Second Life and Virtual Worlds
I think we knew simulator sickness was going to be a problem. It seems to be bigger problem than I expected.
At the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Intel was demonstrating VR heads sets with a new chip they are making. They passed out headsets to show attendees. Along with the headsets they passed out barf bags.
See: Sticker Shock, and Maybe Nausea, Hamper Sales of VR Grear.
According to SuperData Research people spent US$91,000,000,000 on games. Billion… This is an all-time record. But, they are hyping things a bit. In 2015 Statistica shows $91.5 billion spent and $99.6 billion in 2016. I suppose it depends on where one gets their numbers and categorizes them. Game revenue is notoriously flaky as companies like to hype their increasing sales and keep decreases secret.
Still that is about a 10% increase year-to-year. Eight billion isn’t chump change, unless your spending $10 trillion on credit, like some governments…
They break the revenue down into subcategories. Handheld games are dying. Smartphone games are the hot item. They show the largest growth from 2015 to 2016 and that is expected to continue, which seems reasonable as smartphones are selling well.
In 2005 smartphones sales were just $3.8 billion. Eleven years later in 2016 sales of smart phones was $55 billion, a 1,447% increase. So, as more people get smartphones there are more possible users of smartphone games. According to Statistica a little less than half of the 2016 game revenue was from smartphone gaming.
Interesting uses of Virtual Reality Headsets are turning up. Some examples:
Obduction – Of course games. This is a big Myst sibling puzzle game where you are magically transported to an alien world and have to figure out how to get home. The graphics are awesome. All versions of the game will have VR support. The game is out and the VR updates will be sent along.
Sketchfab: Largest Social Media Site for 3D Objects Adds VR Navigation – This is the first web site I’ve heard of that is designed for VR. The highlight isn’t the VR oriented content but the VR oriented site design.
Hospitals Try Giving Patients a Dose of VR – They are using VR to help with pain management. It’s a distraction thing.
Paraplegics regain some feeling, movement after using brain-machine interfaces – Surprising.
Gear VR – Samsung is selling their nice headset for the Note 7 for US$99. I am eligible for a new phone… tempting.
Politicians and Photo-Opts – I didn’t see this one coming. I’m hoping Wiener doesn’t find out about VR.
Massively has an article about a game named No Man’s Sky. In the article is a video by TheHappieCat explaining how the game’s makers created quintillions of worlds using fractals. The thing I find surprising is the worlds are never stored in a database. Yet when you come back to a world it is re-generated, but the same exact world is generated. TheHappieCat explains how she thinks it works.
The Massively Overpowered article Eve Evolved: No Man’s Sky vs Eve Online, by Brendan Drain explores what the differences between Eve and No Man’s may mean how Eve could be impacted.
Massively Overpowered has an article up titled: THE DAILY GRIND: WHICH MMO HAS THE BEST EYECANDY? Readers are contributing screen captures. Surprisingly only a couple of images surpass what we have in Second Life™, at least in my opinion.
I decided to put some of my images from SL up in a comment. From following people on Flickr I know there are people with far nicer images.
Maria Korolov has an article on Hypergrid Business: How to set up your new mobile VR viewer. So if you have Google Cardboard and have been looking to get it working with a viewer…
There is a previous article titled: How to watch YouTube on Cardboard viewers.
