Virtual Market 3 is a festival that takes place in VRChat where visitors can freely look, try on, and purchase 3D avatars and 3D models displayed in themed worlds made entirely with user-generated content. This year had about 600 spaces for booths across 15 unique worlds!
The entire project is a massive collaboration effort by the Japanese VR community. Together, they have pulled off 3 multi-day festivals in the past year featuring hundreds of interactive booths made by independent creators and over a dozen beautiful custom made maps.
Our group’s first destination from the entrance was a cross-compatible avatar world. There are two large rooms with many mirrors positioned within rows of avatars one can try on.
It is amazing to see what designs are possible to pull off despite having low-poly constraints.
The Worlds
Virtual Market 3 will be held across 6 different worlds, each featuring its own overarching genre. Each world is further split into 2~3 different variations, each featuring a different subgenre, totaling 15 unique venues. Each location will be assigned a set of thematically fitting keywords to allow exhibitors to pick and choose whichever venue best fits their content and better reach their targeted audience. Source
There was no in-game purchasing for Virtual Market 3 but, all the booths had QR codes and links that take you to the booth.pm storefront. Desktop users can simply take screenshots to remember booths they liked to purchase assets from there later. Booth.pm accepts paypal.
Many of the stalls contained objects that can be picked up like swords, shields, guns, hats, etc.
There were about 40-50 booths in each world that we explored, some were quite spread out.
VRchat implemented a custom script just for this event which allowed certain booths to open a web page. Any type of web related scripting is unavailable with the VRC SDK but Virtual Market 3 was a special exception.
The first Virtual Market was a for fun creative event but every year has gotten bigger to eventually become the biggest SocialVR convention ever! Since Virtual Market 2 the organizers have exceeded their crowdfunding goals multiple times over with an average of 1000 patrons: https://camp-fire.jp/profile/VirtualMarket/projects
Top sponsors such as 7/11 had rich presence in every world map with a virtual branch of their store featuring items from their real world catalog! Here we are hanging out in front of one.
“It seems many Japanese players feel it symbolizes a kind of a link between real and virtual worlds. All package textures are taken from real one”
What were some interesting observations or qualities you made about a booth that stood out for you?
Animations and having some items that you can grab. Picking stuff up and trying it, especially if the item is interactive like a gun that fired made the booth especially attention grabbing.
How easy was it to navigate the worlds?
With the secondary menu it made it easy to find your group by being able to teleport to other players. However, the VR experience was difficult to stay within the group which is probably why some of us rode on another person’s avatar. The walk speed of the entire world could probably use an increase as well.
What’s the experience like of buying something?
Fustrating, would of loved to buy something but couldn’t figure it out while in VR mode.
Would you be inclined to revisit the world if there were no other people?
Unanimously yes. If one wanted to buy any kind of 3D assets would totally return, it’s very useful to see and try before you buy. The purchasing experience could be improved if a shopping cart was implemented to save things later and then do a single large checkout.
How would you rank an in-world shopping experience versus 2D menus?
Depends if one is in desktop mode or in VR, but its hard to compare right now because it’s impossible to buy things in VR mode. If we can favorite things for now then checkout later it’d be much better.
What are your main takeaways from Virtual Market 3?
Lots of questions around the shopping experience and logistics around putting the entire project together. How was it built and how did people collaborate? The artistic direction was pulled off really well, how was it coordinated?
History
Virtual Market 1
The first Virtual Market took place August 2018 and was 1 world with ~100 booths.
Virtual Market 2
The spring festival comes about 7 months after the first event and drew a staggering 120,000 visitors to Virtual Market 2. There were 403 booths, each featuring a variety of virtual contents ranging from avatars to accessories for sale.
Virtual Market 3 Recap
Virtual Market 3 is a festival that takes place in VRChat where visitors can freely look, try on, and purchase 3D avatars and 3D models displayed in themed worlds made entirely with user-generated content. This year had about 600 spaces for booths across 15 unique worlds!
The entire project is a massive collaboration effort by the Japanese VR community. Together, they have pulled off 3 multi-day festivals in the past year featuring hundreds of interactive booths made by independent creators and over a dozen beautiful custom made maps.
The M3 org went on a field trip to explore Virtual Market 3 and further discuss ideas around content discovery and marketplaces. Link to the proposal: https://github.com/M3-org/research/issues/2
Oculus Quest Avatars
Our group’s first destination from the entrance was a cross-compatible avatar world. There are two large rooms with many mirrors positioned within rows of avatars one can try on.
It is amazing to see what designs are possible to pull off despite having low-poly constraints.
The Worlds
Virtual Factory
Castello Magica
Link to more worlds info: https://www.v-market.work/world
Shopping Experience
There was no in-game purchasing for Virtual Market 3 but, all the booths had QR codes and links that take you to the booth.pm storefront. Desktop users can simply take screenshots to remember booths they liked to purchase assets from there later. Booth.pm accepts paypal.
Many of the stalls contained objects that can be picked up like swords, shields, guns, hats, etc.
There were about 40-50 booths in each world that we explored, some were quite spread out.
VRchat implemented a custom script just for this event which allowed certain booths to open a web page. Any type of web related scripting is unavailable with the VRC SDK but Virtual Market 3 was a special exception.
Clicking OK opened up the web browser to the page https://v-market.work/user/10009 which then redirected to https://games.dmm.com/campaign/virtual_market.
Sponsors
The first Virtual Market was a for fun creative event but every year has gotten bigger to eventually become the biggest SocialVR convention ever! Since Virtual Market 2 the organizers have exceeded their crowdfunding goals multiple times over with an average of 1000 patrons: https://camp-fire.jp/profile/VirtualMarket/projects
Top sponsors such as 7/11 had rich presence in every world map with a virtual branch of their store featuring items from their real world catalog! Here we are hanging out in front of one.
https://www.sej.co.jp/i/products/7premium/drink/ - View the Japanese 7/11 catalog here
Questions
Animations and having some items that you can grab. Picking stuff up and trying it, especially if the item is interactive like a gun that fired made the booth especially attention grabbing.
With the secondary menu it made it easy to find your group by being able to teleport to other players. However, the VR experience was difficult to stay within the group which is probably why some of us rode on another person’s avatar. The walk speed of the entire world could probably use an increase as well.
Fustrating, would of loved to buy something but couldn’t figure it out while in VR mode.
Unanimously yes. If one wanted to buy any kind of 3D assets would totally return, it’s very useful to see and try before you buy. The purchasing experience could be improved if a shopping cart was implemented to save things later and then do a single large checkout.
Depends if one is in desktop mode or in VR, but its hard to compare right now because it’s impossible to buy things in VR mode. If we can favorite things for now then checkout later it’d be much better.
Lots of questions around the shopping experience and logistics around putting the entire project together. How was it built and how did people collaborate? The artistic direction was pulled off really well, how was it coordinated?
History
Virtual Market 1
The first Virtual Market took place August 2018 and was 1 world with ~100 booths.
Virtual Market 2
The spring festival comes about 7 months after the first event and drew a staggering 120,000 visitors to Virtual Market 2. There were 403 booths, each featuring a variety of virtual contents ranging from avatars to accessories for sale.
Links