Whew, where to start. The problem with writing my first VR travelogue was that most VRChat worlds are fairly small with not a lot to see or do. Consequently I had to feature all the worlds by a single author last time, simply to have enough content. This time, I have the opposite problem: This single world is so enormous, with so much to see, I doubted if I could squeeze it all into one article!
This is my favorite kind of world in VRChat. The sprawling landscape, jam-packed with interesting stuff to discover, if you explore thoroughly. When they have some sort of game mechanics and lore as well, that’s the cherry on top. Olympia has no such mechanics, but what it lacks in gameplay or backstory, it makes up for with sheer size and jaw dropping beauty.
There’s a daytime version of this map as well. Or sunset, I ought to say. I personally didn’t find it as appealing, many features like the bioluminescent fungal trees or coral reefs don’t pop at sunset in the same way. Suit yourself though, try both, although each one is nearly 300 megabytes. That makes for non-trivial download time when you’re sitting there, waiting in your headset.
Many vistas reminded me of scenes from the Myst games, particularly Riven. Us dried up old skeletons remember a time when the pre-rendered scenery in Myst was mind blowing. Surely we thought, games will never look that good. It took about fifteen years. Another decade later, here I am in virtual reality, exploring a world that looks vastly better than Myst 1 and easily on par with Myst 4, last in the series to use pre-rendered graphics.
This withered mummy also remembers VRML. Once upon a time, tech companies massively tried to jump the gun, developing a programming standard for a 3D internet intended for viewing in virtual reality. Never mind that the best VR headset available for home use at the time was the Forte VFX1, which I wrote about here.
Technically it was possible. If you had deep pockets in the mid-1990s to early 2000s, you could sit at home with that clunky beast of a headset on, exploring flat shaded 3D worlds resembling something out of Star Fox for SNES, or the average 3D Atari Jaguar game ala Cybermorph or Checkered Flag. An expensive, abortive folly at the time. Yet here I am doing the same thing, but properly, 25 years on.
The future does eventually arrive. Just not “on schedule”, and not evenly distributed. The iPhone was launched in 2006. Today even the world’s poorest have smartphones. I don’t doubt that VR will reach everybody in 15 years, at some level of fidelity anyways. Quest 2 was a popular Christmas gift this year, unfortunately for those of us who don’t like our VRChat sessions interrupted by unsupervised screaming children. Our “Eternal December” starts now.
Yet, it’s hard to feel too upset about it with stunning views like these. Courtesy Paul A.K., alias DrMorro, the author of Olympia Nights. It turns out I’m not the only one impressed with it, as it was nominated for “best immersive world” at Raindance Immersive this year. I’ll likely feature a couple more of the nominees in this travelogue series, so keep your eyes peeled for those.
The premise of Olympia is simply that it’s a city state on an alien world. It mixes a lot of ancient architectural styles, in particular classical Greek and Roman, making it easy to mistake for Plato’s Atlantis if it weren’t for the pale blue gas giant in the sky. Not unlike some dreams I’ve had.
Every part of it is reachable, too! That was a recurring theme in the last set of worlds I featured. Many appeared expansive but only for the sake of a visually pleasing backdrop. Players were still confined by invisible barriers to the small percentage of the world that the author intended for us to inhabit. Not the case in Olympia. See those distant temples? You can reach them.
The largest, most visually commanding landmarks aren’t the whole story either. If you search the out of the way nooks and crannies of Olympia you’ll find charming little gardens tucked away, out of sight. The landscape and structural features are also calculated to facilitate travseral. If you can see someplace neat but out of reach, more often than not there’s a trail, or ramp, or bridge of some description that can take you there.
Alas, that comes at the cost of a staggering polygon count. That’s to say nothing of all the shaders either. Needless to say this is a PCVR only world, inaccessible to Quest users. But for how long? If we went from crude low rest chunky VR helmets and SuperFX graphics to this in 25 years, it can’t be much longer before the VR industry’s steady push towards standalone headsets as the default form factor brings sufficient rendering horsepower to the masses.
It’s funny, I bought into VR as another flavor of escapism. Someplace I could disappear to at will, to get away from other people. But while it’s serene and soothing to explore worlds like this by myself, VRChat really comes alive when you make good friends and take them to places like this, watching them discover it for themselves. Or exploring someplace that’s fresh and unknown to all of you, together.
It really came full circle, didn’t it. A technology conceived of by many as an antisocialite’s paradise eventually matured into a tool for connecting people from across the globe who otherwise might never have met, or even known of one another’s existence. Mirroring perhaps similar changes in myself, as I have grown and matured as a person. At first fearful and mistrustful of others, gradually opening up to new people and new experiences.
In the end, it’s the best of both worlds. I don’t have to trade reality for unreality. I have been places, and seen things in this headset which could never exist in reality. But I’ve also been able to bring real people into this world with me, to share with them those ineffable sights and sounds which must be experienced firsthand to be believed.
I tremble as I imagine what VR will be like in another twenty years. Growing ever faster, ever smoother, bigger, sharper, brighter. Like a colorful, blindingly radiant future rushing towards us all until it surrounds our vision. Then suddenly, we’re inside of it. Not peering at the future as it comes over the horizon, but living it.
I always knew this day would come, too. There was a long time when it appeared foolish to hold out hope for VR. Maybe it was. The resounding flop of the Virtual Boy seemed to satisfy everybody that VR was fool’s gold. An unreachable mirage, which is what it remained for most of those 25 years. A dark and painful time for someone who believed from the start in the limitless potential of a technology which literally makes gods of us, able to create worlds from our own imaginations and then inhabit them.
Yet I still dared hope, because I saw that potential so clearly in my mind. The advance of technology is as inevitable as death or taxes. So any conceptual technology which doesn’t violate any laws of physics, which there’s sufficient demand for, will eventually become real in some capacity. That’s a principle you can set your watch by.
What could there be more powerful, enduring demand for than a technology which allows us to create our own reality? Is that not in some sense the end goal of art, in all its forms? Perfect VR would be the logical terminus of man’s age-old quest to realize the unreal, as Minerva sprang forth from the mind of Zeus. An apropos comparison I feel, given the architectural themes of this world.
Perhaps I’m betraying my own lack of imagination when I say this, but I don’t see the same potential in AR. It may be more “useful” and “constructive”. It may aid us in navigating reality, but reality was never my primary area of interest. AR is VR for extroverts, bringing the virtual into the real world, instead of bringing us into the virtual world. I don’t want out, I want to go deeper in.
Everybody has a choice to make early in life. Fantasy, or reality? A man cannot serve two masters, after all. I chose fantasy and never looked back. It has yielded many fruitful rewards, as well as painful regrets. But the same is true of any path you take; whichever you choose, it destroys all the other possible lives you might’ve lived.
Still, I am content with my choice. Reality can only ever be one way. Fantasy can be absolutely anything you want. Anything you’re able to imagine. Limited only by your technological means of realizing it, and your proficiency with the tools of creation.
Until now I have lived physically, in reality, only under protest. But with the forward march of time comes relentless innovation, chipping away at the ever-shrinking barrier between the real and the unreal. The day is fast approaching when that barrier will, at last, crumble and fall.