VR Status

- Published on 4th August, 2023 -

Tags: tech,vr

Hey there, long time no see!
As you may have noticed on my social media, I have now been for a few months experimenting more with VR (Virtual Reality).
It was in February of last year that I did my first blog post on this technology, when I only had it for around two weeks at the time.
Now that more than a year and a half has passed, I think it’s time for a small update.

First off, I still find the technology amazing while sadly being still gatekept by high hardware costs.

The index itself had a few problems during those months:

1. The left controller has been sent back two times already due to touchpad issues (the same exact issue every time)
2. The screens inside the HMD ended up having dead pixels after months of use and was sent back as well

Otherwise, I had some changes on the platforms I use daily.
For instance, in my original blog post, I talked about VRChat which now I do not use anymore, given its poor creation tools and generally lack of interesting activities.
Most of the screenshots that I post everywhere are now from NeosVR, a social VR platform allowing for content creation within the game while also allowing extensive modifications by modding.
Need an avatar? Just drag-and-drop your model file onto the game window, click on the import window, see your model appear, use the in-game avatar creator and done, ready for use!

Sadly, Neos has been plagued by a lack of updates and a CEO that cares more about scamming users with cryptocurrency (which most of the community rejects) than to take care of the platform.
Though there is rumours of a new platform that would be released by the original developer of Neos (that left it a while ago), for now, we are stuck in this situation.

That’s where Overte enters the game.
Overte is also a social VR platform, but with the particularity of being compltely Open-Source, licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
Though the controls are a bit more basic than Neos’, the platform is more than usable both in VR and Desktop mode.
The game itself is a fork of Vircadia which is itself a fork of High-Fidelity, created by Philip Rosedale, the fomer CEO of Second Life. This is why the game itself feels and looks like Second Life so much.
Creating avatars is a bit more complicated, requiring you to rename bones and blendshapes in Blender, but jump into the game and you will most certainly find someone more than happy to help you in the Overte Hub.

The advantage of Overte is that everything is hosted by yourself, from avatars to worlds.
For instance, I am hosting a Domain, or world, named The Cheesebox (join it btw, I swear we have fun there).
But it is not limited to that, you can also host your own accounts system, the possibilities are endless.

Another advantage is that the project itself is overseed by a nonprofit where board members are elected, thus eliminating most cryptobro-related problems.

All in all, it is a very promising platform that definitely deserves more attention.

I think that’s enough for today, thanks a lot for reading this blog post.
I’m gonna try to make more posts again, probably dedicated around the VR space as one post isn’t enough to cover everything.
I’ll see you next time!

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