Eye to eye contact, we made, eye to eye contact, you and me, contact! You were looking at me, I was looking at you, you were looking at me.
Mitch Wagner knows a thing or two about Second Life and used to run a podcast called Copper Robot, where he would sometimes interview people inworld. At one stage this was a fortnightly event and I think Crap Mariner was involved, but unfortunately I didn’t get to hear too many of the podcasts myself.
I’m mentioning Mitch’s virtual world experience because he has published an article in Information Week : Second Life Founder Pursues Second Chance. This isn’t the first time Mitch has published an article in Information Week by the way! Anyway, the article itself has quotes from Philip Rosedale regarding his hopes for High Fidelity. The article touches upon some issues that frustrate users of Second Life, namely usability, scalability, latency and the lack of eye to eye contact!
There are some bizarre quotes in this article, for example Philip seems to think people don’t talk on the telephone anymore. I can’t be the only person on the planet who talks happily on the telephone! However Philip’s point is to do with latency.
However there are some very interesting points to this article, one of which is the lack of eye contact in virtual worlds, which makes conversations difficult in real time. In the article Philip tells Mitch that avatars in High Fidelity will make eye contact with the human being on the other side of the conversation. I would imagine this may feel quite odd at first.
Continue reading “High Fidelity Aiming For Eye To Avatar Eye Contact”