Stageverse Muse concert first impressions

Many people on social media advised me to try The Muse concert inside the new virtual events platform Stageverse… and so I did. I have no time today to write a full review for you (stay tuned on the HitMotion: Reloaded blog to discover why!), but I thought it could be interesting to write some short first impressions about it. Since I have worked on some VR concerts myself (and one even got featured on the Unity blog), I thought my opinion could be valuable for someone… at least for the Stageverse developers that so have some feedback about what to improve.

What is Stageverse?

According to its webpage, “Stageverse is an ever-expanding world of beautifully designed 3D venues where friends and communities connect, grow, have fun, and share culture”. That is, a social virtual environment for events, exhibitions, and parties. It is not a VR-only experience, but it works also through mobile phones (iOS and Android), Oculus Quest, and soon it will come for PC, too. Given the target platforms, it seems something not geared only towards the VR enthusiasts community, but to the general consumer.

The app is launching with a free recurring event: a concert of Muse that you can enjoy with other people for free for a limited time. The concert airs at 7 pm on Tues, Thurs, Sun. 7 pm is considered as a time for 4 different timezones (PDT, EDT, BST, JST), so actually, every concert is repeated four times every day. If you join the world when the concert is live, you can see it, otherwise, you can just access a preview.

The application is still in beta, so a few quirks are to be expected. That’s why I shouldn’t be too harsh when judging it… but I will be anyway.

Stageverse first impressions

I downloaded Stageverse on my Quest (you weren’t expecting a review of mine for mobile phones, I hope), then I launched the experience at 12 pm CEST, a time where the concert should have started. Entering it, I was immediately asked to create an account. The UI for creating an account needed much refinement… and for instance, I found myself selecting my country by scrolling a whole list of countries (couldn’t I just write “It” and have Italy selected?). Anyway, it’s a beta, these problems are part of the game.

The avatar was not customizable, but I was able to choose one among a set of presets, with many of them wearing dedicated T-shirts for the Muse event. According to the website, some of these avatars were in limited edition for the special event. It’s a nice idea, but honestly, no one of the avatars was so cool that I absolutely wanted it.

When I’ve finished my registration, I’ve found myself in the main lobby. A lot of annoying notifications popped in front of me about people continuously joining and leaving… have I already told you that the UI should be revised?

The venue was a nice place, with other avatars moving around. I was shown a very fast tutorial showing me the basic interactions with the application, and then I was completely inside the experience. I could move around, and then I joined a portal to the Stageverse Stadium, which is the location where the concert was taking place. I entered the Stadium, and I found it nice that they give it the mood that it has an entertainment center when there is a concert: there were some merchandise props on the wall, some fake arcade machines, a big red car that looked like a Ferrari… it looked like a nice place to stay in. Unluckily, almost nothing was interactive there, so after a few minutes, I lost interest in it.

I so joined the concert through another portal and I found myself inside the concert of Muse. I hoped for something a bit more 3D, but actually, the concert was “just” a collection of 360 videos recorded from a big concert of The Muse inside a stadium. Through a map on my left wrist, I could decide from what point of view to watch the concert, or I could just let the application choose for me the best position for every moment of the concert.

In some moments of the concert, the application showed some 3D effects to make the concert more alive… so during certain moments of a song, 3D flames appeared from below me, while in another moment I could see some steam geysers activating in front of me. The idea behind these effects is pretty cool: creating a mix of real and virtual elements, with the 3D nature of the virtual elements that can give a 3D depth to the concert, to give VR users something more than just a 360 video. The problem that I’ve found is that these effects appeared really too simplistic (they looked like particles downloaded from Unity Asset Store) and they merged not perfectly with the 360 videos (e.g. the geyser didn’t seem to come from the stage floor but from a random point in air). A good idea, but with a so-so implementation.

The list of good ideas with implementation to improve is pretty long. Attached to your wrist you have a 3D pen (with which you can write in the air) and a laser gun. I guess they should be used to interact with the other players, to play together, to communicate, and create art together. The reality is that I’ve seen no one of the users around me use them, and when I used them, I’ve found them pretty useless. I’m there to watch a concert, not to shoot someone. Maybe for the concert, it could have been more suitable another tool, like a lighter to wave in the air during the songs.

Then there is the multiplayer nature of the app. The idea of making more people enjoy a virtual concert together is fantastic, but putting many people inside a 360 dome always takes to mediocre results: I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I know that it’s pretty weird. Look how the other users appear to you when you enjoy the concert:

Their presence breaks completely the magic of the 360 videos: your brain sees that it can’t fit those tiny users with the big environment created by the 360 videos, so in the end, you start seeing the concert for what it is: a big textured sphere with many avatars inside. This is disappointing.

Another thing that should have been made better is that some parts of the recording of the concert have been made through a moving camera. And while smartphone users may enjoy this moving point of view, for VR users it is a direct ticket to the nausea world. Other tickets to nausea world were won by me every time the video couldn’t be streamed for bandwidth issues, and I saw weird rectangular blocks that made my eyes cross.

I’ve made many critics about this concert, but actually, I have to say that I enjoyed the experience. And this is because even if many things are to be improved, the footage of the concert is nothing short of amazing. The quality of the video, the quality of the songs (hey, they are The Muse!), the possibility of seeing a stadium full of people watching you when you are on the stage, is impressive. And during the concert, the frontman of The Muse acknowledges your presence: it says during the concert that he greets people watching him in virtual reality; and while you are on the stage, he puts a microphone close to your face to make you sing when he leaves all the audience sing a part of the song; etc… I don’t know how much Stageverse has spent on this recording, but it’s a beautiful recording of a concert, and I agree with Kent Bye when he says that it is one of the best experiences in giving you the sensation of having truly been to a concert. It is really immersive, and also the fact that it is not always available, but it only starts at predefined times, with all people seeing the concert synchronously, gives you even more the impression of having been part of the event. Kudos to Stageverse for having been able to set up such a great production.

Final opinion

I can’t judge what Stageverse can become, but I can judge what I see today. And today I see an application that has to improve a lot on all sides, starting from UX and going to add more avatar customizations, more interactions between users, more interactions between the users and environment, etc… But there are at least many good ideas (like the tools to interact with other users, or the 3D VFX during the 360 concerts) that the company can work on implementing better to offer later on a good service to its users. And especially, it has very high-quality materials for its events: the video of the concert of the Muse was gorgeous. I’m writing this post with a song of the Muse playing inside my head… and I think this means something on the potential of the product it is working on. If you want to enjoy the concert too, download Stageverse on your Quest through App Lab at this link: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/5119490974759740/

Let’s see how this company will evolve in the next 12 months… if it will be able to leverage its strengths and fix its current problems. I hope so for them: good luck to its team!