Philip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Lab (that created Second Life), left his company a few years ago to form High Fidelity. The new company aims at creating a brand new virtual world, using future technologies and truly immersive Virtual Reality.
Meanwhile, his former company is creating Sansar, a virtual world with the exact same premise.
Facebook, AltspaceVR, VRChat and JanusVR has set out to do the very same thing, but when we look at the funding, Sansar and High Fidelity tops the charts. To date, Sansar has raised $19 million and High Fidelity has raised an astonishing $40 million in venture capital.
While Facebook’s purchase of Oculus to the tunes of $2 billion is a higher amount, the fact that Linden Lab and Rosedale has raised so much from other investors seem to indicate their projects might be more in line with what people will want from these virtual worlds.
Maybe I was wrong about VR after all…