Tag: Chart

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: A New Comparison Chart of Seven Options for Free or Inexpensive Female Mesh Bodies (Including Senra Jamie)

Now that Linden Lab has launched the beta version of its Senra mesh starter avatars, I decided to take a stab at creating a comparison chart, comparing and contrasting six options for free or inexpensive (L$250 or less) female mesh bodies. (I will probably follow up with a similar chart for free/inexpensive male mesh bodies, female mesh heads, and male mesh heads.)

The six seven mesh bodies I have chosen for this chart are:

  • Senra Jamie, by Linden Lab (still beta and subject to change, of course!)
  • Erika Zero, by Kalhene
  • Atenea, by LucyBody
  • Classic Meshbody (often referred to as TMP)
  • eBody Classic (free version)
  • eBody Curvy (free version)
  • UPDATE Aug. 4th, 2023: After some hemming and hawing, I have decided to include the open-source Ruth 2.0 mesh bodies in this spreadsheet. You can find a list of vendors for Ruth 2.0-based mesh bodies here (scroll down to the Ruth2 section). While clothing specifically designed for Ruth 2.0 bodies is limited, with a good set of BoM/system alphas, some Maitreya Lara clothing and standard-size clothing does fit.

For each mesh body, I look at the following:

  • Price
  • Bakes on Mesh support
  • Bento support
  • Feet options and compatibility
  • Mesh clothing compatibility (please note that all Bakes on Mesh bodies support BoM/system layer clothing; here are some places where you can find those)
  • Mesh clothing availability (obviously a subjective estimate!)

You can view (but not edit) version 1.1 of my comparison chart here on Google Drive. I am open to suggestions for improving this chart, and I expect to keep it (somewhat) updated as the situation evolves over time. If you have any corrections, edits, or suggestions, please leave a comment, thanks!

UPDATE Sept. 14th, 2023: I have updated the comparison chart above to version 1.2, because somebody informed me that Kalhene is now charging L$99 to join the Erika group (it used to be L$50). Please note that the Flickr snapshots of the chart below have not been updated.

Here’s a snapshot of version 1.1 of the comparison chart, which you can view and download in full size over on Flickr if you, like me, find the fine print a little too small:

Comparison Chart: Free and Inexpensive Female Mesh Bodies in Second Life, Version 1.1, August 4th, 2023

Note that I have deliberately excluded some mesh bodies, for example, the free Altamura bodies you can pick up at various locations (because you cannot change the skin, and you cannot use Bakes on Mesh with them). I have also left out those bodies which have poor or even non-existent third-party designer support. An example of this would be the Ultra Vixen mesh body, which is now only free to avatars under 30 days old and—as far as I am aware—only has clothing that fits it, which is made and sold by the body’s creator.

Looking forward to hearing your comments and suggestions!

Which Social VR Platform Has Been the Most Successful at Raising Money?

Image by Capri23auto from Pixabay

There’s been a very interesting discussion taking place today on the RyanSchultz Discord server. One of the regular contributors to the many conversations that take place there, Michael Zhang, pulled together the following information from Crunchbase:

Today I Learned: Building social VR, MMOs, and virtual worlds are a lot more expensive than I imagined!

From Crunchbase:

-High Fidelity raised $72.9 million over five rounds and is struggling with their recent pivot to enterprise.
-Rec Room raised $29 million over two rounds, $24 million only recently, so they lived off of $5 million for several years.
-Altspace raised $15.7 million over three rounds, went bankrupt and shut down, then revived when bought by Microsoft.
-Bigscreen raised $14 million over two rounds.
-TheWaveVR raised $12.5 million over three rounds.
-vTime raised $7.6 million over one round.
-VRChat raised $5.2 million over two rounds.
-JanusVR raised $1.6 million over two rounds.
-Somnium Space raised $1 million over two rounds.

In comparison:

-Epic Games raised $1.6 billion over two rounds, $1.25 billion coming after Fortnite.
-Mojang’s Minecraft launched in 2003, started making profits in 2007, earned $237.7 million in revenue by 2012, and sold to Microsoft for $2.5 billion. (Wikipedia)
-Roblox raised $187.5 million over seven rounds.
-Linden Lab’s Second Life raised $19 million over two rounds.

Then, another contributor named Jin put together this graph to illustrate how successful the various social VR platforms have been in raising venture capital (please click on this picture to see it in full size on Flickr, or just click here). As you can see, High Fidelity is far and away the leader in raising money!

Social VR Platforms Raising Money

(In comparison, Decentraland raised 24 million dollars in their initial coin offering. Jin also made a second chart including Decentraland, but I have not included it here because, unlike the other platforms, it does not currently support VR, and it is unlikely to do so anytime in the near future.)

Thank you to Michael Zhang and to Jin for their work!

Comparing Blockchain-Based Virtual World Projects

I am still monitoring the various blockchain-based virtual world projects via their discussion forums on Telegram. In particular, there’s been a lot of chatter lately about the Mark Space project, which I still regard with a high degree of wariness. They may have made some cosmetic improvements to the spaces you can build, but I still don’t think they’re terribly appealing compared to what you can do in Sansar, High Fidelity, etc. Here, see for yourself:

However, a member of the Mark Space team posted the following table to their Telegram channel, comparing their product with other blockchain-based virtual worlds, which I did find of interest:

While I am already familiar with Decentraland, I’ve never or barely heard of some of these other projects before:

  • district0x
  • Metaverse (now there’s a poorly-chosen name!)
  • Cappasity
  • Spectiv
  • Prosense
  • Matryx

You know what that means, don’t you? It’s time for me to go do some investigating and exploring again! I’ll report back on what I find, and just how accurate this chart is.

I leave you with this vague and mystifying promotional video for Mark Space, which makes me wonder what exactly the company is spending their money on—an actual virtual world, or slick advertising to bring in more investors? This sort of thing raises all kinds of red flags for me.

Or, if you really want to see something trippy that pretty much has absolutely nothing to do with the actual product, check out this promotional video for Cappasity!

The level of insanity in this market is breathtaking.

An Updated Comparison Chart of the Twelve Most Popular Social VR Platforms

Have you joined the RyanSchultz.com Discord yet? More details here. 

I decided to update my original comparison chart of the 12 most popular social VR platforms, according to my reader survey. Note that in this chart, I excluded platforms that did not have VR support (e.g. Second Life, OpenSim-based virtual worlds, etc.).

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 a larger size.

Comparison Chart of 12 Social VR Platforms 25 Nov 2018

You can also download this chart from Flickr in any size up to its original size (1488 x 920 pixels).

If you feel I’ve made any mistakes, or left anything important 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 to be a useful and handy tool.

UPDATE 2:03 p.m.: I’ve just been informed that there is an Android app for vTime. Thanks for the tip, Stephanie Woessner!