Somnium Space’s v3.1.6 update is slated to rollout today, bringing to the social VR platform a number of quality of life features that could put it more on par with its main competitor, VRChat.
Arguably the most important feature to the update is how it handles World Instances, which now supports a wider degree of privacy, including friends instances, friends+ private instances, paid instances, and PIN-protected instances. Previously, Somnium Space was largely built around a persistent shared world. That essentially means instead of every event existing in one open space, communities can now have private concerts, classrooms, meetings, paid events, and moderated gatherings.
Surely this will have a bigger impact than ChilloutVR, Resonite, and Banter did.
Seriously though, I’d love to see a VRChat competitor, but the reality is unless you can easily support the same community content VRChat does, you won’t get your foot in the door. Worlds and Avatars need to be cross compatible, and if they aren’t then you lose.