This Friday a Third Party Developer’s meeting was held. This meeting has become the primary source of news for Second Life. We got some news this week. I’ll write up the viewer news first and other stuff in later articles. So, here is what is happening.
St. Pete
there were 24 people attending the meeting. I think 6 of those were Lindens, making it 18 residents. As I check out the video of the meeting, I see 22 people have watched the video of the meeting. Continue reading
Hypergrid Business has an article out on VR Headset sales. 300,000 headsets per month. That is 4+ million per year. See: Alibaba, Taobao selling 300,000 VR headsets a month for more details and which units are selling the most.
CtrlAltStudio Adds Interface for Oculus
Bright Canopy is the company replacing SL Go. They bring Second Life to tablets and other low GPU power devices. See: Bright Canopy. Run Second Life in your web browser. Continue reading
The Road to VR has an interesting article challenging 3 common ideas about why VR will fail. Well written and with rational challenges to the 3 common ideas about VR. See: The 3 Most Common Arguments Against VR and Why They’re Wrong.
Possibly Maybe…
One common thought about VR that I think has some merit is ‘gesture based’ control like Kinect is going to fail because users do not have enough room/space… or patience. Continue reading
Massively Overpowered (MO) posted: These Are The Companies That Are Trying To Build The Metaverse. While Linden Lab (214+ employees) is mentioned so is their competition; Altspace VR (20± employees), Facebook, and High Fidelity (). It seems Comcast and the Japanese company Tencent are investing in Altspace.
Down in the holler
Palmer Luckey is mentioned as talking about it being harder to abusive in VR than in the current 3D virtual worlds we have now. MO doesn’t exactly point us to where it is Palmer is talking. But, their article is inspired by an article on Re/code and they quote Palmer, “Virtual reality will make it a lot harder to be a total dick to somebody online.” Re/code says Philip Rosedale, co-founder of Second Life™ and CEO of High Fidelity, agrees. Continue reading
Hypergrid Business is pointing people to a $10 VR Headset App being sold by AT&T. See: AT&T offers $10 VR headset, app. You may want to wait until we see more reviews. Plus, we may see some good free apps appearing.
Remembers It All Too Well
The headset being offered in addition to the app is a Google Cardboard thing.
Of course you could get one of the 10,000 free Cardboard VR headsets offered by CM Products, LLC. Hypergrid has a funny video to go with that offer…
The Daily Mail (UK) has run the article: Rise of the SUPER SOLDIER: Liquid armour, indestructible exoskeletons and weapons that never miss revealed as the future of warfare. The interesting thing for those of interested in Virtual Reality is the prominent picture and discussion of various nation’s military using VR for training.
Industrial Light and Magic is a special effects company we know from movies like Star Wars. Now they are opening ILMxLab to build virtual worlds. The first will be the Star Wars world.
Hypergrid Business caught my attention with: Star Wars coming to virtual reality.
I and other in Second Life™ are waiting for the retail release of the Oculus Rift. Jo Yardley has an article on the Oculus Rift. Seems she is announcing they have an announcement about a coming announcement… See: Oculus announcement about the Rift Headset, it is coming. It is all about this video:
Release of the Rift headset is still planned for first quarter 2016. The video tells us nothing. All we see is the version of the hardware to be released. Jo has lots of information about the Rift in her article. Continue reading