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- Nov 16, 2018
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Over the past week or so, I've been bouncing around a few VR worlds with my Oculus Quest 2 headset, tethered to my Windows 10 PC with an official link cable. This is what I found, while not spending a dime on in world content or currency (of course, YMMV if you drop $100 on content):
Sansar: Most of you know about Sansar and have an opinion on it, so I don't need to go into too much detail. What I found was a friendly community, but in world, I can't hear what people are saying very clearly most of the time. Good tunes at the clubs, and nice avatars, even if the clothing selection is a bit limited. This is a good world for exploring and finding clubs. I never saw any greifers here. This grid is a bit laggy, but it looks nice.
VR Chat: Greifer central. People are either talking about crashing clients and servers, or they are actually trying to particle crash you. If your screen starts jumping around, just TP home before they crash you or overheat your video card. I've been in VR Chat a half dozen times in the past week and at this point, I'm giving up on it. The environment is just too hostile. I have friends who are big into VR chat, but they say all the good stuff happens on private servers. Private servers are nice, but that's how Active Worlds ended up mostly abandoned. Small, insular private worlds make the platform inaccessable, even for experienced explorers like me. Also, the avatars are set up weird. Like, you can choose a nice avatar, but that avatar may not render on all servers. The avatar has to be loaded in every server it appears in, I think... to be honest, I didn't bother with avatars that much, because the community is just that obnoxious.
Rec Room: This place is just fun. If you ever used the now defunct virtual world There, Rec Room has the same vibe as There. The setting is high school, most of the users seem to be kids, but they seem less annoying than kids IRL. There are lots of paintball games and things like that to play with. The community is friendly and helpful, even if their sense of humor can be a bit crazy. Like, in the one place, they were joking that we're in columbine while shooting each other with confetti guns (seriously, who just leaves guns laying around a high school like that? LOL). Everybody is genuinely happy and playful. Despite the weapons laying around everywhere, I found no greifers. The closest I found to a greifer was that one guy did ask to be banned. What happened was one guy warned another guy that he might be banned if he makes sexual jokes. They don't mess around with adult content here at all. Anyway, I think the guy who was being warned didn't know about bans, so he just wanted to see what would happen if he got banned. He asked to be banned, very politely, and everybody was like "are you sure?" and he was all "YES!", so the system popped up a dialog asking everybody in the area to vote on whether or not to ban them, and he got banned. I think that's a good system. I can think of some sandboxes in SL that could use a system like that. This world's most unique feature is probably the in world content creation system, based on a creation gun, or something like that. I haven't tried it yet because when I go into Rec Room I just have too much fun hanging out and shooting people. I really do need to try that creation gun next time I get a chance.
Alt Space: Great community, fun builds. They have events like a German cultural awareness thing, held at a weinerschnitzel castle, where they have little weiner guys climbing all over a castle like Rezzable used to do with greenie aliens. I talked to a few people, we had some intelligent conversations there, about what Alt Space is like and where VR is going, talked some politics with people from europe, which is always fun. Alt Space is like a Rec Room for grown ups. What it lacks in paintball courses and cool banning systems, it makes up for with a very cool, intelligent community, low latency, lots of fun events. I recommend it.
Big Screen (beta): This is different from the others, because it's based on people sitting in a movie theater, or a drive in, or just a house, and watching TV shows and movies together on a big VR screen. You can broadcast your own PC screen or your own video file in your own room any time you want, with a max capacity of 12 avatars. I've watched most of Loki here. Big Screen does lack some basic social features. You can't friend people or even favorite rooms. From what I've read on forums, the developers are adding social features, but right now the focus is on latency. If you broadcast from your home internet connection, and aren't broadcasting a file from a CDN, like the shows and movies you buy from them on-demand, people are going to get stuttering, lag, and even sometimes see a black screen. This is not by design! They want you to be able to broadcast with less latency, so they are focusing their energies on that right now. It's still a fun little community. You can throw popcorn and drink soda and write in the air during a show or movie. I like to write Loki
Loki in the air while watching Loki. They also have some fun music rooms, especially if you are into EDM. Voice chat is a feature, but I think the etiquitte is to keep your mic muted during a show, unless others are talking. I don't think anybody minds you talking over credits, but some places will kick you for talking during a movie. Other rooms advertise that they will kick you for camping if you sit around and don't talk, so you know, pay attention to room descriptions. Also, if you want the best rooms, you should find their discord, then join discord rooms from there to find private rooms that are only listed on their discord channels. If there's a thing you want to see or a sporting event you want to watch, ask around and somebody might set it up.
A few things about avatars: Sansar and VR Chat are the only places on this list where avatars have legs. Rec Room, Alt Space, and Big Screen all have legless avatars. There should be a name for the legless style of avatar. I'm just gonna call them floaties, and the worlds that use them are floaty worlds. Floaty worlds have less lag. Also, I don't think avatar legs or even avatar quality is that important if you are in first person mode. In VR Chat, avatars matter because people usually all hang out in front of a mirror to talk. We say we want nice avatars for others to look at, but lets be honest... nobody really looks at your avatar as closely as you do. If you can't see yourself, you don't really care. You can't really look at yourself in Sansar, because they do not not have working mirrors, which is a shame, because Sansar avatars are higher quality and lower lag than VR Chat avatars. I mean, you can switch to 3rd person mode to see yourself in Sansar, but it's awkward. VR Chat, Rec Room, and Alt Space all have mirrors. Aside from catering to our vanity, mirrors are also the first step towards creating awesome non-euclidian portals like in the game Portal or the older virtual world Croquet.
I know this sounds crazy, but I think the killer app in VR is going to be the ability to hang out with friends and watch movies together. Right now, the tech isn't quite there, and I doubt we will be able to squeeze any more bandwidth from the telcos who refuse to upgrade our infrastructure, so it's up to the grid developers to figure out how to make it work. I know some new technologies like JPEG XL are starting to make an impact on latency, so maybe we will get there soon.
Also, while in world voice chat is nice, it seems like most of these platforms have active Discord channels, and Discord is really the best way to connect with the communities. Any time you want to explore a virtual world, join that world's discord and say hi while the new grid is downloading and installing. You will find it much easier to navigate and make friends if you chat in the discord a bit before you dive in.
I have not yet tried Tribe XR, but I plan to at some point, even though I am genuinely the worst DJ ever, LOL (no really, I empty clubs in SL when I try to DJ). Tribe is a virtual DJ tool. They have events all over the Occulus events page, and the events are almost all for classes on how to DJ. Tribe XR users seem to be invading other grids. Like, there's a big $50 a head event in Sansar that seems to be related to Tribes XR, and in Big Screen, the music room DJs use Tribe XR a lot. It's $30 in the Oculus store, and it looks like a floatie grid, so probably low latency? IDK, but it might be worth checking out at some point.
Sansar: Most of you know about Sansar and have an opinion on it, so I don't need to go into too much detail. What I found was a friendly community, but in world, I can't hear what people are saying very clearly most of the time. Good tunes at the clubs, and nice avatars, even if the clothing selection is a bit limited. This is a good world for exploring and finding clubs. I never saw any greifers here. This grid is a bit laggy, but it looks nice.
VR Chat: Greifer central. People are either talking about crashing clients and servers, or they are actually trying to particle crash you. If your screen starts jumping around, just TP home before they crash you or overheat your video card. I've been in VR Chat a half dozen times in the past week and at this point, I'm giving up on it. The environment is just too hostile. I have friends who are big into VR chat, but they say all the good stuff happens on private servers. Private servers are nice, but that's how Active Worlds ended up mostly abandoned. Small, insular private worlds make the platform inaccessable, even for experienced explorers like me. Also, the avatars are set up weird. Like, you can choose a nice avatar, but that avatar may not render on all servers. The avatar has to be loaded in every server it appears in, I think... to be honest, I didn't bother with avatars that much, because the community is just that obnoxious.
Rec Room: This place is just fun. If you ever used the now defunct virtual world There, Rec Room has the same vibe as There. The setting is high school, most of the users seem to be kids, but they seem less annoying than kids IRL. There are lots of paintball games and things like that to play with. The community is friendly and helpful, even if their sense of humor can be a bit crazy. Like, in the one place, they were joking that we're in columbine while shooting each other with confetti guns (seriously, who just leaves guns laying around a high school like that? LOL). Everybody is genuinely happy and playful. Despite the weapons laying around everywhere, I found no greifers. The closest I found to a greifer was that one guy did ask to be banned. What happened was one guy warned another guy that he might be banned if he makes sexual jokes. They don't mess around with adult content here at all. Anyway, I think the guy who was being warned didn't know about bans, so he just wanted to see what would happen if he got banned. He asked to be banned, very politely, and everybody was like "are you sure?" and he was all "YES!", so the system popped up a dialog asking everybody in the area to vote on whether or not to ban them, and he got banned. I think that's a good system. I can think of some sandboxes in SL that could use a system like that. This world's most unique feature is probably the in world content creation system, based on a creation gun, or something like that. I haven't tried it yet because when I go into Rec Room I just have too much fun hanging out and shooting people. I really do need to try that creation gun next time I get a chance.
Alt Space: Great community, fun builds. They have events like a German cultural awareness thing, held at a weinerschnitzel castle, where they have little weiner guys climbing all over a castle like Rezzable used to do with greenie aliens. I talked to a few people, we had some intelligent conversations there, about what Alt Space is like and where VR is going, talked some politics with people from europe, which is always fun. Alt Space is like a Rec Room for grown ups. What it lacks in paintball courses and cool banning systems, it makes up for with a very cool, intelligent community, low latency, lots of fun events. I recommend it.
Big Screen (beta): This is different from the others, because it's based on people sitting in a movie theater, or a drive in, or just a house, and watching TV shows and movies together on a big VR screen. You can broadcast your own PC screen or your own video file in your own room any time you want, with a max capacity of 12 avatars. I've watched most of Loki here. Big Screen does lack some basic social features. You can't friend people or even favorite rooms. From what I've read on forums, the developers are adding social features, but right now the focus is on latency. If you broadcast from your home internet connection, and aren't broadcasting a file from a CDN, like the shows and movies you buy from them on-demand, people are going to get stuttering, lag, and even sometimes see a black screen. This is not by design! They want you to be able to broadcast with less latency, so they are focusing their energies on that right now. It's still a fun little community. You can throw popcorn and drink soda and write in the air during a show or movie. I like to write Loki
Loki in the air while watching Loki. They also have some fun music rooms, especially if you are into EDM. Voice chat is a feature, but I think the etiquitte is to keep your mic muted during a show, unless others are talking. I don't think anybody minds you talking over credits, but some places will kick you for talking during a movie. Other rooms advertise that they will kick you for camping if you sit around and don't talk, so you know, pay attention to room descriptions. Also, if you want the best rooms, you should find their discord, then join discord rooms from there to find private rooms that are only listed on their discord channels. If there's a thing you want to see or a sporting event you want to watch, ask around and somebody might set it up.A few things about avatars: Sansar and VR Chat are the only places on this list where avatars have legs. Rec Room, Alt Space, and Big Screen all have legless avatars. There should be a name for the legless style of avatar. I'm just gonna call them floaties, and the worlds that use them are floaty worlds. Floaty worlds have less lag. Also, I don't think avatar legs or even avatar quality is that important if you are in first person mode. In VR Chat, avatars matter because people usually all hang out in front of a mirror to talk. We say we want nice avatars for others to look at, but lets be honest... nobody really looks at your avatar as closely as you do. If you can't see yourself, you don't really care. You can't really look at yourself in Sansar, because they do not not have working mirrors, which is a shame, because Sansar avatars are higher quality and lower lag than VR Chat avatars. I mean, you can switch to 3rd person mode to see yourself in Sansar, but it's awkward. VR Chat, Rec Room, and Alt Space all have mirrors. Aside from catering to our vanity, mirrors are also the first step towards creating awesome non-euclidian portals like in the game Portal or the older virtual world Croquet.
I know this sounds crazy, but I think the killer app in VR is going to be the ability to hang out with friends and watch movies together. Right now, the tech isn't quite there, and I doubt we will be able to squeeze any more bandwidth from the telcos who refuse to upgrade our infrastructure, so it's up to the grid developers to figure out how to make it work. I know some new technologies like JPEG XL are starting to make an impact on latency, so maybe we will get there soon.
Also, while in world voice chat is nice, it seems like most of these platforms have active Discord channels, and Discord is really the best way to connect with the communities. Any time you want to explore a virtual world, join that world's discord and say hi while the new grid is downloading and installing. You will find it much easier to navigate and make friends if you chat in the discord a bit before you dive in.
I have not yet tried Tribe XR, but I plan to at some point, even though I am genuinely the worst DJ ever, LOL (no really, I empty clubs in SL when I try to DJ). Tribe is a virtual DJ tool. They have events all over the Occulus events page, and the events are almost all for classes on how to DJ. Tribe XR users seem to be invading other grids. Like, there's a big $50 a head event in Sansar that seems to be related to Tribes XR, and in Big Screen, the music room DJs use Tribe XR a lot. It's $30 in the Oculus store, and it looks like a floatie grid, so probably low latency? IDK, but it might be worth checking out at some point.
