Draxtor Despres recently visited High Fidelity and got an amazing inside scoop on what Philip Rosedale and the team are doing as well as some marvellous discussion regarding the way virtual reality may be headed.
Inara Pey has already done a magnificent job of covering Draxtor’s show in a blog post on the subject, The Drax Files Radio Hour: giving it the HiFi! I will most definitely echo Inara’s comment at the end of her article :
If you’ve not listened to the entire show, I urge you to do so – as noted above, it is one of the best in the series.
I’ll also add that Inara’s blog post is most definitely worth a read too. What makes this episode fascinating is that although the interview is with people involved with High Fidelity, the subject matter covers the past and future of virtual worlds and virtual reality. Second Life gets mentioned, as does Oculus Rift and various controller devices.
There’s also some interesting discussion regarding how people use devices. For example Philip Rosedale discusses how when people look at a monitor, they move their eyes instead of their head in many ways, that’s because it’s easier for us to do so. However when someone uses a headset, they are more likely to move their head to look around, in a more natural manner similar to how we do when we engage with people in a physical environment.
Draxtor talks to Philip Rosedale, Ryan Karpf and Chris Collins who have all worked for Linden Lab. Draxtor also talks to former Pixar employee Ozan Serim, who now works for High Fidelity and David Rowe, who is well known for being the creator of the Oculus Rift compatible CtrlAltStudio viewer for Second Life. David currently does some contract work with regards to scripting for High Fidelity.
The discussion moves around quickly, even though the whole show is around one and a half hours long. We hear a good discussion about why Open Source is a good avenue for High Fidelity to go down as well as discussion about avatars, interaction, peripherals and much more.
There’s also discussion about distributed computing with Philip talking about combined computing power from people’s home machines and how that model could very well be a powerful one for High Fidelity. The long term aim is for people to be paid for leaving their computers running whilst providing resources for High Fidelity. Exactly how this will work is not fully revealed, which is fair enough. The official release date for High Fidelity is also not revealed, which is again fair enough, it’s an Alpha product at the moment and nobody at High Fidelity is suggesting it’s not.
Then there’s the usability issue, Draxtor points out how easy it was for him to setup his home computer as a High Fidelity server. However, back in the studio, Jo Yardley points out the downside of an Alpha product. High Fidelity doesn’t yet have the community or the ease of use building tools for a recreation of 1920’s Berlin or any other era. This doesn’t mean Jo isn’t interested, it’s just that High Fidelity is not yet at a stage to really hold Jo’s attention.
Draxtor also mentions that some people have a dim view of virtual reality and feel that it could very well be dangerous. Many a sci-fi story tells us that it is, but Philip Rosedale responds with a great quote :
Dystopia sells books and movies.
Very enjoyable books and movies they are too. Another area where High Fidelity are looking to make inroads is education and this brings me to High Fidelity’s STEM VR Challenge.
High Fidelity will be awarding up to three $5,000 grants to teams or individuals who, using the High Fidelity platform, can create a unit that is:
- HMD (e.g. Oculus™) featured
- High school age appropriate
- STEM focused
- Social (can be experienced by >3 people together)
In addition to the dollar amount awarded, grantees will have access to technical support directly from High Fidelity and the option to have their content hosted.
This is an international contest, for full rules of eligibility go to http://eduvr.org/ and you may also want to read the High Fidelity blog post on the subject.
An interesting issue for teaching came up when Draxtor spoke to Philip Rosedale. Philip pointed out that when people wear the Oculus Rift, they can’t look at their cellphone, many a teacher the world over will be happy about this. I don’t think many people have considered how good a use case this is for head mounted displays in the classroom. I’m not joking here either, teachers hate distractions in the classroom.
High Fidelity is, as I’ve said, very much in the Alpha stage, although it’s now open Alpha so if you want to take a look, you can do so. However do not expect a finished product and be prepared for things to change rapidly.