Tag: XaosPrincess

UPDATED! Come Say Farewell to High Fidelity with a Final Dance at The Palace

Today marks the end of an era. High Fidelity is essentially shutting down its platform today (more details here). Longtime user Dr. Fran noted that the HiFi user forums have already been taken down:

But we are not leaving without one last epic dance party!

Xaos Princess posted the following message on Twitter:

Today we’re gonna party like it’s 1999 in VR! Fire up your Steam or Oculus client one last time or download it at https://highfidelity.com/download and join us at 3:00 p.m. PST in https://metaverse.highfidelity.com/places/ThePalace to say farewell to the best virtual world ever!

All are welcome to join us, but if you have never set up a High Fidelity avatar before today, you are simply out of luck, as High Fidelity has also shut down their official website, so you can no longer create accounts:

While privately-hosted domains such as ThePalace will continue to run for a while, eventually usage will dwindle down to nothing, as older users move on, and no new users can create accounts to take part in any events. Eventually, even the domain names will disappear as they expire, and you will no longer be able to visit them, even if you still have a working account.

UPDATE 5:48 p.m.: Well, after a few technical difficulties (including having to replace a hand controller battery and rebooting my computer twice), I made it into The Palace! The party is still going on, and there are about 25 avatars in attendance—the largest crowd I have seen in HiFi in quite some time.

Chaka dancing on stage

It was wonderful to see and talk with old friends like Thoys, Piper Peppercorn, Xaos Princess, and Flame Soulis.

Like I said, the end of an era. High Fidelity is the first victim of the social VR wars, but I suspect it will not be the last platform to fold in this rapidly-evolving and ever-changing market.

UPDATE Jan. 18th, 2020: After I left the party, High Fidelity CEO Philip Rosedale himself showed up (see red arrow)!

Thanks for the picture, Carlos!

UPDATED! Xaos Princess Checks Out Sansar

You might be surprised to hear that, amid all the doom and gloom over at High Fidelity, people are still pressing ahead with events. Just recently, DrFran hosted a pub trivia quiz in HiFi which I attended (I’m the one in the wizard’s hat):

Pub Quiz Night in High Fidelity

DrFran also hosts a conversational salon every Sunday where people gather to discuss a pre-set topic. The one I attended recently was on sex and gambling in virtual worlds, and it was a fabulous discussion. It’s due to hard-working people like DrFran that there is still a strong sense of community in High Fidelity.

However, there is no hiding the fact that High Fidelity has made a sharp pivot away from consumers towards the business market. Many HiFi users are looking at other social VR platforms such as Sansar. Well-known High Fidelity user Xaos Princess (whom I have profiled before on my blog) has recorded a video of her recent visit to Sansar, where she talks with Draxtor Despres and Theanine at 114 Harvest and then visits four of Theanine’s experiences: Synthwave, A House on the Hill, Stereopixel Arcade, and an in-progress, not-yet-public experience containing his photogrammetric scans of Chinese sculptures and virtual recreations of buildings and bridges he saw while he was living in China.

The video concludes with a point-by-point evaluation of Sansar, done on a interactive whiteboard in High Fidelity:

I noticed that the only thing that Xaos Princess didn’t like was the complete lack of in-world building tools, compared to High Fidelity. Personally, I don’t see this as much of a problem since everybody uses external content creation tools like Blender, Maya and 3ds Max anyway (even in High Fidelity, where she comes from).

Unfortunately, I can’t embed Xaos’ livestream (which was done using Periscope), but you can view it at this link. Please note that Xaos’ audio is very low and you will probably need to use headphones or earphones to hear what she is saying, although it does get better later on in the video. Also, the livestream video is three hours long! Despite this, I’d still encourage all users interested in social VR platforms to set aside the time to watch this; it’s always illuminating to get an “outsider’s” perspective on a platform you already know.

UPDATE Aug. 5th: Xaos Princess has now put a version of her Periscope video up on YouTube:

Note that this is actually episode two of a series titled Xaos Tours the Metaverse. Episode one, of course, was about High Fidelity, and it is available on YouTube:

By the way, Xaos also did a point-by-point evaluation of High Fidelity at the end of her tour, and she does not pull any punches:

It’s interesting to compare the two whiteboards. Xaos (who is obviously an expert at High Fidelity!) feels that HiFi is lacking in three areas: learning curve, gamification, and user concurrency (?!). I’m kind of surprised at the latter, but according to Xaos’ video, she gave it a red frowning face because of High Fidelity’s sudden shift in direction leading to doubt and insecurity among its users, which is understandable. Perhaps “user concurrency” would better be termed “level of usage”.

I look forward to future episodes of Xaos Tours the Metaverse!

An Interview with High Fidelity Content Creator XaosPrincess

Andreas Troeger has interviewed High Fidelity content creator XaosPrincess in a well-produced 20-minute video. She uses Gravity Sketch and Tilt Brush to create unique avatar clothing and accessories in HiFi:

The YouTube gives a nice overview of the High Fidelity in-world shopping experience.

Here’s a link to her Blockchain line of wearables on the High Fidelity Marketplace.