Category: Viverse

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Taiwanese Opera Coming to Viverse With a Limited Edition NFT Pack on Vive Bytes

HTC Vive caused quite the reaction from the virtual reality (VR) community when it announced its own metaverse and Web3 plans in the form of Viverse and Vive Bytes respectively. To push both new platforms HTC Vive is collaborating with Ming Hwa Yuan Arts and Culture Group to bring Taiwanese opera to Viverse, in addition to releasing “The Pirate King of Formosa Global Limited Edition NFT Pack” on Vive Bytes.

Vive Bytes - The Pirate King of Formosa
The Pirate King of Formosa NFTs. Image credit Vive Bytes

A leading traditional art group in Taiwan, Ming Hwa Yuan will bring their opera into the digital realm by licensing its upcoming production Zheng ZhiLong, The Pirate King of Formosa so that HTC and Future-Digi can create the pack. Future-Digi has brought in Taiwanese comic artist Wei Tsung-Cheng to create an exclusive animated version for the NFTs.

“Viverse is a world of infinite new experiences where people, regardless of interest or age, can discover their favourite content no matter which device or platform they use,” said Joseph Lin, Vice President of the Content and Platform Department at HTC. “We are honoured to partner with Ming Hwa Yuan Arts and Culture Group, which has a history of nearly 100 years, to bring the iconic IP Zheng ZhiLong, The Pirate King of Formosa into Viverse. In addition, we have also collaborated with Future-Digi to launch The Pirate King of Formosa NFT Pack on Vive Bytes, helping preserve the art of Taiwanese opera forever on the blockchain and allowing it to be passed down from generation to generation. We will continue to work with Ming Hua Yuan to expand the Taiwanese opera metaverse.”

The Pirate King of Formosa NFT Pack will be available via the Vive Bytes platform from 10th April 2022 from 12:30 pm CST. Minted on the Polygon blockchain, 2,500 packs will be made available priced at NT$299, 2000 purchasable via credit card from Vive Bytes with 500 through redemption codes bought via 7-11 ibon channels.

  • A total of 23 different NFT designs will be available with each pack containing two randomly selected NFTs, at least one of which will be an NFT of Sun Tsui Feng
    • 2 animated versions, exclusively created by Wei Tsung-Cheng, will be available
    • 20 different appearances of the characters, as redesigned by HTC, will be available. This includes:
      • 3 different styles of the main male character played by renowned Taiwanese opera actress Sun Tsui Feng, and 2 different styles of the main female character
      • 4 different facial expressions of each style will be available
    • 1 hidden version of the “King Card” featuring the guffaw of the pirate king will be available and will be limited to 250 pieces
The Pirate King of Formosa
The Pirate King of Formosa. Image credit Vive Bytes

“Taiwanese opera is not exclusive to any generation. We look forward to leveraging The Pirate King of Formosa NFT Pack NFT Pack and the upcoming virtual Taiwanese opera experiences to let younger generations learn the value of traditional arts and explore this new form of Taiwanese opera in the metaverse. We hope to get the ball rolling for traditional arts to enter the metaverse, and break new ground for the traditional art industry in Taiwan,” adds Chen Chao-Hsien, CEO of Ming Hwa Yuan Arts and Culture Group.

Additionally, a virtual theme park of The Pirate King of Formosa will be launched by Vive Connect, supporting VR and non-VR devices, with plans to link to Vive Bytes in the future. This will enable users to display their NFT collections in personal showrooms.

As HTC continues to explore new ways of combining VR and Web3 technology, gmw3 will keep you updated.

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Step Into HTC Vive’s New Viverse Metaverse Today

Last week HTC Vive presented its vision for the metaverse in a short video presentation and let’s just say it wasn’t exactly well-received. With Mobile World Congress 2022 (MWC) opening its doors for the first time in a while today, Vive has officially unveiled Viverse and the actual components that’ll contribute to the platform.

Viverse - Freemode

Much like Viveport, Viverse will be a hardware-agnostic platform, so you can enjoy it in virtual reality on a device like the new Vive Flow, on a PC, a tablet or even your smartphone. Accessing Viverse is as easy as opening up a browser, and that’s exactly how attendees at MWC have been demoing it.

Key to accessing Viverse is Vive Browser and Vive Connect. As you might expect, Vive Browser is a new VR-based web browser that supports Web3 login, WebXR and WebAssembly, whilst Vive Connect serves as a cross-platform hub from where you can access the various worlds, games and apps that make up Viverse. Another important aspect is Vive Guardian, a tool specific to Vive Flow so that parents, guardians and teachers can control what youngsters view using the device.

As mentioned, Viverse has been designed around an open ecosystem so HTC Vive has partnered with the likes of Engage, VRChat, Museum of Other Realities, and more. And what would a metaverse platform be without avatars and crypto? The new Vive Avatar tool allows the creation of one singular avatar to be used across the Viverse sphere plus you can manage and store NFTs and digital assets using WalletConnect.

Viverse

“Viverse is the next chapter of our Vive Reality vision. Vive is our brand and means ‘life’, and Verse refers to the chapters of life. Viverse provides seamless experiences, reachable on any device, anywhere, and is enabled by the virtual and augmented reality, high-speed connectivity, AI, and blockchain technologies that HTC has invested in for several years. We invite partners to join us on his fantastic journey to the internet of presence,” said Cher Wang, Co-Founder and Chairwoman at HTC in a statement. 

You can access Viverse today via an Android device or select HTC Vive headsets like Vive Flow. For continued updates on the metaverse, keep reading gmw3.

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HTC’s Vision of the Metaverse is Heavy on Buzzwords, Light on Substance

HTC released a video showing off its vision of the metaverse, a reflection of what the company thinks virtual spaces will look like in the near future. And… it’s not a great look.

Some ideas are inevitable. Slim and light XR glasses capable of fluidly serving up novel and meaningful interactions are basically the holy grail in tech right now, with Apple, Meta, Google, Qualcomm, and many more laying down the groundwork to one day make them a reality. When that will happen, no one can say.

HTC’s most recent concept video isn’t at fault for shooting for the stars. It is, after all, only a showcase for what should be outwardly neat concepts, but it unfortunately manages to land pretty hard on its face as it wildly strings together some of its favorite buzzwords and concepts that feel plucked straight from trending hashtags. It feels, well, like a parody, raising the question of whether HTC’s drably conventional futurism is actually doing more harm than good.

Meta: A Polarizing Trendsetter

Add VR, AR, and AI together and you have the fundamental recipe for the metaverse. That’s at least what Meta laid out in its futuristic concept video as it makes its transition from traditional social networks to a self-described “metaverse company.”

Meta’s video, which it released during its Connect developer conference in October, is less a roadmap and more a marketing barrage—like a hundred Magic Leap ‘whale’ moments smooshed into one.

It’s supposed to get you excited, but also open up a range of interactions to an audience that may have heard of AR or VR, but may not really know what either means functionally.

Okay, a playdough-faced Mark Zuckerberg isn’t exactly what dreams are made of, but you have to give credit where credit is due: it looks pretty amazing, even if the smug, corporate cleanliness of it all doesn’t more than resemble the beginning of a Black Mirror episode. It at least makes the effort to demonstrate that the metaverse will one day let you do almost anything you can imagine.

Follow the Leader

Now toss in some of HTC’s favorite concepts from the last few years: 5G, blockchain, sprinkle in some NFTs, reduce the production budget by a whole bunch and you’ve got a treacly sweet dollar store knock-off of Meta’s hype video that feels like it’s more concerned with lining up the right buzzwords than offering an honest-to-goodness vision of the future.

Yes, we know the future will be cool, but is the future… VIVERSE? You be the judge.

That’s not only my hot take. YouTube may have removed the counter on its ‘dislike’ button, but a simple browser extension reveals that HTC’s video is currently sitting around a 3:1 dislike ratio, which isn’t typical for any of the company’s videos. You might chalk that up to residual metaverse hate, courtesy of Meta and not HTC itself, but… well, that should have been preventable by not making a remarkably worse, less demonstrative version.

What’s confusing—besides how you actually pronounce ‘VIVERSE’, or that the future is somehow just a standard version of VIVE XR Suite, or that you have to press a ‘CHEERS’ button to drink, or that you pay for a glass of wine in your house with Bitcoin, or that you can actually hug an entirely photoreal version of your grandma then buy her a cat NFT and she doesn’t even ask why the hell you would waste your money on that… sorry, lost myself there—the confusing thing is how HTC plans on creating this future for anyone, let alone the more outwardly mature, less gaming-focused enterprise segment it’s been courting the past few years.

To think, HTC and Oculus were once competitors back in the early days of consumer VR. Since the launch of Quest in 2019 though, HTC has progressively shied away from appealing to consumers outside of China because it didn’t (more likely couldn’t) invest the same heaps of cash that Meta has in a standalone app ecosystem for its own standalone Focus headsets. Ever since, it’s been pumping out higher-cost headsets for enterprise and arcades outside of China, and quietly maintaining its own PC VR app store Viveport (which has a worse selection of games than Steam, but at a subscription price so you can actually play a bunch of great VR games at a significantly cheaper price than buying them individually).

But until we see HTC more broadly appeal to consumers though with its hardware and standalone app ecosystem, it’s hard to take the company’s vision of the metaverse any more seriously than its NFT marketplace—a quickly produced, low upkeep project that is more flash than boom. And that’s a sad thought for a company that still has the ability to deliver legitimately great VR hardware, and simultaneously hasn’t perpetrated a steady stream of privacy scandals over the years. The Vive XR Suite isn’t bad either, but it’s not the future—it’s the now.

Granted, these perfectly integrated XR futures aren’t coming anytime soon, and no one company will likely be able to make them a reality alone—no matter how slick the hype video, or how buzzy the word. Still, that doesn’t mean the immersive web of tomorrow will be a neutral playground that all companies are equally building towards. If the mobile market is any indication, we can at least expect to see early efforts divided along product ecosystems.

And in the meantime, even if the top headset producers imbue their next device with all of the wishlist items, like eye-tracking, facial haptics, varifocal lenses, all-day batteries, wide FOV displays—it’s probable that none of these things will impress anyone if they aren’t already paying attention to the space. This may mean most people are still a few device generations away from getting their first VR headset, and decidedly more for an AR headset.

So you might ask, what exactly is HTC and Meta selling with these far out concept videos? It actually may be more about what they’re buying: time.

Do you think these sort of concept videos do more harm than good? Let us know your thoughts below.

The post HTC’s Vision of the Metaverse is Heavy on Buzzwords, Light on Substance appeared first on Road to VR.

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HTC’s Viverse Blunder, Minecraft Mods On Quest & Green Hell VR Impressions – VR Gamescast

This week on the VR Gamescast we’re talking Minecraft mods on Quest and that Viverse trailer. You know the one.

Join us at 5pm UK/12pm ET/9am PT!

Harry and Jamie are back in the Upload Studio to break down the week’s news and previews. Kicking things off, we dissect that strange and really rather awful Viveverse trailer from HTC and try to make some sense of it. Do we really want to buy virtual cat art? And how the heck are you meant to taste virtual wine?

Elsewhere we’ve got the latest headlines. There’s more VR mod madness in the form of Minecraft: Java Edition coming unofficially to Quest and a teaser for the Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod. Plus we dive into the news that Coatsink is working on a PSVR 2 launch title, discussing what it could possible be. Finally there’s the full reveal of After The Fall’s Frontrunner season. Is it enough to satisfy fans and bring other players back into the fold?

Over in the impressions, we’ve played the Steam Next Fest demo of Green Hell VR. Is the jungle-set survival game living up to its potential? Jamie gives his thoughts.

The VR Gamescast comes your way every week, usually at 5pm UK/12pm ET/9am PT on a Thursday. Make sure to join the premiered video on YouTube, or head to a podcast service of your choice to listen to the audio version. We’ll see you next week!

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HTC Sees Backlash Over Bizarre ‘Viverse’ Concept Trailer

HTC revealed its vision for the future metaverse, branded ‘Viverse’, and the internet did not like it.

In a now-pinned tweet, the Vive Twitter account yesterday posted a concept for a virtual ecosystem split across both augmented and virtual reality hardware labeled as Viverse. It suggested this platform would deliver a “future where the impossible becomes possible.”

The video itself proposed several broad possibilities for Viverse, from graspable concepts like working out at the gym with your performance displayed on virtual overlays to more outlandish ideas like attending virtual wine tasting sessions and then purchasing said wine using bitcoin. Oh, and there’s of course a bit where a young woman buys an NFT of the ‘Meowna Lisa’ (which is exactly what it sounds like) for her grandma.

Check it out in the video below. And, just in case you were wondering, no, that’s not a typo. It’s Viverse, not Viveverse.

HTC’s Viverse Revealed

It’s a strange and unspecific video that seems to cut between actual HTC products like the Vive Sync collaboration platform and currently non-existent concepts, with no real outline for how the company plans to actually deliver any of this in the future. How, exactly, are you meant to taste virtual wine? Why would users want to interact with NFTs in Viverse when reaction to them in the real world has been so strong that many companies have rolled back and distanced themselves from the concept?

Unsurprisingly, many Twitter replies were less than enthusiastic about the company’s vision.

The video itself has seen over 120,000 views but less than 200 likes (YouTube no longer shows dislikes).

HTC isn’t the only company to take heat for its potential vision of the metaverse, of course. Mark Zuckerberg’s protracted explanation of why we’d all want a digital lifestyle from last year’s Connect has seen similar criticsm. Just last week, Meta pushed that vision with its Super Bowl TV spot before delivering an underwhelming Foo Fighters performance inside social VR that many couldn’t even get into.

Certainly, it seems like these companies have a long way to go before they can convince many people of the potential uses of a metaverse.

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Viverse Presents HTC Vive’s Vision of the Metaverse

Just like a multitude of other tech companies HTC Vive is getting into the metaverse through a range of initiatives like its previously revealed NFT marketplace Vive Bytes. Today, HTC Vive has teased its vision of the metaverse – or Viverse – with a new trailer jumping between several environments and virtual use cases.

Viverse

Just like every other corporate vision of the metaverse, HTC’s world is a dynamic place where you can have work meetings, talk to your family, attend events and visit museums and art galleries, and, of course, buy stuff. As you’d expect, Viverse contains plenty of nods to HTC Vive’s current product lineup, from its hardware offerings to software solutions.

Early on there’s a plug for Vive Sync, the virtual meeting platform that forms part of the Vive XR Suite. Here you get a notification of upcoming meetings in beautifully barren offices, even the Vive Focus 3 standalone headset makes a brief appearance.

It can’t all be work and no play so there’s a virtual wine tasting experience you could enjoy with friends. While you’re not going to taste the digital bottle of plonk in your hands it showcases the idea that you could then order a real bottle for yourself using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Crypto continues to play a role further on when heading to a gallery visit where you can buy an NFT of the image you’re looking at.

Viverse

Once again, this is a nod to both Vive Bytes and Viveport’s online exhibition for Yamamoto’s Step Into Cat Art. No metaverse is complete without at least one of two cat pictures, with the Viverse demo highlighting the purchase of Yamamoto’s Meowna Lisa NFT using Ethereum.

Ultimately though, Viverse is a marketing vision for something that’s currently fragmented. Much like Meta and its various Horizon-branded apps, HTC Vive’s XR Suite, Viveport and Vive Bytes aren’t quite a homogenous whole – it also doesn’t help that Vive’s hardware lineup is just all over the place.

Viverse looks pretty but it still feels a long way off. For more metaverse coverage, keep reading gmw3.