Here in the UK we’ve been dealing with the Beast from the East meeting Storm Emma and all too predictably, chaos has ensued. … wait wait wait, I’ve done that!
Ah yes, you may want to stop me if you’ve heard this one before but after visiting Sansar Kent Bye of the voices of VR Podcast moved on to another virtual reality world in the shape and form of High Fidelity where Kent and Philip Rosedale enagaged in some extremely interesting fireside chat before a pretty decent sized audience.
Kent also took questions from the audience and the very interesting and to me, enjoyable, aspect of the discussion with both Philip Rosedale and the audience was that they weren’t just confined to technical discussions but they also moved into areas of behaviour, opportunities and social justice.
Kent also discussed the differences between being immersed in virtual reality as opposed to the 2D experience, this discussion also took place when Kent visited Sansar and it’s clear that being in VR is a very different experience to being in desktop mode, but a key question is whether this also influences user behaviour.
Alas I don’t have a VR headset but I do believe that being immersed in VR does have the potential to add communication clues that will aid behaviour in VR.
Kent also made a great point about avatars. Kent pointed out that Drax had mentioned Kent’s avatar when he visited Sansar and during the discussion Philip Rosedale had mentioned the avatar of someone asking a question, suggesting that they need to get that person a better avatar . Kent feels that based on his avatar people make biased assumptions about him, they feel he’s a noob. Kent is very much informed about virtual reality and virtual worlds but the point about avatars and almost a class distinction based on the avatar a person wears was a fascinating point.
The discussion is still ongoing as I post this, so unfortunately I can’t post the video, but I will in the future because it’s a very fascinating discussion that is most definitely worth listening to.