High Fidelity is a social virtual reality world founded in 2013 by the founder and former CEO of Second Life, Philip Rosedale. High Fidelity provides a social virtual reality platform for users to create and deploy virtual worlds, and explore and interact together in them. The software is free and open source, and it supports VR gear such as Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. You can also enjoy it using just a regular desktop like I do.
On April 27th, 2016, High Fidelity entered open beta. I have been in High Fidelity a few times already and although I had a pretty hard time figuring out all the controls for the desktop, it’s still pretty interesting to explore. I haven’t done a video showing how to sign up, download and explore, but Draxtor and others will be giving me a bit of a tour and perhaps show me how to use it a bit better since I’m still pretty lost in it. He may also be doing a podcast about it, if he does, I’ll link to it from here. For now you can watch my stream of the High Fidelity tour on Friday, March 9th at 8am PST: https://youtu.be/k1I7gX0fZGU
Here is some information about High Fidelity:
- Download High Fidelity – It is available for Windows and Mac computers, and also on Steam. System requirements are also listed on the download page.
- High Fidelity Blog – Keep up with all the features and updates in High Fidelity by reading their blog. Philip writes some of the posts himself.
- High Fidelity Forums – Watch the forums for updates as well and also to interact with the community.
- High Fidelity Events – Check the events page to see what’s going on and attend to meet some of the community.
- Learn – Their learn page has a bunch of tutorials to help you get started with High Fidelity.
- Marketplace – Check out their marketplace and pick up some stuff. Majority of the items are free!
- Github – Since HiFi is open source, you can also contribute if you are so inclined.
- Social Media – HiFi can be found on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
- Cryptocurrency – High Fidelity Coins is a cryptocurrency that is empowered by blockchain technology. High Fidelity grants 10,000 HFC when you first set up your Wallet, learn how to do that at this link. UPDATE, please note that HFC does not come automatically with the creation of a wallet. Since they are in commerce beta, you currently have to email a request for HFC.
I hope this helps you understand HiFi a bit more. I feel like currently you have to be quite tech-savvy to fully grasp it and this is the reason why it’s taking me a while to understand how it all works. I haven’t done an Intro tutorial type video because of this reason, but I am looking forward to exploring HiFi with Draxtor and others on Friday. If you are in HiFi feel free to join us!
This post is part of a series I am doing in which I share introductions to different social virtual reality worlds. You can check out all of these posts under my Virtual Worlds category and other VR related posts under my Virtual Reality category.
See you in HiFi!
UPDATE: So Drax and I went on our tour and if you’ve watched the video, it’s quite hilarious because we were both somewhat lost. Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life and HiFi, met up with us a few days later and helped us out with some of the questions we had and you can hear that conversation on Drax’s podcast at this link: show #173: too many worlds, too many draxes
I’m very thankful to Philip for meeting up with us and explaining HiFi more to us. I felt like it was a very enlightening conversation, especially for me. I also asked Philip if he would be willing to take us both on another tour so my readers and subscribers get a better idea of HiFi and he said he would. We will work on scheduling something in April hopefully and I’ll do another HiFi post then to announce that tour.
