Ciaran Laval

November 7, 2014

Digital Cybercherries Use Oculus Rift And VR To Take Us Back To An 80’s Style Arcade

Over at New World Notes Hamlet Au recently posted : James Cameron: Virtual Reality a “Yawn” Until it Gets Mass Market Growth, Non-Gaming Experiences. The inspiration from the post comes from the following quote from movie director James Cameron regarding virtual reality :

The question that always occurred to me is, when is it going to be mature, when is it going to be accepted by the public at large, when are people going to start authoring in VR and what will that be?” Cameron said. “What will the level of interactivity with the user be other than just ‘I can stand and look around,'” he elaborated, adding: “If you want to move through a virtual reality it’s called a video game, it’s been around forever.

He has a point, but things are happening with devices such as Oculus Rift and whereas the example I’m going to highlight is game related, it’s game related in a different manner than you may expect. The example I’m highlighting has been talked about on The Road To VR and Gizmodo.

Digital Cybercherries are taking us back to our youth, well some of us, it may be going to a time before you were born for others. They have developed a retro arcade complete with playable arcade machines from the 80’s and early 90’s, playable gameboys, basketball nets, darts, a two lane bowling alley. In short you’re immersed in an 80’s style arcade which you walk through.

Then there’s the icing on the cake, that little bit of extra polish that makes this look so bloody awesome. The retro arcade has cassette tapes with 80’s music which you put into a cassette player and then listen away to those old favourites (or not so favourites). The wonder of this is exemplified in the Gizmodo blog post :

You can even find cassette tapes with ’80s music and stick them into a boombox, then carry it around the arcade with you. Because what’s cooler than playing Missile Command while jamming to The Final Countdown?

Come on, you’ve got to admit that sounds cool!

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November 7, 2014

CDN Teething Problems & Meauxle Bureaux Should Be In Destination Guide

I recently blogged about Meuxle Bureaux in Second Life, home of Michael Linden and The Moles of The Linden Department Of Public Works. I’m not alone in admiring the beauty of this sim, as can be seen from a quick glance on Flickr.

Maddy Gynoid has been there too and blogged about it : Meauxle Bureaux: Neue Heimat für das LDPW. There are some impressive pictures in that post as well as a shout out to someone in a language I’m not familiar with, but I don’t think it’s rude :

Gestern hatte ich im Blog von Ciaran Laval gelesen, dass Linden Lab in den vergangenen Tagen eine Reihe neuer Regionen im Second Life Grid gestartet hat. Eine davon heißt “Meauxle Bureaux” und dient nun allem Anschein nach dem Linden Department Of Public Works (LDPW), sowie den dort arbeitenden Moles und ihrem Chef Michael Linden, als neue Heimat.

I saw Marianne McCann flying off in a helicopter and I also saw Uccello Poultry there. Uccie has also blogged about Meauxle Bureaux. However this brings me to a matter of a technical difficulty I experienced there. I planned to take my snapshots of Meauxle Bureaux last Sunday. Alas the sim would not fully load and what did load, was taking a very long time to do so.

I did the teleport in, teleport out, in, out, in, out, shake it all about trick, but the sim still wouldn’t load. Textures were grey, signs and objects were missing. The problems I was experiencing were not localised to Meuxle Bureaux either. I’m a lot more patient in my old age, I put it down to one of those things and returned on Monday, performance was fine then and has been for me all week. I don’t know if my issues were related to Linden Lab’s new Content Delivery Network but Linden Lab have blogged an update on CDN where they state :

For most users most of the time there has been a big performance improvement in texture and mesh data loading, resulting in faster rez times in new areas. The improvement has been realized both on the official viewer and on third party viewers.

However, we have also seen that some users have had the opposite experience, and have worked with a number of those users to collect detailed data on the nature of the problems and shared it with our CDN provider. We believe that the problems are the result of a combination of the considerable additional load we added to the CDN, and a coincidental additional large load on the CDN from another source. Exacerbating matters, flaws in both our viewer code and the CDN caused recovery from these load spikes to be much slower than it should have been. We are working with our CDN provider to increase capacity and to configure the CDN so that Second Life data availability will not be as affected by outside load. We are also making changes to our code and in the CDN to make recovery quicker and more robust.

Some residents have been feeding back the problems they’ve been experiencing on the official Second Life forums. Some of those problems sound very much like the problems I experienced but I really don’t know if my problems were due to the CDN wobbles.

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November 6, 2014November 7, 2014

The Verge Asks : Can we build a virtual world?

An interesting post on The Verge : The Big Future: Can we build a virtual world? The question may initially seem odd to those who have experienced virtual worlds such as Second Life, Kitely, OpenSim and are keeping their eyes on future virtual worlds such as High Fidelity and Linden Lab’s next generation platform. However the question is one that goes beyond the current generation of virtual worlds :

The web is fine, but how do we get the internet we always wanted — a “real” space you can walk around in, like the Metaverse from Snow Crash? It’s not a new question, but it’s one that’s being taken a little more seriously now that a huge company like Facebook is putting its weight (and its money) behind virtual reality. In this week’s Big Future, we look at what it takes to build a convincing virtual world, why we’re not there yet, and what we might do if we got one.

The Metaverse that exists in Snow Crash has long been the inspiration and dream of many a virtual world enthusiast, but will we ever get there? Indeed do we really want to get there? That level of immersion may well read well in a novel but can it ever really be a place that will happily co-exist with the physical world?

There will be no real answers to this until we have an answer to the question “Are we there yet?” As The Verge article states, it’s easy to trick the eyes, it’s a lot more difficult to trick our other senses and natural motion. For example The Verge talks about walking in a virtual world and how that’s far more of a challenge than tricking our eyes. I remain sceptical because of the sheer number of peripherals required at the moment to achieve greater immersion. However over time those peripherals will become less intrusive and more intuitive.

Obviously the full on immersion that some crave may not be the route to go. Whereas I fully expect greater immersion to open many a great door, I do feel that some doors may be better if they remain locked. The Verge article does mention the current virtual world scene :

We already have examples of “virtual worlds” like Second Life, and they’ll only get cooler with immersion. But some of the most exciting possibilities involve blending the physical world with VR. Sharing experiences will become more intense, and online research takes on a whole new meaning.

However one area that The Verge article doesn’t touch upon is who will be running the bold new worlds.

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November 6, 2014

Get An Overview Of High Fidelity From Their Documentation Resource

High Fidelity, the new virtual world venture from Philip Rosedale, is currently in a limited Alpha phase. However a blog post from High Fidelity’s Dan Hope opens the door a little to those who are outside Alpha to get a limited peek at what’s going on under the hood. The post, Introducing The New Documentation Resource, invites anyone who wants to contribute to the documentation, to do so.

The reason why the Documentation Resource is so important is explained in the blog post :

This section of our site covers everything from how to use Interface, to technical information about the underlying code and how to make scripts for it. We envision this as being the one-stop resource for everything HiFi.

What’s more, we want you to be a part of it. We’ve opened up Documentation to anyone who wants to contribute. The more the merrier. Or at least, the more the comprehensive … er. And accurater? Whatever, we’re better at software than pithy catchphrases. Basically, we think that the smart people out there are great at filling in holes we haven’t even noticed yet and lending their own experience to this knowledgebase, which will eventually benefit everyone who wants to use it.

Even if you don’t want to contribute, browsing through the documentation will give you an overview of where High Fidelity is heading, you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work some things out. Indeed you don’t even need to be Inara Holmes either, however Inara also has a blog post on this subject and that post includes images.

The documentation resource reveals that High Fidelity uses the JavaScript syntax, linked to their JavaScript API, which means that if you’ve got experience with coding in JavaScript you’re likely to be able to cope with coding in High Fidelity. There are example scripts, tutorials on customising your avatar, such as how to create Blendshapes or Shape Keys for your Avatar, how to build a client for Mac, Windows, Linux and more.

However one word of warning, the documentation is incomplete, for example the part about Smartphone devices simply states :

We have a handful of Alpha-stage apps built for iOS, with companions for Android planned. At they moment they aren’t our primary focus, but check back here for further details as they arrive.

However even that is useful because it tells us that Smartphones are likely to play a role in High Fidelity in some way. However the section about hand controllers is more complete with information on how the Razer Hydra can be used with High Fidelity. Then we go back to motion controllers and find that the Leap Motion information is far from complete. However people have been using Leap Motion in High Fidelity.

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November 6, 2014

Outer Space To Virtual Space & Visiting Scilands

Back on Ocotber 23rd Hamlet Au posted over on New World Notes : High Fidelity v. Interstellar: Should Virtual Reality Exploration Replace Space Travel as Philip Rosedale Hopes? The post was based largely on this passage from an excellent MIT Technology reviwew with Philip Rosedale :

“Why go into outer space when it’s more likely that by amassing computing resources we will create all the mysteries and unknowns and new species inside them?” he says. Rosedale says the freedom to explore and experiment inside a virtual world generates a “social force,” creating positive interactions between people that are impossible in everyday life–much like the Burning Man festival he attends each year. It’s a vision that betrays a touching if naïve faith in humans and technology. But it’s set Rosedale on a shared course with some of the biggest names in technology.

The comments on Hamlet’s article generated a mixed reaction. However Philip Rosedale is not alone with this sort of view. The Pendulum have published an article : Astronomy and virtual reality in same orbit for professor Tony Crider. The article states :

With improvements to the Oculus Rift, Crider would be able to let students see what it is like on Venus instead of just reading about it.

“Going to the places that we can’t normally go to is what makes this technology have a lot of potential,” Crider said. “I think that is what a virtual world should be used for. I used to think it was more for the socialization, but my view has changed a lot.”

Professor Tony Crider is of course talking about the future of virtual worlds, but he’s no stranger to the present and fairly recent past of virtual worlds and he’s very much a virtual world enthusiast.

Professor Crider is described in the article as being an associate professor of physics at Elon University since 2006. He knows a lot about Second Life as he’s a co-founder of the excellent archipelago of sims in Second Life known as the Scilands. These sims are home to some excellent science sims which are well worth a visit. However Elon University itself no longer seems to have a sim in Second Life. However Professor Crider did find value in the use of Second Life, as the article explains :

Through Second Life, Crider’s students made real-life museum exhibits virtual. Most of the exhibits were planetariums, although places such as the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro were also created. Open to all Second Life users, the student-created exhibits turned out to be a success, even attracting online users not associated with the class.

“They would build the places, and people would show up afterwards,” Crider said. “What was weird was people would stand in lines at these student-run planetariums with their avatars. But users were at these exhibits, because people online liked the experience of learning.”

The students’ reactions working with Second Life were generally positive, although some mixed reviews did seep through.

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