier this year in April around 30% of VRChat users were using VR; in October the share of VR users was up to 43%.

Among the 24,000 concurrent users specifically, Gaylor confirmed that an even larger share of users—52% or 12,500—were in VR.

Wagner James Au of the blog New World Notes also reported on the event, including statistics from Steam and a quote from his source for the news, Adeon:

Adeon isn’t surprised: “Confirms a lot what I see too. I have lots of friends that have an Oculus Rift, but still choose to run the Steam version on it, just because of Steam’s social features, and Oculus requires Facebook to have Oculus friends. That’s one major oversight for Facebook. People don’t want to use the platform if its social features aren’t cross-play with their friends’ setups.”

It’s an oversight—and a paradoxical one: The main point for requiring Facebook log-in, an Oculus developer recently told me, was to encourage users to interact more in VR with their Facebook friends. (Data harvesting for ads being a secondary goal.) But because so many gamers have strong social connections apart from Zuckerberg’s social network, the Facebook log-in requirement can actually disconnect them from many of their friends.

That to one side, VRChat’s usage growth is impressive. I would not be surprised if its monthly active user numbers have also surpassed that of Second Life as well.

I also would be very interested in seeing a head-to-head comparison in monthly active user figures between VRChat and Second Life (although I think SL would probably still be the winner here, as they too have reported an increase in usage because of the pandemic).