I’m not Palmer Luckey’s biggest fan, this largely stems from the lack of understanding and lack of giving something back to the Kickstarter community after Oculus landed on their feet with the Facebook deal. In the wider scheme of matters this wasn’t exactly a huge let down and certainly didn’t merit the level of vitriol the decison received, I mean he’s certainly not in the Nick Clegg league when it comes to being a complete and utter let down and let’s face it, the future looks extremely bright for Palmer Luckey and Oculus Rift, the same definitely can’t be said for Nick Clegg, the future doesn’t even look as if it will be orange for him.
I think that virtual worlds are going to play a big role in the future of Oculus and VR on the whole, but it remains to be seen how big of a part of that future Second Life will be.
Second Life is of course approaching its official eleventh birthday and is therefore an older platform, it’s not young and exciting but I still believe Second Life can be a platform that takes advantage of technology such as Oculus Rift because Second Life is a very dynamic platform. Second Life is a platform whereby you can wipe the slate clean on a parcel or sim and start again, therefore I believe that people could create builds that are optimised for technology such as Oculus Rift, but being Second Life, that would also mean vast swathes of Second Life aren’t optimised for the technology and that could very well prove to be a stumbling block for widespread adoption of the technology in a virtual world such as Second Life.
Oculus Rift will probably be better served by a virtual world that is created with Oculus Rift in mind from the start. Hamlet asked Palmer Luckey what Second Life most needed in order to transition to the Oculus/VR age, and be relevant in it? Palmer replied:
I don’t think anyone will know for sure until VR has more time to mature, lots of poorly understood problems right now.
This brings us back to the point I was making earlier that Oculus Rift will probably be better served by a virtual world built with Oculus Rift in mind. This is a point that I’ve seen Adeon Writer make time after time regarding existing games and virtual worlds, the advice is that trying to fit existing virtual worlds and games into the Oculus Rift umbrella is likely to be more pain than its worth.
Now this isn’t what a lot of us current virtual world enthusiasts want to hear, we want to hear that when the new frontier arrives, we’ll be able to boldly go where many avatars have gone before, but with new headgerar. This probably explains why I feel Second Life can accommodate the technology, it’s possibly more wishful thinking on my behalf, although I still believe that the dynamic nature of Second Life does make it a possibility, albeit a remote one.
However current Second Life intergration hasn’t thrilled Palmer Luckey, he tells Hamlet regarding current Second Life viewers designed to run with Oculus Rift :
There are some cool third party viewers, but the initial official release from Linden left a lot to be desired. I hear they just put out a new update, but I have only tried the old ones.
This response puzzles me somewhat because Second Life’s Oculus Rift intergration is in very early stages, as is the Oculus technology itself. I wouldn’t expect to be bowled over by it just yet, but this again exemplifies the problems of trying to make existing virtual worlds run smoothly with the technology.
Hamlet has one last revelation up his sleeve. I can recall a while back someone over on the official forums saying he’d came to Second Life to buy some Bitcoins, this puzzled me somewhat as Second Life isn’t a place to exchange Bitcoins and Linden Lab don’t accept them as payment. However it seems this stranger wasn’t the first person to come to Second Life in search of Bitcoins, Palmer Luckey himself has done the same thing and, as Hamlet notes, there’s a twist in the fact that Palmer seems to have found it odd that to meet the Bitcoin seller he had to enter a virtual world, when he himself is behind a technology that at its heart has the potential to boost virtual worlds no end.
All in all it’s a brief but very interesting read from Hamlet.
Bitcoin is a con game for suckers. Anyone looking to get into is either a mark or a con. And virtual rubber money based on nothing is nothing. Less than zero.
Meanwhile Palmer ignored the millions that Linden Lab makes with their reputable virtual currency.
Linden Lab could put real hurt on the VR business world, but they’ve never been business savvy. Unfortunately.
Bitcoin is too unstable to be a virtual currency, but the world is crying out for a viable one.
The Lindex is arguably Linden Lab’s most valuable asset.
Yes, the currency and the marketplace is Second Life’s ace in the hole. But does Linden Lab know this?
Its awful….but seeing Palmer riff on VR replacing RL just reminded me of “Children of the Corn”
http://youtu.be/FMoxZeTeRPE
The first beta LL released was rather full of some rather embarrassing bugs that could have left some devs believing Linden Lab isn’t up to scratch with implementing the tech, especially since that beta had been expected to arrive end of last summer. I was also underwhelmed by the viewer.
beta 2 is a lot lot better but still not without it’s own fresh annoying bugs, but overall it’s a much better experience. second Life has a tonne of virtual reality usability, and not all of it is accessible in VR just from putting on Oculus, many of SL’s VR problems might only be fixed by the other tech rising along side the oculus such as prioVR and Stem and even Leapmotion.
I think SL will be part of VR future as long as it’s users stay interested.
Unfortunately I haven’t experienced Oculus Rift in SL but it’s good to hear from someone who has and very positive news that improvements continue to be made.
I do feel Second Life has potential to at least in parts, exemplify the technology well.
Quote:
I think SL will be part of VR future as long as it’s users stay interested.
Unquote:
And there lies the big ?
I’m not for sure and if i was i would choose much faster to use Open Sim in order to achieve so.
So i do believe strongly that the Oculus or whatever 3d virtual gadget will fail to be mass appealing in a near or even medium future.
Still have no doubt that some will manage to use it, they are already and for those i can only advise, Crtl+alt+studio and open sim, not Linden Lab.
The future will be interesting, i’m still unconvinced about headsets leading to mass adoption, people still haven’t welcomed 3D glasses after all these years, so something bulkier is a hard sell, yet people often use headphones on PC’s etc. Interesting times ahead.