Weighing only 127 grams, and at the diminutive size of 143 mm long by 52 mm wide, the Bigscreen Beyond goes on presale today for US$999.00, and the first units are expected to ship in the third quarter of this year.
One drawback of this device is its comparatively limited field of view (FOV), 90° by 93°, which many commenters on the r/VirtualReality subreddit community saw as a dealbreaker. However, people need to remember that Bigscreen is primarily a virtual space to gather with friends (from both near and far away) to watch movies together, and the Beyond seems like a logical, lightweight, comfortable headset whose primary purpose is to consume such content. It’s notable that the Beyond headset features a custom-moulded face cushion, and Bigscreen has built the necessary infrastructure in order to create these custom faceplates, on a quick turnaround, for each and every purchaser! (The Beyond also uses magnetically-attached custom lenses for those, like me, who might require vision correction.)
And I wonder if any other social VR platforms are going to follow the lead of Somnium Space and Bigscreen, and branch out into branded virtual reality hardware. It’s an intriguing trend, and it certainly looks like we are going to see some interesting new VR headsets enter a marketplace dominated by Meta, with Valve and Vive fighting over the remainder. 2023 is going to be a fun year!
UPDATE 3:00 p.m.: Of course, the virtual reality hardware YouTubers are all over this announcement, dropping videos they recorded during the pre-release period, while under a press embargo. Here’s a 20-minute review by Adam Savage’s Tested channel, which included a chat with Bigscreen VR’s founder and CEO, Darshan Shankar:
UPDATE Feb. 14th, 2023: I forgot to mention one other interesting fact about the Bigscreen Beyond: you do a scan of your eyes before your device is delivered, not only for the custom-fitting face cushion, but also to set the IPD (interpupillary distance, i.e. the distance between the center of the pupils) for the headset! The IPD is fixed at the factory, and cannot be adjusted after delivery.
So, between the custom face cushion and the fixed IPD, this is not a device which can be shared between friends, coworkers, or family members! It is truly customized to your eyes and your face.
Also, as you might have guessed from the videos, this is not a wireless headset. It’s a PCVR device, which means that it must be connected to a desktop PC with a good graphics card. You’ll also have to shell out for SteamVR accessories such as hand controllers and base stations, if you don’t already have them; the US$999 only gets you the headset!
There is simply no better place to watch as the dominoes fall in the beleaguered world of cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) than the cryptosnark subreddit, r/Buttcoin (tagline: “ButtCoin. It’s a scam. At least we’re honest about it!”).
Crypto lender Genesis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late Thursday night in Manhattan federal court, the latest casualty in the industry contagion caused by the collapse of FTX and a crippling blow to a business once at the heart of Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group.
The company listed over 100,000 creditors in a “mega” bankruptcy filing, with aggregate liabilities ranging from $1.2 billion to $11 billion dollars, according to bankruptcy documents.
A list of the 50 largest unsecured creditors was leaked, and it turns out that both of the co-founders and the current Chief Financial Officer of blockchain metaverse Decentraland are owed an eye-watering US$55 million. Crypto news website The Block reports:
Virtual world platform Decentraland has not one but three of its executives and founders listed among the 50 largest non-insider unsecured claims against Genesis Global, the crypto lender that filed for bankruptcy protection on Thursday.
Decentraland CFO Santiago Esponda drew attention after his Decentraland email address was listed in court filings as the contact for Heliva International, a Panama-based company owed $55 million by Genesis. But a closer look reveals that Decentraland’s two co-founders are also listed in the documents with non-Decentraland email addresses.
Esteban Ordano, a Decentraland co-founder who now acts as an adviser, is listed as the contact for an entity called Winah Securities. Genesis owes Winah, which is located on the same floor in the same building as Heliva, almost $27 million. Ordano told The Block that Winah has no relationship with Decentraland.
Gaming company Big Time Studios is owed $20 million. It’s run by Ari Meilich, Decentraland’s other co-founder. He started Big Time in 2020 but also remains a Decentraland adviser. Meilich declined to comment.
Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the point of this particular editorial: how I will be covering blockchain-based metaverse platforms going forward on this blog.
In a previous editorial, I explained that I was substantially cutting back on my coverage of Second Life, to refocus my blog on virtual reality in general, and social VR in particular. Likewise, I have also decided that I will no longer be writing about any blockchain-based metaverse platform unless it incorporates virtual reality. According to my comprehensive and reasonably up-to-date list of virtual worlds and social VR, the only platforms which incorporate blockchain technology (cryptocurrencies and/or NFTs) and support virtual reality are three:
NeosVR (a social VR platform with an associated cryptocurrency called NCR, which was planned to be the in-world currency but has not been incorporated; please note that Neos does not have NFT-based virtual real estate, or use NFTs at all)
Sensorium Galaxy (this ultra-high-end social VR platform uses the SENSO cryptocurrency to purchase avatars in their online store; as far as I am aware, Sensorium Galaxy does not use NFTs)
Somnium Space (a blockchain-based virtual world that supports VR, with a cryptocurrency and NFT-based real estate)
All the other blockchain metaverse platforms I have written about on this blog (including the one that first attracted my attention, Decentraland) are either flatscreen virtual worlds which do not support virtual reality, or they have not yet launched (and, in the current crypto nuclear winter, are increasingly unlikely to do so; the only exception being The Sandbox, which is still in extended alpha testing).
And (as illustrated by my initial anecdote about the Decentraland co-founders and executive entangled in the Celsius bankruptcy case), those platforms which had the great good fortune to launch well before the current crypto carnage, are possibly still entangled in the web of interconnected crypto companies lending and borrowing from each other, in highly speculative cryptocurrencies whose actual value is based only on what the next greater fool is willing to pay for them. In particular, those who purchased overpriced NFT-based real estate on such platforms as The Sandbox, Somnium Space, and yes, even pioneering Decentraland, are going to find it very difficult, if not impossible, to make any sort of profit off their investments.
And one only has to observe the travails which NeosVR has gone through, after a cyncial pump-and-dump instigated by cryptobros, to see how a social VR project with such technical promise can be hamstrung by attaching a cryptocurrency to it. There has, to my knowledge, been no active development on the platform in over a year, and it is unclear what 2023 holds for NeosVR. It breaks my heart and it angers me.
While I will continue to follow the current crypto winter shenanigans as an interested (and bemused) observer, I have decided that I will no longer be writing about any blockchain metaverse unless it has launched, and it supports virtual reality. In particular, I will no longer waste my time (and your patience) writing about all the blockchain metaverse projects which consist of little more than an .io website, a Telegram or Discord channel, and a white paper long on hand-waving, but short on actual technical details. Enough with the bafflegab and bullshit.
If you happen to actually launch a product which incorporates blockchain in some way (cryptocurrencies and/or NFTs), and it supports users in a VR headset, then I will gladly write about it. Otherwise, I’m no longer interested.
The SWIFT payments network has made an extraordinary decision that will have widespread implications on cryptocurrencies.
Asia Markets can reveal SWIFT will no longer process fiat currency transfers from bank accounts to cryptocurrency exchanges, with a value of less than US$100,000, effective from February 1, 2023.
The move will thwart cryptocurrency access to tens of millions of people worldwide.
One of the first crypto giants to notify users of the development this weekend, has been the world’s largest exchange, Binance.
“The banking partner that services your account has advised that they are no longer able to process SWIFT fiat (USD) transaction for individuals of less than $100,000 USD as of February 1, 2023. This is the case for all their crypto exchange clients,” said Binance.
“Please be advised that until we are able to find an alternative solution, you may not be able to use your bank account to buy and sell crypto with USD via SWIFT with a value of less than $100,000 USD.”
Time to go get more popcorn; this three-ring circus is just getting started!
Binance sent a notice to customers that starting February 1, their banking partner, Signature, would not be processing SWIFT transfers of less than $100,000.
Retail customers of Binance have until the end of the month to get their US dollars off the exchange. After that, their money is stuck.
Rumors are swirling around this — not helped by an early news report (rapidly corrected) claiming that the SWIFT system itself was cutting off all crypto exchanges. Here are the facts that we know so far:
Binance is cut off from Signature for transactions below $100,000.
Signature’s other exchange customers have not said they’re affected, and we haven’t seen their customers saying so either.
We haven’t heard of other banks putting such a condition on Binance or another exchange.
So it’s so far just Binance, via Signature.
Still, it is significant that Binance, the biggest cryptobroker still standing, is facing such a stringent sanction by one of its banks. (By the way, Attack of the 50-Foot Blockchain is well worth following, for its expert analysis of the ongoing crisis in crypto!)
As somebody who writes about social VR and flatscreen virtual worlds on this blog, with a popular Discord server packed with metaverse fanatics and a front-row seat on pretty much everything that has been happening in this space, let me tell you, the past twelve months have been a wild ride. You can even see it in my blog statistics of the number of visitors and views the RyanSchultz.com blog has attracted over the past year:
See that surge from October through March? In October, Mark Zuckerberg announced in a Connect 2021 keynote that Facebook would rebrand as Meta, and would focus on realizing his vision of the metaverse. This also coincided with a crypto speculation boom, where people and companies were frantically bidding for artificially scarce NFT-based plots of land in various blockchain metaverse platforms.
Together, these events sparked a greater awareness among the general public of the metaverse (as indicated by a corresponding increase in traffic to my blog). However, it would appear that the ongoing crypto crash, combined with Meta’s recent woes and missteps, are causing people to sour on the concept. (And by “people”, I mean the general public, not the metaverse fanatics, content creators and world builders whom I tend to hang out with!)
As an illustration of this, I would like to focus on a recent announcement made by Mark Zuckerberg, about the expansion of their flagship consumer social VR platform, Horizon Worlds, from Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. into two new countries, France and Spain:
The first thing I think of when I look at this picture is: hoo boy, somebody working in Meta’s PR department is gonna get fired! You’re trying to sell people on Horizon Worlds with this unappealing, uninspiring, and frankly ugly image on Twitter?
The response to this on two different subreddit communities on Reddit, r/technology and r/Buttcoin, proves to be quite illuminating. (By the way, r/Buttcoin is the blockchain, crypto, and NFTs snark community, where we cryptoskeptics and critics love to discuss and dissect the latest shenanigans, antics, and scams in that world!)
It looks like Mark Zuckerberg watched Ready Player One and thought he would be able to recreate that universe with MS Paint.
“Looking forward to seeing people explore and build immersive worlds!” :: “Work in my content mill, peasants.”
The more money they dump into this dumpster fire, the better chance Facebook finally collapses into the abyss. So keep doing it Zuck.
One much-upvoted comment reads as follows:
No one is building a $1500-2500 PC with [a] dedicated GPU to add a Facebook $600 VR headset to attend work meetings in a virtual space that looks like a kids CGI series from 2004 at a mass adoption level, where the majority of the public would use it daily for 8 hours at work then again for another 4-6 hours “for fun” at home, as the Meta dystopian dream suggests.
Meta has already been subsidizing the costs of their currently meh headset, which they just increased the prices of, as they were losing too much money.
For this to work, the hardware has to be good enough for grandma to be able to buy it on a pension, put it on out of the box and it just works, and it does not make her sick to her stomach in 5-20 minutes due to the low frame rates and quality.
That’s the barrier of entry to the space you need to be able to target… if that old guy at your office struggles with getting their mic to work on MS Teams for a video call every day, as the manager he is not going to order $100,000 worth of gear for your department that is hard to setup and use to meet in the metaverse.
This thing is dead on arrival, but Facebook is also dying/dead in it’s current form, so this Hail Mary [pass] is all they have.
The thing is, this happens all the time with Zuckerberg and his metaverse because Horizon Worlds has looked terrible since its inception and has barely gotten any better over the years, where its avatars still look like Miis from 2012 and they still don’t have legs.
Granted, I understand that showing 2D screenshots of VR is difficult, and that VR generally lags behind traditional console and PC gaming in terms of graphics. And yet that doesn’t change the fact that even within VR, Horizon Worlds is one of the worst-looking offerings I have seen, and that Meta has spent something like $10 billion chasing its Horizon, VR-centric version of the metaverse, even embarrassingly changing their company name to reflect that. And…this is the result.
If I was a Meta stockholder I would be selling the minute I saw that screenshot.
He (and many others) are hoping that nobody remembers Second Life ever existed, let alone that it still does. It has a dedicated audience of somewhere between half to one million users and that’s kinda it. I suspect the future for “the metaverse” is similar.
One r/Buttcoin member posted the following detailed comment:
This is the part I don’t understand. Any “meta” style environment will be incredibly limited in terms of graphics and gameplay due to the need to have a high number of players at once. So who is the target audience?
• Someone looking to play a game is going to go with something like Grand Theft Auto V (and continue to move on to the next biggest thing when they come out). • The live concerts! aspect of the website seems equally absurd given the graphical limitations and that this would be less entertaining than watching a concert on TV. • Your casual Farmville-style person isn’t shelling out hundreds of dollars for a VR headset. • For their “practical” concepts like virtual stores, it seems to invalidate the concept of buying metaverse land as either the system will allow for fast travel style movement (making “premium” land a joke), or not allow for this travelling and completely turn off their customer base for this.
I just don’t see where the interest comes from.
And I chuckled at this wag’s opinion:
Second Life managed to survive because it fostered a community of weirdo people who fetishized the environment. I think the only person who fetishizes Facebook’s metaverse is Zuckerberg.
Absolutely SAVAGE! I live. Somebody else posted this gem to the r/Buttcoin subreddit:
Even worse, the cryptobros are starting to dunk on the metaverse, notably Shark Tank billionaire investor Mark Cuban. According to an August 8th, 2022 report in Fortune:
Mark Cuban, the billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner and avid crypto enthusiast, is not sold on the metaverse.
I’m quite sure that the various blockchain-based metaverses like Voxels (formerly known as Cryptovoxels), Decentraland, Somnium Space, and The Sandbox, all of whom have seen the value and the trading volume of their NFT-based real estate decline during this crypto winter, were not expecting the ridicule and disdain of crypto influencers themselves! After all, the crypto crowd are main target audience of these platforms, not your average non-crypto user. You know things are getting weird when the cryptobros start to turn on each other!
So, what does all this mean? Well, it looks as though the concept of the metaverse, at least among the general public, is going to sustain some reputational damage, at least in the short term (12 to 24 months). Perhaps it was inevitable that there would be such a swing from irrational metaverse exuberance to equally irrational metaverse distaste, even disgust.
The five steps of the Gartner Hype Cycle (source: Wikipedia)
Also, this “trough of disillusionment” means that it’s going to be harder to sell consumers and businesses on the metaverse. This will apply both to behemoth corporations like Meta, Apple, and Alphabet (the parent company of Google), as well as to much smaller metaverse-building companies. As I have said before, not all platforms currently being worked on will survive this rough period.
It is possible, perhaps even likely, that only a handful will achieve dominance in this ever-evolving market, leaving the other firms to fight over the leftover scraps. Of course, some companies will be savvy enough to focus on a profitable niche market, such as the surgical training platform FundamentalVR, which recently received another venture capital infusion of US$20 million.
So, as Bette Davis once memorably said in the movie All About Eve: “Fasten your seatbelts…it’s going to be a bumpy night!”
Earlier this week, the alien-wearing-a-human-skin-suit known to us as Mark Zuckerberg posted a VR selfie from inside his company’s metaverse project, Horizon Worlds. The selfie showed off the Eiffel Tower and was meant to announce that his metaverse is expanding to more countries. Instead, however, people immediately began dunking on the terrible picture, the ugly avatar, and how it all looked like it fell out of a 2005 edutainment game…
And that brings us to 2022, where Zuckerberg’s avatar is a legless knock-off of a Nintendo Mii with some really weird buttons and the eyes of a corpse. And this isn’t just how Zuckerberg looks, this is the way all avatars appear in Horizon Worlds. I’ve played enough Horizon Worlds to tell you that the missing legs quickly cease to matter. But the lack of style and the cold, dead aesthetic never goes away.
Sure, part of the reason these avatars and worlds look simple and ugly compared to modern video games comes down to the limited VR hardware in Quest 2 and Facebook’s desire to make VR content that can run on as many devices as possible.
On the other hand, I can find Nintendo DS and Sony PS Vita games with better, nicer-looking art and models than what we’ve been shown so far in Facebook’s metaverse. I also don’t think you can blame the people making this stuff, as I assume they are more than capable of doing better and more vibrant things. But more and more, it seems that isn’t what Meta and Zucklehead want. Instead, they are focused on making a product that can be consumed by the masses and which lacks any defining characteristics in an attempt to get more people to dive in.
This is the exact opposite approach we see in more community-driven VR metaverses like VR Chat, which looks better and feels warmer and more inviting. In comparison, Horizon Worlds looks like an animated video I’d walk by in some fancy hospital while I look for the bathroom.
And if this bland and ugly metaverse is the future Mark Zuckerberg wants and is investing billions of dollars into, I’m worried that it could end up winning out over other, better alternatives simply because he has the money and resources to squash or buy up competitors. Well, if it does win out, at least I’ll be able to skip it and not buy a new VR headset.
Spending by major crypto firms, including the trading platforms Crypto.com, Coinbase Global Inc. and FTX, fell to $36,000 in July in the US, according to ISpot. That’s the lowest monthly total since January 2021 and is down from a high of $84.5 million in February, when the industry flooded the airwaves around the Super Bowl.
Again, Yeee-OUCH!!! And it looks like things are not going to get better anytime soon, as inflation roars and recession looms. People have more important things to worry about (like keeping food on the table and a roof over their heads) than buying virtual real estate on the blockchain!
Not too long ago, I wrote up a blogpost about an NFT-based metaverse project called Wilder World. As part of my research, I joined the Wilder World Discord server. This morning, I got a direct message from someone with the account name Wilder World, with a come-on to invest in a “limited-time presale” of Wilder World virtual land.
As I suspected, this was a scam. I know this because I know that legitimate NFT metaverse projects do not direct message users via Discord. (I have seen similar messages before, borrowing the names of projects such as Cryptoland, Decentraland, and Somnium Space, to the point where I recently issued a warning via Twitter:
I also got a DM via Discord from them this morning. In the past month, I have received phishing offers from scammers impersonating Cryptovoxels, Decentraland and Somnium Space. Caveat emptor! These are all scams. #MetaverseNFT #Metaverse
Getting back to the scammer from Wilder World, I read the message carefully, and noticed a couple of signs that something wasn’t quite right.
First, in a direct message, Discord will inform you if you and the other person have any Discord servers in common. The fact that Wilder World and I had “no servers in common” is a big red flag. You seriously mean to tell me that the REAL Wilder World would contact me from a Discord account that doesn’t even belong to the official Wilder World Discord server?
Second, I checked the URL against the list of official links in the #official-links channel on the official Wilder World Discord server, and did NOT find this new, suspicious URL on it! (I blurred out part of the URL address in the previous image.) If the Discord server does not have such a list (and all legitimate projects should), then look for it on the official website. Never click on a new, unfamiliar URL you have not thoroughly investigated first!
It is all too easy to target people who have joined an official Discord server for NFT metaverse projects, since you can easily see who else is with you on the server (just check the far right-hand column). It’s also very easy to create a false account by stealing an official logo and calling yourself the project’s name (e.g. “Wilder World”). There is nothing stopping you from creating as many Discord accounts called Wilder World as you wish, since each one has a separate, randomly-generated four-digit suffix at the end of the username (see image, right).
And, unfortunately, some people always fall for this particular scam which appropriated the logo and name of Wilder World, using a well-written come-on and a fake website to take that person’s hard-earned cryptocurrency:
A: That was a scam, I think Victim: are serious?! ffs
B: There is no land stuff [right now] The focus is on Pets.
Victim: I just filled it out!
A: So any land sale is a scam [right now]
Victim: omg did I just get scammed
C: There was a scammer yesterday DM’ing people
Victim: wtf it was a message from Wilder World D: From a scam CLONE E: oh noooooooo Wilder World never DMs u!! F: Was a scammer with a WW logo on their profile G: [refers Victim to the #report-scammers channel]
H: Land is not for sale yet, only raffle for mint list is available on [Wilder World] website, click the link in announcements
And I went over to take a look at the #report-scammers channel on the official Wilder World Discord server, to see this, plus numerous other scams being reported on. The Victim did report this scam on that channel (see image right), but unfortunately, any money he thought he was spending on NFT-based virtual land in Wilder World is unrecoverable.The scammer, once he or she fleeces a number of people, then deletes the Discord account and the website, and vanishes into the night—likely to repeat the same scam on a different target in future.
So, once again, I am going to list the things that you can do to avoid getting scammed via a direct message on Discord for the various and sundry NFT metaverse projects:
Legitimate projects will not direct message you on Discord. Instead, they will use an #announcements channel on their official Discord server, or perhaps post a blogpost on their official website.
Always check any DM you receive via Discord to see what servers you and the other person have in common. If you and the other person have “No servers in common” (particularly, the official Discord for the legitimate project), that is a red flag! I belong to almost a hundred Discord servers related to social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse, and I now routinely block any DM from someone where I have “No servers in common”. The reasoning is this: anybody whom I am interested in talking to should belong to at least one of the same Discord servers as I do!
Check the various channels of the legitimate NFT metaverse project Discord server carefully. Look for an official announcements channel. Look for an official links/URLs channel, either on the Discord or on the project’s official website. Look for a channel to report potential scams and scammers.
Always stop and ask yourself if something is too good to be true. Be highly suspicious of any “good-will gesture” such as the following example, taken directly from today’s Wilder World scammer: “As many of you may have expected, there has been talks of a land sale coming up and we are excited to officially announce…As a way of giving back to those who supported Wilder World early, we will be hosting a limited-time presale to raise liquidity and allow our users to buy the land early before…”.
EDUCATE YOURSELF ON BLOCKCHAIN, CRYPTOCURRENCIES, AND NON-FUNGIBLE TOKENS! If you aren’t willing to take the time to learn how all this works, you are better off staying out of this arena until you do.
I leave you with a few articles on the subject of blockchain/crypto/NFT scams (I’m sure you can find many more on your own):
REMEMBER: Do EVERY. SINGLE. SCRAP. of your homework before investing in any blockchain. cryptocurrency, or NFT project! Be especially cautious when you receive a direct message on Discord!!! Caveat emptor!
UPDATE 4:17 p.m.: Someone on the official Wilder World Discord server shared the following handy tip:
You should turn off server DMs from any NFT Discord you’re in – just click on the server name, select Privacy settings from the drop down menu, and switch them off. NFT Discords will never DM you directly.
