Okay, more feedback, more thinking, more changes to my Venn diagram (as before, the following diagram is available to view and download in various sizes from Flickr, up to 1024 by 768 pixels, just click on it):
Summary of the changes this time around:
I decided that NeosVR, after all, was not primarily a business, conference, and remote workteams platform after all (sorry, guys!).
I have been told that Mozilla Hubs is used by some educational institutions, so I needed to move it.
I have seen art galleries in Sinespace, so I moved it over to join Sansar.
And finally, in response to a request/complaint, I have replaced the pesky copyright symbol with a Creative Commons-BY licence. Feel free to reuse and remix, just give me credit, please.
I am happy with Version 2.1…for now. I have also updated my original blogpost with this new infographic. (Check back tomorrow, when I will no doubt release Version 2.2, with yet more changes. Then again, maybe I’ll stop fiddling with it for a while.)
Over the past two days, I have received feedback on the first version of my infographic, and I have also been doing some thinking on my own, so I have made some adjustments to it, and I now present version 2.0 to you now (I have also updated my original blogpost here). The following diagram is available to view and download in various sizes from Flickr, up to 1024 by 768 pixels, just click on it:
If you are looking for an up-to-date list of YARTVRA platforms, you can find it here.
Here is an explanation of some of the changes. First, you will notice that NeosVR now occupies the centre spot on this Venn diagram. Yes, the people at NeosVR have actually convinced me that their platform can actually be used for all five of the major purposes! I had forgotten that NeosVR was originally an educational platform, and it is being used by several universities, including the University of Oxford and the University of Sydney (a topic I hope to cover in more detail in a later blogpost).
NeosVR is also used for art (in particular, I remember a wonderful three-dimensional recreation of one of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings). And, of course, the MetaMovie project is the perfect example of a live event in VRChat (another project I need to write an update on). So, for me, NeosVR comes the closest to checking all the boxes.
I also moved Ceek from Live Music to Media Consumption, since I do not believe they actually offer any live performances, just video recorded previously (somebody correct me if I am wrong, since I am not bothering to purchase their branded VR headset, and I am not really interested in cellphone-based VR, anyway). Meh.
I have also decided that Engage can host live events as well as business conferences, so I have moved it. While I really don’t consider Engage a general purpose platform, they do fit into the other four categories.
Likewise, I have moved VRChat, since I forgot that they do have business and conferences. The recently concluded Virtual Market 4 was a prime example of that!
I think those were the only changes I made from version 1.0. As always, please feel free to let me know if you think I have grievously miscategorized any particular platform. Thanks!
I thought I would set aside some time today, on a somewhat lazy Saturday, brew myself a large pot of black coffee, and attempt to categorize all the social VR platforms I have written about on this blog into some sort of taxonomy. No small feat! But at least I have a full day to tinker with the project. (I might turn this into a journal article and get it published somewhere.)
I decided to first try and organize the wide variety of social VR platforms by primary purpose by creating this Venn diagram using Canva.com (the following diagram is available to view and download in various sizes from Flickr, up to 1024 by 768 pixels, just click on it):
And, this is finally my opportunity to compile a somewhat complete list of what I collectively call the YARTVRA platforms (an acronym I coined, which stands for Yet Another Remote Teams Virtual Reality App). This is currently a hot market for social VR, as corporations struggle to try to provide immersive, remote workteams support to employees working from home during the global public health crisis of the coronavirus pandemic.
Plus a whole bunch I still haven’t gotten around to blogging yet, like Connec2, Sketchbox, Softspace, etc.
Yes, I am going to make the YARTVRA acronym a thing (WORK. WITH. ME, PEOPLE!)
UPDATE May 11th, 2020: Based on feedback I have received, and after doing a little more thinking, I have made some adjustments to version 1.0 of this Venn diagram, and I have now updated it version 2.0. Thank you to everybody who took the time to reach out to me! Summary of changes made is here.
UPDATE May 12th, 2020: I also wanted to add to this blogpost some thoughtful comments by the Voices of VR podcaster and VR expert Kent Bye, who retweeted this blogpost to his followers on Twitter with the following comment:
Conceptually, any sufficiently robust virtual world will be able to handle multiple contexts ranging from going on a date, hanging with friends, playing games, learning, working. I see context is more driven more by the culture and people using it, more than the platform itself.
Infographic by Kent Bye
He added:
I use the lens of qualities of presence: Active Presence: Rec Room Mental & Social Presence: AltSpaceVR, Mozilla Hubs, Engage Embodied Presence: VRChat Emotional Presence: Wave, Museum of Other Realities All of these are always happening to different degrees in social VR, but there’s combos and a center of gravity.
Four Qualities of Presence in Social VR (from a presentation slide by Kent Bye)
