Recap of VR Exploders Meeting in VRChat

VCARA Blog

Published: September 22, 2020 by Dr. Pat Franks

On the third Friday of each month, members of the VR Exploders Group (no, that’s not a typo) explore a different virtual reality platform. Last week, on September 18, 2020, they met up in VRChat to compare notes on the experience.

Since a 2019 survey of users of both Virtual Reality and Virtual Worlds revealed that 64% of respondents want a platform to encourage educational purposes (not predominantly social/gaming), the group keep the education use of the platform foremost in their minds.

Although we will be going back to explore further, one of the explorers had this first impression:

  • There are very little interactive tools and the interface was difficult. The social hubs are numbered and, if crowded, you are sent to a different hub;
  • My first impression is that VRChat is for social fun times and not very useful for educational purposes. I was on my Oculus Headset, and it worked pretty well. Voice was a problem and we were all really glad to have the Discord channel.

If any of you use VRChat and have had different experiences, we’d love to hear them!

Comments

VR Chat

Well I remember me, Val, and Marie having a little trouble friending and teleporting each other. I don't think voice was a problem at all, in fact I think using Discord is a distraction at first. If someone didn't remember to mute their mic in-world there was an echo because we were all in Discord on voice. But being able to friend and TP someone is essential. I friended Marie right away, but she couldn't TP me. I think it took Sidearm a couple tries to teleport me successfully. So that's the part that I think is kind of a deal killer. Val and I were both on Oculus Rifts and I know Sidearm was on a desktop. I can't remember what Marie said. What device were you on Pat?

Even though I prefer better avatars, I did kind of like my crazed bunny driving a robot. I'll post a link to my picture below. I had my neighbor calling and knocking on my door right at the end and had to jump out before we could all get a better group picture!

https://drive.google.com/file/...

Oculus Rift

I found the experience using the headset better in VRChat than some of the other VR environments I’ve tried. Since I missed the group tour, I went in alone so not sure about voice.

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