How to dance in vrchat

[Discussion] I Learned How to Dance Because of VRChat [Story] : VRchat

This story is about how VRChat has fundamentally changed me as a person. It's a long one, but I hope you read it anyway. Perhaps it will inspire you to start dancing.

I should preface this by saying that I've never danced or felt rhythm properly in my life before this game. The idea of moving my body to music, even by myself, made me anxious enough to not even bother trying.

I started playing VRChat one year ago, November of 2017. I'd purchased an Oculus Rift, and the very same night, I downloaded VRChat since it was free on Steam. Fast forwarding about 4 months past the avatar creating obsession, I found myself at the old Void Club around midnight. That night I was feeling happy that I'd made a new avatar and went onto the dance floor. The music was great, my genre for sure.

My IRL door was locked, I was fully immersed in VR, and I started to experiment with moving my body to the beat. I didn't think much of it, I was simply in a quiet Void Club instance, alone on the dance floor with good songs. As I didn't have a Vive or trackers, I simply moved my arms and head to the music. I found it strangely pleasant to move along with the songs and eventually I closed my eyes. After this point, It felt like I began to melt into the music and I felt myself move without much thought or care. It was very pleasant.

An hour or two passed and I hardly noticed. I had fallen into a flow and couldn't stop. At some point I had the realization that my movements were actually a form of geometry. My hands traced invisible lines and shapes into the space around me in sync with the songs. For the first time, I felt myself moving to the rhythm of music, and I loved it.

I stayed in that instance until early in the morning. I enjoyed it so much that I worked up a good sweat. After going to sleep far later than I should have, I found myself drawn to the same old Void Club the next night. I was looking for that same great feeling I'd had the night before. It took 15 or so minutes until it happened, but once again, my eyes closed and my body was moving with the music again. I didn't know if it looked bad or good, I only knew that my body was tracing patterns into the space around me in tune with the music, and I loved it.

I kept this up for a week or so, until one day somebody with full body tracking joined me on the dance floor. Back then this was really rare to see. They had unbelievable freedom of movement and it was obvious to me how much clearer their movements were than mine. It demotivated me somewhat to know that my Oculus Rift couldn't match the amazing movements they were showing. I truly admired how cool they looked and how fun it was to watch them. So a few days after that, I convinced myself to make a scary big purchase. A week or so later I had a Vive, body trackers, and the straps to go with them.

Of course purchasing full body trackers doesn't suddenly make you good at dancing. In fact, at this point, I was not very good at all. Even still, I went to a VR party with some friends at a lesser known rave club and discovered that a good friend of mine, who also had full body tracking, was an excellent dancer! I stared closely at his feet as they moved, trying to learn something. Later I asked him how he got so good, and he directed me toward a Youtube video tutorial on Footwork. The video featured over 20 leg dances and broke them down step by step. To say I studied this video would be an understatement.

I picked the first move the video showed. Out of my seat, I slowly and sloppily mimicked the movements I saw. After 30 minutes or so, my sedentary legs had built up the memory to do the Running Man. Essentially, the basic move in any shuffle dance. I was super excited that I now had a real dance move under my belt. I knew this was going to be a big step in my enjoyment of dance, as I could really have some form of rhythm in my legs.

I hit the dance floor once again and found myself loving the Running Man. It was simple, flashy, and most of all, fun. At this point it became quicker to get into the groove of the music. It still took 10 minutes or so, but I didn't need to close my eyes to feel the rhythm. Though of course, it always helps. People began to compliment my dancing at this point, which boosted my confidence a lot and made me feel that I was making real progress. Even though I had never intended to do so the first night that I'd randomly entered to the Void Club, I was now fully committed to becoming a genuinely good dancer.

Over the next several weeks I continued to go to the Void Club, practicing my moves and watching the Club itself undergo major aesthetic changes. The creator of the club added a nicely optimized screen and I was able to see myself dance and critique my movements easily. At the same time, I was copying the same Footwork tutorial step by step for multiple other moves. It was at this point I realized that shuffle dancing was my absolute favorite. I had danced with the Running Man so much that it began to get looser and more flexible. I started to experiment with it and found small modifications to throw in that spiced things up and made it more interesting.

I started to feel like I had learned this big secret to dancing. That you build up a mental library of different dance movements, and you smoothly string them together to create a bigger whole. I began learning many different moves and modifiers to the ones I already knew until I could no longer remember all of them easily, and instead found that they would slip out and appear randomly throughout my dances as I lost myself to the music. It was some time around this point that I truly felt I had become a decent dancer.

More months passed and I continued to dance in VR, though I had never dared to try it without my headset on. My brother, a smaller Twitch streamer, decided to go to Twitchcon, and I went with him. After day one of Twitchcon, there was an after-party at around 9 P.M. Unexpectedly, there was a massive concert-style stage with fantastic light shows, excellent DJs, and music even better than what I'd heard in VR. I approached the stage with some friends and felt the rhythm throughout my body. Unfortunately, the same old anxiety gripped me, and kept my movements small, so as not to be noticed. So I did what any sane person would do to quell their fears. I drank a bunch of alcohol.

In no time at all, my nervousness disappeared and my body flowed naturally even with tons of people crowding around me. Nearby, two people started a dance-off and a circle of people opened up around them. Eventually more people jumped into the circle and showed off their moves. I finally said enough is enough and jumped into it myself. For the first time I felt the nervousness fade away and I began to dance in front of the crowd. I nailed every move, went hard at the bass drop, and according to my friends, (biased as they are), I put the others in the circle to shame. My brother had never seen me dance before, and was pretty surprised that I had the skill to dance at all, let alone pretty well. The rest of the night, I danced with other people, sweat my ass off, and left my friends and family surprised to see that I had secretly been practicing dance for over half a year.

After returning, I felt truly confident in my ability and discovered that I had no anxiety at all about dancing. In fact, the opposite was now true. I loved it! I wanted to show others the amazingly fun skill I had learned. I still continue practicing and learning to dance even today, as I know there's lots more to learn. However, when I go to the Void Club now, I dance for not just myself, but for the others who enjoy watching me, just as I enjoyed watching the full body dancer who convinced me to take the plunge.

Dancing is something I never thought I would do, let alone be passionate about. I'm here today to tell you that VRChat has changed my life and I never want to go back. I love losing myself to rhythm, moving to the music, discovering new patterns, and surprising people with this skill. I won't bother with posting a self-advertising dance clip, but if you join a public Void Club late at night, look for the trusted user, Zhooby.

Thank you for reading my story. I hope it might inspire you to start dancing too.

Breakdance Battles in VRChat Are Connecting People Across the Globe

If you aren’t paying close attention to VR, you’d have no idea that some insanely futuristic stuff is already happening today. Case in point: VRChat is host to a growing community of people strapping on motion-trackers to have live dance battles in virtual reality.

Yes it looks pretty janky at times, and the hardware is surely a pain to strap on, but there’s no denying we’re living in the future when people are donning headsets, stepping into anime avatars, and breakdancing with each other in virtual reality.

These are real people, connected virtually from around the world, actually performing these dance moves in real-time. Dance battles like these have been cropping up in VRChat, a social VR application which has embraced both full-body motion tracking and an ‘anything goes’ approach to avatars; the culmination of which has led to this unbridled level of digital self-expression.

To pull off the full-body dance moves in VR, prolific VRChat dancer Makoto from South Korea uses an HTC Vive headset with wireless add-on, Index controllers around his wrists, and Vive Trackers on his waist and feet.

#Dance #VR #VRChat

VR VIVE FullBodyTrekking 착용 현실 브레이크댄스 영상 :)) … 😎

VR VIVE FullBodyTrekking wearing reality breakdance video :)) … 😎

VR VIVE FullBodyTrekking着リアリティブレイクダンス映像:)）…😎 pic.twitter.com/rs0xJrZXEk

— MAKOTO 🇰🇷 (@MAKOTO_VR) November 11, 2020

Dancing in VRChat has been a thing from the outset, from simple spontaneous dance parties to players going as far as doing actual pole dancing in virtual reality.

Communities are beginning to form around these activities, with organizers coordinating virtual get-togethers, mentorship, and competition, connecting people from across the globe who would almost certainly not have met otherwise.

The International Dance Association (IDA) is one such organization. The group has hosted a series of tournament-style dance battles with judges and prizes; the IDA helpfully explained the format of one of its events last year, using VRChat, naturally:

The next BIG #VRCHAT #Dance #Battle event is here! Since the 2v2 battles back in April, we haven't seen the dancers of IDA really go at it on the battle grounds. Everyone has been practicing and waiting for the next chance to test their skills again. That time is now @htcvive #vr pic.twitter.com/3TAfOI0asb

— IDA OFFICIAL (@IDA_VRC) August 26, 2020

Dancing in VR is greatly enhanced by motion-capture accessories, which means that there’s still a significant barrier to entry given the cost of buying additional accessories for full body tracking. Luckily there’s already some competition brewing on that front, alongside increasingly more affordable VR headsets.

On the software side, improvements in avatar technology will also enhance the experience. Makoto, the dancer from South Korea, showed off his dancing skills in another social VR application, Neos VR, which replicates his movements in virtual reality more realistically:

#VR #NeosVR #Dance @JJFX_MULTIMEDIA Thanks for the video!

NeosVR 브레이크 댄스 가볍게 춰봤습니다 .

I played NeosVR break dance lightly.

NeosVRブレイクダンス軽く踊ってみました。 pic.twitter.com/6FnZSIfNEg

— MAKOTO 🇰🇷 (@MAKOTO_VR) December 4, 2020

While such communities are still fledgling, the grass-roots dancing movement in VRChat and beyond is yet another example of VR’s ability to remotely connect people in truly unique ways. As the technology gets better and cheaper, you can bet that this and other unforeseen VR use-cases will continue to emerge.

VR at the current time. Opinion - VR / AR / MR on DTF

So to speak in light of the latest news.

335 views

I have always been interested in technology, since its first reappearance, in the form in which we have it now. I'm a gamer in general and love everything new.

Before that, there was a different experience, from the first oculuses to any self-stick made from a shit phone and sticks, but everything is somehow on the run and for five minutes. It was clear what it was, the potential was clear, but everything was not right. Technical flaws interfere with immersion. Even now, when the format in terms of iron implementation is almost out of diapers, it's still dull here, there is not enough viewing angle, FPS, resolution...

Now I'm playing in VR taken to drive from a friend. This is no longer a new and top HTC Vive helmet, but it is quite good, with good tracking and all that. You can form an opinion. I play Alyx.

Despite the still present technical limitations in terms of picture and optics, there is an immersive effect.

Feelings

This is a completely new gaming experience that has not been seen for a long time. If anyone remembers the history of the development of games and followed it, remember those delights when dynamic light appeared, physics, interaction with objects, something could be broken, make a hole in the wall, tear off the leg of the enemy and it was wow. Here VR is wow from the category of interaction with the world. Torn off arms and legs in Soldiers of Fortune, destructibility in Redaction, a flashlight in Doom, this is all from the same series of emotions.

Alix is definitely a great tech demo. When she gives you a flashlight, darkness and enemies in this darkness, and still few ammo and enemies to shoot and reload weapons with your hands, it's cool. If there is a mod for Doom 3, I think you can crap there, you have to look. Firstly, games have not scared me so much for a long time and did not take me by surprise. And secondly, for a long time they did not evoke such emotions at all. Even games have not surprised me for a long time with some kind of epic events in the form of explosions or total destruction. It's all here and you are literally in the middle of the action.

When they gave you grenades for the first time in Alix

A separate story, open skirmishes with groups of enemies. When a shelter is literally a shelter for which you need to hide your fat ass, because of them you can look out, stick out your hand with a gun and shoot and this is physical and ! Plus inducing fear of heights, which works. No, that's not how it WORKS!

it's you and your fat ass hiding behind a virtual hideout

Moment of interaction

After leaving the game, I began to catch myself thinking that sitting at the computer, I miss this native interaction, a level higher than the touchscreen. I want to poke my fingers into the icon, drag the folder, control some kind of gesture. You seem to twitch in this direction, but you understand that this is impossible here and it is not clear how. That is, it is addictive and asks to be used not only in games, as it is close to natural.

I want like Johnny. He's lying, of course, VR porn is pumping...

For hardware

Questions to iron. Is it worth experiencing this gaming experience, fully, at home, without rushing anywhere? Definitely yes.

Is this experience worth the current price of top-end hardware? And we need a helmet and a computer that can pull it all. In my opinion, no. Collectively, costs versus potential gaming experience.

What to buy?

The best price now is for all sorts of quest 2 and pico 4, as I was recently told. But they are still technically limited in terms of the implementation of optics, the quality of the screens, the landing itself on the head. And non-alternative solutions cost some unrealistic money.

Is she your/mine's fish? dreams...

There isn't much quality content either, and it doesn't appear as fast as it did in the early days of the VR craze. And it all works far from how Alix works, far from it.

Still, what about the money?

My opinion. You can already take it if you are ready to spend 300-400 dollars on cool fun entertainment.

It is worth taking a self-contained helmet so that you can take it with you and not depend on the place and not be tied to the installation of trackers. As entertainment in the company on the road, just super. And in this format, the gameplay is more interesting than fierce graphene, which unties us from nitpicking about graphics and the need to have a powerful computer. But at the same time, be able to play via wifi or on a rope from a computer in w s games, if the computer drags.

Fierce top-end VR for a lot of money, if you don’t know what it is yet and are not a direct fan of technology, you definitely don’t need it if you are rational about spending.

richly expensive, but there are better ... 200tr from you, do not forget to buy a compik

What about Sony?

VR from Sony, he's. .. ninnuzhon. This is an overprice, squeezed into an even narrower box of content. I wouldn't buy it even if I had a prefix and didn't have a computer. It's not worth it. There will be one game, Horizon and everything else is like an oculus. It’s better then to take quest 2, there is already only a wagon for it, a full store, over the edge, plus those who are short of money can steal. I am against theft, but for opportunities. And wank with VPN and regions awaits you here and there, so why pay more for a limited solution. Especially if you remember how Sony did with its first helmet, releasing a dozen games and it's good ... abandoned.

Output

Today, the price for the experience and the feelings that you get when buying, has become acceptable. The lower threshold of what it makes sense to spend money on has become achievable. You can take.

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Srach in the comments is welcome, I created it. =)

work, 3D worlds, events, sex, games / Sudo Null IT News record surge in users.

And this is not a one-time accident, Quest 2 generally sells much better than all VR helmets before it. It does not require a connection to a computer and costs only $300, and ultimately makes VR mainstream.

What is it, is Zuckerberg right that we are all about to move into the metaverse? I’m not sure: many of the purchased helmets are gathering dust on the shelves, no one knows what the “metaverse” is, and talking about the future is guesswork. But from the discussions about the future, I see that many do not really understand even the present. Therefore, since VR is taking off, I decided to paint: what are people doing there already now?

Important disclaimers:

The text is long, but consists of independent parts, you can choose the most interesting one in the table of contents and read only it.
Please note that flat screenshots do not convey VR well.
I am an enthusiast, any of my delights divide by two.
I only have Quest 2, I can misunderstand something about other helmets.
I don't even have a Windows computer, so I know about things that require Windows mostly from hearsay.

Work
Virtual worlds
events
Sex
Games
Conclusions

Work

What can be played for a long time, but is it possible to be productive there? Zuckerberg in his presentations promises a virtual office of the future, where you can work yourself and communicate with colleagues. And what about the present with both?

Work alone

Applications Immersed and Virtual Desktop allows you to display desktops in VR from your computer. Why is this, if you can just work at the computer itself? In our blog, we translated the text of a person who has been working at Immersed for several years. He writes that he has become more productive by creating several giant virtual screens “around him”.

His text is very inspired. But many object that you can’t sit out in VR for a long time, and the resolution of helmets is still insufficient for comfortable work. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle: someone can really sit in VR only in fits and starts, and someone can have as many norms as they like.

I used both Immersed and Virtual Desktop extensively (I didn't spend the whole day doing this, but I did for more than two hours in a row). Let's say now you are reading a text half written in VR:

Recursion such a recursion

My personal results are as follows:

I don't feel any discomfort from prolonged use.
But I feel the lack of resolution: the characters are quite readable, but after a 5K display it is sad to see their pixelation.
I did not use many virtual screens, it turned out to be easier for me to switch between windows than to carefully hang them on different sides of my head.
On the other hand, I felt another pleasing effect: when you make a “huge” screen located far from you in the virtual space (like in a movie theater), your eyes relax in their own way, because the point of convergence goes into the distance.
And I saw the main advantage in this: in such an environment, I better abstract from the superfluous and concentrate. There is a specific task in front of me and some kind of background around, but there is nothing else.

In the end, I decided that this is not suitable for me as the main mode of operation, but for the situation "you need to focus on a particularly important task, ignoring everything else."

Working with other people

There is a well-known difficulty with telecommuting: it does not allow you to “sit next to me in a meeting room” and “grind at the cooler”, the physical presence in one room cannot be completely replaced by a video call.

Well, many have decided: since VR is about the feeling of presence, let's make a meeting there! There are already a number of such applications, including Horizon Workrooms by Meta. Users gather there in the form of 3D avatars and can chat, draw on the board, share their usual screen with others.

There is already a detailed post on Habré from a person who has been practicing such work calls for six months. I could not check so deeply simply because my colleagues did not have VR helmets. But I tested Workrooms with @Niketas, and with colleagues I tried the hybrid mode (in which someone connects to a meeting from a regular computer, and a flat screen with it floats in a VR meeting room).

Virtual Nikita looks like a schoolboy (that is, everything is like in life)

My results are:

The bad news is that 3D cartoon avatars have poorer facial expressions than human ones, so compared to Zoom there is some loss. I would not like to talk about something very important or personal.
And the good thing is that I really experienced the feeling of presence. Not at all to the extent of “complete replacement of offline”, but what is the advantage over Zoom, I understood well.
And one more thing. Screenshots of Meta VR apps often draw hate in the spirit of "what are those graphics from the 90s with legless creatures. " So: although it may look stupid in the screenshots, in practice it does not interfere (at least for me). When a 3D avatar speaks in a familiar voice, you perceive it as a familiar one, abstracting from the cartoonishness. And the volume effect and spatial audio (when you hear a person where he “is”) affect the sensations much more than the absence of legs.

So, if all my colleagues had helmets, I would not call for transferring every single phone call to VR, but I would definitely be happy to spend some of them this way.

Also in VR, they are trying to simplify collaborative 3D modeling. The application ShapesXR invites you to create 3D things right in VR together with colleagues, waving controllers in space, and then call your boss/customer there to show and discuss the result. I don't know enough about the topic to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach, but intuitively it seems that this may be suitable for prototyping.

General conclusion on work

Firstly, everything is very individual: someone absolutely cannot work like that, but someone is delighted. So it's better to try once than read a hundred times on Habré.

And secondly, it is unlikely that all of humanity will begin to work in helmets, but I think that the situation “an acquaintance / colleague uses a helmet at work” will become familiar to Habravchan. Especially when the screen resolution increases.

Virtual worlds

VR-helmets help to “feel like you are somewhere” (at least in real London, even in fictional Mordor). This came in handy in games, but new places are interesting to people in and of themselves. And people are interested in talking. Therefore, a whole layer of VR is dedicated to “being somewhere” and “with someone”. What does it include?

Virtual worlds alone

The simplest is YouTube. There are already quite a few 360-degree videos, so in a VR helmet you can rotate your head even under water, even flying over Dubai.

And in the VR180 format, you rotate your head only within 180 degrees (it's even more convenient), but everything is filmed with a camera with two lenses - and the helmet gives different images to the eyes, creating a three-dimensional effect. Therefore, the video with the capybara impressed me more than the capybara in a real zoo: the real one was in the distance and it was hard to see it, but in VR it’s as if you reach out and touch it. After that, I wanted to get a VR180-camera for shooting on vacation, so that later I could be inside my vacation again.

Insta360 EVO works like a 360-degree camera when folded, and like a VR180 when unfolded. But of the applications, the “real” (that is, interactive) ones are more interesting, which put you in a 3D model of some place: on the ISS , in Machu Picchu , in the Anne Frank family shelter . Soaring around the ISS with your hands on the rails is a completely different experience than seeing photographs. It used to be an abstract thing in orbit for me, but now it's like a familiar place. It is a pity that so far I have met few successful such applications.

"Walking" around Manchester in Wander

I also love the Wander app, which puts you "inside" Google's Street View panoramas, allowing you to roam around the world like that. Yes, everything is static there, without sound and 3D effect - there is little in common with real walks. But when I asked a friend who moved to London for his address and began to “walk” around his district in panoramas, I got a favorite pub that I had never been to: the one that regularly “passed” by was enough to become related.

Virtual worlds with other people

"Being somewhere" is even more interesting in the company. The aforementioned Wander has a social mode, when one user switches panoramas around for several at once, while you can communicate by voice and poke your fingers. And people conduct “excursions” for each other: the Turk showed me his city, I told him Nevsky Prospekt, both liked it. Some "VR-tourists" collect whole collections of interesting places in this way.

There is also a "virtual cinema" Bigscreen for sharing video. Users in the form of a 3D avatar find themselves in a virtual room, the host displays something on the screen, and you can chat under it, move around the room, throw popcorn. So you can watch a movie together with friends (or with Internet strangers), cheer during a match, laugh at stand-up. Or do something else that you can think of yourself: some people sing along with karaoke versions of songs, even though the network delay interferes.

Bigscreen has selfie sticks

But the main thing in the “be with someone” genre is metaworld apps: VRChat , AltspaceVR , Horizon Worlds , Rec Room . These are "sandboxes" where you can create 3D worlds and meet in them, and for what - it's up to the users to decide. There are specialized worlds (for example, for playing chess), but in most they just “hang out”, communicating by voice.

What did it lead to? When you first launch VRChat and enter the popular world of The Black Cat, you think it's no good. All around, American schoolchildren in the images of monsters, memes and furries squeal loudly and swear. Constructive communication is difficult to find, and the world offers nothing else. I think this is where many people close VRChat in horror and put an end to all metaworlds. But I think it's like opening a random fludo chat in Telegram and deciding that the whole Telegram is terrible because of it.

Let's try to find Russian-speaking people here. Among them, the VRChat-world "Pyaterochka" is popular, imitating a Russian courtyard with a store of the same name. And there, at first, it is easy to get stuck on the world itself, because it is worked out in detail (up to the “swan from a tire”) and is interactive in some places (you can ride a cat, sit on a swing, scan goods at the checkout).

An excellent example of housing office art, in my opinion

This is already interesting. But you won’t scan goods for an hour in a row, then it remains to communicate again. How might communication in Pyaterochka look like? I'll give you an example. I see a giant caterpillar in the yard with the name Ivanych, who in an adult male voice scolds everyone with anime avatars (“you are a disgrace to your family with such an appearance”). A character appears nearby, explaining in English that he is a Swede and has come to learn Russian. Ivanych angrily declares in broken English that since Sweden is next to Finland, everyone there loves Hitler. Then, out of harm's way, I drag the Swede to the store and help him figure out how to pronounce the inscription "Chilled Meat" - this turns out to be an interesting activity for both of us.

This all sounds crazy (what else can you expect from an app that brought Ugandan knuckles to the world). But at the same time, in the virtual world, I felt a very real interaction. Somewhere in Sweden lives a very real person, I really helped him learn something interesting, he really thanks for it. And I am grateful to VR for this experience: where else could I explain to a Swede the difference between the letters “e” and “ё”, poking my hand at the store labels?

I wonder if the Pyaterochka network is aware of its VR version.

There is a lot of such funny game. Is it possible to find "normal communication"? In my opinion, it’s like in life: with such a request, it’s logical not to go to a random playground, but to communicate with existing acquaintances or find new ones of interest. And then it can be just as interesting in VRChat as with a good offline company. Together you can at least explore different worlds, at least discuss Dostoevsky, at least play Cards Against Humanity, at least dance - there’s something for everyone.

In my experience, a surprising amount of the social from offline is transferred here: for example, it is impolite to stand close to someone else's avatar, this can be psychologically felt as an invasion of personal space. Or here is an episode seen: a girl sings beautifully, people gather around to listen, two of them begin to talk, and they hiss at them “step aside with your conversations, you are in the way.” Of course, there are also differences (you can’t look into your eyes here), but in general, the feeling of “spent time with people” quite arises.

As a result, while someone says “people don't want to socialize in the metaverse”, many already are constantly socializing there, and for them this is no less important component of life than offline meetings. And for some, even more important: for example, for people who, for health reasons, rarely leave the house. In my opinion, to argue in 2022 that communication in VR is “fake” and people don’t need it is like when in 2000 they argued that everything on the Internet is fake.

The most obvious fact is that there are already married couples who met in VRChat. Moreover, some of them, due to the pandemic, could not fly to each other for a long time, that is, they had serious relationships in VR without an offline component at all. They even shot a documentary about this right inside VRChat:

And in long-distance relationships, VR helps better than the usual online: here you can “go on a date to the movies” or “pat on the head” (this begs the question about sex, which will be discussed below).

General conclusion on virtual worlds

Do virtual "journeys" replace real ones? Of course not, I don't want to spend my summer vacation in VR. But can VR tourism be any more interesting than looking at walls from vacation to vacation? In my opinion, quite.

Does virtual communication replace conventional communication? I am not suggesting canceling real meetings with friends. But if, for example, those who want to meet are in different cities, then VR gives a lot that a video call does not.

Events

This overlaps with the previous point: there is also a story about “being somewhere and with someone”, and often using the same applications (Altspace, VRChat). But when it is also “being at something” (a concert, a conference, a quiz), its own specificity arises: schedule, goal, organizers, rules. Therefore, Meta has a separate Horizon Venues application for this.

And this topic is especially interesting to me, because we in JUG Ru Group hold online conferences for developers. Of course, now there is no talk of transferring them to VR (simply too few participants have helmets), but I wondered: is this possible in principle in the future? I tried to figure it out.

Activities alone

This sounds like an oxymoron: how can an event be without others? But this is how you can describe VR broadcasts of offline events. That is, you kind of feel like you are at a concert that is going on right now, but you cannot interact with other viewers. I didn’t really try it (there is even a Russian project Lookport , but it looks half-alive and something did not work for me), so just know that in principle this happens.

Events with other people

I haven't tried Horizon Venues either (the service is not yet available in Russia), but I spent a lot of time at events in Altspace and VRChat. “Science Fiction Gathering,” “Questions and Answers on Death,” “Business Networking,” “David Bowie Virtual Concert,” “XR Safety Week,” just “Thumping Friday Night,” clicked on everything. (Almost all events are in English, but in principle it is already appeared and Russian speakers.)

Meeting place "Death Q&A"

The results were different. Somewhere it was rotten: the “fantasy fan meeting” took place mostly offline, and they simply sent a video broadcast from there to the VR world and allowed VR participants to ask questions, but did not see anyone actually doing it.

It turned out to be more interesting at the networking meeting. Companies of several people communicate in the hall, you approach the company and see if you can organically join - just like offline at a conference party. And when he joined, already in the process of an English-speaking conversation, he discovered that one of the participants in the conversation was Russian. We stepped aside, switched to Russian, talked - and I felt that I really met an interesting person to whom I can still turn to for some reason in the future. That is, I joined the meeting just to see “how it looks”, and in the end, unexpectedly, I fulfilled the goal of networking no worse than offline.

At XR Safety Week there were full-fledged reports: a screen with slides, a speaker in the form of an avatar, the organizers “provide him with a microphone” (they make it loud for everyone in the hall, and not just for those standing nearby), there are avatars of viewers in the hall and listen (moreover, it is really visible whether the person is looking at the stage or has turned away).

I think this is very interesting for several reasons. First, although we try to provide opportunities for “behind-the-scenes discussions” at online conferences, offline traditions are being revived here quite literally: you can step aside with someone and talk face to face.

Secondly, usually online, the speaker has to “talk into the monitor”, instead of people's faces he sees slides in front of him, it can be difficult. And here, in front of the speaker, the audience (albeit cartoony-looking and with poor facial expressions), you can ask the audience a question and see the reaction (“raise your hand if ...”). It’s just that you won’t be able to see by their eyes whether they understood what was said.

There were very few viewers, so I don't know if this can scale well to our conference sizes (for example, a large number of avatars in one room can cause performance problems). But I will follow the direction with interest.

At the "Bowie concert" the virtual concert venue turned out to be more colorful than the real ones: a castle in the forest, in the courtyard of which a stage was erected. With the performance itself, it’s much more boring - there was a flat screen on the stage, where they simply turned on the recording of the old concert from YouTube. And the audience talked more than listened to the music, as if they were not at the concert at all. I already decided that it was just a hat, but then the legendary “Heroes” began to play, and some viewers began to dance to the “stage”:

And it seems that Altspace is not suitable for dancing, because avatars don’t even have legs (VRChat in much better in this regard) - but here it hit me. Because when, at the sound of an adored song, you see by the people around that it pins them just as hard, this is the unity of the audience, which is also important at offline concerts. You can't go to a real Bowie concert anyway, and I'm glad that at least this was now in my life.

In the meantime, startup AmazeVR is going to bring concerts to VR properly in 2022, filming real world stars with 8K cameras, so it will no longer be just a “recording from YouTube”. And in parallel, there is another version of virtual performances: when the speaker himself is also represented by a 3D avatar. I want to show a recording of one of these performances, it was made “from the eyes” of the artist, so the video sequence is lame (he often looks at the floor) - but, in my opinion, the performance itself is amazingly cool, I regret that I was not in the audience. He is an improvisational comedian performing in VR as a raccoon named Resnauv. In the video, they say a few words to him - and on the go he composes a song that includes these words (with a dubious topic, but these are the words they gave).

He is from the improvised comedy club Gob's Improv Emporium , where they also hold workshops for beginners, and this also looks interesting from the point of view of VR events: they stand in a circle and do voice and movement exercises, in Zoom this really isn’t postpone.

General conclusion on events

I no longer have the question “can VR events be of interest to people”: they can, period. While some people are arguing on the Internet whether someone will go to this, others is already running .

But there are other questions. What kind of offline events are well transferred to VR, and which ones are not very suitable? And what part of all people will go well with the VR format? Will IT conferences be held in VR in a couple of years?

I don't have complete answers to this yet. But there is such a partial forecast about IT events: I think that in a couple of years at least VR meetups will be held regularly.

Sex

Zuckerberg didn't say a word about it at his presentation about the metaverse (IT giants pretend that sex doesn't exist). But let's not pretend that this topic is not important for VR, and let's figure it out like adults (if you are not an adult, skip the text to the next part).

I will only make a reservation that I know a lot here from other people's words. People who are very serious about the issue are buying additional devices (like trackers Vive ) and fiddling with confusing software (like Virt-a-Mate ). And I didn’t climb into such jungle - but I seem to have figured out why others climb into them.

Sex alone

The obvious use case for VR is porn/webcam, where the presence effect is clearly in demand. Someone even syncs sex toys with videos using Project EroScripts to make it seem very real.

Is there a big difference from "regular" video? Almost all VR porn is pay-per-view — big enough that people are willing to pay for it. But for all the realism of the video sequence, of course, the fundamental difference with the “real” does not go away: technological progress does not negate the significance of psychological contact.

Even in the virtual porn world you can't hide from Java bugs

Realism is not the only difference. For example, since VR is a “view from the eyes”, the POV genre triumphs here (usually it is “through the eyes of a man”, but videos with female POV also exist). And since the feeling of “look into my eyes” works powerfully in VR, one of the main qualities of actresses is the ability to languidly look into the camera.

Wow, the porn industry has noticed that people have eyes! But at the same time, the main character usually lies passively while he is being pleased, and some kind of monotonous videos about a lazy egoist are obtained. In addition, since VR shooting is more complicated than usual, there is so far almost no amateur segment with sincere fans of their craft - only professional imitation.

In addition to videos, there are indecent games where, instead of live actors, 3D models with customizable appearance. Here the user does not just look, but takes the situation into his own hands (literally: thanks to hand tracking, it is possible to put the controllers aside and “touch” the characters with their hands).

There are so many books around, but they are not allowed to read :(

Technically, the games are noticeably different: I was impressed that there are even browser-based ones on WebXR (one of them is in the screenshot). That is, people can get inside interactive VR worlds, of sufficient quality

But harder games are being made as apps and many of them can't be installed on the Quest itself, you need to connect a computer. No wonder: for example, there may be is such tissue physics that performance is clearly required. Although all this is often done by obscure enthusiasts with payment through Patreon.

Sex with other people

Okay, I understand about singles, but is it possible to interact sexually with other people? Well, in a way.

I'll start with a simple one: I already mentioned the Bigscreen "virtual cinema" above, and some people share NSFW content there. Such is the sudden revival of porn cinemas from 1970s, which were closed offline long ago.

But from Russian realities: at Kinky Parties they experimented with VR back in 2020, but if I understand correctly, they have moved away from this and now they are holding online events simply in Zoom.

However, the main thing happens in VRChat. Its rules prohibit sexual activity on public servers, but this does not apply to private instances with invitation access. And from some VRChat worlds it is obvious that they are created specifically for use in private mode.

Here, for example, according to this

One can only guess how many couples meet in such worlds alone. On the other hand, it is not difficult to find English-speaking communities that hold ERP parties (where they communicate first of all, but move on to more if they wish). The abbreviation ERP (“erotic roleplay”) originally meant that people create an erotic story (for example, in correspondence), where everyone plays some fictional character. However, in VRChat, with its variety of avatars, everyone is already a character (who is a mummy, who is a vacuum cleaner). Therefore, here, ERP is simply understood as any sexual interaction.

How might this interaction be in the virtual world? There are a number of technologies that help in ERP. So far, you can hardly find suits and gloves with vibration feedback, but many people buy full-body tracking systems so that the VR avatar accurately repeats the movements of their entire body (without this, only their hands and head are tracked). There are avatars with clothes that can be switched off, and some use the development with the speaking name Dynamic Penetration System. And if you add sex toys that can be controlled over the Internet, then ...

…then it might still look like a caricature circus from the outside (if you want to see it, you can search “vrchat” on porn sites). VR porn is infinitely far from realistic. But people are attracted to it, since there are so many users with full-body tracking (if they tell you that they bought FBT for something else, don't believe them). What attracts?

The cause is commonly referred to as "phantom touch". VR partly deceives our brain, influencing even those feelings to which it does not have direct access: in virtual Antarctica, you can involuntarily shiver from non-existent cold. And some people, if someone hugs them in VRChat, it feels like a real touch. And if such a person participates in sexual touching, then they are seriously excited by them. So, if you have already found the video somewhere and are laughing at its lack of persuasiveness, keep in mind that for the participants everything felt very different. Here virtual YouTuber Phia explains it (she was in a long-distance relationship for a long time, so she probably understands the issue):0003

At the same time, if a person does not know his ERP partner offline, it is difficult to be sure what gender the partner is (after all, there are voice changers). Not surprisingly, there are a lot of gender-fluid pansexual femboys in the ERP communities who are not attached to the concept of gender at all. But strictly heterosexual people also exist. How do they survive in such uncertainty? Apparently, thanks to "roleplay": here, after all, they interact not just with a person, but with his character. And if the character is convincing enough, for many, more is not required.

I do not give moral and ethical assessments of the things described above (you decide whether to consider all this a wonderful breakthrough or a terrible depravity). But in the end, I will voice what I consider a serious problem. Now VRChat is such a Wild West, where social rules have not yet fully developed. And overall it's fun, but in some ways the fun is irresponsible: there are tons of children running around, there are opportunities for immersive sexual interaction, and no one is really responsible for ensuring that children do not participate in this.

VRChat forbids sexuality in public worlds, and what happens in private is not his responsibility. Meta allows you to use the Quest from the age of 13, and that parents give helmets to children younger is not her responsibility. ERP party organizers write “strictly 18+” and will certainly take action if they hear a child’s voice, but if the user is muted, it’s not their responsibility. And the parents who bought the child a helmet are unlikely to understand what is happening. Meanwhile, kids are running around the world in droves with Truth or Dare, where the challenges are:

Children wrote something in the air with a marker about their mother

But I see the main threat not in Truth or Dare and ERP parties, but in the fact that in the “decent” VRChat world an adult with bad intentions will approach the child and invite him to a private one. Unlike offline, here it will not even be noticeable from the outside that an adult has approached.

Recently, the issue has already been raised by a British near-government organization, so I think that some measures will be taken soon. But so far, the situation looks like a powder keg to me.

General conclusion on sex

VR porn can be enjoyed by almost anyone who watches regular porn. But ERP is not suitable for everyone, but there are already people in the world for whom this is an important form of sexual interaction.

Games

This is the most common application of VR, so the topic is well covered without me. But they usually talk about powerful titles like Half-Life: Alyx that require a computer connection, but what can be installed on the Quest itself? With VR now moving out of the "hardcore gamer" niche and into the mainstream, what's on offer to the mainstream user who doesn't own a gaming PC?

Solo games

You can find a variety of games for Quest: shooters, quests, racing. But you can transfer any genre if you wish, another question is more interesting: which of these really flourishes in VR?

The most massive game is Beat Saber , where you have to cut cubes flying at you with lightsabers to the music. In my opinion, this is such a VR analogue of Angry Birds: a super popular casual game that goes well with the new platform.

And my favorite is Superhot . This game originally appeared on computers, but as if it was created for VR. Here you have to freeze, throw virtual objects, dodge bullets - and when you really make all these movements in space, and do not press the keys, you get powerful physical activity. (The main thing is not to think about how you look from the outside when you roll on the floor in a helmet.)

There are games that would not make sense at all on a computer - for example, climbing simulators Climb . Quest gives you the ability to really move your hands, and the mountain scenery works well with the ability to turn your head. However, when I started the game, at first I thought it was some kind of nonsense: since during the “rise” you stand on the floor of the room and do not really pull your weight up, what is the point without physical exertion? But soon I felt that constantly keeping my hands on the weight is actually not quite easy either. And when after another 15 minutes he reached the top, he breathed a sigh of relief, as if he had really conquered it.

Those offline games that go well with Quest controllers are transferred to VR: table tennis, golf, bowling. Eleven Table Tennis is so committed to realism that many say "this game taught me how to play real table tennis better" (and some even attach a real racket to the controller).

VR is well suited for a scary atmosphere: when you are inside the world, where you can look in all directions, you feel that there can always be something sneaking up from behind. And there is video content related to this, and there are games with a tense atmosphere - like a creepy quest The Room or ported Resident Evil 4 .

And sometimes immersiveness leads to completely non-standard things. I only played the demo of The Under Presents , but it turned out to be a very unusual experience. You find yourself in a surreal world where you don't try to win according to clear rules, but you figure out what the rules are. I think that children may be bored here, but it may be interesting for adults, who are usually far from games. And in this I see a promising direction for VR gaming: the usual “shoot all the enemies” can be done on a computer, but “feel yourself inside a Salvador Dali painting” is just right for VR.

Games with other people

Some of the above also have a multiplayer mode. They say that while playing golf it is convenient even to talk about work.

But there are also games that are conceived from the start as multiplayer games. For example, a whole range of shooters: Pavlov Shack (local Counter-Strike), Population: One (local Fortnite), Gun Raiders and so on.

It's clear with shooters, but is there something exactly "virtuous" here? My favorite such example is Echo VR. It's, uh... a team game where zero gravity robots throw frisbees and hit each other. It sounds crazy, it works great in VR: the ability to look in all directions and physical movements are well suited here. In the heat of the game, many are so actively rushing for frisbees that Quest's warnings "you are approaching the border of real gaming space" do not save, and the matter ends like this:0003 Picture from the /r/EchoArena subreddit

Everything in Echo VR is great (for example, zero price), only one sad moment: there are a lot of yelling and swearing schoolchildren among the players, and here you can’t hide from it as easily as in VRChat. Of course, you can mute everyone, but then you lose part of the essence of a multiplayer game.

How to avoid this in multiplayer? Well, there are a couple of cases where it is basically impossible to speak with your voice. One is Beat Saber, which originally featured single-player only and later added silent multiplayer. But Half+Half was designed for wordless interaction right off the bat: it's an app with cute graphics and simple co-op games where users can wave to each other but can't chat. You can safely let the child go there to play with other people, without worrying about what vocabulary he will return with.

And I also came across an interesting option for offline parties, where you play not with random people from the Internet, but with friends sitting next to you. The game Acron works like this: one person puts on a helmet, and the rest install the mobile version on their smartphones. The man in the helmet plays for the tree, and the others play for the squirrels, who together try to take away his nuts. Usually VR has a problem with the fact that only one of the people who are physically nearby is having fun (not like ordinary consoles where you can cut together) - here it is partially solved.

General conclusion on games

Although powerful and beautiful games require a computer connection, the average user can suffice with his head and those available on the Quest itself.

Note that the price of games for Quest is usually measured in tens of dollars, and there are no regional prices for Russia yet. But there are ways to save money: prerelease versions from App Lab , games in the browser and in the metaworlds, prompt delivery of a game you don’t like back to the store.

Conclusions

There are other applications of VR (fitness, 3D-drawing, meditation), but the post already turned out to be dimensionless. Therefore, if I missed something valuable, add it in the comments, and then I will move on to the general.

You can relate to all this in different ways: and “hooray, the future has come, even bedridden people can socialize”, and “oh no, the ungodly Meta sells helmets for less than cost in order to collect all the data about people in general. ” In my opinion, these theses are not mutually exclusive, so I am both delighted and horrified. It is both utopia and dystopia.

Another interesting thing. Although Meta lives on ads, VR has seen almost no ads so far. And I almost didn’t see spam, clickbait, sracha, cryptocams, “subscribe to our newsletter”, “confirm your consent to cookies” there - that is, everything that people hate the regular Internet for. And I think that later all this will get to VR, but for now there is undeveloped virgin land, which was once on the regular Internet. If this is close to you, seize the moment before it ends.

A wonderful VR world to relieve stress: you throw objects at dogs, they bring them back.

And in the end, I'll still tell fortunes on coffee grounds and write my forecast for a couple of years (and you write yours, and we'll see who turns out to be closer to the truth). What's next for VR? Will IT conferences be held there in 2024?

Two typical positions can now be found on the Internet. Some people believe that we will all move to VR soon. Others write “all these Zuckerberg fictions are empty hype, people indulge once and forget.” Which of them is right?

I don't think anyone.

Both active users of VRChat and Khabrovsky's example of working calls show that not everyone "plays around and forgets": for some people, this becomes a permanent way of communication, like social networks and instant messengers we are used to. So I think that VR has come in earnest and for a long time, and will grow many times over thanks to the snowball effect.

However, I don't think "humanity is about to move to VR". For example, the PlayStation and Apple Watch are very successful devices that have come in earnest and for a long time. But most people live quietly without them: this is not a smartphone, without which you can’t go anywhere. And my prediction is that the current incarnation of VR headsets will be closer in scale to set-top boxes than to smartphones. They will be popular and there will be a lot of exciting events taking place in VR, but it won't be the default format for any new event.