Servers
There are no roll outs this week.
Viewers
The main viewer remains: 3.7.6-289164
RC Viewers
No changes since the last report.
Bit of News
Jo Yardely posts about Ebbe’s saying new avatars are coming. Originally he said they would arrive in March. It looks like they will get released this month now. So, we will have more ‘Library Starter Avatars.’ This will make it easier for new users to not look so noobie.
That of course assumes they don’t walk around nude flashing everyone. (face palm)
The idea of a Billion Person Virtual World is bouncing around. Jo and Hamlet both touch on it. Hamlet has videos of the interview with Brendan Iribe, Oculus Rift CEO. See: Oculus Rift Takes on Second Life’s Original Mission Statement, Aiming for a “Billion Person Virtual World.”
I suppose it is a doable idea. But, I’ve dealt with lag from the days of Myst Online to today’s Second Life. Watching what Intel was doing to get 1,000 avatars in a region and how hard Linden Lab (LL) works to reduce lag and fight the 40/80 avatar limits. I am guessing Iribe has yet to run into the barriers LL is working on.
I have no doubt Facebook (FB) is going to build something. I believe whatever they do it is going to be competition for Second Life™. Just the payment system FB has for games is amazing, 87 different payment systems. Of course they have money going only into FB and out to the associates. Players may get refunds, but they aren’t making a living at FB or able to attempt to laundry money through the game. The greatly simplifies the process. But, it is competition.
Iribe is saying they will have a virtual world ‘soon.’ He also says it will be 10 to 20 years before we have ‘human like’ avatars in the world. But, he means visually indistinguishable from RL humans. I think that he is looking at that level of realism shows something of what they may be thinking about. In the second video he goes farther into the idea ‘real’ for VR.
It may be some time before we find out what his idea of ‘soon’ may be. At this point I suspect the FB decision makers are looking for what is on the shelf and figuring out what they will have to build from scratch. Once that process is complete the actual building will start.
For now I don’t see any change in their ‘employment’ pages that would suggest hiring of virtual world experienced people.
In the first video they get into the differences between using the Rift and Google Glasses. Time mark: 16:00