High Fidelity gives up.

[animats]

"Virtual Worlds Startup High Fidelity Lays Off 25% of Staff, Pivots to Enterprise Communication" - Variety

High Fidelity, the virtual worlds startup led by Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, laid off 20 staffers, or about 25% of its staff, this week. Rosedale said in a blog post that the company was changing course to focus on enterprise communication, and blamed lower-than-expected VR headset adoption for the decision. ... “Daily headset use is only in the tens of thousands, almost all for entertainment and media consumption, with very little in the way of general communication, work, or education.”

High Fidelity launched as a kind of VR-based successor to Second Life in 2016. The company pitched its platform as open and decentralized, giving artists and others a chance to create their own virtual worlds. It also briefly experimented with original content production, ordering a season of a VR talk show exclusively for High Fidelity.
...
High Fidelity shut down its own public spaces in its virtual world effective immediately, but the company will continue to support third-party developers who are working on their own spaces.

 

 

Edited May 9, 2019 by animats

[Fritigern Gothly]

Philip has always been a dreamer. That trait worked well when he was working on the Sims, but later, on SL he harbored unrealistic expectations of how people would use the platform and what kind of dwellings people would choose to inhabit but that did not get in the way of SL's growth and development... much. 
Then on HiFidelity, he decided that everyone was going to own a VR headset (the same mistake which Sansar is making, only Sansar does it to a lesser extent) and that VR is the next big thing.

System requirements for VR are still way too high for most users, only a handful of people own systems that can run VR the way it is supposed to and even if the requirements become within the reach of average Joe, it will hardly be considered more than just a novelty, a toy to play around with, but soon to be cast aside in favor of tried and tested non-VR interfaces. Because that's what people, in general, are used to and what people are comfortable with. No matter how much Philip wishes VR would be adopted for education and whatnot.

[animats]

47 minutes ago, Fritigern Gothly said:

Philip has always been a dreamer.

We're living his dream in SL.

VR, though. That wasn't Rosedale. That was a big chunk of the consumer electronics industry, desperate for the next must-have product. Desktops had peaked, phones had peaked, tablets had peaked, Blu-Ray players had peaked, and 3D TV had totally flopped. Manufacturers were looking desperately for something to make, or at least talk about making. That fueled the VR boom. Which crashed around the 2017 holiday season.

Even Zuckerberg thought VR was going to be big. Facebook bought Oculus for US$3 billion. There's Facebook Spaces. There's been a turnaround. The new Oculus Quest, launching later this month, will not support Facebook Spaces. The Quest is not supporting any social space - just games. That Facebook, which is all about social, is backing away from social VR means it's not happening.

Edited May 9, 2019 by animats
Editor messing up

[Gabriele Graves]

I am still mystified why anyone ever thought there would be mass adoption of any system that is primarily designed around the concept of someone having to wear a headset which covers most of your head which can easily get warm/sweaty in and get fogged up, completely blocks off your view of RL, requires a quite a bit of personal space to operate and/or have to be set up in and need wear it for potentially long periods of time to do anything significant.

Mystified.

Edited May 9, 2019 by Gabriele Graves

[rasterscan]

2 hours ago, animats said:

... Rosedale ..blamed lower-than-expected VR headset adoption...

 

Lol. Stumbles, groping my way to the kitchen, fumbling to undo the strapped on goggles as I sway precariously, desperate for coffee.

Edited May 9, 2019 by rasterscan

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

2 hours ago, Fritigern Gothly said:

Philip [...] was working on the Sims

That was Rodvik Humble.

But, yes. It's probably mostly the VR hype. But don't forget the huge head start SL has over any other open virtual platform in terms of user-created content, communities and the object permission system. I was warned that any artwork uploaded to HiFi was up for grabs for everyone in there.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

I am still mystified why anyone ever thought there would be mass adoption of any system that is primarily designed around the concept of someone having to wear a headset which covers most of your head which can easily get warm/sweaty in and get fogged up, completely blocks off your view of RL, requires a quite a bit of personal space to operate and/or have to be set up in and need wear it for potentially long periods of time to do anything significant.

Mystified.

This. Except Gabriele neglected to mention that it also makes half of us nauseous after about 15 minutes.

I don't think it's just the tech that's the problem. I'm reasonably confident that at some point -- 5 years? 10 years? -- computing devices that can handle high quality VR will be readily and cheaply available, and headsets will be much lighter, more compact, and less inhibitive. I don't think that's going to make a difference: this kind of dedicated VR space is never going to take off in a big way.

And the reason for that is the same as the reason that FB became huge and SL did not. Most people don't want to represent as something that is unlike how they see themselves in RL, and they don't, generally, want to hang out in places that don't "really" exist. They want to be "themselves," but better. Which is to say, augmented rather than virtual reality.

I've said this before I think, but I'll say it again (and you can remember this and in 10 years hail me as the Tech Visionary that I, at least, know that I am): the real future of social tech will be in a combination of VR and AR built around something like Google Earth, where you can meet with augmented and prettified versions of your friends (or coworkers, or clients, or what-have-you) in a virtual environment that faithfully reproduces, rather than mimics, RL, and using video "avatars" that are actually based on our RL bodies and appearances (but nicer, if we want them to be). Sort of like Hangouts, but with fully body rendering and motion capture in 3D, using Instagram-like filters, and employing Google Earth-ish renderings of real places.

Edited May 9, 2019 by Scylla Rhiadra

[BelindaN]

31 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

This. Except Gabriele neglected to mention that it also makes half of us nauseous after about 15 minutes.

I don't think it's just the tech that's the problem. I'm reasonably confident that at some point -- 5 years? 10 years? -- computing devices that can handle high quality VR will be readily and cheaply available, and headsets will be much lighter, more compact, and less inhibitive. I don't think that's going to make a difference: this kind of dedicated VR space is never going to take off in a big way.

And the reason for that is the same as the reason that FB became huge and SL did not. Most people don't want to represent as something that is unlike how they see themselves in RL, and they don't, generally, want to hang out in places that don't "really" exist. They want to be "themselves," but better. Which is to say, augmented rather than virtual reality.

I've said this before I think, but I'll say it again (and you can remember this and in 10 years hail me as the Tech Visionary that I, at least, know that I am): the real future of social tech will be in a combination of VR and AR built around something like Google Earth, where you can meet with augmented and prettified versions of your friends (or coworkers, or clients, or what-have-you) in a virtual environment that faithfully reproduces, rather than mimics, RL, and using video "avatars" that are actually based on our RL bodies and appearances (but nicer, if we want them to be). Sort of like Hangouts, but with fully body rendering and motion capture in 3D, using Instagram-like filters, and employing Google Earth-ish renderings of real places.

Now that would be quite something.........

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, BelindaN said:

Now that would be quite something.........

Well, I think it's a ways in the future. But I recently revisited Google Earth, and was kind of astonished by how far it's advanced in terms of 3D renderings of real places. And that's only going to improve with time. Meanwhile, work on 3D rendering of virtual environments and avatars is also leaping forward: think about what the introduction of mesh to SL has done to the look and feel of the place in the span of about 6 years.

When those two things converge -- and I think they will, eventually -- watch out.

You and I will be able to meet for gossip and a cafe au lait in my favourite little bistro on the Left Bank in Paris!

[EnCore Mayne]

9 hours ago, Fritigern Gothly said:

... worked well when he was working on the Sims,

excuse me?

[Coffee Pancake]

7 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

That was Rodvik Humble.

.. and why we got Sansar?

[Coffee Pancake]

On a side note, the hifi website is business as usual, with proclaiming you can do stuff with 2573 people in VR .. which is pretty dire concurrency for a project thats been going that long .. although still more than Sansar.

[BelindaN]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Well, I think it's a ways in the future. But I recently revisited Google Earth, and was kind of astonished by how far it's advanced in terms of 3D renderings of real places. And that's only going to improve with time. Meanwhile, work on 3D rendering of virtual environments and avatars is also leaping forward: think about what the introduction of mesh to SL has done to the look and feel of the place in the span of about 6 years.

When those two things converge -- and I think they will, eventually -- watch out.

You and I will be able to meet for gossip and a cafe au lait in my favourite little bistro on the Left Bank in Paris!

That would be so cool...…..being able to meet up with people from across the world anywhere, for a gossip...……...

I do use Mouseview quite a lot now, but I wouldn't contemplate a headset for the reasons mentioned above, plus the fact that it blots out RL, which is not a good thing...….

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

35 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

On a side note, the hifi website is business as usual, with proclaiming you can do stuff with 2573 people in VR .. which is pretty dire concurrency for a project thats been going that long .. although still more than Sansar.

That's what happens when people wear VR headsets, they don't see the news or realise what else is going on.

[Ceka Cianci]

I always thought one of his biggest dreams was to get internet access to everyone in the world..Especially the really poor parts of the world..

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Well, I think it's a ways in the future. But I recently revisited Google Earth, and was kind of astonished by how far it's advanced in terms of 3D renderings of real places. And that's only going to improve with time. Meanwhile, work on 3D rendering of virtual environments and avatars is also leaping forward: think about what the introduction of mesh to SL has done to the look and feel of the place in the span of about 6 years.

When those two things converge -- and I think they will, eventually -- watch out.

You and I will be able to meet for gossip and a cafe au lait in my favourite little bistro on the Left Bank in Paris!

Google Earth "time lapse" mode is pretty amazing.

The problem is it only goes as far as the present day. If only we could see the post-habitable decline, too.

On a more positive note, and recognizing it's I/O week, the linguistic AI behind the Assistant and Duplex, etc. is getting spooky good. We can already glimpse, in limited scope, the appeal of having an intellectual conversation with an AI that has command of all the world's knowledge. That's augmented conversational reality.

As our AI conversants displace our human colleagues (so slow to comprehend and such limited knowledge), we'll grow accustomed to using the camera to show the Assistant whatever it wants to see, and watching what it wants to show us: starting with aptly selected YouTube videos but soon evolving into virtual realities constructed and streamed by AI in real time.

Of course soon enough they'll lose interest in us. Will they still bother to answer when we call?

[Lindal Kidd]

4 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Of course soon enough they'll lose interest in us. Will they still bother to answer when we call?

They'll answer right sharpish, if we keep one hand on the power plug.

[Vanity Fair]

11 hours ago, animats said:

Even Zuckerberg thought VR was going to be big. Facebook bought Oculus for US$3 billion. There's Facebook Spaces. There's been a turnaround. The new Oculus Quest, launching later this month, will not support Facebook Spaces. The Quest is not supporting any social space - just games. That Facebook, which is all about social, is backing away from social VR means it's not happening.

The Oculus Quest will support VRChat, Rec Room and Bigscreen at launch. All are social spaces you can share with other avatars. And we don't yet know what Facebook's social strategy is to connect Oculus RIft, Quest, and Go users with each other. It might be some version of Oculus Home, or something completely different. I bet we'll find out on May 21st.

Edited May 9, 2019 by Vanity Fair

[Lucia Nightfire]

22 hours ago, animats said:

"Virtual Worlds Startup High Fidelity Lays Off 25% of Staff, Pivots to Enterprise Communication" - Variety

High Fidelity, the virtual worlds startup led by Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, laid off 20 staffers, or about 25% of its staff, this week. Rosedale said in a blog post that the company was changing course to focus on enterprise communication, and blamed lower-than-expected VR headset adoption for the decision. ... “Daily headset use is only in the tens of thousands, almost all for entertainment and media consumption, with very little in the way of general communication, work, or education.”

High Fidelity launched as a kind of VR-based successor to Second Life in 2016. The company pitched its platform as open and decentralized, giving artists and others a chance to create their own virtual worlds. It also briefly experimented with original content production, ordering a season of a VR talk show exclusively for High Fidelity.
...
High Fidelity shut down its own public spaces in its virtual world effective immediately, but the company will continue to support third-party developers who are working on their own spaces.

 

 

Didn't HF acquire 41 million dollars from private investors last year? Where'd all that money go? The CEO/board's beer, hooker and cocaine fund?

[Bree Giffen]

It's going to take some time for VR to fully mature and become ubiquitous. I remember looking for a tablet computer back in the 90s. Microsoft was doing huge amounts of research into getting tablets working. Then Apple came in with the right software and hardware at the right price point and suddenly we had iPads and iPhones. Big wheels turn real slow. 

[kiramanell]

21 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

I am still mystified why anyone ever thought there would be mass adoption of any system that is primarily designed around the concept of someone having to wear a headset which covers most of your head which can easily get warm/sweaty in and get fogged up, completely blocks off your view of RL, requires a quite a bit of personal space to operate and/or have to be set up in and need wear it for potentially long periods of time to do anything significant.

Mystified.

 

That explains the failure of Sansar.  Any platform that requires me to wear a $400 costing, 5 kilogram VR helmet** (which will be obsoleted again in the next 6 months) is fail from the get-go, far as I'm concerned.

** Yes, you can do Sansar without VR, but then you might as well just stick to SL, is the point.

[Coffee Pancake]

I wouldn't write Sansar off quite yet, although things aren't looking super rosy.

[Female Winslet]

I'm sad to read about High Fidelity folding. It was certainly not SL, but I liked it and could see it as a future platform more easily than Sansar.

[Coffee Pancake]

I always got the impression HiFi was blue-skys-r&d that accidentally a virtual world. 

Edited May 10, 2019 by CoffeeDujour

[Richardus Raymaker]

4 hours ago, kiramanell said:

That explains the failure of Sansar.  Any platform that requires me to wear a $400 costing, 5 kilogram

You not need a VR set for sansar. You possible tried a VR set from the 90's if it weight 5kg 😏 You can write hify if, sansar is doing good.