Episode 42 of The Drax Files Radio Hour sees confirmed staunch socialist Draxtor Despres and red under the bed, Jo Yardley, getting their teeth into a number of issues and getting the hump with the BBC, an organisation long accused of being lefties ….
Jo and Drax take umbrage with the beeb over an article in their technology section : Podrift: Is podcasting ripe for virtual reality? Podrift is a technology aimed at taking podcasting into a virtual world setting, however not everyone is convinced by the concept and in the article they quote Todd Cochrane, head of podcasting specialists RawVoice as saying :
adoption into Second Life may be more appropriate
That sounds fair enough but the author of the article, Dougal Shaw writes :
This is something of a damning comparison, as virtual world Second Life has become synonymous with virtual reality’s false dawn. After creating a huge buzz when it was launched in 2003, it has failed to live up to its potential. Other than a hardcore of loyal users, few are giving it a second chance.
Personally I think Dougal Shaw is missing the point by a country mile if he comes to that conclusion and I can understand why Jo and Drax take umbrage with that comment. Second Life is over eleven years old and still around. Second Life has hosted talk shows such as Tonight Live With Paisley Beebe in the past and is perfectly viable as a venue for a podcast already. However I’m not dismissing the potential behind Podrift here, I just find Dougal Shaw’s dismissive comment about Second Life odd.
The show is the usual mix of commentary, fascinating interviews, virtual reality discussion and via the website itself, some very interesting links and clips. The discussion between Jo and Drax about virtual reality gadgets is interesting because they discuss some of the challenges of these peripherals, such as the difficulty of using many different peripherals at the same time and how cumbersome that may become. This is an issue that will have to be tackled because people are not going to be comfortable wearing headsets, VR gloves, grabbing peripherals and trying to communicate. However there’s a long way to go with this sort of technology and how it all fits together will be improved over time.
The interview with Leap Motion CTO David Holz encountered a few technical glitches but Drax manages to salvage some very interesting points. David actually highlights some of the above issues and labels this stage as the first generation of VR. I’m sure there will be plenty of people who will disagree that this is the first generation of VR but his point is that there are currently a lot of peripherals around and at this early stage the current generation of VR is going to be a mixed bag whilst the technology is developed.
Continue reading “Drax Files Radio Hour Ep 42 – Leaping, Bashing The Beeb & 2007 Oldbies”
