Category: High Fidelity (and Forks of Its Open-Source Code)

High Fidelity Announces the FUTVRE LANDS Virtual Reality Festival on Nov. 17th

FUTVRE LANDS 24 Oct 2018

High Fidelity has announced a one-day festival happening on Nov. 17th, 2018 from 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time, both in-world and at High Fidelity’s VR Arcade in San Francisco’s SOMA district:

High Fidelity Presents

FUTVRE LANDS
Virtual Reality Festival

Saturday, November 17 | 12:00 pm – 4:00 pm PST

FUTVRE LANDS is a celebration of the communities developing inside High Fidelity. It’s an all-day binge of groundbreaking social VR experiences.

In honor of VR Day, we’ll be giving away a ton of prizes – including state-of-the-art VR systems.

What to Expect?

  • Live Music
  • Live Performances
  • Art
  • Speakers
  • VR Headset Giveaways
  • Games
  • Contests
  • Ways to earn a stable coin cryptocurrency you can cash out for US$ (High Fidelity Coin)
  • And more!

***Full line-up to be announced shortly***

As part of the Festival, there will be two contests, a favourite domain competition and a second iteration of their best avatar contest (the first one was held at the most recent avatar domain capacity stress test):

We want to see and celebrate High Fidelity’s best avatar creators and the models that wear them. The winners will be selected by a panel of celebrity judges, and this time, also the people in attendance!

One grand prize winner will be awarded the HFC equivalent of $1,000 US and two runner-ups the equivalent of $500 US. HFC can now be converted to US dollars. For more information, read here.

Rules:

  • Entries must not violate other’s intellectual property.

Contestants are encouraged but not required to use our flow script technology which gives clothes, hair and other attachments movement. Avatars can be humanoid or non-humanoid. Avatars can be photo-real or stylized.

To apply, fill out this form.

Information on our Avatar standards can be found here.

Looks like fun! You can register for tickets via EventBrite.

UPDATED: A Comparison Chart of Twelve Popular Social VR Platforms

UPDATE Nov. 25th: I have updated the comparison chart! You can see it here.

bigfive

From my recent blog reader poll results, I got the following results on who has created user accounts on which social VR spaces:

The “Big Five” social VR platforms

After Second Life and OpenSim, the next biggest section of the reader responses were these five newer social VR platforms:

  • Sansar (149 readers, 8.87%)
  • High Fidelity (145 readers, 8.63%)
  • VRChat (101 readers, 6.01%)
  • Sinespace (83 readers, 4.94%)
  • AltspaceVR (68 readers, 4.05%)

Not far behind were a few more newer competitors

  • Rec Room (54 readers, 3.22%)
  • Somnium Space (53 readers, 3.16%)
  • Bigscreen (35 readers, 2.09%)
  • Facebook Spaces (29 readers, 1.73%)
  • Oculus Rooms (26 readers, 1.55%)
  • vTime (20 readers, 1.19%)
  • TheWaveVR (16 readers, 0.95%)

So, I decided to draw up a detailed comparison chart of just these 12 social VR platforms. Note that in this chart, I excluded platforms that did not have VR support (e.g. Second Life, OpenSim-based virtual worlds).

I also did not dwell on technical details, such as the underlying game engine, user creation tools, etc. Instead, I focused on the three things of most interest to consumers:

  • How you can access the platform;
  • What options do you have for your avatar;
  • And whether you can go shopping!

This print on this chart is a little small to show up on the constrained width of this blogpost, so I saved it as a picture to Flickr. Just click on the chart below (or the link above) to see it in Flickr in full size. You can also use the Flickr magnifying glass to get an even closer look!

Social VR Platform Comparison Chart 22 Oct 2018

You can also download this chart from Flickr in any size up to its original size (1656 x 914 pixels).

If you feel I’ve made any mistakes, or left anything out, please leave me a comment below, thanks! I do hope that people who are trying to figure out which social VR spaces to explore will find this comparison chart useful.

UPDATE Oct. 23rd: Someone on the Virtual Reality subReddit has helpfully pointed out this thread on the official Sansar website’s Feature Requests section, where it would appear that Sansar does now work with Windows Mixed Reality headsets. Sansar user Vassay wrote in July 2018:

After Windows 10 April update, WMR headsets work with Sansar in full scale – meaning all the benefits, including moving your avatar. Tested and confirmed on several systems already.

One thing to be weary is that Sansar works with WMR headsets through SteamVR libraries, so some updates to SteamVR can sometimes break things. But from what I’ve seen, things are mostly stable and work correctly.

Happy VR to all 😉

Also, there is an interesting comment on the discussion thread about this chart over on the High Fidelity user forums:

Clothing in High Fidelity is doable, but is limited at this time to whichever avatar is was made for, since global clothing options isn’t really a thing.

…

So can you have clothing in High Fidelity? Yes, and not just attachments either. Apparently Ryan forgot that Menithal’s robes are completely separate, that items made in Marvelous [Designer] do work here, or that I had a greeter uniform before all greeters got one…

Menithal in Clothing.jpeg

To which I would reply: Yes, technically you can make clothing for your custom avatar in HiFi (if you have the skills), but there is still no default, dressable avatar for which you can buy clothing from the marketplace, like you already can in both Sinespace and Sansar. Note that I am making a specific distinction between actual avatar clothing that conforms to your body and the simpler avatar attachments (such as hats and wings) currently offered at the in-world stores in High Fidelity.

Second Update: It turns out that Windows Mixed Reality headsets will work with any SteamVR-compatible virtual world. High Fidelity users report they can use their Windows MR headsets to navigate very well in HiFi.

CNN Business Takes a Look at Social VR with Visits to AltspaceVR and High Fidelity

CNN Business teamed up with BEME News to produce a nine-minute segment on avatars in virtual reality, visiting both AltspaceVR and High Fidelity:

How realistic virtual reality experiences impact your mind

Widespread adoption of virtual reality may depend on bringing people together in familiar ways like going to a party, seeing a band, or networking at a conference without leaving your couch. How real do VR connections feel?

Here’s the complete video segment on YouTube:

I like how this segment includes the part where the reporter steps into the Doob scanner to create a photorealistic avatar of herself. I would love to be able to do that, but alas, I live too far away from any of the locations that currently offer this service.

And then, I love the part where Philip Rosedale leads the reporter to a mirror within High Fidelity so she can see what she looks like…absolutely wonderful! (By the way, does Philip do anything else lately besides public relations for social VR in general and HiFi in particular? He’s popping up everywhere lately! Does the man sleep?!??)

And I still chuckle whenever I see tarted-up AltspaceVR avatars (such as Katie Kelly’s avatar in this video), which look way better than the limited default options offered to the regular customers! AltspaceVR avatars are still totally unappealing compared to what other social VR platforms can offer such as Sansar and High Fidelity. When is Altspace going to get off their butts and fix that? They’ve got all that Microsoft money to work with, for Pete’s sake! Do something!!

Anyway, my carping at AltspaceVR’s dreadfully cartoony avatars aside, it’s a great video. The reporter’s sense of awe and wonder were genuine, and quite infectious! This video segment will introduce social VR and its possibilities to a whole new audience. Well done, CNN and BEME!

UPDATED: High Fidelity Sets Another Avatar Region Capacity Record: 426 Avatars!

Yesterday, High Fidelity had another one of their monthly stress tests of the platform. (They moved it to a Saturday to encourage more people to show up.)

They were able to bring together 426 avatars in a single domain (The Spot). They also had a Best Avatar Contest, and here is a picture of the contest entries:

HiFi Custom Avatar Contest 7 Oct 2018

Here’s a snapshot from High Fidelity, showing CEO Philip Rosedale addressing the crowd:

HiFi Load Test 7 Oct 2018.PNG

Frankly, I am having a bad weekend. The urologist has put me on a heavy-duty course of industrial-strength antibiotics post-surgery, and it is wreaking havoc with my body.

But I’m glad I did pop in just to experience the madness. I’m still really impressed at how well the High Fidelity platform can stand up to the stress of over 400 avatars in a single domain! Congratulations to Philip and his team.

UPDATE Oct. 9th: Here’s a one-and-a-half-hour video of the event, which gives a good sense of what an event with over 400 avatars present looks and feels like! If you don’t watch the whole thing, be sure to skip ahead to the 42:20 minute mark, where you can see the Ganesha blue elephant god avatar, which was my personal favourite of all the contest entries and the grand prize winner! The Ganesha avatar took two weeks of work in Maya and Substance Painter to create, and it features extremely well-done rigging, including flapping elephant ears and trunk movement!