Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Jo Yardley has been talking with Björn-Christian Bönkost. Björn has a Rift SDK unit that he is using with David Rowe’s CtrlAltStudio Viewer. Björn visited Berlin in Second Life™ and Jo got him to write about it. You can read his account here: First Oculus Rift user visits Berlin.
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I think for anyone thinking of trying out the Rift, Björn ‘s comments say it very well: “I was impressed, amazed and stunned. The city is bigger than anything you can find as a demo for the rift.”
Loki Eliot has an article up: The Big Black Box Arrived – Updated. The Black Box is one containing the Oculus Rift Developers Kit.
Loki has hands on. He has some interesting comments on the Rift.
I came across this and thought it pretty neat. GameTrailers.com does the top ten thing pretty often. In this case they are imagining which games they would like to see/play via the Oculus Rift. They make some interesting observations.
I am seeing lots of people suggesting that exploration games and virtual worlds are going to be more fun with Oculus… I suspect that mostly depends on the user. But, I’m looking forward to it.
You may not have noticed but, Myst was in the opening section. It is at about 20 sec in that you see a glimpse of Myst.
0:30 Amnesia – Looking around for what is after you… scary real.
Indigo Mertel posted on Facebook about these SpaceGlasses. cNet has an interview with the developer: Meta’s Meron Gribetz and the rise of the natural machine. But the fun part is the video.
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In an earlier article I pointed out the rush all the companies are in to capture a part of the mobile market. Oculus is in the race for mobile market share too.
There is an update on KickStarter.com about the status of the Oculus Rift, which is adopting the name Oculus VR. See the update here: Shipping Update, E3 2013 Recap and Oculus 0.2.3 SDK Release – Update #38 – July 4th, 2013.
This update is about the release of the 1080p developer’s headset.
Scroll down the page to the comments about EVE-VR. This is a tech demo of the EVE Online space adventure game. It blew people away and won awards. The reviewers are raving about the immersive quality of the experience.
Some bloggers have become frustrated with Second Life™. I hear them talking out the frustration by writing about how bad SL is, how dumb the Lab is, how SL is dying, it is all over… yadda, yadda, yaddda… Then there are the bloggers that write as if they know what the Lab should do. Of course none of those writers are making US$45+ million per year. So, lets take a look at some possibilities.
Hamlet has written several articles, I take as mostly objective, about what is wrong and right with SL. So, lets start with those.
Many feel SL is losing users, land, and popularity. I tend to agree with that thinking about losing users. But, that is sort of like saying a 600 mph (965 kph) car has been nerfed to death when it only runs 500 mph. It is still way faster than most people’s car.