Apr 5, 2018
Decentraland Design Quarter District presents…
Our second mock-up… and it’s about to come ALIVE.
As Decentraland makes steady progress toward release, we in the Design Quarter District have also been hard at work.
What we have achieved
To provide you with a context, our “Visitor’s Room” mock-up was the first seed planted toward developing a series. It was created while evaluating A-Frame according to the proposed method of asset deployment within Decentraland.
This initial mock-up, an image of which is placed further down in the article, is available from dcldq.org and it enables a viewer to singularly visualise and navigate a small part of our intended world space in 3D. It also contains a few small fun tricks and hidden code gems.
Our current experiment has evolved to take place via the medium of WebVR evolving into WebXR and, in the context of Decentraland, represents our second Design Quarter mock-up.
As a proof of concept it successfully demonstrates fully operational first-person interaction with communication and positional data exchanged in real-time between multiple participants. In 2D, 3D and/or VR seamlessly mixed. 5 Mb (yes, as in only 5 Megabytes) total download, including ALL assets. Currently requires standard Chrome or Firefox with no other pre-installs.
It chugs along happily at around 100 Mb an hour while you mosey around and yabber away and works right off the bat on more or less any PC we’ve tried so far. A bit more PC and hardware needed for the VR part though, but still requiring the same amount of bandwidth.
Efficiency is demonstrated as features scale according to your system and preferences as well as offering you various ways in which to engage.
Why go on about efficiency?
There is a brief statement of deeper importance I need to make before continuing. Efficiency, low barrier of entry and adherence to open-source standards are mantras here.
They combine towards ensuring systems like this work easily and seamlessly across a broad range of use cases, while being largely agnostic toward user means and technical ability. I Believe the inclusivity of this principle, by its nature, compliments the level of transparency that blockchain technologies desire to achieve.
Furthermore, adding an element of equal accessibility between users without sacrificing the overall quality of the experience encourages the myriad of personal interactions required to drive any resulting transactions. In other words, it also counter-compliments blockchain by striving to offer a more human aspect in levering these technologies.
…Or just simply to have fun.
Practically respecting and understanding efficiency also, no doubt, will be paramount in how hundreds of thousands of players, assets, media and scenes are able to interact seamlessly in motion. Without it, attempts to do so will fail. All we would then hear, post-mortem, are mistruths on how the technology was not ready. The importance of efficiency cannot be over-estimated.
Our streamlined approach should align well within the context of Decentraland, particularly initially while the creators work out how to deliver on somewhat more complex demands.
To note, the current experiment is not in fact optimised to the extreme yet, simply because I prefer development code to remain flexible and readable. I can think of a number of approaches toward improvement.
But why in a browser? A cautionary tale.
Browsers, the Swiss army knives of most devices, liberate us today by allowing us a flexible, standard-centric way to connect and gain attentions across the globe.
With net-neutrality in dire threat and an ecosystem popping up for every software and hardware offering out there I believe that the liberation browsers today offer us simply cannot be taken for granted. Every possible action toward ensuring the browser of tomorrow remains an open, non-exclusive, environment is important.
This proof of concept is our way of saying Social VR can — and more importantly, already does — work in your stock browser today. Let us then rather refine it to work better than buying blind into yet another walled promise or adopting yet another panacea out of desperation.
Various game engines offer export for use in a browser but ultimately the source ecosystem remains closed with browser porting designed to be a functional add-on, in my experience seldom optimal. Certainly the potential wielded by running natively written code is higher.
Decentraland was forged on being de-centralised and without my having any detailed insider knowledge; I am hoping that the browser itself is the natural approach toward a standard viewing technology.
The Future
The mock-up is online and working. An open testing period can begin the moment I am able to logistically provide what is required for it to succeed at scale.
Personally, I have been working (very, very patiently) with WebVR along these lines for a number of years. Using WebGL and WebRTC combined with server and client-side scripting, WebXR as a combination of these is a medium undergoing growth. It is certain to broaden from what, years later, is still considered to be a stage of early adoption. This is changing fast as the various related technologies and API’s on which WebXR depends catch up.
In fact, eagerly following all these technologies is how I stumbled across Decentraland… and to this day I still simply cannot wait for their viewer to eclipse my own. That thought truly excites me.
In Conclusion
I am one person with a deep belief in harnessing VR to work towards true social upliftment. This viewpoint can only be developed within the extents of my reach and ability.
As such I am open toward reviewing offers, exposure and alliances that would allow me more reach in the expression of a clear, longer-term vision.
Thank you for the genuine interest and commitments shown thus far, both from within Decentraland and further afield. I appreciate and take confidence from these small graces.
Meanwhile… If you are interested and would like to share in the demo experience, please consider yourself invited. Contact me directly via dcldq.org and we can arrange a suitable time.
… AND A TIP: For a keepsake while in-world, just hit the “P” key and smile.
