Jesse Joudrey of Jespionage Entertainment talks about the weekly VR Chat gatherings that have been happening, and how meeting people in virtual spaces compares to meeting them in real life. He talks about the what type of body language cues translate, and how they’ll be expanding that with hand gestures.

Jesse also talks about the process of stress testing gatherings in VR Chat, and the current bottleneck is when too many people speak at the same time. They’re currently limited by what the uSpeak Unity plug-in provides, but they can also host additional servers to help out with the load. He also talks about how the VR Chat SDK provides the ability to customize your own avatar look with animations as well as customized spaces. Gunter has also gathered an archive of past VR Chat meet ups.

Finally, he talks about his VR Game jam game of Snow Drift, which is an extreme sports game. He was surprised that it made a lot of people motion sick because he doesn’t suffer from any symptoms of simulator sickness, which he talks about as well.

Reddit discussion here.

TOPICS

0:00 – Intro to VR Chat

0:30 – The VR Chat experience. Almost like being in reality in that you’re meeting other real people from around the world.

1:13 – Body language that translates. Where people are looking. Hand tracking is coming. Fidgety people also move around a lot in VR

2:00 – VR Chat stress tests. How to measure bottlenecks. Simultaneous in-voice communication

3:12 – Different challenges with audio. They use the uSpeak Unity plug-in. Can add servers to help with the load. Lots of data is being pushed when people speak simultaneously

4:15 – VR Chat SDK – Import avatar into the chat. Create own animations, and their own meet-up spaces. Build environments to express themselves.

5:30 – Can people host chats on their own server? Chats pare

5:56 – What it’s like meeting people face-to-face after communicating with them in VR Chat.

6:38 – What’s next in VR Chat? More personalization.

7:16 – Snow Drift, extreme sports VR Jam game.

7:53 – Doesn’t get motion sickness.

8:39 – Get more info at Snow Drift and VR Chat and Jespionage Entertainment

Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio