Virtual Reality – Page 12

April 13, 2016

Virtual Reality And Virtual Worlds Should Pay Attention To Older Participants

At the Game Developer’s Conference 2016 Professor Bob De Schutter of Applied Game Design at Miami University, gave an excellent presentation : Beyond Ageism: Designing Meaningful Games for an Older Audience.

Now you may be thinking that virtual worlds are not games, they aren’t, but they contain games and the mechanics of accessing virtual worlds are game like. The presentation Professor Bob De Schutter makes has themes that apply to virtual worlds too and platform providers as well as content creators would do well to pay heed to what he says.

That’s before we get to the sort of games older people play. Professor Bob De Schutter presented research from Quantic Foundry regarding the games people over 50 play. The top three, by gender :

Women over 50

FarmVille
Glitch
Second Life

Men over 50

Railroad Tycoon
Second Life
Microsoft Solitaire

This tells us that a certain virtual world that many of us are familiar with is popular amongst over 50’s. Many of us already knew that Second Life was popular amongst a more mature audience. Plenty of over 50’s also inhabit the likes of OpenSim, High Fidelity and more.

Now, as virtual worlds have an older crowd, the rest of the presentation makes for interesting viewing, it covers issues such as accessibility, ageism and the fact that older gamers want to be challenged, not patronised.

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April 6, 2016

SH//FT – A Non-Profit Organisation Aimed At Sponsoring Underrepresented Groups In VR And More

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes published an article regarding SH//FT : VR Industry Leaders Launch Pro-Diversity Non-Profit SHIIFT.

This prompted me to take a closer look at SH//FT, where I discovered that SH//FT is :

a non-profit organization that partners with industry leaders in emerging technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality to sponsor and create opportunities for underrepresented groups.

Helen Situ, who is behind this also has a Medium Post about this in which she explains more :

But I’ve noticed something unsettling. There are very few women in virtual reality.

To whoever is reading this, I’m sure that wherever you work, it’s true that the majority of your coworkers are male. In the tech industry, women only represent less than 20% of the workforce. We need to change this.

I’m really a fan of “Whomever” for some bizarre reason, but that’s not important right now! More women in tech and VR is important. I have taken a look at this subject before : Women Probably Don’t Want To Feel All Alone On A Crowded VR Island.

There is, without any shadow of a doubt, a shocking lack of women in tech and we really need to address the reasons why as we move boldly on to the brave new world of VR. I’ve worked in tech for many moons, I’ve worked in tech for many moons in an education environment too and there you see the shocking lack of women in the classroom too.

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April 4, 2016

Concerns Raised Over Oculus Rift Terms Of Service

The Terms of Service (TOS) that accompany the Oculus Rift have raised concerns from users and potential users. UploadVR report; Oculus ‘Always On’ Services and Privacy Policy May Be a Cause for Concern. Gizmodo report; There Are Some Super Shady Things in Oculus Rift’s Terms of Service. techdirt report; Oculus Users Freak Out Over VR Headset’s TOS, Though Most Of It Is Boilerplate.

The concerns raised will sound rather familiar in parts for Second Life content creators. This is especially the case for parts of the TOS such as this :

Unless otherwise agreed to, we do not claim any ownership rights in or to your User Content. By submitting User Content through the Services, you grant Oculus a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual (i.e. lasting forever), non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free and fully sublicensable (i.e. we can grant this right to others) right to use, copy, display, store, adapt, publicly perform and distribute such User Content in connection with the Services.

Sections of a TOS such as this can sound worse than they actually are. A lot of those rights are required for companies to carry your content and transmit it to other users. The article over at Gizmodo suggest that the result of the above is :

If you create something using Oculus’ services, the Terms of Service say that you surrender all rights to that work and that Oculus can use it whenever it wants, for whatever purposes

I’m not convinced that’s quite true but it’s not hard to see why people come to that conclusion. techdirt point out :

The problem with getting hysterical over the TOS is that this language is essentially boilerplate, and attached to the terms of service for pretty much every service in existence so they can make a sharing technology work without being sued over copyright. While certainly worded poorly there’s no real nefarious intent; it’s CYA lawyer language.

The UploadVR article takes a closer look at the privacy angle and the privacy policy that is incorporated into the TOS.

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January 22, 2016

Project Sansar Looms Large But Second Life Is Probably Still The Best Virtual World Out There

Project Sansar Concept Art

Project Sansar is widely being dubbed as the Second Life of Second Life. This makes it sound as if Second Life has gone away, if you read the headlines, but when you read the articles then you discover that Second Life is not only healthy, it’s arguably still the best virtual world out there.

We’ll take a look at a couple of articles to demonstrate this point, the first is by Annie Gaus and published on Silicon Valley Business Journals : In virtual reality, Second Life prepares for its second act. The article talks about the virtual reality boom, the fact that Linden Lab have a new product on the way and dives into the hype machine that is currently in action regarding VR :

Now, the makers of Second Life are preparing for a new life of their own in the fast-developing virtual reality market, which Deloitte analysts estimate will hit $1 billion for the first time in 2016.

However, before we can move forward into the new virtual reality, we have to step back and the article acknowledges that Second Life was a successful early experiment, so successful that the article also points out that Second Life’s longevity makes it ancient in Internet years.

The article also contains some quotes from Ebbe Altberg, many which have been heard before but one really stands out from the crowd, especially when people seem to feel that the end of the Second Life virtual world is nigh :

It’s still the best virtual world out there today. We’re profitable all thanks to Second Life.

People should bear this in mind, Second Life is still paying its own way for Linden Lab, Project Sansar is still some way off from being a polished product and even when it is a polished product, it won’t be Second Life, which means that Second Life may still have a home. The article does of course delve into Project Sansar, which is seen as the future, but the future isn’t here yet.

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December 16, 2015

Tribeca Film Festival To Feature Virtual Reality & Philip Rosedale

The Tribeca Film Festival® is set to run April 13th April 24th 2016 and news about the festival is starting to appear. The first round of speakers have been announced. Tina Fey and Tom Hanks are grabbing the headlines for their part in; Tribeca Talks: Storytellers platform, and I do love storytelling but this year’s festival is also taking a look at technology and innovation :

On April 19, it’ll be home to Imagination Day, powered by the Hatchery. The industry’s top minds will convene for an all-day summit focused on, “What happens when our wildest dreams become reality, and what will that reality be in our not-so-distant future?” The first round of confirmed speakers is no joke: entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, founder and chairman of the Virgin Group, and business leader and product innovator Regina Dugan, of Google ATAP. The Hub will also host the following esteemed VR creatives and tech entrepreneurs: Second Life and High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale, VR directors Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël of Felix & Paul Studios, and STRIVR founder and CEO Derek Belch.

Imagination day sounds like quite an interesting day, although there aren’t many firm details just yet.

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