Social Virtual Reality – Page 3 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

December 20, 2021

Social VR App ‘Rec Room’ Raises $145M Funding, Now Valued at $3.5B

Social VR platform Rec Room has sealed another big funding round to close out the year. The Seattle-based startup today announced it’s secured a new $145 million financing round, bringing the company’s total valuation to $3.5 billion.

The funding round was led by Coatue Management, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, and Madrona Venture Group.

This comes on the heels of a $100 million raise in March, which at the time pushed the company’s valuation to a stunning $1.25 billion—the first of its kind to get ‘unicorn’ status. The most recent round brings the company’s lifetime financing to $294 million, pushing it now to a $3.5 billion valuation.

First released on Steam in 2016 for both VR and flatscreen play, Rec Room has evolved a great deal over the years, taking it from social VR platform that focused solely on first-party content and minigames to something much more akin to Roblox, including a heavy focus on user-generated content—over 12 million user-generated rooms now, the company says.

Although first-party content is still a big anchor, such as its recently released ‘Rec Rally’ mini-game, users can also make real-world cash for creating cool and interesting stuff.

Things like in-game objects and mini-games underpin Rec Room’s budding economy, which kicked off this year through a creator program. Through it, trusted creators can sell in-game creations for the game’s premium token currency, which can then be converted back to fiat cash.

“It’s been amazing to watch Rec Room grow from a tiny collection of mini-games into a global platform with millions of experiences built by the community. The platform has become a place where people can come together to form meaningful connections, build communities, and share their creativity,” said Nick Fajt, Rec Room co-founder and CEO. “There’s still so much more we want to do, and as we head into 2022, we’re excited to build more experiences, expand to new platforms, invest in best in class trust and safety systems, and continue to expand our creator tools.”

Over the past years the platform has expanded a great deal in search of the widest possible audience. Rec Room, a free app, not only serves VR users on Meta Quest, PSVR, and SteamVR headsets, it also offers cross-play to traditional gaming platforms and mobile devices, such as Android, iOS, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PC via Steam, and more.

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November 3, 2021

Microsoft’s Metaverse Ambitions Grow as Teams Platform to Include 3D Avatars & Immersive XR Meetings

Microsoft is making a strong bid to bolster its version of the metaverse as it looks to roll out 3D avatars and immersive meetings for its Microsoft Teams communication platform.

You might define the metaverse as essentially an immersive internet where virtual experiences are interoperable, and also offer a continuity of the user’s digital identity. It’s not a new idea, as fully-functional immersive social platforms have been around since even the early days of consumer VR, although the concept seems to be picking up traction now that the established names in tech are making more concrete efforts.

First announced back at Microsoft Ignite in March, Mesh allows developers to create multi-user XR applications built on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing arm.

Now Microsoft is gearing up to offer competition to the rest of the known tech world with the announcement of Mesh for Microsoft Teams, which effectively brings those previous efforts to build cross-platform immersive spaces and 3D avatars natively to the Teams communication platform, replete with support across mobile, PC, Microsoft VR headsets, and HoloLens 2.

“The feature combines the mixed-reality capabilities of Microsoft Mesh, which allows people in different physical locations to join collaborative and shared holographic experiences, with the productivity tools of Microsoft Teams, where people can join virtual meetings, send chats, collaborate on shared documents and more,” the company says.

Coming sometime in 2022, Mesh for Microsoft Teams will offer a new ‘Immersive experience’ option which will allow Teams users to build a 3D avatar and either use it in place of a standard webcam, or selecting it as their avatar for AR or VR interactions. While Mesh for Teams is admittedly an XR-focused offering meant for live face-to-face collaboration, when used in place of a webcam (read: without an XR headset) the 3D avatar is animated to interpret vocal cues.

Mesh for Microsoft Teams will roll out with “pre-built immersive spaces to support a variety of contexts, from meetings to social mixers,” the company says. At some point, organizations will also be able build bespoke immersive spaces so colleagues can interact.

Microsoft Teams’ large enterprise usership and interoperability with its cloud infrastructure, video conferencing, and family of Microsoft 365 products automatically positions it as a strong competitor for would-be metaverse users.

Undoubtedly the company’s biggest competition is Meta (formerly Facebook), which announced last week that it was bolstering efforts to shift its business toward building its version of the metaverse, something that saw a complete rebrand of the company.

Meta launched its own work-focused immersive space back in summer. Called Horizon Workrooms the virtual collaboration platform connects both VR and video chat users in the same place, the latter of which includes support for both Zoom and Facebook video chat.

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October 28, 2021December 13, 2021

Meta’s Latest Avatar System is Finally Rolling Out to All Unity Developers

Following an initial announcement eight months ago, Meta has released its latest avatar system for all Unity VR developers, including support for App Lab titles and limited support for non-Oculus platforms like SteamVR.

Update (December 13th, 2021): Meta today announced that its latest avatar system is finally available to all Unity developers. Formerly called Oculus Avatars 2.0—and now called Meta Avatars—the system brings a huge upgrade to avatar style and expressiveness compared to the company’s prior avatar systems.

The Meta Avatars SDK offers support for Unity-based VR applications on Quest and Rift, with limited support for non-Oculus platforms, like Unity VR apps built for SteamVR. Meta says that Quest apps on App Lab can make full use of the Meta Avatar SDK, just like those on the official store.

Meta Avatars aren’t yet supported in Unreal Engine, but support is expected eventually.

The company says it has built the Meta Avatar SDK “with developer needs in mind.” Developers can override the system’s positioning of avatar bodies and facial expressions if necessary to fine-tune avatar behavior for their given application.

The company also says the Meta Avatar SDK uses an interesting distributed architecture for performance. Instead of having all headsets redundantly calculate all of the positions and expressions of all avatars in a given scene, each headset performs the calculations for its own avatar and then streams that information to other participants. Developers are also free to use the system with whichever networking stack they’d like, which increases flexibility over a proprietary solution.

Oculus-based applications using the Meta Avatar SDK will use the avatar that player’s have customized through their headset’s avatar creator. SteamVR applications can use the Meta Avatar SDK, but because those apps aren’t tied to the Oculus platform players are restricted to choosing from one of 32 pre-configured avatars. In cross-play scenarios, Meta says that although non-Oculus players can’t fully configure their own avatar, they will see the fully customized avatars of Oculus players.

Documentation from the Meta Avatar SDK also includes a ‘Best Practices’ guide for developers to consider how they handle avatars within their apps.

As far as we know, the Meta Avatar system currently doesn’t support multiple avatar outfits or app-specific outfits, which means you can only have one ‘look’ at any given time. Similarly, it doesn’t appear to be possible for applications to offer their own unique outfits, accessories, or styles for players to use with their avatars within a specific app.

The original article, which overviews the preliminary release of Meta Avatars to select developers earlier this year, continues below.

Original Article (October 28th, 2021): Facebook began rolling out its latest avatars in the Oculus Avatars 2.0 update in April, which creates new default avatars for the company’s first-party social VR platform, Facebook Horizon.

In addition to being more lifelike and visually appealing than its prior releases, Avatars 2.0 is also positioned to unify the Oculus and Facebook ecosystems somewhat by bringing them to the full swath of Facebook properties including the Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, and more.

Over the past year a number of third-party applications have worked with Facebook to adopt the system. You can already see the new avatars in Epic Roller Coasters, PokerStars VR, and Topgolf with Pro Putt, Synth Riders and ForeVR Bowling. This SDK release will allow all Quest developers to do the same thing.

In comparison to previous avatar systems created for the Oculus platform, Avatars 2.0 offers up more possibilities for customization, including customizable skin tone, hair style, face shape/markings/lines, eye shape, eyebrows, eye makeup, and more. You can also choose clothing, glasses, and body types—something Facebook says makes for one quintillion possible combinations.

The company hasn’t said exactly when to expect the Oculus Avatar 2.0 SDK, although we’ll be glued to the company’s developer blog then to give you the heads up.

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July 28, 2021

Facebook Creates New Internal Organization to Build “the Metaverse”

Facebook Reality Labs, the company’s AR/VR research and development team, announced the creation of a special product group focused on developing its future vision for “the Metaverse.” Apparently Facebook is betting big on the idea too, as it hopes in the near future to be viewed more as “a metaverse company” than a social network.

The term ‘metaverse’ was first coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash. It not only refers to the monolithic online 3D environment where a part of the story takes place, but also the sum of all virtual worlds, including virtual reality, augmented reality, and the Internet as a whole. You may also recognize the concept from Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One, which was brought to life in Steven Spielberg’s 2018 film adaptation.

Now, on the heels of Epic Games’ landmark $1 billion investment to kickstart its own vision for the metaverse, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company is also investing in ways to better position itself for a more connected future by creating “the Metaverse.”

Speaking to The Verge, Zuckerberg’s immersive, interconnected future may sound nebulous for now, but head of Facebook Reality Labs Andrew Bosworth announced in a Facebook post that it’s actually spinning up a product team dedicated to the task, bringing into the fold a number of Facebook execs.

Bosworth says its so-called Metaverse Product Group will be lead by Vishal Shah, Instagram VP of Product. Vivek Sharma, head of Facebook Gaming, will be leading the team behind the company’s still in-beta social VR platform, Facebook Horizon. Jason Rubin, original Oculus executive and one-time head of AR/VR content, will lead the group’s content team. Bosworth say Rubin and Vivek will continue working with Facebook Gaming partners on the company’s gaming various platforms.

Zuckerberg tells The Verge that the company’s vision for the metaverse won’t rest solely on virtual reality devices, but rather he says it’s going to be “accessible across all of our different computing platforms; VR and AR, but also PC, and also mobile devices and game consoles.”

At least as far as VR is concerned, offering support to all devices will be a marked departure for anyone who’s followed the company’s walled garden approach to VR software development over the years, which may point to where the company hopes to go in the future.

“I think a good vision for the metaverse is not one that a specific company builds, but it has to have the sense of interoperability and portability. You have your avatar and your digital goods, and you want to be able to teleport anywhere,” Zuckerberg says. “You don’t want to just be stuck within one company’s stuff. So for our part, for example, we’re building out the Quest headsets for VR, we’re working on AR headsets. But the software that we build, for people to work in or hang out in and build these different worlds, that’s going to go across anything. So other companies build out VR or AR platforms, our software will be everywhere. Just like Facebook or Instagram is today.”

As the company continues to develop for the future of pervasive all-day AR glasses and VR headsets, Zuckerberg hopes that over the next five years the company will enter a new chapter to become what he calls “a metaverse company,” shifting its image from just a social network.

“One of the reasons why we’re investing so much in augmented and virtual reality is mobile phones kind of came around at the same time as Facebook, so we didn’t really get to play a big role in shaping the development of those platforms,” Zuckerberg says.

Continuing: “And I think if we can help build the next set of computing platforms and experiences across that in a way that’s more natural and lets us feel more present with people, I think that’ll be a very positive thing.”

Not much is certain for now: creating that future of a singular, interoperable virtual continuum is likely to be a long and sustained effort that will not only require immersive devices to supplant (or augment) traditional computing platforms, but would require Facebook to take on an active role of platform holder, requiring it to reach much farther than it does currently with Oculus, or even its traditional social network.

Love it or hate it, Facebook has a pointed interest in pioneering the space and owning a big piece of it too later down the line. And yes, it’s still hiring a lot more people to make that happen.

The post Facebook Creates New Internal Organization to Build “the Metaverse” appeared first on Road to VR.

July 13, 2021

‘Rec Room’ Adds More Flexibility to Avatar System with New Full-body, Animated Costumes

Ever since the social VR platform Rec Room launched in 2016, its avatar system has notably lacked full-body inverse kinematics like you see in its contemporary VRChat, which essentially leaves users with a stylized appearance lacking arms and legs. Now the studio says it’s releasing an update that will allow you to buy more articulated avatar outfits which should add more flexibility to how you can look in the game.

The studio tells us that the new costumes will let you look like “almost anything imaginable.” It’s not matching VRChat’s functionality one-to-one though; that platform pretty much gives carte blanche for avatar user uploads.

Instead, Rec Room notes that each full-body, animated costume will be created by other players and supposedly also made available for purchase via the platform’s in-game currency system.

The update is no doubt working to support the game’s nascent digital economy, which allows premium users to make avatar accessories, rooms, and gadgets and get paid in real cash. It might also allow the developers some modicum of control over what outfits are approved for sale, as its audience skews fairly young.

And the name of the game is content creation, it seems. The studio says it now hosts over five million user-generated rooms, some of which are placed behind user paywalls that require paid tickets to access. With its mounting currency-earning opportunities for users, the company seems to be well on its way to paying out to creators what it says should amount to $1 million by the end of 2021.

This content expansion follows a landmark $100 million financing round, bringing the company’s valuation to $1.25 billion. This makes Rec Room one of the most valuable VR companies outside of platform holders Facebook and Sony.

In the coming months, the Rec Room is also readying an Android version which will feature cross-play with all supported platforms, which includes iOS devices, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PC via Steam, Oculus Quest, and all SteamVR-compatible headsets.

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June 29, 2021August 4, 2021

‘Rec Room’ Begins Early Rollout on Select Android Devices

We were expecting to see Rec Room make its way to Google Play sometime this fall. With little fanfare though, the popular social VR platform has quietly begun early rollout for its Android app on select devices.

Update (August 4th, 2021): If you’ve pre-registered for access to Rec Room on Android, you may receive a notification in the coming days to let you know you can download the app. But don’t wait, because since July 24th the app has been available to select Android devices.

As Android Central notes, controllers aren’t supported yet, and some users are reporting performance issues at the moment. It seems to be well optimized for modern phones though. We’ve tested with a device running a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, so it should work fairly well for flagship phones from at least 2018. The original article follows below:

Original Article (June 29th, 2021): According to its Google Play listing, Rec Room is set to launch on Android versions 7.1 and up, something that accounts for around 70 percent of the market share for mobile operating systems.

The launch on Android is undoubtedly a big piece of the puzzle for Rec Room, as it will feature cross-play with all supported platforms, which includes iOS devices, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PC via Steam, Oculus Quest, and all SteamVR-compatible headsets.

Rec Room is far from just a digital chatroom for VR and non-VR devices though; it offers up loads of bespoke content built by the company such as their popular multiplayer co-op adventures, but also the ability to make your own rooms and avatar accessories too. And it’s completely free.

The ability to make your own stuff has been the basis of the game’s burgeoning economy, which allows some users to create things like rooms or avatar accessories and sell them to others for the in-game token. Those tokens can be bought with cash by users to buy things, but can also be converted back to real-world cash now too, which essentially lets the studio pay certain users to create content.

The game has one of the strong userbases in the medium—the studio says 2021 seen a +500% year-over-year growth in users and over 1 million active monthly VR users—and it’s set to potentially explode in number upon release of Android support. The most apt point of comparison is the game’s 2018 launch on iOS, which the studio says saw an iOS download increase by 600% year-over-year. Combined with a fresh $100 million investment announced in March 2021, the studio now boasts a $1.25 billion valuation, making it the first VR software unicorn.

You can pre-register now for the Android version and get notified when it arrives. They’re also throwing out some free in-game stuff to everyone on the platform depending on how many people sign up.

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June 28, 2021

‘VRChat’ Secures $80M Series D Funding to Create its Own Digital Economy

VRChat, the popular social VR platform, announced its secured a Series D funding round of $80 million, which brings to the startup more than five times its overall lifetime investment.

The round was led by Anthos Capital, alongside participating investors Makers Fund, GFR Fund and others. According to Crunchbase, this brings VRChat’s overall outside investment to $95.2 million.

VRChat is a free app that brings together VR and non-VR users in user-generated spaces that can range from the mundane to the truly fantastic. Having celebrated its first taste of virality back in 2018, the PC and SteamVR-compatible app went on to include support for Oculus Quest in late 2020, which propelled it yet further with record-setting concurrent user numbers. The company now boasts over 40,000 concurrent users.

The company says the investment will “expedite development of a creator economy where members can earn, an enhanced social discovery system for more meaningful experiences, and expansion to more platforms. These enhancements will contribute to VRChat’s rapid growth and allow more people to access this virtual universe.”

Last year, social VR app Rec Room also dipped its toes into the digital economy by offering its creators real financial reward for developing on the app, which includes things like premium experiences, avatar accessories, and in-game gadgets. Rec Room also posted some pretty substantial funding, as its latest round garnered it a $100 million Series D and a $1.25 billion valuation.

This means Rec Room and VRChat now rank among some of the most valuable VR companies outside of platform holders Facebook, Valve, and HTC.

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June 24, 2021

VR Education Platform ‘ENGAGE’ Raises $10.7M to Build ‘Oasis’ Metaverse for Business

VR Education Holdings, the company behind the social VR platform ENGAGE, announced it’s raised €9 million (~$10.7 million) which will help it expand beyond the realm of immersive education & training and into a new product called ENGAGE Oasis. It’s billing the upcoming social VR platform as an enterprise offering comparable to a “fully featured corporate metaverse.”

As reported by Forbes and Silicon Republic, the Waterford, Ireland-based company has secured its latest funding from a number of investors via share placing, which includes Octopus Investment LTD UK. The new shares generated from the deal are said to represent 20% of the company’s issued ordinary share capital prior to the placing. VR Education Holdings is listed on both Euronext Dublin and London Stock Exchange.

In May 2020, VR Education secured $3.3 million from HTC to expand Engage, the company’s platform which allows educators and enterprise customers to create bespoke VR experiences for both small and large format events across a variety of devices, including SteamVR headsets, Oculus Quest, Vive Focus Plus, and Pico headsets. Only two months before the deal went through, Engage played host to HTC’s Virtual Vive Ecosystem Conference—a direct response to the pandemic’s deleterious effect on in-person events.

As the name would suggest, Oasis is fairly ambitious in scope. Aiming for launch in H1 2022, Oasis was inspired by the eponymous metaverse featured in the novel and film Ready Player One, which was the de facto platform in VR where users meet, play and do business. Oasis said to be an “always-on, fully persistent virtual world, where ENGAGE clients can meet and sell products and services directly to each other,” and it targets business professionals, corporations, young professionals, and college students.

“Employees from the world’s largest corporations can connect with each other to generate new business ideas and deliver value to their respective organisations,” the company says in a press statement. “ENGAGE Oasis aims to be an opportunity for corporate users to expand their customer base and provide immersive services at a reasonable price.”

The studio says avatars and virtual locations will be “tailored for professional users,” which includes no limits when it comes to the storefronts and meeting places they want to build. There, the company envisions the platform as a new marketplace for corporations and digital artists to sell digital items and provide services using non-fungible tokens (NFTs), fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies.

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March 24, 2021

Social VR App ‘Rec Room’ Raises $100M Financing, Now at $1.25B Valuation

Rec Room, the social VR platform, announced it has secured a $100 million financing round, bringing the company’s valuation to $1.25 billion. This makes it one of the most valuable VR companies outside of platform holders Facebook, Valve, and HTC.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Rec Room reveals its largest round to date was led by Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, and includes Madrona Venture Group, all of which are existing investors.

This brings the Seattle-based company’s lifetime financing to $149 million following its most recent round in December 2020 when the company secured its $20 million Series C.

Although free to download, one of the platform’s largest monetization strategies is undoubtedly selling tokens, which can be used to buy in-game merch and access to user-generated content. There’s also a ‘Plus’ membership subscription which includes a steady supply of spendable tokens and discounts on certain in-game items.

In recent months however, Rec Room has also allowed Plus members to create objects and rooms for the game and sell them for a sort of ‘premium token’ which can then be exchanged into real cash. In short, the company is laying the groundwork for a functioning economy, whereby its users invest time into building more value into the platform while earning real money.

With over one million monthly active VR users and many more joining on traditional consoles, mobile devices, and PC, Rec Room is well positioned to make it happen. Now with substantial venture capital behind them, the company has more leeway to expand on its emergent economy, likely with aims similar to the sort of wealth creation seen in Second Life. For now, the studio says it hopes to pay out $1M in real cash to creators in 2021 through its token exchange program.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Rec Room is hiring.

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