There were a record 20 avatars at DrFran’s weekly salon in High Fidelity, which is effectively shutting down as of January 15th, 2020, trying to figure out what they are going to do in response to all the bad news. New users will not be able to create accounts on High Fidelity after that date, which means that in-world meetings of this kind will be increasingly unlikely, as the existing userbase drifts away to other platforms.
As far as we are all aware, there are at least three forks of High Fidelity’s open-source software code in various stages of development:
None of them is currently up and running, which means that there will possibly be an “in-between” period where HiFi users will not have a home. DrFran said that she is not sure she will be continuing her weekly salon in the new year, which leaves the Federated HiFi users Discord (and of course, my own cross-worlds Discord) as places where High Fidelity’s diaspora can meet and discuss issues.
…we have been heads-down developing and testing the use of High Fidelity for remote workers. We’ve developed a streamlined desktop version which has been tested by teams from 75+ organizations. In total, we’ve logged thousands of hours in-world as these groups tried working in a virtual environment. We’ve learned a lot and it’s hard to imagine our team working in any other way.
We plan to continue to use our technology as our company’s primary virtual office but we have decided not to commercialize the virtual workplace application at this time. Simply put, having taken a close look, while we can see that remote work is going to continue on its growth trajectory and we do have customers using it—the opportunity is not big enough today to warrant additional development.
The work we’ve done over the past six months has been valuable in helping us understand how to make a 3D VR environment usable, stable, and accessible to first-time, non-gaming audiences, and that is intellectual property we will take forward into future work.
According to Philip, High Fidelity will be working on a new internal project, the details of which will be announced at some future point in time.
Another major announcement is that the company is closing its open source codebase:
One of the many reasons we opted to develop an open source virtual world is because we wanted people, particularly creators and developers, to have the peace of mind that they were in control of the content and experiences they built and not dependent on decisions made by High Fidelity as a company. We have succeeded in that mission having open sourced the most powerful virtual reality codebase built to date: It can handle large crowds, low-latency 3D audio, live editing, interactive content, open-format file compatibility, and users can host the content however they wish with complete control.
The existing community over the past six months has continued to use the platform and contribute code with little involvement from High Fidelity. Given this, and given that our new project will further reduce our ability to manage the existing open-source repository, we believe that the best course of action is to formally turn over control of the codebase to the community.
As of January 15th, 2020, we’re going to make High Fidelity’s Github repository private. We want to give community leaders time to create their own repositories and systems as desired.
We know this change will lead to many questions for users, so we have attempted to provide as many answers as possible here.
Another major bombshell is that the company is laying off more staff:
Our new project is different and in early development, which led us to the sobering realization that the incredible and talented team we have built, isn’t the one to take us forward. Consequently, we will reduce our team size in half effective today. We’ll be giving those affected time and support to find new positions in the New Year—these people are brilliant pioneers in VR—developers, designers, program managers, marketers, and support professionals—but we just aren’t ready for their firepower. I’ve already thanked them in private but let me publicly state my gratitude for all their work. They have pushed the boundaries of VR and I am sure will continue to do so, as other successful High Fidelity alumni have done.
And, finally…
As part of the refocus, we’ll also be withdrawing our apps on the Steam Store, Oculus Store and our Virtual You: 3D Avatar Creator app from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Since there are no High Fidelity supported environments, we’re not offering registration for new accounts which these enable.
According to the FAQ, High Fidelity is withdrawing from the Early Access programs on both the Oculus and Steam stores as of January 15th, 2020. High Fidelity will no longer allow new users to create accounts on the platform (existing accounts will continue to work, however).
Also, HiFi is shutting down its Marketplace and will suspend cashouts of its High Fidelity Coin (HFC):
The Marketplace will close. The public Marketplace pages will be removed, you will not be able to purchase new items, you will not be able to add new items available for sale, and you will not be able to edit existing items’ details. We will also no longer offer cash-out of HFC after January 15th, 2020.
In addition, High Fidelity will no longer be providing any support services to users after January 15th, 2020, and they will be shutting down the official user forums on that date.
Essentially, High Fidelity will soon be a dead platform, the first major victim of the social VR wars (but probably not the last). R.I.P.
Not in the slightest, we’re mostly creating new infrastructure from scratch. The work we’re doing on the open source code is mainly subtractive, removing things to make a faster experience and making room for better features.
Philip Rosedale (the founding CEO of Second Life and the CEO of High Fidelity) used to have a very ambitious goal printed across a large banner hung over the stage at HiFi events: One Billion People in VR, it read.
It was the company’s goal to get millions of people in VR headsets and using their social VR platform. But those millions of people never came, and Philip Rosedale has been spending some time lately doing a bit of reflection about what went wrong, and why that never happened.
Yesterday, he penned a post on the official High Fidelity blog, titled Requiem for the HMD, outlining what he sees as four key problem areas that need to be addressed before we can expect to see widespread consumer uptake of virtual reality headsets:
They need to be light and comfortable enough to wear all day: “The weight needs to drop to the same as ski goggles — about 300 grams.”
Good see-through display: “You need to be able to see the world around you while you are using these things.”
They allow you to type at a normal speed.
The display is the same quality as a desktop screen.
Philip writes:
It’s hard to say when these challenges will be solved and packaged into one elegant solution at mobile-phone price points. I’m clearly not the only person who thinks we’re in the thick of winter for consumer-grade VR headsets. In the meantime, I’ll keep rooting for the commercial-grade applications that show the world what’s possible and to funnel enough money into the industry with the hope that the next screen comes out in the not-too-distant future.
If you want to read Philip’s blogpost in full, you can do so here.
What do you think? Is Philip right or wrong, and why? Please feel free to leave a comment below. And I also cordially invite you to join the conversation over on the RyanSchultz.com Discord server, the world’s first cross-worlds discussion forum! Over 300 people from around the world, representing many different social VR platforms and virtual worlds, meet daily to chat, discuss, debate, and argue about the ever-evolving metaverse and companies building it.
I can remember a time here in Canada when there were no Black Friday sales. Canada follows the British tradition of Boxing Day (Dec. 26th) sales. But over the past decade, Black Friday crept north of the border, and now we have both Black Friday and Boxing Day sales.
This year I have decided to write a blogpost outlining the Black Friday sales happening in those social VR platforms and virtual worlds which have an in-world economy:
Second Life (of course!)
Sansar
High Fidelity
Sinespace
For example, FULLSpectrum (Medhue and Bagnaria’s store in Sansar) is having a buy-one-get-one-free sale on their custom human avatars. Bagnaria tells me:
FULLSpectrum Black Friday Special (November 26 -November 29): TWO FOR ONE | Buy any FS avatar and get a second of the same value or less for free. You will automatically get your money back for the second avatar you buy. For obvious technical reasons you need to be friends with FULLSpectrum to get your money back. Contact Bagnaria for support.
If you have news about a Black Friday (or Cyber Monday) sale taking place on those four platforms, please leave me a comment here, or use my Contact form, or message me on one of the many Discord servers where I am a member (my handle is RyanSchultz). Thank you!
