[DAO:8715c24] Continued Maintenance of Decentraland VR Client

Governance
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by 0x9a739c2e212754c3d8432cb717dc9437e5b3dfae (seanong)

Should the following $69,000 grant in the Platform category be approved?

Abstract

In this renewed grant proposal, the Decentraland VR client team seeks extended support for enhanced maintenance, performance optimization, and timely adaptability. Riding the wave of our recent achievements, we aim for further refinement. Our new endeavor includes publishing to the Meta App Laps store, guaranteeing easier access, and monitoring Decentraland’s Foundation updates closely. Our mission remains the same: offering an immersive Decentraland VR experience, adapting to change, and perpetually progressing

Grant size

69,000 USD in DAI

Project duration

6 months

Beneficiary address

0x6340676C1604186893Ab14521fDFc1C81AF07161

Email address

sean@onginnovations.com

Description

In May 2022, the community greenlit our Decentraland DAO grant, propelling the Decentraland VR client’s capabilities. Achievements encompassed Android compatibility, Meta Quest native functionality, PCVR and Quest VR parity with web/desktop versions, VR screen UI, pop-up integration, and in-game VR controller interactions.

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Throughout mid-2023, we’ve been busy tuning Decentraland VR based on the invaluable feedback you all provided. Over the recent months, we’ve honed in on improving load times, refining the VR audio experience, and enhancing in-game interactions. Big shoutout to those who participated in our DAO community tests – those events were a great success! On the bug front, we made significant strides, reducing issues and making the experience smoother for everyone.

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Our focus on stability led to a new VR UI, comprehensive bug resolutions, and robust enhancements. The culminating masterpiece, Decentraland VR, proudly sits on the SideQuest store: SideQuest

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PROPOSED WORK

Maintenance and Stability: Our dedication to the VR client persists, ensuring its alignment with Decentraland’s latest offerings. We pledge to further optimize performance and virtually eliminate crashes.

Automating Updates: We’ll refine our system, letting the VR client self-adapt to Decentraland’s core advancements, substantially reducing breakage risks.

Meta App Labs Store Integration: A major leap, targeting easier access by publishing the VR client on Meta App Labs, simplifying downloads, and enhancing reach. A stretch goal will be to publish to Meta’s full VR store, recognizing that it’s currently an invite-only process.

Decentraland Foundation Monitoring: We’re establishing a dedicated monitoring procedure for the Foundation’s Decentraland updates that may cause breaking changes to the VR client. This ensures rapid response to any potential changes, guaranteeing our VR client’s resilience.

FINAL REMARKS

Our focus remains: evolving and optimizing the Decentraland VR client. The continued support through a DAO grant accelerates our mutual ambition of a global, enriched, and dynamic Decentraland metaverse.

Roadmap and milestones

November 2023

Meta App Labs Store:
Commence the process of publication to App Labs and testing.

Progress Update:
Share insights into the integration process and initial user feedback.

December 2023 - January 2024

Bug Fixes & User Feedback:
Act on user feedback from the Meta App Labs store launch and rectify bugs. Continue VR client enhancements, performance updates, and other improvements.

Progress Update:
Share feedback received, bugs addressed, and optimization steps.

February 2024

Performance Optimization:
Intensify efforts on the VR client’s performance metrics.

Progress Update:
Detail enhancements in frame rates, stability, and overall VR experience.

March 2024

Advanced Automated Updates:
Test and refine the automated update system, ensuring flawless synchronicity with Decentraland.

Progress Update:
Share findings from rigorous tests, improvements made, and future roadmaps.

April 2024

Wrap-up & Future Planning:
Conclude tasks, gather comprehensive feedback, and draft future strategies.

Progress Update:
Offer a holistic review of our journey, accomplishments, challenges, and forward paths.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

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This is the fourth grant you are requesting, and it amounts of a total will be

Screenshot 2023-10-17 at 6.16.51 PM
Screenshot 2023-10-17 at 6.16.51 PM2746Ă—638 83.6 KB

$598,000. We believe that this might be a significant number of grants for maintenance.

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:joy:

no comments…

maintenance?? this is horrible :joy: :joy:

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Hi @LandlordDao and @Skazi Thanks for commenting. The first two grants were primarily for the development of the VR client from scratch (with the first grant also being for the integration of a VR parcel content editing tool.) The third (and most recent) grant was for the continued maintenance of the Decentraland VR client, to keep it running and to provide continued updates and improvements, which the team delivered well over the last 6 months with lots of improvements and stability. The current grant proposal seeks the same budget as last time to keep the momentum going for the next 6 months, and also for the publication of the VR client to Meta App Labs. Our team is grateful for the opportunity to work on the VR client, but of course this open source project ultimately belongs to the Decentraland DAO and Decentraland community, and we have no direct stake in it. I personally believe that continued support and fostering of a Decentraland VR client is important for the future of Decentraland, but this decision ultimately rests with the Decentraland community, and we’ll respect the decision either way.

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Looks like this proposal is already DOA, but still feel strongly about the VR component for Decentraland enough to cast my Yes vote. Albeit extremely slow, the additional users that are VR advocates are an unrealized, untapped source of the Decentraland future. Having an unmaintained, choppy VR Client will turn off VR users and cause overall negative PR reprecussions against Decentraland as a whole.
I’d rather be shot down than be buried in Absentions.

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Part of me really wants this VR Client to continue while the other part of me says we have already paid this team $500K USD and they could not deliver. Sort of stuck in between. I mean is there a guarantee this grant will be the final one? or do we just keep funding?

If we stop the funding right now, it’s like throwing that $500K into a burning fire. I understand it’s all open source but I don’t/can’t see another team pickup this up and continuing from where they left off.

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@JasonX thanks for your comment. Similarly to how the web and desktop Decentraland clients have large teams and budgets behind them for continued support, maintenance, and improvements - the VR client also needs ongoing support.

Personally, I’d like to see the VR client continue - whether it’s our team that continues the work, another team, or the Decentraland Foundation. But if work on it stops, then inevitable breaking changes will cause it to stop working in the future, especially as Decentraland continues to evolve with updates over time.

I understand the dilemma about perpetually funding this, but that’s the reality of keeping a Decentraland platform alive, whether it’s a PC client, web client, or VR client. Again - I’m not advocating that specifically our team continues this effort, but I’d like to advocate that the VR client is kept alive and healthy - evolving with the core Decentraland platform - whether our team or another team works on it. That will require continued budgets for it.

The current VR client is quite robust, much more performant than the previous version and I’d say our team has delivered something remarkable as part of the most recent completed grant work.

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We all agree on the continuation of the VR Client. Everyone understands this will take time and many resources in both monetary & man power. Because there is a constant mana sell pressure this is upsetting a lot of people. On top of this most grants don’t end up delivering on their promise and keep coming back for more funding. Not saying you or your team hasn’t delivered. The reality is this proposal or any other VR related proposal most likely is not going to pass anymore.

What I can recommend is a roadmap with smaller grants. If you can show each step and what $ is required along with timeline for every small goal this will be much more achievable. This way your team completes smaller goals in a short amount of time. Once the community sees the workflow they will support it back again. Rather than asking for a larger grant and coming back in 6 months time and asking for another grant.

We all want Decentraland to succeed, we believe in it hence why we’re all here. Sometimes all it takes is passion, hard work and dedication.

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I absolutely agree. Especial In this bear market, we need to control our grant spending and focus on what truly works.

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As the person who is possibly the most excited by a Decentraland VR client - I really hope this highlights why WebXR is so important.

The team here was great, did their best, but building native & compliant apps for a shifting metaverse platform is not only going to be time consuming, it’s going to be expensive.

While I would love to see this project continue, we sadly cannot afford to continue spending resources on a VR client that only works on a single platform, and still does not have full body tracking or VR networking capabilities/full interactions.

I’d like to say thankyou to the team for this endeavor, and for exploring an untapped section of the metaverse we still need to tackle - should we ever get a webXR client off the ground - I hope they would be around to assist and take part with us.

1 Like
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Continued Maintenance of Decentraland VR Client

This proposal is now in status: REJECTED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 1% 45,000 VP (36 votes)
  • No 77% 8,665,774 VP (74 votes)
  • Abstain 22% 2,598,673 VP (22 votes)
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is the original codebase going to be released so others can continue this project? @mr0ng