Phoenix, Arizona-based TimefireVR Inc. announced today the grand opening of its persistent virtual reality city and playground called Hypatia for VR platforms where users will find themselves immersed in a shared world and surrounded by the bustle of city life and virtual entertainment.

Starting today, the VR social application will be free-to-play, meaning it costs nothing to download and play, and can be accessed through Valve Corp.’s Steam distribution platform and the Oculus Store. The VR app also supports both the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift with Touch controllers.

Hypatia differs from other social VR applications in the market, such as High Fidelity and Sansar, because most focus on providing an instanced “room” or group-oriented space such as a bar, club or concert hall, whereas Hypatia is designed as an “open world” presented as a lively city in which users move around and find entertainment options.

TimefireVR initially launched Hypatia as alpha software in March 2017 and eventually made it available for early access on Steam.

“Here at the dawn of VR the industry heavyweights such as Oculus/Facebook, Samsung, HTC/Valve and soon Microsoft are looking for the compelling content that can launch VR into the homes of millions,” TimefireVR Chief Executive Jeffrey Rassás said at the time. “We believe our efforts with Hypatia may be exactly what the market is looking for.”

According to John Wise, founder of TimeFireVR, the inspiration for Hypatia arose out of the experience of visiting a new city for the first time. The city’s name references Hypatia of Alexandria, a philosopher, astronomer and mathematician who lived in Alexandria Egypt and was known to give lectures in the city.

“The decision to develop Hypatia came about from my extensive travels and the excitement of arriving in a new city for the first time,” Wise told SiliconANGLE. “Part of the inspiration behind Hypatia was to break down barriers for people who are trapped by economic and geographic circumstances, the idea of providing a safe big city with all of the cultural amenities found in a Paris, New York City or Tokyo was very appealing.”

True to this philosophy, the city of Hypatia has a number of landmark locations for visitors to explore including parks, a shopping center, an art studio and a performance theater.

The Centrum, thus named because it’s the hub zone of the city, is located at the center of the virtual space and players can hang out there to socialize and interact. Basic activities are available as well as a street market with access to a hot air balloon tour and paths to other venues in the city. There’s even an open-air café for players to sit around and chat.

Virtual items are available for purchase at the Mango Shopping Center, a three-story building where players can window shop through stores, buy toys and fashion for use throughout the city. Players looking for a game of hide-and-seek can look to Sprite Park, a cartoon-inspired space for relaxing, enjoying the scenery and playing with the Sprite King.

There’s also a virtual art gallery called the Creative Art Studio accessible from the Centrum where tools are available for players to create works of art as well as spaces for them to display them. This includes canvas paintings, 2-D flipbooks and 3-D sculptures.

As for “night life,” the Theater De Nul offers a Vaudevillian theatre for player performers to put on shows for player audiences. The space gives performers access to a variety of props and stage mechanics as would be seen in any other theater, and much more as being a virtual space, almost anything is possible by using interesting geometry and available VR computerized effects.

These amenities described above are not the only available amidst the virtual streets of Hypatia which also include a garden filled with puzzles, a waterfront filled with boats, a lake where fireworks fill the night with color and even a multidimensional coloring book neighborhood called Paintville.

These examples are only a taste of what players can discover when they don a headset and discover themselves swept away by immersion. “Just as libraries were the foundation of information and the internet became a source of collected knowledge, I believe that VR is the harbinger of systems of wisdom,” Wise said about VR and the place he hopes Hypatia will take in the industry.

Just as important as entertainment venues and social spaces in the city, he added, the system also includes mechanisms to give people control over their social experience and keep them “safe.” To do this, Hypatia includes user experience controls for helping curb bad behavior (such as spamming, harassment and forms of bullying).

“We have provided primitive tools so far for keeping bullies away from visitors in order to try to help break the cycle of abusive persons in the anonymous space of the internet,” he said. “If social VR is going to work cross-culturally and become a civil place to find work and offer services, it cannot be in a war zone on the verge of the zombie apocalypse.”

Image: TimefireVR