Second Life and Virtual Worlds
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. The headset being offered in addition to the app is a Google Cardboard thing. … Read more
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.