OMG, another car update? How shocking

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Today, right around when I was about to leave for the Matrix test drive, I got a call from the dealership: the loaner was available, but it wasn’t in a totally safe state due to a huge crack on the windshield. They asked if I still wanted it and I said I’d rather not.

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Another car update

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The Kia service person finally got back to me several hours later, and I have learned:

  1. The parts for the repair have been ordered and are on their way
  2. Which implies that they actually did diagnose it, phew
  3. Also they might have a loaner available for me tomorrow, but they’re “uncertain”
  4. Also they still haven’t told me how much these repairs are gonna cost or if the warranties are going to cover them, bla bla bla, not looking forward to a surprise bill

Meanwhile, I’m scheduled to test drive the Matrix XRS Thursday afternoon, and my brain is currently in a state which has me overcommitting to just buying it, without having seen it in person yet. Maybe let’s think this through, and make sure I’m not just doing my usual self-convincing/rationalizing of something stupid.

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Matrix Third Room

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Back when the VRChat debacle took place, I’d rambled quite a lot about the idea of a standards-based truly-distributed VR system. I probably mentioned how back in the day I was designing something like that, and was intending to use XMPP as the actual transport mechanism; in my more recent reevaluation of the idea I was thinking that using WebRTC to stream the actual realtime data (voice, character animation, etc.) would be the way forward.

Well, the Matrix folks just announced Third Room, which is the same basic concept, running on Matrix and WebRTC! They’ve also made a bunch of other great technology choices along the way.

This is pretty exciting and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes. At least from a 20,000-foot view it hits all of the right notes for me. For example, using glTF for all object interchange, focusing on in-world editing, and allowing for (apparently optional) world persistence.

Hopefully this can disrupt the stranglehold VRChat has on social VR and will also be a fun, compelling experience in its own right.