Somnium Space has updated its platform with improved player profiles and various quality of life features. I took a look into what’s new on the live service platform.
I remember first hearing about Somnium Space through an XR social group a few years ago.
One of the group members was raving about her experience on the platform. She had built a club and wanted us all to visit and take a look around. That early visit didn’t wow me back then as there was a learning curve I couldn’t get past.
Fast forward to today, and Somnium has released a new update with improved player profiles, faster map loading times, new dance animations, and more. But will the platform leave an impression with me this time? I logged back in to find out.
Welcome To Base Reality
I begin my journey in Somnium Space by viewing a short tutorial on how to move and use basic features on the platform. Afterwards, I materialize in an office tower that reveals the world below. This place, which looks like a bunch of sleekly-designed structures mixed with player-owned buildings, is what’s known in-game as “Base Reality”.
Base Reality is a quaintly designed town map bisected by rivers and mountains. In its center is a public courtyard surrounded by a mall, a public pavilion, a planetarium, and a prison for misbehaving players. Overhead are several planets that share the sky with a sun and moon. There are day and night cycles as well as thoughtful spatial sound design featuring singing birds and nighttime crickets.
The overworld’s town mall is a bright echo of vaporwave design. Its empty storefronts state they’re currently for rent or will be soon. The planetarium across the street holds an exhibit on space travel and is narrated by an AI voice that sounds like Morgan Freeman. I walk from building to building in the town center while marveling at the architecture.
Riding around on a free hoverbike, I explore more overworld landmarks. There’s a large park called Magic Forest that’s drenched in pink fog and decorated with statues. Beyond the park is a hill hiding a secret cave, leading to an underground series of tunnels. Cross one of the large bridges over the river and the Somnium Racetrack sits in the distance.
In the middle of the raceway and town center are land parcels. Most of them feature old NFT galleries and defunct cryptocurrency businesses. I drive from building to building, park my car, and walk inside to observe the interiors. Video players that no longer function, old photos of celebrities hawking token-based art, and AI-generated image galleries are what await me.
This is where the town begins to contrast. What’s bright, cheery, and welcoming at the center of the map bleeds into aging neighborhoods of abandoned virtual office concepts. They’re fun to race by and load quickly enough to not cause lag, but I can’t help but wonder about the people who once ran businesses here.
Digital Land And NFTs
In 2022, Somnium Space Founder and CEO Artur Sychov gave Forbes a tour of the platform. The Forbes article extolled the virtues of parcel ownership and claimed digital land bought on the blockchain couldn’t be taken away once purchased.
That might be a problem for a live service experience looking to grow its numbers in the current day. If there’s going to be parcels people can buy and sell, there should be players actively using them to keep things lively.
Somnium now has worldbuilding with instance technology rather than relying on parcel space, but Sychov insists digital land purchasing isn’t going away at all.
“Parcels remain a fundamental part of Somnium Space,” he wrote to UploadVR. “Users can still purchase them using blockchain or traditional currency, and they can build on them either through our easy-to-use Builder application or via the Unity SDK.”
Somnium Space currently handles purchases through either Stripe for traditional currency or a linked crypto wallet through Somnium’s website. Once payment is linked, players can purchase items on the platform’s marketplace or tip one another with either form of currency.
The Call Is Coming From Inside The Game
While I’m not personally wild about web3, Somnium Space’s other features are impressive.
Glimmr is Somnium Space’s in-house social app. You can take a snap of anything and upload it to the social feed right away. Posts can optionally be hidden and unlocked by a monetary donation, or boosted for higher visibility on the general timeline. During a community meeting I was able to pull up the social feed where players were posting snaps of one another in real time.
One jaw-dropping moment came when Sychov mentioned a video call function that lets you facetime players through in-game video and real-world webcams. I tested this with Sychov as he called me via his game menu. A thin smartphone screen appeared as I answered. After hanging up, a player standing next to me also initiated a call. When I picked up this time, I could see the actual person in real life waving at me. I waved back with my avatar and laughed.
“Communication between people in different VR instances which we introduced is already powerful and first in industry, but we realized that connecting real life directly with VR could be even more impactful,” Sychov explained. “That led to the idea of enabling video calls where someone outside VR can call a person inside Somnium. It’s a very natural step toward blending physical and virtual presence.”
Players can also call from their phones into Somnium Space in order to have a physical-to-virtual-phone conversation. The “physical” user must access Somnium’s website on their phone to initiate the call. Their “virtual” friends will be able to pick up on the other side and speak to them that way. Sychov says Somnium Space plans to expand the feature in the future.
Can They Make It?
The VR community is sharply divided on issues such as web3. Either Somnium Space will appeal to someone because of its token implementation or it won’t at all. This challenge is to be reasonably expected and faced with honesty.
That aside, Somnium Space’s UI is one of the best I’ve seen in a live service platform. Its overworld map design is done reasonably well but parcel management currently gives an “abandoned” feel. If the platform can overcome its land issues, Somnium can grow to be a nice alternative to other platforms currently on offer.
Sychov is proud of what Somnium Space has accomplished so far. “Our philosophy is very straightforward: build great technology and the users will come.”
“We’re seeing our user base grow steadily, and we’re focused on providing creators with better tools to build experiences and monetize them in a fair and decentralized ecosystem.”
Somnium Space is available on PCVR. It is currently an 18+ platform with age verification implemented through Stripe.
