Tag: Sinespace

My Predictions For The Next Two Years

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Photo by Wyron A on Unsplash

I’ve been hanging around virtual worlds of one kind or another for over a decade now. I’ve seen them come and go. Some were spectacular failures that provided lessons for other companies. Others just kind of meander along, not attracting very many users or ever becoming very big (like the multitude of OpenSim-based grids).

What usually happens in today’s hyper-competitive computer applications marketplace, is that one or two players in a particular market segment get big (e.g. Microsoft, MySpace, Facebook, and yes, in its own way, Second Life), and then continue to grow like a juggernaut, based on the network effect, while the smaller players in the marketplace fight each other over the leftovers. The ones who get big are usually, but not always, the early entrants into the field (Second Life is a prime example of that, although there were notable virtual worlds which were founded before it, like ActiveWorlds).

But social VR and virtual worlds are not a zero-sum game. Many consumers are frequent visitors to a number of different metaverse platforms, and many creators build and sell products in various virtual worlds. Right now, success in one VR-capable virtual world (e.g. VRChat) generates interest in other social VR spaces. As they say, “A rising tide lifts all boats”.

It’s still not clear where all this is going, but I’m willing to polish my crystal ball and make a few predictions of what will happen over the next two year period, from now until April 2020.

What I predict will happen, over the next two years, is that one of the Big Five computer companies:

  • Alphabet/Google
  • Amazon
  • Apple
  • Facebook/Oculus*
  • Microsoft

Is either going to launch their own social VR/virtual world/metaverse product, OR is going to buy one of the Big Four metaverse-building companies:

  • High Fidelity
  • Linden Lab (Second Life and Sansar)
  • Sine Wave Entertainment (Sinespace)
  • VRChat

(We’ve already seen this happen with Microsoft’s purchase of AltspaceVR.) We could also see a company buy out a virtual world, just to grab the programming talent, and then shut the world down completely (as Yahoo! did with the promising Cloud Party).

Now, there’s no guarantee that any of the Big Four companies WANT to be bought out by the Big Five. Perhaps instead of a buyout, a strategic partnership deal will be inked. But I bet you anything that it’s tempting for the bigger companies to buy their way into the evolving metaverse marketplace, rather than design something from scratch.

I also predict that a LOT of the new virtual world/social VR startups we see popping up are going to fail over the next two years. There’s a lot of virtual-reality-related (and especially blockchain-related) hype taking place, and some people are investing in startups that are risky. Some smaller companies have jumped into grand virtual-world-building projects without realizing the sheer magnitude of the work involved in creating a fully-featured, viable metaverse. I’m afraid that some investors are going to get burned.

I also predict that Sinespace and VRChat are going to pull ahead in terms of features, simply because they decided to build on top of the popular Unity game engine, and they can use all the cool Unity development tools that are popping up. By comparison, feature development on Sansar and High Fidelity will be slower, as they continue work in-house on their own engines.

And finally, I expect that Second Life’s 15th anniversary celebrations will entice some former users to dust off their old accounts and revisit the platform to see what’s new. It may well herald a renaissance for SL! At the very least, it will help stave off a slow decline in SL’s user concurrency figures.

*Sorry, but as I have said before, Facebook Spaces is not a palatable social VR/virtual world product. It can’t even come close to competing against what High Fidelity, Second Life, Sinespace and VRChat are currently doing. But I bet you anything that Facebook has other plans up their sleeve. They can still try to leverage off their 2-billion-plus Facebook network (not to mention 800 million Instagram users) to become a potential major disruptor in the evolving metaverse marketplace. I’m not counting them out yet!

Sinespace to Integrate Archimatix Building Tool

Earlier I had speculated about the possibility of Sinespace using a Unity development tool called ProBuilder. It turns out things are much further along than that! Adam Frisby told me today in the official Sinespace Discord channel:

Unity bought it [ProBuilder] and released it for free, it’s part of the Unity editor, but we are looking into an in-client integration as well

But that’s not the only Unity tool that Sinespace is looking to integrate with its virtual world platform. Take a look at this very impressive promotional video for a tool called Archimatix (it’s a Vimeo link which I cannot embed in this blog). Adam says that models you upload to the world using Archimatix will be editable by end-users inside the client.

Here’s an animated GIF showing you just how flexible building can be with Archimatix! It’s like Second Life in-world prim building on steroids!!

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Now, check out these clips of Adam using Archimatix within Sinespace!

Apparently, this feature is expected for the April release of Sinespace! Things are definitely getting interesting in Sinespace.

Sinespace Is a Social VR Space/Virtual World to Watch

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You know, Sinespace is really starting to grow on me.

I’m starting to think that Adam Frisby was smart to build his virtual world on top of the Unity game engine, because he can leverage off all the development work that has taken place on that platform. For example, he already has great in-world vehicle physics for things like dune buggies and race cars.

And Adam can take advantage of all those cool Unity building tools. Of course, there’s a lot of work to integrate such tools with Sinespace, but the payoffs could be big. In the official Sansar Discord channel, creator Agustine shared with me a promotional video of a Unity building tool called ProBuilder. It reminds me of the Second Life in-world build tools, but on steroids!

Pretty impressive! Can you imagine having the ability to build so easily in a virtual world? And can you imagine how popular Sinespace could be if they could integrate such a tool? The Second Life crowd would be all over it!

And you can already build some truly beautiful experiences within Sinespace. I’ve already blogged about a few. Take a look at these pictures I took of the Sinespace region I am currently in. Trees swaying gently in the breeze, grassy rolling hills… it makes me want to explore!

And Agustine told me about a new enticement to explore: gifts! Hidden away in some of the Sinespace regions are gift boxes like the one in the picture above. Find them and click on them, and you win a small amount of in-game currency! I’m not going to tell you in which region I found this particular gift; come to Sinespace and explore for yourself 😉

Gifts in Sinespace 8 Apr 2018

And there are some very nice touches to Sinespace, like the built-in Snapshot tool, which I have already talked about, which are fun and easy to use.

Now, Sinespace is not perfect. For example, I still cannot get the new VR client to work with my Oculus Rift setup, even after several attempts (other people have been luckier than me). And, annoyingly, now when I launch the new Sinespace client in desktop (non-VR) mode, it also loads SteamVR and Oculus Home automatically, which means I have to work around the rather annoying SteamVR “Headset not tracking” pop-up window. But this is a minor complaint, and one that I’m sure will be fixed in time.

The fact is, Sinespace should be getting a lot more press attention than it has been to date. Yesterday I was talking with Andrew, the producer of my upcoming show Metaverse Newscast (hopefully launching later this year), and we agree: Sinespace is one of the “Big Four” where some of the most interesting developments are happening in the metaverse (the other three are High Fidelity, Sansar, and VRChat).

Thoughts on the Land Market in Second Life and the Newer Virtual Worlds

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Photo by Jesse Roberts on Unsplash

Through the Second Life Friends group on Facebook, I found out about my new favourite thing/activity in Second Life. It’s a backpack by ScriptWorks that you wear, and when you click it, it teleports you to a random spot anywhere within Second Life! (You can set it to avoid Adult-rated areas if you wish.)

You can buy a set of 5 random teleporter backpacks on the SL Marketplace, which means that you can give them to your friends and go exploring together! A group of backpack wearers can be simultaneously teleported to any random location on the grid, estates as well as mainland sims. It is great fun and a great way to see Second Life!

In spending my time exploring the SL grid with this backpack, I have learned a few things while hopping around from sim to sim:

  1. There is a lot of empty/abandoned land on the SL mainland. According to the Second Life Grid Survey, between 20.7% and 21.4% of Mainland by area is abandoned parcels, but to my eye, it looks like much more than that. No wonder Linden Lab is trying to encourage more land use by decreasing the cost of tier and doubling the amount of free land given to Premium members.
  2. There are a lot of people who are land barons, who buy land, subdivide it, and rent it out to other people. I really had had no idea that it was such a big business in SL! I have visited some attractively designed communities like Cedar Creek, Lionheart, and Orchard Heights, where I was tempted to rent a beautiful home for myself.

Which got me thinking about the concepts of land and land rental in the newer virtual worlds. It’s going to be a lot harder for people to make money as land barons in places like Sansar, where you can get up to three 4km-by-4km spaces for free (and even more land if you upgrade to one of the paid subscription levels).

However, there may still be a market for people who create well-designed spaces that other people want to rent. Drax has said that he wants to rent out the currently empty houses that line the street in his 114 Harvest experience. I’d certainly be interested in renting one of those houses!

The thing is, once you own land, you want to build something on it. This, in turn, drives the economy, as people purchase houses, trees, swimming pools, etc. I used to own land in Second Life, both on the mainland and then in the planned community of Bay City, but I sold it years ago. For many years I was homeless, like many SL avatars (although I did have access to a secret spot with build rights, where I could unpack boxes and change outfits).

Then very recently, I decided to use one of my Premium accounts to get myself a Linden Home in Second Life, and right after that I went out and bought some new furniture from many of the designers whom I have met and gotten to know from my time in Sansar, like Maxwell Graf, Loz Hyde, Froukje Hoorenbeek (a.k.a. Dutchie), and Ria Bazar!

What about newer virtual worlds other than Sansar? I seem to remember visiting a domain in High Fidelity where avatars could set up homes for themselves, but I’m not sure what the status of that project is (and I’m not even sure if I could find it again!). Much like Sansar, Sinespace actually gives you a free home space which you can decorate as you wish.

Frankly, most of the people currently exploring and inhabiting the newer social VR spaces/virtual worlds are creators rather than consumers, who are going to build from scratch rather than select ready-made items from a marketplace to decorate their living space. This means that most people are going to use their own (free) land rather than rent it from a landlord. It might stay that way for quite some time, which could be bad news for wannabe land barons in the newer virtual worlds. And it could be even worse news for people who bought expensive virtual land in places like Decentraland, hoping to be able to make some money by renting it out.