VR Micro Online

I've got a new project in the works, VR Micro

A shared infosystem based on spatial reasoning,
a world of many interconnected maps,
with documents and services physically represented as objects.
Users have avatars and can see and interact with each other.

The short version is, this is a file share, as a memory palace by way of graphical adventure games. It is to "real" (but costs too much and makes you puke) VR, as HTML was to "real" (but never shipped) hypertext like Xanadu: It's small and simple enough to actually work. To be something a semi-normal person could run on a rented server and make some maps and share their thought world.

All I have so far is a spec, but I got the server stood up this morning, I expect to have a standalone client working soon™, and then can work on the server.

I plan to keep it all licensed BSD for code, CC-BY for content. You are of course encouraged to contribute feedback, source, content, and/or money.

Hey, you like this? Servers aren't free. You know I have a Patreon tip jar up there? <rattle> <rattle>

Spokes and Hubs

Firefox is extremely annoying using Hubs in fullscreen. Open a tab, type about:config as location, and set:

full-screen-api.warning.timeout: 0
pointer-lock-api.warning.timeout: 0

This time I did the tutorial for Spoke—which you should absolutely sit thru, and try out as you go—and then made a scene based on the Material Test. Well, first I tried to edit the cafe, but it turns out that's a single model with 80K polys, not editable. Pity.

So you can make a scene by adding items from a library, Architecture Kit has most of the building blocks you'd want, mostly in 1x1 to 4x4m segments, and a small palette of industrial textures.

Google Poly and Sketchfab have hundreds/thousands of items to drop in.

Unfortunately, while you can upload your own textures, you can't put them on any object, they're just images. The best I've found for now is to just lay it down like a carpet, 0.01 above a flat surface so there's no z-fighting. Works but obviously stupid. The actual workflow is apparently to clone ArchitectureKit, edit it in Blender (oh fuck), upload.

Not a bad toybox, not as good as Second Life, Garry's Mod, or Unity, but usable, and a lot cheaper (paying SL $1 per 25 images sucked giant balls until later I made it back 1000x by selling things and coding services).

The Spoke controls continue to be awkward, and often contradictory to Hub's, but I got used to them.

There doesn't seem to be any way to select or group multiple objects and apply changes to all of them, except translation, rotation, etc.; texture remapping is kind of a pain. And there's no texture offset field, so if your objects aren't full-sized and don't line up exactly, you can't make them fit. Don't use hex or tile patterns on such objects, I guess, or hide the seams under carpets.

After a bit of work, mostly changing textures but adding some trim, adding a doorknob, fixing misaligned blocks, I got a slightly better version of their demo, hit Cmd-S to save (in Spoke), then Publish to Hub. Which takes >1 minute for a tiny default scene.



So starting over from the watery caldera template, and a "forest" model from Poly, I'm building up a dark twilight castle, we'll see how that goes.

Trying out Mozilla Hubs

  • Mozilla Hubs is a VR/3D chat room, sort of like IMVU, Second Life, etc, except semi-private instances. That should be quite interesting. It doesn't need a client, it uses the browser, so I opened it in Firefox, assuming they're favoring their own. Whoo, listen to those computer fans, this thing runs hot, to get me 30-45 FPS (admittedly on a 5K iMac…)

It uses a horrible no-password email-link token login flow. Almost just stopped right there. I have a password manager, I'm fine with entering long passwords; I don't like opening email every time I come to a site.

Picking name and avatar seems persistent, but the avatar choices are either box-headed robots, round-headed robots, or super creepy human busts on floating buttplugs. I did eventually find a Bender avatar, so that's sorted for now.

You start in a tutorial on a terrible little "River Island" with painted-on water. It took me a while to realize you can create and edit objects you place, but the "stuff" in the room is created in a world editor and you can't edit those while you're in the scene. Nothing can really be interacted with, you can't sit, but it doesn't matter because you don't have a moving body to animate. 1990 called and wants its VR back.

Controls are weird. It does WASD, but Q/E rotate you by 45° per tap, left-mouse drag turns you, right-mouse drag sets a destination, which is backwards from every MMO & FPS. Shift sprints, which annoys me since Minecraft has shift=crouch, ctrl=sprint, but whatever. Flight is G or /fly in chat, to go into no-clip flying mode, which can be disabled by the room's owner. Tab or space open a GIANT emote bar, which is frustrating since holding space is also how you edit items. I have to back way up to see the popup menu over the giant emote bar.

Hamburger menu, Change Scene lets you pick from quite a lot of worlds. Some you can bookmark/copy to "My Scenes", some you can't, and I don't know why. The scene list doesn't keep your place, each time you open it, you start at page 0 (actually, all pages say "0"; so you're just paging forever with no idea where you are).

Scenes I've liked so far:

  • morning dew: Nice open café.
  • Atmosphere Lounge: Cool cathedral floating in the void, but can't bookmark it.
  • Viewing Room: Nice little basement room with sofa.
  • Wizard's Library: World of Warcraft-y cute tower with two levels and little nooks.
  • Mad Scientist House: Rick & Morty's house. Not every room is detailed, but the doors are pass-thru.
  • TheNightClub: Dark hallway, dance floor, and stage. Tastefully black and purple. Seems useful.

But many others are weird models with no interiors, and almost no place you can walk. I've seen one scene so far that had sound effects, so it's possible, just nobody else bothered.

I'll probably go back in and try making a scene, and then make it permanent(?) and see how the user interaction is. I'm not expecting much given these terrible avatars, but world-building is fun.