People, passion and point clouds
Adventures in virtual reality and the quest for the perfect avatar
Introduction
This article is a more of a blog and it’s about experiences with the VRChat metaverse (accessible on Steam). There are other programs like it but it’s the one I prefer for looking into the more real, weird, and unconstrained side of metaverse experiences. When I refer to metaverse I mean a virtual universe inside of cyberspace. John Perry Barlow referred to it as the new Wild West and even wrote a Declaration of Independence for it. https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
VRChat is pretty chaotic. Anyone can upload anything, whether they want to build a world for others to explore in, or design a cool new avatar. Every day there are millions of interactions in VRChat that take place and sometimes the experience of being a fly on the wall can feel ambient and relaxing and suddenly switch to weird and entertaining. But it’s the social experiences that add to the presence, the digital economy/folksonomy behind the platform is what contributes to the immersion.
To learn more about VRChat- check out https://vrchat.com/
What is this article?
This article explores VRChat and introduces one of many metaverse experiences available in virtual reality. It’s written from my perspective and will discuss some social experiences I’ve witnessed, everything from a Storm Trooper shooting liters of Mountain Dew into Hatsune Miku’s mouth, to a Jukebox that can play music to a crowd of avatars.
How can I use VRChat?
You will need a Virtual Reality HMD like HTC Vive and Oculus Rift as well as a computer powerful enough to run the software through the HMD. This game will not run off of an HMD that uses a phone. To check if your computer is VR-ready, try out this tool : https://support.oculus.com/1357437467617798/
VRChat can be downloaded on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/438100/VRChat/
Personally I bootcamp Windows 10 off of my 2017 iMac and use an HTC Vive.
Avatars and the limits of virtual appearance
An avatar is a representation of a person in virtual reality. One person’s avatar might be a giant psychedellic cockroach, and another’s might be Leonardo the Ninja Turtle, and another one Leonardo da Vinci. Those who have used VRChat before likely know the trials of the steep learning curve behind creating a good Avatar- and the satisfaction of finally having your avatar work perfectly, complete with eye and mouth tracking. Fortunately, the developers behind VRChat have made it possible to make importing a good avatar into VRChat with limited creative constraints as seamless as possible- and the community has developed plugins for programs like Blender to optimize their avatar in ways not previously possible- saving both time and effort.
Tools VRChat has released include the Unity VRChat SDK which gives users a way to import models into VRChat via the Unity game development platform. Getting the models into VRChat and working as intended is a journey in of itself- but creating a bad-ass model with really complex and unique interactions requires a whole new level of knowledge.
It’s a steep learning curve for the average Joe to create a badass avatar- and that’s awesome.
What I have noticed is that this ecosystem has contributed to a phenomenon in the Metaverse- if you have an awesome avatar, people naturally gravitate towards you. To put it bluntly, if your avatar sucks, then so do you.
Avatars engage human empathy in unique ways not previously possible. There is a ton of scientific research out there about the effects of an avatar on the person- a common theme is the transcendence of the self. (Slater et al, 2014) Jaron Lanier wrote his own psychedelic philosophies in his book “The Dawn of the New Everything”. There’s a whole body of research on social structures like social avoidance. (Felnhofer et al, 2018) Second Life was a popular platform for studying interactions like this in the past.
Not all metaverse experiences allow the creative freedom that VRChat does. This freedom comes with it’s own ethical issues. The lack of constraints make it possible for a hacker to program a fork bomb and crash a user’s session. I was having a discussion with someone I met in VRChat about this the other day- in a nutshell, this affordance allows for totalitarianism. If you can eliminate players from a server, then you can control people. There’s a risk associated with the amount of freedom in VRChat, but the joy of a great social experience outweighs the risk.
Worlds and the colonization of cyberspace
VRChat allows users to build their own worlds complete with whatever objects they want to include to make their world more immersive. It’s really impressive how easy it is to create what’s essentially your own virtual treehouse for you and your friends to hang out in. I was listening to an interview with the VRChat creators the other day on the “Voices of VR PodCast” and the creators spoke of their own board room complete with a screen that shows the number of players logged in to VRChat. Again, the learning curve is steep, but this constraint prevents content overload.
My first moment of “WOW” in a VRChat world was when I was watching virtual fireworks. This was in a secret area of Club Void where one could launch fireworks via the press of a button. As I launched the fireworks, other avatars gathered behind me as we watched together. It was surreal.
Another cool affordance I stumbled across was a VR Jukebox that caused a song to play when the album was pressed on the UI.
I was amazed by this jukebox when I stumbled across it. This is a virtual object that is designed almost identically to it’s real-world counterpart. This is a great example of mapping between a jukebox in the real world and a jukebox in the virtual world. People know how to use it. Contrast this with the fireworks mentioned before, where a tedious, and sometimes dangerous task, was made simpler.
Scientific research in Psychology and Cyberpsychology has suggested how these worlds effect human emotion. Research has suggested that physiological stress recovery can be induced by presenting users with a virtual forest complete with natural sounds. (Annerstedt et al, 2013) Occupational therapy and other sciences experiment with and use virtual reality to help with issues ranging from rehabilitation to skill acquisition. (Butt et al, 2018) I personally am interested in the uses of VR to help people with maintain focus and social comfort.
In “Dawn of the New Everything”, Jaron Lanier recalls some of the risks of creating virtual worlds. The genre cyberpunk paints a pretty good picture of this. The same risks of creating virtual worlds exist for creating virtual avatars- The code that builds them can be written unethically or even harmfully.
The burden of creativity is awesome.
It’s a very emotional moment experiencing VR for the first time. It’s a truly human feeling that pits your brain against trying to make sense out of the nonsensical. It defies the laws of nature. It’s new, it’s awesome, and it’s just barely accessible. But that’s a good thing. And then right as things start to make sense, you stumble across a couple of Pikmen walking around in man-thongs drawing circles around you.
Just yesterday I was invited to join a Discord server filled with other VR hopefuls and creators. When I was first recruited, I met with the owner in a virtual version of Hyrule who wanted to meet me in person and introduce himself. It was really neat joining a social group for VR through VR. I had experienced things like this in videogames before e.g. guild recruitment- but this felt different.
Conclusion — Preserve the digital economy
VRChat allows a degree of freedom and precision that makes for a very lucid experience. The lack of constraints means anyone can create and import practically anything. This freedom allows for a huge array of experiences and a vision of the wild west of cyberspace. I love sharing stories with others about the weird things we’ve seen while chatting around a fire in VR- everyone has their own feelings and opinions of the medium, these are just mine.
In my opinion, the nature of VRChat should be preserved. Let the people create the content and just build laws around it as necessary. The beauty of this sort of ecosystem is that those who are really great at creating avatars or worlds can be paid for it. We’ve seen this model before with Valve’s Dota 2 community market- where CAD-proficient users could sell an armory of digital weaponry for real money. These digital ecosystems provide a system of constant innovation, where the people are bending the rules to create a great avatar or world and thus raising the bar higher for an even better, more realistic, avatar- or just a psychedelic cockroach.
