Are Philip And Andrew Going Back To Their Roots?

The reasons for Andrew Linden’s move from Linden Lab to High Fidelity (which is now accepting Alpha signups) are unknown. Some speculate that Andrew had had enough of standing in the rain, drenched and soaked with pain, tired of short time benefits and being exposed to the elements.

Others have suggested that Andrew’s departure was due to feeling his spirit’s getting old, It’s time to recharge his soul, whereas others suggest it’s simply a matter of Andrew being homeward bound, Got his head turned around.

Whatever the reason, the move reunites Andrew with Philip Rosedale, with whom it all began back in 1999 when they were both at Linden Lab. The Second Life wiki tells us that Linden Lab originally started life as a hardware company involved in the research and development of haptics. Haptics are related to touch and are still very much in development, one of the latest examples being The Steam Controller. The controller is currently in beta but PC Gamer have been taking an early look at it, it’s not yet the finished article.

However Linden Lab abandoned the idea of being a hardware company after the software they created to bring their hardware to life turned out to be more fun. That software morphed into Second Life. The Hardware? Well that was something known as The Rig, and rumour has it that it sits in a box at Linden Lab HQ and makes the odd appearance, a bit like Magellan Linden but with less drunken debauchery and grumpiness. Whether Andrew has taken The Rig with him to High Fidelity is unknown.

Where am I going with all this? I mean High Fidelity isn’t a hardware company. This is true but on November 27th on The High Fidelity Blog, Grayson Stebbins blogged:

“How to create virtual touch? Without haptic feedback rigs or direct stimulation to the brain, how can we get closer to that special, sometimes intimate, sometimes intricate, sometimes magical feeling that is touch?”

The example they produced involved Ryan The Stylist and Emily The Client and the results look rather impressive.

The blog also explains a little bit about the setup used for the example:

“We’re trying a lot of different approaches, but this video illustrates one combination: a front-facing PrimeSense depth camera, the FaceShift facial tracking SDK, the Leap Motion controller, and the Hifi virtual world software. There’s no physical feeling for either party, but as you’ll see, Ryan is virtually touching Emily’s hair, and that’s one step in the right direction.”

There’s an accompanying video, which I will now embed:

I particularly like the facial expressions in that video. The hand movements are via a combination of The Leap Motion Controller and a mouse. Ryan is using The Leap Motion Controller, Emily a mouse. When Emily moves the mouse up, her arm and hand move.

This demonstrates different approaches to avatar input and show, albeit very briefly, different techniques in a quite impressive fashion. There’s a lot more information in the blog post I linked to, so if you are interested  in this, please read the blog post.

However High Fidelity is still in a very early stage and there will be a lot more buzz when people can get their hands on the tools. At this stage, outside of High Fidelity HQ, we don’t really know which direction Philip’s new venture is going to take. Personally I hope it won’t be a closed virtual world of its own, but that it will be more of a platform for people to build virtual worlds and link them. Whereas there would definitely be a scope for High Fidelity to create a virtual world of their own, I would hope it will not be the only show in town. However patience young padawan, patience. We’ll find out more in good time.

For the time being it seems as if Andrew is zippin’ up his boots and going back to his roots, in one form or another anyway.

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