VAM 2.0

Hi Everyone, Do you think VAM 2.0 will be ever released? Meshed VR any comments? Seems like the project is frozen. No updates for long time. I am enjoying current version of it anyways. Just thinking that it took too long and by this time you could release another Red Dead Redemption

I think someone is making a lot of money while delivering nearly nothing.


I hope there will be VaM 2.0. But right now, it looks like a fraud to me. Just my honest thoughts. I hope I'm wrong.

Medved said:

Hi Everyone, Do you think VAM 2.0 will be ever released? Meshed VR any comments?

Click to expand...

You don't visit the official Discord very often, do you ... ?

Whats happening on the Discord channel? I would expect that meshed shares some stuff from time to time on the official forum.

//EDIT
Ok, done some reading. Nothing really new to me like a video or something. Nothing.

HolySchmidt said:

I think someone is making a lot of money while delivering nearly nothing.

Meshed VR: Patreon Earnings + Statistics + Graphs + Rank

meshedvr Patreon earnings, statistics, graphs, and popularity rank updated daily

graphtreon.com

I hope there will be VaM 2.0. But right now, it looks like a fraud to me. Just my honest thoughts. I hope I'm wrong.

Click to expand...

You can literally download the alpha from his patreon, please do the bare minimum research before accusing someone of fraud. Really disgusting accusation..

I downloaded the alpha already. But an alpha is not a finished product. Right now the situation is like Star Citizen but much more worse cause VaM 2 is not even playable, its just a minimal tech demo.

And I just expressed my feelings. I didnt say it is a fraud. And I said I hope I'm wrong. So, calm down and relax. I didnt say anything against you.

Well, I think MeshedVR doesn't feel any pressure, he lost only 2k supporters in half a year (but gain 3k after alpha release), so in this pace he can work next 4 years showing nothing...

We'll I'm not too sad. VAM 1 is terrific and I'm getting my money's worth. I'm looking forward to VAM 2.0, but I also know that when it comes out, it will have growing pains and very little content for a while. VAM 1 has an enormous amount of content which is better than ever, so I've got plenty to indulge in.

Would there be compatibility issues in terms of content between VAM & VAM 2.0?

100%. This was also mentioned a lot of times. Since it's a much newer version of unity and the models for example are switching from Genesis 2 to 8, there will be big differences.

Another important point to consider which I've made a thread about some time ago, is the transition and adoption period from VAM 1.x users to VAM 2.x.

As of now VAM 1.x is like the "Skyrim" in this 'field' of Sex Simulators out there. There's been years and hundreds of creators and editors' worth of content for download, either free or paid. In the end, there's too much content to just leave behind whenever VAM 2.x does come out. The reality is that whenever VAM 2.x will come out it will absolutely pale in comparison to the total amount of content already available for 1.x. Additionally, even if VAM 2.x would allow for somewhat of a 'smooth' porting of 1.x mods over, the real issue isn't exactly whether or not it will be "Easy" to do; it's about whether or not original creators / editors of content WILL bother to do it at all, or if they don't, then will they give permission for someone else to do it for them.

I've seen this situation happen to some degree (but not comparable to the scale of the situation that will affect VAM) with Honey Select. The first Honey Select (regardless of what some people here might think of it in terms of 'quality') had a gold mine of content that accumulated Skyrim Mods-style over many years. When Honey Select 2 came out it was struggling to attract the "mass" of users. The only thing it really had going for itself at the start were somewhat improved character models (not that crazy of an upgrade, but it was there) and better Lightning / Shadows and that's about it. In fact, the Facial expressions were worse in HS2 compared to HS1 (at least initially, for the period of time I did try HS2 when it came out I was stunned by the downgrade of that). It took HS2 many months to start receiving enough Plugins and content mod ports to "catch up" on just a fraction of the content that could be found for the first one (which remained very active during the first year or two of HS2's release).

I absolutely predict the same will happen for VAM 2.x. In fact, I would argue that the 'problem' with VAM might be worse simply because a LOT of the content that many users have is Paid-for, and I actually know of Patreon artists (authors of content here) who will do at least a portion of their VAM 1.x content ports by Commissions only. So imagine a situation where you download some Paid-for Look that you've gotten without maybe knowing that originally it was Commissioned at a price, only to find out that to use that Look in VAM 2.x you'd have to subcribe to that Patreon artist AND pay him (or her) the original Commission price (or at least probably half of it, but that will be the decision of the artist) in order to get that same Look in VAM 2.x. Now granted, such a situation will be rare, and probably very niche too. But it will happen, believe me. It's not like Patreon artists will do everything for free (nor do I "blame" them for it, they DO, in many cases, absolutely deserve to be paid for their work and nothing will ever change my mind on that).

That's why in my original post about this looming "issue" for VAM 2.x I highly recommended that the MeshedVR team - somehow - produce more updates to VAM 1.x at least in terms of performance improvements (if at all possible). However, there's also a problem of a sort of "Self Competition" situation with this. If MeshedVR were to upgrade VAM 1.x further, it would down-value VAM 2.x, especially at release; because then VAM 1.x would truly still be way better, like WAY better for general content for most users. The reality is that the majority of users will have in mind that they are content (no pun intended) with whatever it is that VAM 1.x offers them, regardless of how "better" 2.x would be. And there would be NO such thing as an argument like "There's no reason not to move on to VAM 2.x, it's just way better in every possible way". That would NOT be true. There's absolutely no chance VAM 2.x will have even the fraction of the content mods at release AND for many months to follow. The only reason why someone with 1 or 2TB worth of VAM 1.x content would "Move on to" 2.x would simply be because of curiosity and to see "what it's like" for a few test runs; then they'll close it and go back to 1.x because their favorite content and their whole setup is there, not in 2.x.

It's not as simple as "Let's make a better VAM and that's it", I'm afraid. It will be up to the community itself (rather than up to MeshedVR) to MAKE that new VAM version truly worth it in the end. Even if on a technical level 'everything' is better. That's like asking me to play Starfield when it comes out, versus NOT playing my Modded Skyrim which literally took me months to work on with tons of guides and downloads and .INI file adjustments and tests for stability and truly things I don't even remember I did in order to make the game look the way it does and play with the content it has. Just won't happen.

So the point of all this is to say that VAM 2.x will have a LONG way to go even IF it ever does come out, before it can truly be considered 'better'. What makes VAM great is the content mods community for it.

I'm guessing he's a mostly a one man team with another being paid to work part-time (as a side-gig) on the project. He's obviously very rich judging from the number of Patreons essentially funding his lifestyle which is another reason why things are taking so long. There's no obligation for this man to rush something out if 15,000+ or so Patreons simply don't care enough to move on to something new, and obviously due to a lack of competition in this space.

Of course, eventually he will need to get something out otherwise questions will start to be raised by even the die-hards on just what the fuck this man is doing with all of those Patreons and the exorbitant monthly income that comes with it.

Don't be surprised if Vam 2.0 isn't even an actual product by the late 2020's. Don't be surprised at all.

Also one other thing; being active on community channels and actively engaging with the community does not at all suggest major progress is being undertaken with Vam 2.0. In fact, if anything, it's much easier to spend your days typing away on your keyboard in discussions (in Discords, social media or what have you) than actually putting your head down and doing some real work which in case would be software engineering.

Meshed show trello for Vam2. There's a lot of time to wait. Looks like 80% of topics are research.

Sadly, VAM will probably be completely outpaced by newer faster teams, especially as AI improves work productivity. The current work efficiency of Mesh is extraordinarily low because of a straight refusal to hire additional talent that could easily see the project cut its development time by literal years after factoring any bringing them up to speed.

In truth, we all know the main focus is to milk it as much as humanly possible, not that anyone could really blame him. This also aligns with the refusal to migrate to better tools when Unity is showing strong decline because it is easier to stick with what Mesh knows, especially with more recent drama showing Unity is outright unwilling to keep current with technology like DirectStorage, superior Unreal Engine offerings, etc. Probably worst is how limiting Daz is and the current scope of the project not to mention the dependence on others to add stuff and fix stuff in the final product that should readily be included/fixed by the developer themselves just like with 1.x.

The reality is bleak, but it all comes back to money, learning curve, and work life balance to which I can't entirely blame the creator for this choice. This is the simplest and most profitable path while retaining their sanity wheres doing a more efficient job could work out but also might not be nearly as profitable if unstable results as milking it.

Bobnosh said:

Sadly, VAM will probably be completely outpaced by newer faster teams, especially as AI improves work productivity.

Click to expand...

Sorry by "ourpaced" you mean currently VaM has competitors? What are they?

haroldwithlove said:

Sorry by "ourpaced" you mean currently VaM has competitors? What are they?

Click to expand...

At the moment, none in that specific space with the closest but still distant competitors being Wild Life and FD Operation Lovecraft.

My comment about competitors is more towards future projects that could pop up out of no where, for clarification, and not existing real risks. This is an issue because as the adult game scene matures and even more critically AI based technologies that improve efficiency or radically evolve what is capable in these types of games, far beyond what Mesh's current scope is targeting or willing to consider, it could eventually have a real more direct competitor pop up out of no where. We've seen this with impressive projects that do just this but then stall after making rapid progress and offering significantly superior results because of personal issues or scope creep like NaughtySandbox, Afterparty, etc. A better example would be Starcitizen which is, frankly, ancient at this point but has faced contenders such as EliteDangerous, No Mans Sky, or the newer Starfield which pop up and relative by comparison quickly release offering a great portion of what it promises with an actual proper product while it still has no existing release date or real meaningful content and has gradually becoming increasingly dated technologically and visually and no longer offering bleeding edge features or content options that don't largely exist in other games before the whole AI development issue even became relevant.

This is especially so because Mesh's roadmap is "years" or "many years" to be more precise. In fact, even the next real beta based on their comments is still "years" on the timetable unfortunately.

For everyone interested:

Bobnosh said:

In truth, we all know the main focus is to milk it as much as humanly possible, not that anyone could really blame him.

...

The reality is bleak, but it all comes back to money, learning curve, and work life balance to which I can't entirely blame the creator for this choice. This is the simplest and most profitable path while retaining their sanity wheres doing a more efficient job could work out but also might not be nearly as profitable if unstable results as milking it.

Click to expand...

Anyone who thinks Meshed is in this for the money should go to the Patreon page and review the vam1 release history. Count the number of times a massive new release has come out that Meshed decided to call a minor release, and not require people to purchase a new key. He does this over and over and over.

If Meshed were truly "milking" the project, updates would have been smaller, more frequent, and always required a new key. Business-wise, that would have been the smart move.

For some people, there is no such thing as "enough money". However much they have, they want more. Then there are people who just need enough to support their chosen lifestyle, and really aren't motivated by money beyond that. I'm pretty sure Meshed is one of the second type. He certainly could have wrung a hell of a lot more money out of this project than he chose to do. IMO, that buys him a certain amount of credibility now.

DJ said:

Anyone who thinks Meshed is in this for the money should go to the Patreon page and review the vam1 release history. Count the number of times a massive new release has come out that Meshed decided to call a minor release, and not require people to purchase a new key.

Click to expand...

You are 100% right, good point.

But (yeah I like to be devils advocate) at that point it was totally unforeseeable, at least from my point of view, how big of a project this could be, moneywise. Patreon wasn't that "big" as it is right now (though I don't know how big Patreon really is right now, but I guess it has grown a lot due to Corona). I once said like nearly 2 years ago, I think this could be a god damn cashcow. And I didn't meant that in a negative way. If you have a very good product it's absolutely fair to pay good money for it, and also demand it.

Still, projects like Star Citizen and a general tendency in the gaming industry for creating shitty "beta 1.0s" but demanding full price though not delivering a good software and the early access trend, makes me doubtful. Of course I am talking mainly about big companies.

To me, it would be nice to see some progress, even some screenshots would do the job, takes no time at all.

Sharing "nothing" but demanding monthly payments is bad marketing and bad behaviour towards paying customers. To be honest, they ain't even customers cause there's still no product. They're backers. If I want to do business but don't have the money for it I have to take out a loan and the bank wants something back for it for taking the risk.

In general I try to trust people, even strangers. But sometimes reality hits hard, and the older I get the more distrustful I become.
I say it again: I hope I'm wrong regarding meshed, but there's a lot of money floatin' around. In Germany we say "Gelegenheit macht Diebe" (opportunity makes thiefs).
And if I am wrong at the end, I will apologize. But right now, I'm still skeptical.

HolySchmidt said:

Sharing "nothing" but demanding monthly payments is bad marketing and bad behaviour towards paying customers.

Click to expand...

Quoting Meshed from here: "This is a crowd funded project. As long as there is stuff to be done I'll probably keep the Patreon going. I have told people they can come and go as they please. Just subscribe when you feel there is something worth subscribing too. Take breaks as needed. No worries there."

And here:
"I have no problem with people subscribing intermittently or even just once. I figure people will pay what they think it is worth. And I don't want to do pay up front because a lot of people join and find VaM is not for them or does not run well for them. Easy out for them and saves me hassle of refunding."


Nobody is "demanding monthly payments".

And you're not a customer. You're a willing supporter. Or you're not, if that's what you decide. Which is perfectly fine. Either way, you get to keep using Vam.

You want more frequent updates? Ok, I understand that. It's a reasonable request. But lets be honest about what's going on here. Unless you think $8 is too much to be charging for a Vam key (which is really the only thing he's "demanding"), there's really no reason to be accusing Meshed of being greedy.

DJ said:

Anyone who thinks Meshed is in this for the money should go to the Patreon page and review the vam1 release history. Count the number of times a massive new release has come out that Meshed decided to call a minor release, and not require people to purchase a new key. He does this over and over and over.

If Meshed were truly "milking" the project, updates would have been smaller, more frequent, and always required a new key. Business-wise, that would have been the smart move.

For some people, there is no such thing as "enough money". However much they have, they want more. Then there are people who just need enough to support their chosen lifestyle, and really aren't motivated by money beyond that. I'm pretty sure Meshed is one of the second type. He certainly could have wrung a hell of a lot more money out of this project than he chose to do. IMO, that buys him a certain amount of credibility now.

Click to expand...

I get you want to defend them but your argument is invalid.

Even if no new key is required, which has often been required despite not being massive updates lately and in the past contrary to your claim, there are still a huge number of people paying monthly even when absolutely zero updates come out. Currying occasional favor to avoid disruptive backlash with some updates once in a blue moon when most require keys isn't rocket science. More frequent updates wont help a monthly revenue retaining its core patron count even without updates get more money, but rather would just demand more effort on Mesh's part for statistically zero gain. I'm not trying to hate on the guy as I've made clear in my prior point but you got your facts wrong here with regards to monetization and work life balance projections.

You do not have a compelling argument here. This is why you attempt to argue this point and none of the points I raised about VAM 2.x' development issues I presented.

Your final paragraph has nothing to do with my post really. I've already talked about the benefits of the approach Mesh has taken and why I don't blame them for that approach, but also why it is problematic for the project as well. If you want to speak of anyone's credibility, yours, mine, or Mesh's you probably shouldn't use an argument and phrasing that tries to essentially claim I've said otherwise when I very clearly have not and I'm very clearly talking from an extremely neutral stance presenting both perspectives. Mesh has been very clear about the expected slow development timeline and roadmap, too, so once again I'm not hating and only providing clarification of the two different perspectives, the pros/cons of both stances, and also fairly pointing out that while I personally understand Mesh's approach it severely cripples development because of that "approach" and not because "necessity".

People can easily cancel their subscription on Patreon. I will be honest, I subscribe for a month to get the newest creator key. I'm using VaM now for 3 to 4 years, and this year is the first time I needed to buy a new key. If those people keep subscribing, is their choice, simple. It's a other story if the developer is unnactive or doesn't respond anymore. But in this case, the developer is still working on VaM 2.0 and VaM 1.x. While first we got the news that VaM 1.x doesn't receieve updates anymore, but suddenly we still do.

3 to 4 years ago, I bought my first key for 8 euro's. When VaM 2.0 "pre" alpha got released, I got another sub for 8 euro's. And I got another sub this year for 8 euro's to get the new 1.x creator key and I checked out VaM 2.0 again.

So, in the last 3 to 4 years, I only spend 24 euro's. Compare this to video games, that increased in price. 70 euro's for a AAA game, that I only play 30 to 50 hours. VaM I'm using now 3 to 4 years, and I'm not sick of it.

And now to my own opinion about 2.0. I don't care much about VaM 2.0 at this moment. Yes, I would love to see the new and better optimized lighting system. Yes, I want to see Genesis 8.

But I stay for VaM 1.x for a long time, even if VaM 2.0 has been fully released. Simply by the fact that VaM 1.x have tons of content, and the content keep growing each day.

It will take years for VaM 2.0 to reach the same level of content as VaM 1.x. And the content from 1.x is not transferable to 2.0.

Also the characters I've made, are not transferable to VaM 2.0. I would like to keep using and working on my own made characters. I've spend hundreds of hours combined on all my characters. They are my work, I can't simply let all those hours go to waste.

VAM developers are rolling the dice every weeks now. There is a huge interest for 3D porn these days and a competitor could pop on the market with an amazing product overnight built on unreal engine, dethroning legacy VAM 1.0.

They should make sure to stay ahead of the race instead of sitting at the top doing nothing (what they are obviously doing right now). This product is in danger since it is cool, but the tech level is not that great. That thing could change overnight with a new competitor showing up ... and it will.

Babell99 said:

VAM developers are rolling the dice every weeks now. There is a huge interest for 3D porn these days and a competitor could pop on the market with an amazing product overnight built on unreal engine, dethroning legacy VAM 1.0.

They should make sure to stay ahead of the race instead of sitting at the top doing nothing (what they are obviously doing right now). This product is in danger since it is cool, but the tech level is not that great. That thing could change overnight with a new competitor showing up ... and it will.

Click to expand...

In business, there is something called "barrier to entry" that would discourage somebody from trying to unseat Vam. The barrier to entry in this case is the metric ton of content that Vam has. Vam has the advantage of being the incumbent here. Vam may be based on an old version of Unity, and an older Daz generation, but it still has that incumbent advantage, and the weight of all that content on its side.

There is a pretty simple explanation if you all are willing to accept it. And if you can't, there probably isn't any way to convince you other than for me to actually release something, which is exactly what I'm trying to do.

Summary:
This shit is hard and it takes years to develop an application like this. If this were easy, there would be more competitors.

Longer explanation:
I was developing VaM1 for several years before I even showed it to the public in any form. VaM2 required something similar. At first I thought I could reuse a lot of code and work from VaM1 so the transition to VaM2 would be shorter, but I'm essentially rewriting everything from scratch. After digging further into VaM2 it was obvious that I had to lay completely new groundwork to meet all the goals I had set out for performance and improvements in rendering and physics. For VaM2 we are now somewhere in the middle of those 3 years of development it took before presenting VaM1 to the public. I won't say where we are because it is too hard to predict exactly. I know it has already been more than 3 years since the first mention of VaM2, but along the way VaM1 was also still being worked on, including the Hub, which was a huge amount of work to pull off and maintain. A sizeable % of the Patreon earnings go into running the Hub ad free. I also took VaM1 off the shelf to help with the retail launch and help ease the large time gap between VaM1 and VaM2. So VaM1 got some much needed love to improve usability to help extend its lifetime. Another thing to consider is during the earlier VaM1 days I was also working 80 hour weeks and it was costing me a great deal in the rest of my life. I'm no longer willing to do that as it isn't sustainable. I would rather it take longer than burn out or worse.

Like many of you, I don't like how long it is taking to complete VaM2, but I'm doing the best I can with the resources I have. Thank you to those that have been supportive and understanding. If this were easy, there would be more competitors. I have seen competitors come and go. Many of those projects that looked promising as a competitor (that I even supported!!) have kind of dropped off the map. My guess is because this is not an easy thing to create and they got stuck and lost hope. There are challenges every day that often require custom workarounds, clever solutions, or compromises. The work can be frustrating and sometime solutions to problems take weeks or months to work out. But with the proper drive and persistence, it is possible to bring a project like this to completion.

I'm loving working on VaM2 nearly every day. I'm very excited about the possibilities and improving the parts of VaM1 that I was not as proud of (mostly usability and performance). I want to keep enjoying making it and make a quality product that improves upon every aspect of VaM1. If I love what I'm doing, it will show in the end result. That is how VaM1 came to be, and I believe it is the correct path for VaM2 as well.