Experiences
VRChat
We've mentioned VRChat a few times (Issues 3 and 7 of the newsletter) but we feel it almost needs no introduction. With over 26,000 worlds, thousands of hours per month logged of community time, and plenty of press, when people are describing social VR they are usually talking about VRChat.
Neos VR on Steam
Neos VR is a social platform with exceptionally customizable avatar controls, supports full body and facial tracking hardware, and has very well developed in-game building tools to create games and fun enhancements to the world. We really liked that the community also put a lot of effort into documentation which covers topics like how to read the room and how to be a good host along with how to make art, emotes, and environments.
Home | sinespace
Called by some the Second Life of social VR, this fast-growing platform has some of the broadest options for fashion, realistic avatars, and scenery with an option to become a creator to share & monitize custom content. With both Unity Asset Store and Daz3D asset imports and fine tuned character editing, the quality of its scenes are pretty high. Experience worlds interactively with their viewer on desktop or mobile devices, with or without VR.
Rec Room
Rec Room's cartoony aesthetic doesn't always do justice to the power its creation tools gives players, but we feel helps keep it approachable and fun for anyone looking for a truly casual social experience. Cross platform support for both the application and experience allows players on iOS, Xbox, and PlayStation to share a world with players using a more traditional VR headset. Boasting millions of player created worlds and venues the chances you'll find a fun game or place to hang out with your friends is exceedingly high.
Roblox
This exceptionally popular, kid-friendly massively multiplayer online (MMO) experience also has VR compatibility using PC VR. Very dedicated content creators are hard at work releasing fun, interactive VR experiences built within the platform. HackerNoon has a list of VR worlds you should visit if you want to see some of the more popular worlds currently available.
Business
MeetinVR - Business Meetings & Collaboration in VR
Social VR isn't limited to only casual interactions, and companies have options for how they can take their meetings, prototyping, and brainstorming into VR. MeetinVR offers large meeting rooms to bring together teams to collaborate centered on human interaction and a focus on intuitive tools.
Health
AdHawk Microsystems launches cameraless eye-tracking sensors for AR/VR | VentureBeat
AdHawk Microsystems is launching eye-tracking for AR and VR systems using sensors that don't require slow and expensive cameras. Not relying on video cameras reduces power consumption and weight of any HMU, and could open up an entirely new class of devices that seamlessly integrate with existing form factors without changing the profile greatly. Having a pair of AR glasses with chunky frames seems more a fashion choice than identifying you as a technology early adopter and will greatly increase public comfort, and ultimately use of AR technology.
Learning
Virtual Simulation Center: Immersive Education and Training
Acadicus is a virtual simulation center and social VR platform proving a growing library of content and tools for implementing simulation scenarios. Meant for educational demonstrations of simulations and training, the target audience are medical professionals interested in reducing the cost, time, and complexity in making VR content. Their Acadius Pro subscription allows access to all of the tools, scenes, and scenarios but the free VR tools and recorded training sessions let you try just about everything out before deciding to invest in the platform.
Commentary
Welcome to the 25th issue of the Other Realities newsletter, where we're highlighting social VR platforms that may just be your next place to hang out in VR. Casual social interactions are one of the many type of experiences that attracts people to give VR a try. Having casual experiences along side more traditional gaming has propelled VR to historical heights and brought in millions of new users looking to destress and explore new worlds.
The actual list of social VR platforms is much too long for a newsletter, and we will have to setup a page on the Other Realities Journal to list out all of the social VR applications we have encountered this week. We have more than 30 other platforms that didn't make it into the newsletter, and even more which are strictly web browser based that were interesting but pretty early stages.
Do you have a favorite social VR platform? We'd love to hear about it on Twitter, where you can also find more events and timely information that doesn't make the weekly newsletter. This week we added new entries into the Other Realities Directory if you're casually looking for more VR content to explore. If you have any suggestions for the directory feel free to send them our way.
Thank you for reading and subscribing, and we'll see you next week!
Other Realities