(Photo by Chris Briggs on Unsplash)
Earlier this week, I had a guided tour of the blockchain-based social VR platform Somnium Space, where I was informed by my tour guide that the virtual world had just implemented teleporting. Scattered throughout the one large, contiguous virtual landscape which comprises Somnium Space were teleporter hubs, where you could pull up a map, click on the teleporter hub you wanted to travel to, press a button, et voilà! You were instantly transported to your destination.
What makes Somnium Space unusual among metaverse platforms is that you cannot simply teleport from one place to another distant location; you either must make use of the provided teleporters, or walk/run/fly/swim to your destination. (Of course, you can certainly “short hop” using a limited form of teleporting, but that is only for shorter distances, not for instantly getting from one end of a large, contiguous landmass to another.)
In other words, the teleporter hubs of the Somnium Transportation System are set up much like a modern urban subway system, where you can only travel to a particular, pre-built subway station that is situated the nearest to your intended destination, and then walk the rest of the way. Many people might remember that in the very earliest days of Second Life, there were also teleporter hubs in the days before avatars could instantly teleport themselves from one location to another!
Another thing that sets Somnium Space apart from other social VR platforms is that there are only going to be so many “public” teleporter hubs. In face, some of these hubs are going to be auctioned off as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), and the successful bidders with such a teleporter hub on their properties will be able to charge a cryptocurrency fee in order to use their teleporters! (In other words, they would operate much the same as a real-life toll road or highway.)
Closely intertwined with the idea of teleporting vs. walking is the layout of a metaverse platform. Is it one large contiguous landmass, like Somnium Space, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, and (to a certain extent) Second Life? Or is it a collection of smaller worlds, like VRChat, Rec Room, Sansar, and Sinespace? If it is the former, then means of transportation (and ease of access to transportation) becomes more important. If it is the latter, then another tool which many of the newer social VR platforms offer is the ability to create a portal—either temporary or permanent— between two worlds. (Of course, you could consider a teleporter hub a portal.)
So, keeping all this in mind (particularly the distinction between SHORT HOP teleporting and teleporting to a DISTANT location), we can create a chart outlining the transportation affordances of the various metaverse platforms:
| Name of Platform (Layout) | Walk/Run? * | Distance Teleport? ** | Create Portals? † |
| Second Life (mostly one contiguous landmass, with private islands) | YES | YES | YES |
| Sinespace (separate worlds) | YES | NO | YES |
| Sansar (separate worlds) | YES | NO (but you can create teleport hubs) | YES |
| VRChat (separate worlds) | YES | NO | YES |
| Rec Room (separate worlds) | YES | NO | YES |
| AltspaceVR (separate worlds) | YES | NO | YES |
| NeosVR (separate worlds) | YES | NO | YES |
| Cryptovoxels (one contiguous landmass with some islands) | YES | NO (you can add coordinates to a URL, though) | YES |
| Decentraland (one contiguous landmass) | YES | YES (/goto X,Y) | NO |
| Somnium Space (one contiguous landmass) | YES | NO (but there are teleport hubs) | NO (unless you count teleport hubs) |
** – Can a user personally choose to teleport from one location to a second, DISTANT location?
† – Can a user create a temporary or permanent portal from one location to another?
Obviously, all metaverse platforms offer some form of personal locomotion for your avatar (walk, run, fly, swim, short-hop teleporting, etc.). This is standard.
It is also clear from this table that the metaverse platforms which consist of many smaller worlds (Sinespace, Sansar, VRChat, Rec Room, AltspaceVR, and NeosVR) all prefer the creation of temporary and permanent portals to allowing users to teleport great distances on their own steam. On the other hand, all the social VR platforms and virtual worlds which consist of one contiguous landmass tend to allow some form of teleportation across great distances.
You will notice that Cryptovoxels uses a rather brute-force method of “teleporting”, which consists of appending the coordinates to the end of the URL you enter into your web browser client (which are much the same as the coordinates which form part of the SLURLs used in Second Life, but not nearly as convenient in my opinion).
Transportation affordances are yet another way to classify metaverse platforms in my continuing effort to create a taxonomy of social VR platforms and virtual worlds.
So, what do you think? Have I made an error in my table? Do you have an opinion about the benefits of teleporting and portals versus walking around and exploring the landscape? I’d love to hear your opinions, so please leave a comment, thank you!
Camera movement, independent of avatar location is also very important for exploration. Seconf Life offers the best camera features for this. When we just want to explore a region or a place without caring about having our avatar in the view, and then be able to easily teleport our avatar to that distant location the camera is aiming at when we need our avatar to be there for some reason.
Teleporting is handy, but you lose the ‘sense of place’ you get when you actually walk, drive, fly, or boat to your destination.
I confess that I had gotten so used to teleporting everywhere in Second Life that I had forgotten how to follow a path on the surface. I’m having to learn how to walk again….