Best Avatars in XR

 

At a recent conference, I asked a panel for their opinion of best clothing/avatars in VR right now. To my surprise, one panelist answered "RecRoom".

I thought about her answer afterwards and realized that she was probably referring to the creativity that the avatars can wear many different add-ons in that platform. Users can each be very unique with what they purchase and wear in RecRoom.

But also interesting in RecRoom is the fact that the base avatar is not gendered.  An avatar is made male, female, or other completely by the choice of clothing or add-ons. The base shape is exactly the same size (no difference for child or adult, same head, torso, and hands).

Interesting choice...but I disagree for different reasons. I pick a different platform for a different reason altogether.  To me, it's not about how the avatars look, it's how the avatars move.

NeosVR

First place in my judgment of best avatars in XR in 2020 is NeosVR. (By November 2021, it appears to be now named just Neos.)

NeosVR is a download and I found that I really needed help to set up an avatar.  So the entry point is really high on the difficulty scale.

 

Spaces in NeosVR in 2020 could hold a maximum of about 40 users (somewhat low, now in 2021 compared to the competitors). Neos has a nice Discord Community and I recommend it.

However, NeosVR has one feature in April 2020 that was ahead of the pack:

Avatars could - in live time - impact OTHER avatars.  That feature barely exists as I write in November 2021.  I saw one avatar reach up and wiggle the ear of another avatar.  That's not a script, program, animation, or pose ball---it was spontaneous and live.  Neither avatar user (as best as I can determine) was wearing a haptic suit (over the ears?) so that point is irrelevant.

But the closest I've seen to this in other platforms so far is the fictional moment from Ready Player One when Art3mis touches Wade Watson on the chest and he's wearing a haptic vest and "felt" it.  Of course, that's all staged...touching a vest that is designed to be touched isn't really news.

If you'd like to dive down that rabbit hole, go ahead and read Ready Player One fully as the book because it goes "all the way" and I think provides a good commentary on body touching in VR.

Spoiler alert: people reject it.

There is another close item to this but...now I can't find it (very typical for me). It is the grabbing and moving of fabric in real time in VR.  Again, NOT a program, not planned, not preset. It is spontaneous. So we are getting very close to this being in EVERY avatar...very close now.  We'll barely remember the days when we could not do this.

 

2nd place is a love/hate time with Sansar and their avatars.

First, the hate. I hate that, in 2020, of the dozen or so default free avatars you could pick, the ONLY female avatar was scantily clad and her boobs deserved their own zip code.  Really.

 

But now the love. Once I figured out how to change my avatar AND dress the clothes to fit her body, the avatar's thighs jiggled!  Since we tend to see our avatars from behind as the default camera view, I was delighted to see my avatar run, dance, and jump with some real junk in the trunk.  It was awesome. Well done, Sansar.

P.S. Worst avatars in XR?  Oy. I gotta say that the limited choices in both Engage and Virbela are tough to look at. 😕