Bruce Wooden (aka @cymaticbruce) is a cool avatar in AltspaceVR: a floating robot with blue eyes and a serious multi strands of dreads ponytail. Just as he looks IRL. Almost.
We met for nearly an hour in AltspaceVR for an interview about, well, Social VR. Where else should we talk?
The interview went much like a podcast might, and watching the video here you might find it a little dry or long because you’re seeing it from a single camera’s point of view in 2D. But I assure you, wearing my Vive and talking with Bruce was pretty engaging while we were there in AltspaceVR, probably much more than if we had just spoken via Skype or Zoom or any other video conferencing software. The Social VR experience must be, well, experienced, to get the difference.
Time flew by pretty quickly, as I was sitting in my chair in real life for the most part, whereas my avatar was standing and sometimes moving around a bit. Bruce was pretty animated, talking with enough hand and body gestures for me to get comfortable with an avatar that had practically no other facial gestures than eyes that would light up as he spoke. I struggled a little with using my Vive wands as extensions of my hands, though I do use my hands to gesture routinely when I speak when not holding triggered devices. I’m sure I’ll get better at it quickly. The Vive HMD did faithfully capture head motion though, and while my human-based avatar seems a little socially awkward still, even by the end of the video you can see me getting more in the swing of using body language that looks more normal.
Here are some key ideas of what we spoke about, for those who’d rather read than jump through the video:
Bruce’s journey to AltSpaceVR
As an early Kickstarter support of the Oculus Rift, Bruce was ready for a social adventure in VR, having had a Twitch Channel going for a while and having built an online community that communicated via camera and text. He’s a confounder of AltspaceVR and the Head of Experience, and being both socially gregarious and really taken with the possibilities of VR, he’s bringing all of his passion into building and expanding the platform across as many devices and open in as many real-world places as possible.
Unique elements VR brings to the Social media experience
Whereas 2D broadcasting of a 3D environment doesn’t restrict what the environment can look like of what people can do in them, VR amplifies the sense of complete engagement through two aspects: 3 dimensionality and sound that is generated from people and things as they would, giving the auditory spatial perception of being in a real space. When someone approaches you in VR, you have both the visual 3D clues and the auditory perception that they are coming closer to you. This perception persists even when you teleport, or jump many feet away quickly: the sound of the person talking will diminish as well as their size, accordingly.
Bruce also talked about how it feels to be part of a group standing in a circle speaking, where in VR you can turn your head to hear or see others in different parts of the circle more clearly, and have a strong sense of where you are in relation to others, something you really can’t pick up in a flat environment.
Gatherings that are flat suddenly become more engaging and easier to navigate once you are immersed in the 3D VR experience.
As a result, people stay in AltspaceVR for much longer than you might presume, and he mentions that people will easily spend 30, 45 minutes, or much longer at one time, despite the possibility of fatigue from eye strain or wearing a headset. I would add that with the selection of activities that are always available, and groups that aren’t too large to jump in and talk with easily, it can be easy to spend more time than you thought you would at first glance.
Why are there so few Avatar styles in AltspaceVR?
I asked why the limited group (less than a dozen) of avatars, all fairly simple and with pretty limited modifications available. Bruce was very direct and unapologetic to say that restricting the avatars to a limited handful of presets allows for smoother action and more participants at one time (more about that below). He elaborated that contrary to the idea that people want photo-realistic avatars, the ability to have enough body/head/hand language (and some choices over hair/skin/clothing colors for the more human-like ones) gives people just enough cues for one to be able recognize individuals in a room full of people. I would add that you can always aim your pointer over their heads to find out who they are and their relationship to you as a friend, just to double check. I would add that using your voice combined with the body language helps to distinguish the generic class of a half-dozen or so avatars. Your microphone is always on (unless you intentionally mute it), so talking takes precedence over typing in Social VR.
I would agree that if you have to restrict things for performance by keeping the avatars simple, I’d rather be able to have a room with as many as 20 or 30 people rather than just the 3-4 that limits Facebook Spaces social VR.
Editing your Avatar in AltSpaceVR – a limited palette, but the payoff is speed and better gatherings
Social Behavior in Social VR
Next I raised the question of social norms in AltspaceVR, considering that social gaming environments, for example, are ‘kill or be killed’: that’s the norm, and with that in mind multiplayer gaming hasn’t had famous blowups or personal tragedies making the news over serious breaches of social conduct. Other social spaces are dealing with unhealthy and inappropriate behavior in different ways, mostly through focused monitoring and responding quickly with account shutdowns or adding reporting and blocking capabilities.
Bruce explained that when AltspaceVR was a limited environment in early testing, everyone seemed to be on best behavior. Once they went into open beta and beyond, they have had to find different solutions for things that wouldn’t even be a problem in text-based or even flat video chat, such as violating an individual’s sense of personal space. For example, in the page of community standards (for behavior) there’s a specific comment about “a high speed approach and passing of one avatar through another”, which, when sensed in 3D, could feel extremely personally intrusive and disconcerting. The possibility of harassment and intimidation includes completely non-verbal action in Social VR. And so, it has been addressed — Read the entire list of AltspaceVR community standards here.
For those who come from a place of desiring very controlled contact with others here, it’s possible to create private, friends-only spaces, and even set up a protective bubble around yourself. This also makes the space useful for holding private meetings, which could bring AltspaceVR into the business world with little to no modification and no worries about being NSFW.
Regardless, however, “it just takes one a-hole to spoil things”, so some measures, such as time-limiting channels or making moderators out of channel creators help reduce the need for live monitors everywhere by automating some of the control and isolating potential bad behavior. Just as every social media has discovered, Bruce notes that developing rules and responses is an ongoing process, and AltspaceVR is fully aware it’s not immune to bad actors or people being highly sensitive to social interactions that may cause them discomfort.
What is the future of Social VR?
I asked where Bruce sees things going in just 2 years, considering how quickly technology is moving. I proposed that most VR users are still early adopters, not to knock the number of Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, and Playstation VR units that have sold. The numbers over just the past 18 months are promising and continue on an upswing. I mention these three because they all piggyback on existing technology, the handheld device, lowering the price bar required to enjoy the fuller VR experiences provided by Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, both which demand higher-powered computers with fast GPUs and a $500+ VR HMD (Head Mounted Display) systems.
Bruce says that mobile VR is going to be the major driver for growth and adoption of VR in general over the next two years. You can see that’s AltspaceVR’s strategy, as they put Google Daydream on the top of the list and the latest VR platform they are supporting. There’s also a page dedicated to the various controllers that work with mobile version for GearVR, most of them in the$25-$50 range. This is also in line with why they are keeping avatars limited in design complexity and customization: simpler avatars lower the drain on mobile CPUs/GPUs cycles and their batteries, and work better at lower resolutions and frame rates. However, the AMOLED/OLED displays on the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones aren’t far from the Rift and Vive displays, and Apple’s silence on their stance on AR/VR/MR creates speculation that they’ve got a blockbuster refresh on the iPhone in the works that will go in some kind of (fill-in-the-blank) Reality category.
Closing thoughts
We didn’t cover content and activities that are already going on in AltSpaceVR, but I did volunteer to put together a talk show, even before I noticed open auditions happening this week for just that. And Bruce was kind enough to encourage me to get my hopes up!
With AltSpaceVR making it past its first birthday and Bruce Wooden as the enthusiastic and affable Head of Experience, there are great possibilities for this flavor of Social VR to remain popular and continue to grow, even as Facebook starts its own journey down the road of Social VR. Try Holograms for Humanity, for starters, and I think you’ll see why this feels like AltspaceVR is well past the Beta stage and could slip into getting the Early Majority on board sooner rather than later.
Please check out the video, comment below, or look for me (dmeyers) in AltspaceVR.
