It's About the Art

The Artverse is first and foremost about the art. There are several things the Artverse does to provide a first class viewing experience for art and generative art.

Images are shown in the highest resolution possible and adapts to the users screen. If you have a higher resolution screen, you will see a higher resolution display image, up to the actual size of the images. See Billboards below.

There are large display areas for iframes that will run the generative art in its native form. So you can see the generative art being created as the artist intended. See Frames below.

Billboards

The Artverse has special 3D objects called billboards. Billboards use some shader (glsl) magic to project the art images in screen space, rather than just displaying them on an arbitrary plane. This has a very striking effect when viewing billboards. As you zoom closer to a billboard, you see more of the image in the resolution of your screen. If you zoom right next to the billboard, the image will take up 100% of your screen, with full resolution.

Look at the progression below to see what I mean.

Many Billboards Without Cluttering

The space the image takes in the 3D scene is not dependent on the resolution of the image, but only the size of the billboard as it appears in the scene. As you zoom out, the images are still confined to the billboards in the 3D scene, even though they may be very high resolution images. This lets us add even dozens of billboards to a scene efficiently, even with very high resolution images. For example, the default Artverse Cube has 18 billboards and this runs at 60fps even on modest hardware.

Frames

Frames are the other great innovation of the Artverse. Frames are large 3D planes in the scene which display iframes of the actual running generative art. There are 3 large Frames in each Artverse Cube. Frames are the best way to view generative art, since in many cases the display images on IPFS are not the same as the running generative art. Frames will always show the generative art as the artist intended.

Cubes

The Artverse is composed of Cubes. Cubes are sections of the Artverse that are owned by a particular user. You are always inside a Cube when in the Artverse.

Cubes are Galleries

Each cube has public access for viewing only. This is similar to a gallery, except it's embedded in a 3D metaverse.

Cubes are Spaces for Private Gatherings

Cubes also act as spaces for private gatherings, controlled by the owner of the Cube.

When you enter into the private space of a Cube, your pfp will appear with any others in that Cube. The Artverse supports spatial voice communication and chat for private members of the Cube. All private members that are visiting the Cube will be aware of each others presence through their pfps, which can move freely through the Cube. The spatial voice is very compelling, and makes engagement inside the Cube very realistic and even fun. The first time you hear it, I guarantee you will be surprised by the fidelity and realism.

These private features provide a space where you and your friends can view and discuss the latest art, or just hang out!

Cubes are Expandable

If you look at the current Cubes, there are 9 ground areas with 2 billboards in each area. Obviously, this leaves room for many more features and items to add to just the ground area of a Cube. Since the Artverse is a metaverse, many more features will be added in the coming days, weeks, and months to make the Artverse the premiere online place for art.

Portals

Each Cube also has 9 portals. Portals hover above each ground section of the Cube and have a small sphere rotating around them. Double clicking a portal will teleport you to the Cube configured for that portal. Since portals are configurable by the owner of a Cube, we see them as potential sources of income for Cube owners, as popular Cubes will have high demand for their portals.

Roadmap

Artverse Cubes

We will be offering Cubes as an fxhash collection. Each iteration of the fxhash collection will correspond to a Cube in the Artverse. Your fxhash iteration will look the same as the Cube in the Artverse for the 3D objects that are common. Obviously, the Artverse Cube is customizable and will eventually contain many more features now and in the future.

The fxhash collection will also have rarities that provide special features in the Artverse.

The first fxhash collection offered will include the public viewing features, but you will need one of these for all future enhancements and features.

We expect this collection to be available in the first half of November 2022.

Private Spaces

Subsequent fxhash collections will open up the private space features of Cubes, including spatial voice and chat.

Note that we have already run and tested a beta version of the presence, spatial voice, and chat features. We expect the first fxhash collection exposing these features to appear at the end of November 2022.

Pfps and Other Features

Of course, since the Artverse is a metaverse, we will be offering a 3D pfp. We expect the pfp to be available at the end of November 2022. In addition there will be many other items and features of the Artverse that will be exposed via fxhash collections.

Technology

The Artverse uses Babylonjs with many custom shaders. Babylonjs is the most advanced 3D game and rendering engine available for browsers. I personally have been deeply involved with 3D programming in various forms for many years. This is the first year that I believe 3D is viable in the browser. Improvements in browser software, displays, and GPU hardware have finally converged, making metaverse like experiences possible in the browser. It's been a long time coming, and the time is now.

Conclusion

You can preview The Artverse here. We have Cubes configured with many of the great artists on fxhash. Please note that the preview has only been thoroughly tested on the current stable version of Chrome, but any browser supporting WebGL2 should work.

You can contact me on twitter (my DMs are open), or slagrouv at protonmail dot com.