Adam Frisby, the CEO and lead developer of Sinespace, just wrote an article on VentureBeat as to why he believes that blockchain technology isn’t quite ready for consumer applications yet:
While much of the tech industry has grown bearish on the volatility of cryptocurrencies, enthusiasm for its underlying technology remains at an all-time high. Nowadays we see “blockchain” cropping up with impressive frequency in even the most unlikely startup pitches. And while blockchain technology does have genuinely interesting and potentially powerful use cases, it has enormous drawbacks for consumer applications that get little mention in media coverage.
My background is developing virtual worlds similar to Second Life — MMOs where users create, build, and usually sell their virtual wares to other users. In principle, blockchain should be my holy grail, enabling user-to-user micropayments without a middleman. But it’s not that now, and it probably won’t be for a long time.
Well, I would certainly agree with Adam about the hype surrounding the blockchain!
Adam says current blockchain technology has three drawbacks:
Blockchain cannot be everything it aspires to be at the same time, being caught between three competing objectives: fast, low-cost, and decentralized.
Blockchain can become a customer support nightmare: no recovery mechanism if you lose your wallet, handling refunds, etc.
Blockchain adds friction to an already seamless process: a need for (re)training consumers, the speed of transactions and transaction fees, etc.
Adam sums up:
As I said at the start, none of this is meant to suggest blockchain isn’t a worthwhile technology. And there are some early attempts underway to address the problems I’ve raised. But to become truly viable, blockchain tech is going to need fundamental improvements that require thousands of minor changes — or, perhaps, a radical rethink of the key ideas.
Well, I still don’t get the attraction of Mark Space, but for what it’s worth, here are the contest winners of their recent Apartment Decoration contest (this is a YouTube video made by one of the contest judges):
Best Content: https://sandbox.mark.space/?7480266600 (you’re supposed to click the TV set to start some sort of game or quest, I couldn’t figure it out)
Check them out and decide for yourself whether Mark Space is worth the millions of dollars that cryptocurrency investors have poured into it (all the apartment links above should open in your web browser). As I said, I just don’t get the appeal here. Maybe I’m missing something… but this is NOT “virtual reality”, as they keep calling it!
Photo of Pamplona’s annual Running of the Bulls by Ethan Weil on Unsplash
Avatar capacity limits are the bane of all virtual worlds. They impact how many avatars can attend and participate in events, such as concerts and conferences. Everybody has experienced the frustration of trying to get into an overcrowded region, and how laggy an experience can be when it is packed to capacity.
Second Life sim limits are pretty straightforward:
Full regions: 100 avatars maximum
Homesteads: 20 avatars
Open spaces: 10 avatars
Of course, event planners in Second Life use such tricks as creating “in the round” stages at the intersection of four adjoining sims in order to increase potential crowd capacity.
So, I wondered, what are the avatar capacity limits of the newer virtual worlds? How many avatars can you pack onto a Sansar experience, a High Fidelity domain, or a Sinespace region? Are there limits in place for AltspaceVR and VRChat? So I went out to ask some questions of the various companies.
Galen tells me the limit for Sansar is 30+ avatars, but that they can always fit a few extra Lindens in. That would fit well with my own personal experience, where we’ve had almost 35 avatars in some experiences for Atlas Hopping.
Most VRChat worlds are limited to 30 avatars in a single instance. I’ve been told on the official VRChat Discord server that “the hard cap is twice the number they put”. A member of the VRChat Events Discord server named Gallium says:
I’ve been in instances with 40+ users. As for limits, theoretical max, not sure. I’m sure VRChat has a max possible users per instance but I don’t know what that is. When you make a world and upload it you set the max users, last I heard this is a soft cap. Say 32. Once it hits that nobody can join from the Worlds menu, but they can join friends who are in there via the social tab. Eventually the hard cap, which is double the soft cap, will hit and then I think it diverts people to the next instance.
In AltspaceVR, they have boasted about getting a crowd of more than 1,200 people at a Reggie Watts show, but this involved broadcasting across multiple instances. It’s not clear how many avatars you can pack into a single AltspaceVR area, but given the relative simplicity of the avatars, I would expect it to be a fairly high number. I’ve been told by someone on the unofficial AltspaceVR Discord server that the limit at the central Campfire is 40, which corresponds to my own experience. But someone else added the caveat, “except that those limits can be pushed by joining through friends or getting invited”.
The limits of Facebook Spaces and vTime are hard-coded: a maximum of four avatars can be in one space together. But then they’re meant more for intimate chat than hosting events.
But the clear winners here seem to be High Fidelity and Sinespace. High Fidelity blogged about getting 90 avatars together in one domain way back in February 2017. And XaosPrincess, a user on their forums, states, “In last year’s stress tests, up to 160 avatars (all in HMD) were hosted in Zaru”. That’s pretty impressive.
But Sinespace seems to have topped even 160. Digvijay from the Sinespace Skype group told me, “Theoretically about 200 [in Sinespace]; but 100 should be a safe number without any lag, etc.”. Adam Frisby himself says:
Officially 100; tests indicate we can do 200 safely. We have regions like Struktura with 700+ avatars using our NPC system that perform well. We’re thinking of doing another load test done to try [and] hit 200.
Over 700?!?? I’m not sure how Sinespace NPCs differ from real avatars in terms of server load, so I’ll accept the 200 figure. So Sinespace seems to be the current winner in this particular “Space Race”, with High Fidelity not too far behind! It will be interesting to watch how the various social VR spaces and virtual worlds will handle increased avatar capacity, especially as they may experience the kind of surge in popularity that VRChat recently experienced.
UPDATE 8:54 a.m.: Naticus from VRChat tells me in a comment, “The current soft cap max at VRChat is 40 and the hard cap is twice that at 80.” Thanks Naticus!
Did you know that you can now use emotes in chat in desktop (non-VR) mode in Sansar? Torley took these short videos of a group of avatars at today’s Community Meetup using the three available emotes:
/clap:
/thumbsup:
/dance:
Note that these emotes don’t work when you are in a VR headset (I know, because I tried to use them, peering at my keyboard through the nose space on my Oculus Rift headset), but then again, you can move your head and arms when in VR, so it’s not really as important. I still would like to be able to dance, though! Linden Lab still has to figure out how to integrate the VR hand controllers and visor with the played-back animation, what takes precedence in such a situation. Oh, the joys of social VR development!
Only three emotes so far, but it’s a start! Hopefully, Linden Lab will add more soon.
