Meet you in the Metaverse
Notes on running a Virtual Reality event with Mozilla Hubs
By now, many of us have been looking into screens for longer than a year. And amongst many other things we learned since the Covid-19 pandemic started to unfold, we realised that the tile layout in Microsoft Teams or Zoom could only do so much to replace a real chat. In fact, there’s also science backing up ‘Zoom Fatigue’: the lack of a shared space, the stationary field of view, and the impossibility of eye contact all jeopardise a sense of co-presence. Luckily, some alternatives do exist. The following is a curious mixture of reflection and practical advice for anyone interested in setting up virtual events using Mozilla Hubs.
First, a bit of background. The company I work for, Arup, is an international consulting company focussing on the built environment. Like many multinational companies, the knowledge and skills of Arup specialists are distributed across the globe, held together by the possibility of travel and an ecosystem of personal and professional networks, serendipitous encounters, curated events and conferences as well as online channels. And whilst some aspects kept going through the pandemic, others abruptly stopped. Bumping into that colleague at the coffee machine (who you have heard about but never met), listening in to a conversation after a conference (to find out that your interest is less niche than you thought) or casually geeking out with people after a talk (who turn out to be absolute experts in their field) — all of this seemed to be off the table since the WHO declared a global health emergency.
In the spring of 2021, a group of Arupians interested in Digital Fabrication met to discuss how to revive their community and expand their network. The idea of an open 24 hour Microsoft Teams call was soon buried as a rather depressing prospect. Instead, we envisioned creating a virtual workshop space teeming with conversations, presentations and content, where participants from all time zones could come together.
Using a social Virtual Reality (VR) platform, we developed a new digital exhibition format that aggregated existing knowledge in one space, brought to life by expert talks. A global host team — myself included — welcomed visitors in avatar form after accessing a link to the VR room in their browser. Over 24 hours, Arupians met fellow collaborators, as well as internal and external experts. They had the opportunity to listen to talks, view an exhibition, or engage casually with other avatars. Presenters could share their screen and rally a crowd of people around them, whilst smaller groups of avatars would meet for more personal conversions.
Finding the right platform
The pandemic boosted a rapidly growing remote meeting and collaboration market. Social VR allows participants to engage via avatars with one another — early examples were Second Life or formats known from MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games), such as World of Warcraft. Increasingly, platforms like VRChat, Spatial, Altspace and Mozilla Hubs aim to bring a social experience outside of the gaming world. This coincides with 2-dimensional alternatives combating Zoom fatigue, such as Gatherly or Gather.town. What all of them have in common is a new way of communication, where participants move through space whilst tuning in and out of conversations. In these environments, audio levels change based on proximity with other avatars, allowing for many different conversations and formats to happen at once.
We decided to go for Mozilla Hubs, as it is widely accessible from computers and tablets (and to VR headsets, even if we haven’t heard from any visitor making use of it). It is also free, and it is easy to get behind Mozilla’s vision of an open internet. However, many different considerations should be weighed up when deciding on a platform, including the number of expected participants, confidentiality, digital literacy.
Up to 50 participants can come together in hubs; however, only 25 are recommended. After this number, increased pressure on local processing power and the network might compromise the experience for some users.
Creating the event venue
Mozilla hubs allows using a set of default and user-generated ‘scenes’ to hold meetings in. Built for an audience working in the built environment, the bar for the architectural look and feel was set quite high — and as a trained architect, it was a welcome exercise to create a bespoke space for the event.
I used Mozilla Spoke, an in-browser editor, to create the scene. It is an interesting crossbreed between a simplified game engine interface, as known from Unity, and a sandbox game, such as the build-mode in The Sims. The ‘Architecture Kit’ allows arranging a set of building components, such as walls, roofs, trims, windows etc., to create a space fitting the needs of future visitors — follow this link to hear its creators give a great overview. I added plenty of doors and windows to make the space as non-claustrophobic as possible, and designed a classic saw-tooth roof to make it feel more workshop-like. I found some good, industrial material options and architectural elements in Spoke that made for a decent space.
After some testing and feedback sessions, I developed a layout consisting of a central hall with content curated according to the four main digital fabrication techniques and five smaller breakout rooms. Each of them was fitted with a whiteboard and a small window framing a generic but pleasant mountain landscape. As for a real exhibition space, I produced labels and exhibition content in Adobe InDesign and imported them as bitmap files. Mozilla Spoke integrates with the vast libraries of free 3D assets from Google Poly and Sketchfab. This allowed me to pull a CNC machine, 3D printers and some robot arms into the space, as well as a battered workshop table that added a bit to the industrial look (ironic in VR, I know). I made it display the welcome instructions, as it would be conveniently located directly in front of where visitors enter the space.
Setting up an Avatar self
When logging into the room, Mozilla Hubs allows choosing from a myriad of different avatars, from raver-glasses wearing foxes to robots, seals, birds and magicians. Whilst visitors could choose to be whatever they wanted to be, our host team followed this instruction to create more realistic, custom readyplayerme avatars to make the interaction feel more natural for our participants. An added benefit was that we were easy to pick out as go-to-people to talk to. Using realistic Avatar faces, at least for the hosts, made the experience more relatable and less game-like.
Running the event
Running up to the event, we rallied fellow hosts and presenters, talked them through the controls and instructions of using the space and co-developed a programme for the session.
On the day of the event, we actively approached visitors as soon as they entered the space, appearing in the ‘dedicated ‘spawn points’ previously determined in Mozilla Spoke. We found that being talked to put people at ease in taking the first steps in this new environment. If people were interested, we gave them a tour across the ‘exhibition’, asking them to follow us. Having material on the walls became great starting points for more in-depth conversations. Invited contributors would hold presentations in the space, sharing their screen with the audience.
Being able to spatially move in and out of conversations in a VR environment allowed participants to curate their visit based on their interest, making it an active rather than a passive experience known from conference video calls. Overwhelmingly positive feedback showed that participants enjoyed the format. While facial expressions and gestures were not possible, there still was a sense of shared presence in the space — both spatial and temporal.
However, some visitors who had a slow internet connection struggled to enter the space, and the long loading screen and the novel nature of the experience might have negatively affected some users’ experience. Therefore, it seems to be a good idea to reach out to participants beforehand with simple, not intimidating instructions and asking them to be patient whilst the room link is loading.
Reflecting on the future of Social VR
While we were already quite excited when we were trialling the space, we were still surprised by the overwhelmingly positive feedback. It seems that once the first hurdle of slight awkwardness and confusion about the new format is overcome, participants love to explore the three-dimensional space behind their two-dimensional screens, and to engage with the people–avatars within it.
A rigorous study already shows that the quality of collaboration offered by “embodied VR” approximates face-to-face interactions far closer than previously expected. Whilst one can argue that Mozilla hubs is still far from achieving a fully embodied experience, it is still an enormous step in this direction.
Personally speaking, I felt a weird, warm feeling of companionship between the people and their avatars visiting this space, one that makes me think that this might be much bigger than what it seems at the surface. In fact, Mozilla itself sees Mozilla hubs as their contribution to the ‘Metaverse’, a new, more spatial, more embodied, more consistent virtual universe built on the world-wide-web and the internet. As a sort of cyberspace on steroids, it is described as spanning physical and virtual worlds, sustaining its own economy and achieving unheard levels of interoperability.
For now, it is easy to get behind the antiseptic nature of VR meetings as long as a pandemic holds the world in its grip. But the format has practical implications beyond that. During a Climate emergency, businesses need to radically reconsider flying clients, colleagues and collaborators across the globe to meet in person: and social VR will help to enable collaboration without co-location.
I hope that sharing this experience is helpful for people thinking about new engagement formats. If you want to learn more about our work at Arup Digital Studio, please write to me or my colleagues under studio@arup.com.
