While social virtual reality (VR) apps like Rec Room tend to be focused towards multiplay gaming, there are those like Somnium Space or Linden Labs’ Sansar which want to create massive virtual worlds, much like the Oasis in Ready Player One. Today, Somnium Space has announced the successful completion of a seed funding round, securing the company $1 million USD.
Somnium Space has previously raised funds by selling virtual land on crowd-funding websites like Indiegogo, managing to achieve over $200,000 from the VR community. The funding round will help Somnium Space boost development of its open VR world.
“Our ultimate goal is to bring a long-lasting dream of humanity to fully immerse themselves into a huge world which is constantly changing and is never same no matter when you decide to join,” said Artur Sychov, Founder & CEO of Somnium Space in a statement. “Ability to create a functioning economy within virtual reality world is a dream and an internal goal we have at Somnium. This round of funding allows us to bring many more features into Somnium Space faster, in order to empower creators to start shaping the world of everyone’s dreams. I am more than ever convinced in the bright future of Social VR and we are going to do everything we can to make that vision to a reality very soon [sic].”
Currently, Somnium Space can be downloaded for free via Steam Early Access, supporting HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. An Oculus Go version is planned for this summer, with an Oculus Quest version also in the works for late 2019.
For those interested in seeing what Somnium Space has to offer, the platform hosts weekly and monthly events like VR bowling tournaments, a deep dive into Future of VR with RoblemVR or concerts such as Luke’s Reynolds live performance.
The team also plan on releasing a new version of Somnium Space to the public soon, with improved graphical fidelity, interaction and avatars system, building capabilities with a persistent map, in-game store and much more, also scheduled for a summer 2019 release. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Somnium Space, reporting back with the latest updates.