Otherside Metaverse "Starts Work"

Author: Kyle, Hive Tech

In the early hours of July 17, Beijing time, a large party took place in Otherside. This is the metaverse space created by Yuga Labs, the issuer of the "Bored Ape" NFT. After more than two months of development, the community member's technical demonstration "First Trip" has begun------NFT holders of land contracts in Otherside can experience this new metaverse as the first batch of "Voyagers."

According to videos released by participants, players entered Otherside through various virtual avatars, with a huge screen displaying key elements of this virtual space. People could freely walk, fly, and talk within it, traversing scenes such as snowfields, oases, rivers, and canyons.

After the "First Trip" event concluded, Otherside released a LITEPAPER outlining its future vision. Unlike traditional closed development, Otherside will adopt an "open development" approach, allowing unofficial developers to use the software development kit (SDK) to customize their needs through the building tools provided in the game.

This means that Otherside can be seen as an open metaverse space, without a predetermined blueprint for initial construction, and will change with the infusion of collective intelligence, focusing on breaking through technical bottlenecks to achieve high-quality collective rendering effects, real-time communication, and allowing people to enter the metaverse seamlessly from any device.

Thousands Experience the Otherside Metaverse "Trip"

In the early hours of July 17, Beijing time, as the night sky deepened in the Eastern world, a grand gathering opened in another space-time.

That night, the metaverse space Otherside, initiated by Yuga Labs, the issuer of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), launched a technical demonstration called "First Trip." Unlike traditional product demonstrations, "First Trip" was held as an open testing experience, with over 4,500 players entering this metaverse space, manipulating virtual characters to dance and celebrate, resembling an online party.

"First Trip" was a long-planned meet-up in the Otherside metaverse, and this experience was only open to Otherdeed landowners, referred to as Voyagers. Otherdeed is the land contract NFT of Otherside, with a total of 200,000 issued, and the first batch of 100,000 was minted on May 1.

Prior to this, the vast majority of project participants were unaware of what kind of space Otherside was envisioning. After this technical demonstration, people got a glimpse of the initial outline of this metaverse.

According to videos posted by participants on social media, in the Otherside "First Trip" demonstration scene, there was a wide square with a huge screen. As more and more virtual people entered this space, the big screen began to flicker and displayed key elements of the Otherside world. In front of the screen stood a Bored Ape dressed in red and a KODA, acting as hosts for the gathering, energizing the atmosphere with cheers and dancing.

Soon, the "Voyagers" filled the square, adorned with glowing patterns of different colors, gathering under the night sky of Otherside like a virtual concert. The "Voyagers," with name tags above their heads, could move freely in this metaverse space, send emojis, and even sprint, dance, and perform acrobatic flips. Under the hosts' guidance, these virtual newcomers to the metaverse cheered together, with fireworks continuously bursting in the square.

This square was just a small part of the Otherside world. During the testing event, the hosts continuously sent instructions to participants to transport them to different scenes. From the released videos, Otherside featured scenes such as snowfields, oases, rivers, and canyons, with "Voyagers" flying through the air and others running and jumping on the ground.

The "First Trip" demonstration event was very lively, resembling a metaverse launch conference. Entering players curiously explored various scenes and developed their activity skills. Some players praised on social media, "This is a really cool world, everyone is having a blast!"

Since the debut of Otherside on May 1, there has been much anticipation for this metaverse space produced by Yuga Labs. Finally, after more than two months, Otherside's development has shown substantial progress. According to plans, Otherside will continue to invite "Voyagers" to participate in more special trips and events to convey more information to the outside world.

Otherside Focuses on "Open Development"

After the "First Trip" event concluded, Otherside also released a LITEPAPER, a concise document aimed at conveying and explaining the principles of the Otherside platform, the capabilities of developers, and the possibilities of community co-creation.

According to the LITEPAPER, the current development of Otherside is in its first phase, where only Otherdeed holders (also known as Voyagers) and selected third-party developers can use the platform's features or contribute to development.

The first phase consists of 11 story chapters, where Voyagers will narrate around the "mysterious obelisk" appearing in this alternate universe. People can collaboratively develop their plots and discover and shape items that can be harvested, crafted, traded, purchased, and sold.

The current Otherside metaverse is built by Yuga Labs in collaboration with the UK-based metaverse technology company Improbable, allowing seed users to experience gameplay based on the metaverse technology known as M² (M Squared). Moving forward, Yuga and Improbable will adopt an open, transparent, and iterative approach to develop Otherside, conducting large-scale game testing, trying out new systems, content, and mechanisms, while correcting the course based on participant feedback.

To support "open development," developers and Voyagers can use the official team's software development kit (SDK) to customize their needs through the building tools provided in the game. For example, unofficial users can use metadata symbols from Otherside to tag objects, enabling common game actions, such as marking an object as a chair to sit on it or marking an object as a ball to allow it to be picked up and thrown.

Of course, to prevent malicious development incidents, Otherside will also establish governance and review mechanisms within the community, requiring all items to pass through community and security guidelines before generation.

Thus, Otherside can be seen as an open metaverse space that supports community development. The future of this space is uncertain; it has no initial construction blueprint and will continue to change with the condensation and infusion of collective intelligence.

For Yuga Labs and Improbable, their upcoming work will primarily focus on solving three major technical challenges------how to gather thousands of people together? How to enable real-time communication among thousands of people? How to allow people to access the metaverse from any device?

From the current metaverse spaces on the market, achieving large-scale crowd rendering, clearly hearing each individual's voice within the crowd, and accessing the metaverse from mobile devices has yet to be realized. Yuga Labs hopes that in the future Otherside, people can see every interaction within dense crowds and hear the cheers and roars of everyone around them, while being able to enter the metaverse at any time, even without professional PC equipment.

Therefore, Yuga Labs is collaborating with Improbable to explore new rendering technologies, spatial audio, and other solutions to break through the technical bottlenecks in metaverse construction.

According to the plan, Otherside will also launch a trading market called "Agora" in the future, for purchasing, classifying, finding, trading, and selling various created, cultivated, and harvested content, using APE tokens to complete ecosystem governance and economic system construction. As the economic system begins to operate, the rules of the Otherside metaverse will also become richer.

Currently, although Otherside's "debut" has received some positive feedback, it remains an early and uncertain space. During the "First Trip" event, many people reported being "unable to connect" to the scene. It is evident that it indeed needs to first resolve the basic issue of having thousands of people online simultaneously and running smoothly.

As for the future, Otherside hopes that developers and the player community can join in to create rich virtual works, "Ultimately, where it goes will depend on you."