OpenSim – Page 4 – Ciaran Laval

January 8, 2015

The Virtual Reality Battle For Standards Is Coming

There’s a lot of excitement around about the future of Virtual Reality (VR from now on). There are a lot of gadgets, devices and potential. However there’s also going to be the inevitable battle to win the war on standards and protocols.

We’ve been here before in many ways, Blu-Ray v HD-DVD. Those of us who are a bit longer in the tooth can remember VHS v Betamax. There will be lots of other examples. Arguments will always rage about which format was the better one and why the better one doesn’t always win, but generally one format wins and the same surely has to be true for VR.

Initially we’ll probably find experiences optimised for the Oculus Rift, or optimised for a rival headset. Eventually, for the sake of consumers, that optimisation for a brand will need to be replaced by optimisation for a standard. For example consumers won’t want a headset for Second Life, a headset for Linden Lab’s next gen Virtual World, a headset for OpenSim, a headset for a game or MMO and so forth. Consumers will want a choice of headsets that work pretty much across the board. Obviously some headsets will be better than others but they should all work to a set of standards and protocols that mean software developers optimise their product for those standards and protocols.

At CES 2014 the BBC reported that Valve were making steps in this direction :

Valve designer Brian Coomer says the company is “days away” from releasing a VR software development kit that will give game makers a standard way to provide an interface for VR controllers.

I’m not quite sure what happened there because I haven’t heard much about this since. However at CES2015 noises are being made in this direction by Razer with their Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) Hacker Dev Kit.

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December 31, 2014

2014 Reviewed All In One Post

If you’re read my other two posts reviewing then there’s nothing new here in this one, it’s just a merging of the two posts to make it easier for future reference. This means it will be a long post, with pictures, videos and probably some errors.

January

January started with a look back to 2013 and the number of private region losses. The scores on the door from Tyche Shepherd displayed a slow down on the number of regions leaving the Second Life grid, something that would continue during 2014.

2012 Net Private Region Losess – 2865 (12.0%)
2013 Net Private Region Losses – 1719 (8.2%)

The virtual world of Kitely moved to a different pricing model which largely did away with the pay by the minute options as these had not been popular.

Blackened Mirror poster should be here — The Blackened Mirror Poster

Season 2 of The Blackened Mirror was taking a mid-season break but would return by the end of January. The show was recorded in Second Life.

Linden Lab were Raising The Roof : The HTTP Project. This project, which had started in 2012 was aimed at improving HTTP communications to improve the end user experience. Linden Lab would continue working on improvements during the year.

Second Life users were getting frustrated by tax and account information requests from Linden Lab. They would continue to be frustrated by these requests throughout the year despite Linden Lab improving their communications and information on these issues.

Second Life got a mention in the comedy show, 2 Broke Girls.

Then came the storm to warm up many a chilly January evening, Cloud Party announced that they would be closing their virtual doors on February 21st.

This was quickly followed by even more news to warm up January, Aston Villa fan and Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble, was leaving Linden Lab. This created a Twitter storm.

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December 31, 2014

2014 Reviewed Part 2 : July To December

In this post I will review 2014 from a largely virtual world perspective for the months July to December. This is part 2 , part 1 is the post before this one. I’ll combine both posts into another post for easier future reference once they are both completed. These posts will miss lots of big and interesting stories because the nature of the beast demands some brevity. These post may well look longer than they actually are at first glance because of images and pictures. The aim of posts such as these are to give a brief overview of the year, rather than an in depth review. An in depth review is too long for a blog post, it may make for an interesting book.

July

New changes to Skill Gaming policies in Second Life were coming to the fore in July, the result would be a learning curve for Linden Lab, creators and region owners. This was not a smooth process. KR Engineering, creator of the very popular Greedy Greedy announced they would be releasing a free to play only version of the game to ensure they did not have to deal with the Skill Gaming Policy.

Experience keys were the flavour of the month as Linden Lab invited us to the Cornfield to experience the new experiences!

Linden Lab updated section 2.3 of their terms of service. The update wasn’t really convincing and remains problematic. CG Textures, who now forbid use of their textures in Linden Lab products remained unconvinced that any of their concerns had been addressed at all and told Jo Yardley :

I’m afraid this does not change the situation for us.

I’m not sure why it’s so difficult for Linden Lab to address this issue.

Linden Lab announced upcoming improvements to Second Life, including experience keys beta, improving group chat, implementing the chrome embedded framework and more improvements for Mesh and texture loading.

I covered the University Of The West Of England teaching an MA in Virtual Worlds within Second Life. This course was aimed at those who want to teach in virtual worlds but some of those taking the course were actually just interested in the subject matter.

Despite the slow down in the loss of private regions in Second Life, the overall amount was still dropping. Tyche Shepherd informed us that the number of private regions had slipped below 19,000 for the first time since 15th June 2008.

The new Skill Gaming policy in Second Life, which had initially been pencilled in to be enforced from August 1st had its deadline pushed back to September 1st.

Continue reading “2014 Reviewed Part 2 : July To December”

December 29, 2014December 29, 2014

2014 Reviewed Part 1 : January To June

In this post I will review 2014 from a largely virtual world perspective for the months January to June. This is part 1 of 2 as part 2 is still a work in progress but will hopefully appear tomorrow. I’ll combine both posts into another post for easier future reference once they are both completed. These posts will miss lots of big and interesting stories because the nature of the beast demands some brevity. These post may well look longer than they actually are at first glance because of images and pictures. The aim of posts such as these are to give a brief overview of the year, rather than an in depth review. An in depth review is too long for a blog post, it may make for an interesting book.

Anyway, on with the show, as they say.

January

2012 Net Private Region Losess – 2865 (12.0%)
2013 Net Private Region Losses – 1719 (8.2%)

The virtual world of Kitely moved to a different pricing model which largely did away with the pay by the minute options as these had not been popular.

Season 2 of The Blackened Mirror was taking a mid-season break but would return by the end of January. The show was recorded in Second Life.

Second Life got a mention in the comedy show, 2 Broke Girls.

Then came the storm to warm up many a chilly January evening, Cloud Party announced that they would be closing their virtual doors on February 21st.

This was quickly followed by even more news to warm up January, Aston Villa fan and Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble, was leaving Linden Lab. This created a Twitter storm.

Continue reading “2014 Reviewed Part 1 : January To June”

November 11, 2014November 12, 2014

Ebbe Altberg At Endgadget Expand NY – Virtual Reality Beyond Video Games

The Endgadget Expand NY event this weekend saw Ebbe Altberg going coast to coast as he participated in a panel discussion : Back To Reality VR Beyond Gaming. This panel discussion saw Ebbe joined by Matterport’s Matt Bell and BeAnotherLab’s Marte Roel and has been summarised on Endgadet itself in an article entitled : Virtual reality has a future beyond video games, and it’s already started.

The discussion has also been discussed, eloquently, in detail and with great analysis by Inara Pey in an article entitled : Beyond gaming: looking at VR with Ebbe Altberg and others.

The panel was hosted by Ben Gilbert of Endgadget who introduced Ebbe Altberg as “The CEO Of Linden Lab, who you might have heard of from Second Life and other fun products.” This sort of introduction is exactly why I thought Rod Humble was on the right track in terms of expanding Linden Lab’s portfolio. Second Life should really be a tag line of Linden Lab, not the other way round. However it does emphasise yet again the sway that Second Life has in terms of its name.

Host Ben Gilbert then earns cheers from the virtual world fanbase when he says that the people on the panel are not making video games. You see, some people do understand the difference between virtual worlds and games! Ben also earns some bonus points for realising it’s Linden Lab, not Linden Labs. However he only found that out on the same day of the discussion.

Ebbe indicates that beta testing of Linden Lab’s new virtual world may start around the middle of next year, so watch that space. Ebbe also talks up Second Life well discussing use cases such as education, art and entertainment as well as talking of the economic model and how Linden Lab allow users to create the content.

Ebbe makes a good point about lines between the virtual and real worlds when host Ben Gilbert brings up the issue of the lack of the sense of smell in virtual reality. Ebbe feels there are pro’s and cons and that it’s not about reaching equality between the two spaces. That’s a very important point because I feel some people feel virtual reality will lead to some people being lost in the machine but I really can’t see the feared level of immersion some have being an issue for eons, certainly not in this generation of VR.

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