This Monday, before digging into the news, let me announce to you two things:
- I have added a new section to this newsletter, called “Other news”. There I will just put a description and a link of those pieces of news I find interesting, but a bit less relevant than the others. These are articles I would have probably not shared with you in the previous editions of the newsletter, but with this new format, I can at least acknowledge that these things have happened. Please tell me if you find this new approach useful so that I can decide if keep going with it or not;
- We of New Technology Walkers (me and my partner Massimiliano Ariani) have been featured on the local news section of an important Italian newspaper! We are pretty happy about it and I wanted to share this with you. Since “pics or it didn’t happen” is a well-known rule of the web, here you are a picture to prove it: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6901455419726798848/
Top news of the week
Microsoft to tighten safety measures in Altspace VR
After a similar announcement performed by Meta last week, this week Microsoft has announced the tightening of the safety measures inside its social VR platform Altspace VR.
First of all, all the public social hubs like the Campfire, News and Entertainment Commons will be removed. These places, meant to make new friends, were running without moderation, so they were prone to episodes of harassment. Removing them removes lots of potential problems from Microsoft.
Also, for the other worlds, all people will start with the Safety Bubble on by default: Safety Bubble is meant so that people can’t come too close to you and physically harass you in the virtual world.
The cherry on top is the introduction in the coming weeks of a mandatory Microsoft login: this helps Microsoft in having a better knowledge of its users, and at the same time it lets it integrate Altspace inside its Safety suite so that there can be parental control in Altspace on the Microsoft Store.
This is important news, that becomes truly relevant if it is paired with the one of last week about Meta. It seems that there is a trend of tightening control on social VR platforms, especially the ones held by big corporations. And this is in my opinion good and bad news.
The characteristic that I love more about this news is that corporates are trying to solve the problem of harassment in virtual worlds. This is surely positive: trying to obtain a positive experience for everyone, no matter the gender and the ethnicity, is fundamental if we want everyone to happily stay in the future m**averse. And it is even more important now that after Christmas, many kids have entered virtual reality, and could be a victim of harassment or sexual predators.
What puzzles me is why they haven’t worked towards this before. As many veteran people from our industry say, virtual worlds are a concept that is decades old, and the problems we are facing now have already been faced by others 20 years ago. Do you remember the penis attack on Second Life? And even if we want to go to our more recent history, all the issues from a few years ago about harassment in VRChat? I wonder why Microsoft and Facebook haven’t taken action before.
What makes me sad is the realization that as humans we always need control and regulation, and that the freedom of many must be sacrificed for the behavior of a few people. I find it pretty depressing that people in two important social VR spaces must live in bubbles so that they can’t touch each other. Physical contact with other people (like hugging friends) is one of the things I love the most about social VR, and now it will be reduced. The Altspace social hubs were a means intended to meet new random people when you felt alone, and while I’m not the kind of person that was using them, I understood their value, that now will get lost. Having a Microsoft account means losing anonymity, and also have more data about our behavior tracked by a company that already has control of all our PCs.
These pieces of news mark the end of the dream of a certain idea of a free and open metaverse and face the reality that if virtual reality is similar to reality, it must have clear limiting rules exactly as we have clear laws in our physical world. This is because we are always humans, either made of meat or of bits.
More info (New rules inside Altspace VR — Upload VR)
More info (New rules inside Altspace VR — The Verge)
Other relevant news
Meta Horizon has now 300,000 monthly users
Meta has announced in a meeting that Horizon platforms now have 300,000 monthly active users. The number includes both Horizon Venues and Horizon Worlds, but not Horizon Workrooms.
This is for sure a good number, and it shows a 10x growth of the platform if compared to the months before when Horizon Worlds was just in private beta. If we pair it to the other announced number, that is that on Horizon Worlds that are now 10,000 user-made worlds, we understand that this social world created by Meta is having its little success.
Anyway, my gut says that something is not completely right about these metrics. First of all, the fact that the number includes both Venues and Worlds is quite suspect, and it makes me think that the numbers about Horizon Worlds were not cool enough and that Meta had to add the one about Venues to make them relevant. Venues hosts interesting events, with the last of them being the Foo Fighter Concert which attracted thousands of people, and so it naturally has good users numbers.
This is related to another problem: the metric talks about active users, not recurring users. There’s no mention of the retention: everyone that has attended one of the concerts in Venues has been included in the 300K count, but he/she is not a relevant user of the platform.
300,000 is also quite low if compared to competitors: Rec Room, but also Big Screen VR has more users than that.
I say all of this not to undervalue all the work that Meta’s engineers have done: 300,000 is anyway a good number, also considering that Horizon Worlds is only out of its beta in North America. But it seems to me they have shared this number to convince people about Horizon Worlds’s big success so that to cause FOMO to the members of the VR community that are not attending it… while the real situation is not exactly that. In any case, it will be important to follow the growth of the platform in the upcoming months, especially given the big marketing push that Meta is directing towards it (e.g. with the Super Bowl ad).
More info (300,000 people in Horizon Worlds)
More info (Upload VR commenting the news)
More info (NWN’s take on these numbers)
More info (BigScreen claiming to have better numbers than Horizon)
Meta changes its values
Mark Zuckerberg has informed the company that the main values of the companies have changed and now there are new mottos associated with Meta. As Alex Heath reports on Twitter:
- “move fast” is becoming “move fast together”
- “be bold” has been replaced with “build awesome things”
- “focus on long term impact” has been just added
- “be open” is becoming “live in the future”
- “be direct and respect your colleagues” is a change to “be open”
- Zuck also says employees are not supposed to “nice ourselves to death” (whatever it means, honestly I have not understood it)
This comes together with a new name for all the Meta employees: “Metamates”, a word pun spun by the fact that Meta is the anagram of Mate.
As a CEO, it is normal that Zuck sets the vision and the values of the company, and honestly, I appreciate that he’s trying to propose more positive values for the company. The switch from “move fast” to “move fast together” is very powerful in my opinion.
There are just two things I’m not very happy about. The first is the removal of the “Be open” sentence, that in my opinion was another powerful statement. Considering that recently Meta has limited the access to internal news to employees that were not devoted to reading them, it seems to me a sign that Meta wants to close a bit the company.
The other thing I don’t like is the name Metamates, which is honestly speaking, terrible, however, I want to see it. I would have preferred something like the Zucketeers.
The internal reactions to these new statements have been mixed, with some employees happy about them, and others puzzled about what they mean.
More info (Alex Heath announcing the new Meta values)
More info (The New York times comments on the announcement)
Meta is under crossfire and should take action
I have a growing impression that Meta should change its CEO if it wants to survive long term. The name change has been useful to make everyone hyped about the M-word, but the reputation of the company has not changed much. There is in my opinion the need for a strong change of direction, similar to what Nadella has done after he took the role of Steve Ballmer, which gifted Microsoft a new reputation.
I say this because I see Meta/Facebook under constant attack on various fronts. The community does not forgive its privacy scandals, nor its data harvesting practices. The regulators are always ready to investigate possible anti-competitive practices it is performing, and some recent acquisitions have been negated (see Giphy) or are under investigation (e.g. SuperNatural). Apple has just caused big troubles to its ad model with its restrictions on iOS, and some rumors say that Android wants to implement similar restrictions on data gathering in the upcoming months. The company has burned $500B in value if compared to how much it was worth some years ago, and this should worry all its investors. Journalists are always looking for problems with Facebook, and the scandal of the recent whistleblower is proof of that. This week I have also found an article on Buzzfeed that proves that safety inside Horizon Worlds is not guaranteed enough. Add to it another big scandal because the head of the global community development has been fired for a sex scandal, and you have a full picture of all the mess Meta is in.
The impression I have is that there are too many problems with Meta, its current business model, and its reputation. For Meta offering the best VR platform like it is doing now (with Quest 2) is a true necessity, because it knows that if there were an equivalent product, people probably would migrate to the other one to not support Facebook and its privacy implications. For now, given its big investments, Meta is on the top, but what will happen when other brands will be able to offer products with similar features?
This is the true concern that Meta must have: Facebook has made many errors (and still is doing them), and it risks paying now all this reputation debt it has accumulated these years. The same doesn’t hold for the other companies. Do you want an example? Well, you just have to read the first news of this roundup: Microsoft will impose a mandatory Microsoft login for Altspace. Have you seen any backlash from the community? Personally, no. Imagine what would have happened if Meta had acquired VRChat and after two years it would have imposed a Facebook login. Can you imagine the backlash this would have created? This speaks a lot about how the reputational burden can be a problem for Meta’s vision of the m**averse. And it needs a clear steer of direction if it doesn’t want to be smashed by the weight of this burden.
More info (Meta burning $500B)
More info (Horizon Worlds moderation tested by Buzzfeed)
More info (Meta employee’s sex scandal)
News worth a mention
Apple may announce its device in 2023
Like every week, I have a new rumor about the Apple AR/VR headset. This time it’s again the turn of Mark Gurman, that believes that all the developmental delays of the headset (not to mention the chip shortage and the pandemic) will push the announcement of the headset to WWDC 2023.
Quest 2 probably won’t feature full-body tracking
Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, the VP of Meta Reality Labs, has commented on last week’s leak about the Quest 2 going to integrate full-body tracking. He has said that due to occlusion issues, it’s hard that a standalone headset can track all the body, especially because the smaller the headset (and headsets are becoming smaller and smaller), the more the cameras have an occluded view of the legs. So it could be that Quest/Cambria are going to integrate upper-body tracking, but full-body tracking without external sensors is very difficult.
Some articles on the metaverse
Talking about the metaverse, this week I post another series of articles underlining how all the recent hype about crypto-based VR worlds like The Sandbox is leading to a bubble, with few users and many speculators. Even Samsung event with which the company has launched its new phone in The Sandbox has been a true disappointment. I wonder what will happen when these bubbles will pop…
More info (The true status of Web3 social platforms)
More info (The disappointing Samsung event)
More info (Somnium Space CEO answering these claims)
VR Heaven helps you in finding Quest games
Finding new Quest games is not always easy, considering that App Lab titles are available in a separate store than official ones. A new tool called VR Heaven tries to fix this issue, providing you a search engine that looks amongst all the available games for the Quest 2, with intriguing filtering and relevance scoring functionalities. A must-have tool to use if you are looking for the next title to play.
More info (VR Heaven description from its creator)
More info (VR Heaven official website)
Qualcomm is already aiming at Wi-fi 7
We were not used to Wi-Fi 6E yet and Qualcomm, the chip manufacturer that provides the foundation to all the most important XR headsets, is already working on integrating Wi-Fi 7. Wi-Fi 7 can provide a huge boost of bandwidth and reliability for Wi-Fi and its integration could help the performances of remote rendering solutions like Virtual Desktop. I can’t wait for this to happen.
Valve to offer Valve Index replacement parts via iFixit
Valve announced that it plans to offer official replacement parts for “Valve Index VR products” via the DIY repair site iFixit. The details of this operation are not known and will be shared in the upcoming times. For sure it is a piece of welcome news, especially given the fact that many Index users had problems with the hardware and had to go through RMA.
Enjoy the new VR Humble Bundle
The popular gaming bundles website Humble Bundle is offering a new interesting bundle of VR games: called the “VR Discovery” bundle, it offers 8 amazing VR games (including Blaston and Synth Riders) for just 11€!
VRChat keeps expanding and hires Udonsharp creator
VRChat keeps growing and it confirms to be the most versatile social VR space by adding OSC support for its avatars. It allows creators to create special applications on their computer that send triggers that activate programmable features on the avatars. The company has also just hired Merlin, the guy behind Udonsharp, the system to use C# to develop the logic of VRChat worlds.
I’m also always more amazed by the VRChat creators community. This week I’ve found someone that has programmed a translator between English and Japanese ALL INSIDE SHADERS…
More info (VRChat adding OSC support for avatars)
More info (VRChat face expression tracker made using OSC triggers)
More info (VRChat hires Merlin)
More info (English-Japanese translator made with shaders)
Some news on content
- Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual is coming to PSVR on February, 23rd
- “Star Trek: Bridge Crew” is being delisted from all the major VR stores. RIP
- Musical application Virtuoso is coming to Quest and Steam VR on March 10th
- Mech game Vox Machine is going to release its single-player campaign on March, 3rd. The same day the game will be launched for Quest
- Outlier is coming to Steam in Early Access for PC VR headsets on March 17th. Being a Joyway game, it will be in Early Access
- Hand-painted VR adventure, Unbinary, has been released for Quest
- Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR, a new two-part VR documentary, is arriving on Oculus TV on March, 3rd
- Pistol Whip’s new “Encore” update will be unveiled on February, 24th. I speculate it will introduce multiplayer
More info (Sam&Max on PSVR)
More info (Star Trek: Bridge Crew)
More info (Virtuoso)
More info (Vox Machine)
More info (Outlier)
More info (Unbinary)
More info (The Soloist)
More info (Pistol Whip: Encore)
Other news
Simula One headset won’t go through Kickstarter anymore, and will rely on direct pre-orders
Japanese platform xambr will host a virtual art exhibition on Magic cards
45 statistics about VR that are worth a read
The 8th Wall partners with Ready Player Me to offer cross-platform avatars in AR
UploadVR starts a new column to mention indie games that are not worth a full article (kudos to them!)
XR Bootcamp has released a nice guide on the Oculus Interaction SDK
Navigation in VR inside Blender 3.0 is now much better and you can move with controllers
Motorola has built a neckband to power AR glasses, so that you don’t have to keep the battery in your pocket
News from partners (and friends)
Attend the Gatherverse event
Inclusion advocate Christopher LaFayette is organizing Gatherverse, a new event about AR/VR, that instead of being focused on the technology or the money, is focused on the humans of our ecosystem. And for this reason, the event also gives voice to many professionals that usually are not invited to other events because they are not “famous”. It’s a very interesting initiative, and I invite you all to give it a look.
Learn more
Potato Party: Hash It Out
I can’t resist the power of the potatoes, so as soon as I’ve learned about the existence of a new indie VR game called “Potato Party: Hash It Out”, I felt the urge to tell you all! If you are into party VR games, consider checking it out.
Learn more (Game trailer)
Learn more (App Lab page)
Some XR fun
This newsletter is an NFT
Funny link
Modern problems require modern solutions
Funny link
We need the Star Wars soundtrack here
Funny link
I am confused about how positional tracking should work here… but I guess Russia has different rules than us.
Funny link
Who needs legs anyway?
Funny link
Zuck and the Metamates
Funny link
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