High Fidelity Moves To Open Alpha Phase

High Fidelity, an open source virtual world solution, has until now been in a closed alpha phase with people only gaining access after being invited to participate. However yesterday they unofficially announced that Open Alpha was coming and now that has been officially announced by Philip Rosedale : High Fidelity Open Alpha.

It’s important to read the blog post before diving into High Fidelity because it includes some extremely important points regarding expectations, for example :

This is a very early release, and High Fidelity is still very much a work in progress. The look and visual quality is far from complete, and big things like avatar movement animation and physics are still not in place. There are lots of bugs to fix, and content formats will continue to change. But enough systems are now functional to make us feel that High Fidelity is useful for some types of work, experimentation, and exploration. Having run a small and controlled early alpha to iron out the really show-stopping bugs, we’re now eager to engage a larger group and recruit open source contributions from other developers working on building the metaverse.

Please bear this in mind because it is an early Alpha product and if you’re expecting something like Second Life in its current form then you will be sorely disappointed. However if you are prepared to put up with an early Alpha product, one in which things could change rather rapidly, then take a look at High Fidelity.

Another important thing to bear in mind, especially if you’re a casual traveller, is that at this stage, there isn’t that much to explore. However as High Fidelity moves to this Open Alpha stage, expect that to change.

High Fidelity scripting is done via Javascript, which many people are familiar with. The way models are imported and placed is different to traditional methods in worlds such as Second Life, but I’ll let people discover that for themselves.

There is a marketplace for people to get items, but at the moment this is for freely sharing items, not selling them.

They have a lot of work to do and in his blog post, Philip Rosedale is brutally honest about this. However I don’t want to make this sound all gloom and doom, there are plenty of good developments within High Fidelity and they include :

You can communicate with your voice and with facial expressions, and you can optionally use the Oculus Rift HMD and other input devices like the Razer Hydra to touch and edit the world. We will also support the HTC Vive HMD and hand controllers as soon as they are available.

Avatar hands and bodies can also be moved using the Razer Hydra and Leap Motion.

There’s also a working physics system, 3D Audio and more. You can create avatars, buildings, scripts etc. Please read the blog post I linked near the start of this article for full details, but please be aware of where High Fidelity is in the development process, again the blog post emphasises this point :

You can expect continuous and substantial changes as we complete new features; we will likely break content as we continue to design and experiment. The transition from ‘alpha’ to ‘beta’, which we expect will happen over a year or so, will signal greater stability in the content formats. But as an open source project with contributions from many developers and with a broad set of features working, we think the time is right to open things up completely for early use.

By understanding this, you should be able to safely take a look at High Fidelity. Personally I find it fascinating to be taking a look at a product such as this so early in its lifecycle. Things change, things develop, sometimes you wonder where it’s all headed, but that’s part of the excitement for me.

High Fidelity certainly isn’t for everyone, especially at this stage, but if you fancy a bit of virtual world adventure in terms of early development, then you may well enjoy the ride.

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