Don’t VR alone! The rise of social VR

Although the so-called “new wave of virtual reality” hasn't taken off as quickly as some enthusiasts had anticipated, augmented reality and virtual reality market figures are quite encouraging: global spending on AR/VR is forecast to achieve a five-year compound annual growth rate of 71.6% over the 2017-2022 period, with headset adoption expected to increase from just under 10 million units in 2016 to 100 million units in 2021.

Despite these promising numbers, most tech analysts would probably agree that the real potential of this technology will never be released without the full development of "social VR".

Actually, most VR apps provide solitary immersive experiences that do not take advantage of "being virtual together". Yet hundreds of studies in the last two decades suggests that social presence is an essential ingredient of an engaging virtual experience.

In this sense, we are still far from the forecast that Mark Zuckerberg made in 2016 at the Samsung's Galaxy S7 event, when he declared that VR will be the main social media platform in 5 to 10 years.

Inspired by science fiction novels, like William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, the idea of a shared virtual world in which people interact through avatars has always had a central place in the evolution of VR. Despite the importance of this idea, there is still a lack of a commonly accepted vision of what a shared virtual world should be like.

Adopting a broad definition of social VR, one could include in this category the first Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) and even some arcade combat games of the 80’s. Indeed, the success of these applications led to the development of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, more commonly known as MMORPGs, a genre of role-playing games in which a large number of players interact within a virtual world.

In 2003, the US company Linden Lab launched Second Life, a virtual world in which users could create and personalize an avatar to live their "second life" online. Second Life was regarded by media as one of the most important innovations in these years. In 2007, at the apex of its popularity, this community counted over 2 million of "residents" and a plethora of virtual places to explore, including cinema, concerts, schools, discos, shops and art exhibitions. However, despite the kaleidoscopic variety of its virtual scenarios, Second Life was not able to sustain interest beyond the hype balloon, and soon many companies and organizations which had created their branches in the virtual world diverted their resources back to “real” life. As of today, the number of Second Life active users has significantly dropped, but still counts more than half a million users.

Fifteen years after the exploit of Second Life, what are the best social VR applications? Although options are not lacking, the number of social VR platforms is still modest.

A first player in the social VR arena is Linden Lab’s Sansar. Although many consider this MMO VR application the “sequel” of Second Life, there are few important differences among these applications. First, Sansar has a platform-oriented architecture that consists of a number of interconnected user-generated virtual worlds, while Second Life was built as a giant, continuous virtual space. Furthermore, in Sansar each virtual environment acts as entry point to the platform, whereas in Second Life user accessed the world through one front door. Moreover, the creation of content in Sansar is more straightforward than it is in Second Life, giving the user the possibility to drag-and-drop objects directly into the scenes (although more sophisticated editing possibilities based on common 3D modelling tools should also be available for advanced users).

Another social VR platform that has made recent headlines in the news is AltspaceVR, an immersive VR environment where users can meet through their avatars, play games, watch videos and even browse the Internet using holographic-style windows. The platform was started in 2013 and backed by $15 million from prestigious investors. In its first years, the service was quite successful, hosting live events of celebrities like Reggie Watts, Bill Nye and Justin Roiland, just to name a few. By mid 2017, the company claimed 35,000 active users and was available for most VR headsets, including Facebook's Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, and the HTC Vive, plus the web browsers. In August 2017, though, AltspaceVR announced its closing down after running out of funding. However, a couple of months later the company was acquired by Microsoft, which was increasingly seeking to incorporate communications technology into their mixed reality ecosystem. After joining Microsoft, AltspaceVR is candidate to become a direct competitor of Facebook Spaces, the new virtual world of Menlo Park’s social media giant. AltspaceVR allows users to create their own avatars using their Facebook photos, enjoy 360 videos, draw 3D objects, video call friends outside of VR, and share selfies of their VR memories on Facebook.

Despite their huge firepower, Microsoft AltspaceVR and Facebook Space are not the only protagonists of the social VR arena. Other MMO VR apps are sharpening their weapons and and oiling their armor to win the metaverse race.

For example, JanusVR is a VR App for the Oculus Rift and SteamVR that allows the user to see and experience the internet through virtual reality. The application represent web pages as fully interactive rooms with doors acting as links between them. It allows users to have spatial walks through the internet.

In a similar vein, VRChat is a free MMO virtual reality video game that allows players to interact with others as 3D character models.

vTime - The Sociable Network is a completely cross-platform social VR application that allows users to meet, chat and share in VR. In April 2018, the vTime Limited announced that it had raised $7.6 million (￡5.4 million) in a series A funding round to accelerate development of the app.

Also worth mentioning is Decentraland, the first virtual platform that is completely owned by its users. Like in other MMO VR applications, in Decentraland users are immersed in a shared virtual world that they can contribute to create. But the unique feature of this social VR platform is that it operates on a public blockchain, meaning that all virtual environments created using this ecosystem are public and globally accessible. Users can purchase land through the Ethereum blockchain, creating a record of ownership, without building limitations and with full control over the owned land.

In sum, the rapid emergence of social VR applications seen in recent years suggest that shared virtual worlds represent one of the hottest areas of development in this moment. Hopefully, this restless evolution will lead soon to the creation of easily accessible and scalable platforms, making the Metaverse dream finally come true.