Intro to Japan Social VR Platforms
Self Introduction
Hi there! My name is Kiral (キラ). I have been living in Japan for couple years now. Working in the XR industries with a lot of great open-minded peoples, anime and entertainment companies. As an engineer and business operator, I do not usually write articles, but during the corona-virus pandemic situations, I decided to write more articles and share more interesting experience from now on to the world for fun and also as a record.
There are couple VR/AR apps that I involved as technical director in creations like Attack on Titans: The Fight Against Beast Titan VR(Hexaride), Slayer’s LIVE concert in Sakura Town, Sailormoon VR and etc.
As I am living in Japan, I got a lot of interesting and special experience to share that is completely different from Canada lol
Virtual Cast
If you love the anime “Sword Art Online” like I do, You will probably heard of the name called “THE SEED ONLINE”. The cool part is the Origin of the name is actually from “Sword Art Online”!!! What What?! They actually received permission from Reki Kawahara who is the author to use the name. This is so AWESOME!!!
By uploaded your own character data(.vrm) to THE SEED ONLINE, you will able to use your own character with no problem.
You can also create your item as VCI (Virtual Cast Interactive) and use it in this VR Platform.
Just like VRChat, you can also create your own world.
The iconic event will be MIKU LAND Snow World 2021
It is coming up on 2021.2.6- 2021.2.7
There will be an Acoustic LIVE shows between Shinonome Megu and Hatsune Miku.
One of the best part is you can actually buy things directly in Virtual Cast!
Here are some of the items that were sold in the previous event in 2020
TLTW (Too long to write):
As a summery
Digital figures -> HoloModels(AR) and Virtual Cast(VR)
Poster and items -> HoloModels(AR) and Virtual Cast(VR)
Special Virtual Cast Items -> Virtual Cast(VR)
Since it is getting a little bit too details, I will explain what is HoloModels and how the ecosystem works in the other post when there is a chance :)
If you never experience the VR event in Virtual Cast, I will highly recommend you to join. (Although it is in Japan time, and you system location might somehow need to be in Japan)
Cluster
In the beginning, Cluster was an VR Application that used for Education and Event. You can actually host a technical event in cluster with powerpoint(pdf) and musics.
Now, Cluster had been evolved to be more like VRChat, and you can basically build your own world, your own trigger with their creator kit.
Cluster also support the .vrm format and you can also customise to your own avatar.
The Iconic event will be …” I wanna be the very best!! Like no one ever was~~..” Pokemon in 2020!!!
You can even select your character with your starter pokemon hat XD
The super cool part is it actually support in mobile phone, so you can actually see the world you created or for an event from your phone instead of the PC VR. Regardless of the immersive experience, it is always great to have options.
Ambr
I am lucky to be one of the beta tester in Ambr, it is such a great experience!
The cool part of Ambr is everything was really well though out that you can go to the bar and cheers with your friends with effect, you can go on a quest to slay a dragon with your friends and earn items. I think this might be one of the only VR Social Game in Japan that you can earn cool items after you won on a quest.
XRCloud
XRCloud seems to be still in development but it has quite a promising future.
The recent famous iconic event that used XRCloud would be Neoket which is hosted by the famous Pixiv who created VRoid from Japan.
The cool part of Neoket, since the event is hosted by Pixiv, you can connect to Booth directly and purchase your product.
If you interested to know how it looks like, please feel free to watch the video I created which talked about the event.
Coming up
Inspix world
Well that’s getting a little bit too long to read lol.
If people is interested, maybe I will write an article to compare all these platforms in details later.
Hope this article might help you understand the VR platforms war in Japan, especially in the time of pandemic.
Thanks for reading and here is my potato ;)
