Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Google is releasing a $79 headset named Daydream. Road to VR has an article on the headset.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLLAA4ENIP4
The headset uses a phone, not included. But, the phone has to be Daydream Certified. I’m not sure exactly what that means and I didn’t dee anyone explaining it. The most they say in the way of an explanation is: the Daydream headset works exclusively with Android’s integrated VR support.
There is an interesting tutorial out for Blender 2.78 showing how to make a 360 VR image.
Road to VR has an article and video up on how to fake an infinitely long corridor in VR. Some people have found a way to give the impression of walking in a straight line while actually walking in a circle.
This is pretty awesome. But, it also shows that VR developers have realized there is a space problem for VR. What they have requires a room bigger than 7m (20ft) x 5m (15ft). This is typical ‘small’ master bedroom size in America.
AUSTIN TATE has written an article on how to use VorpX with Second Life and OpenSim to get a VR view. See: Second Life and OpenSim in VR using VorpX. Sounds fun and reasonable, US$40.
The Second Life™ blogosphere is mostly silent on the state of VR in SL. A few blogs are covering the release of a sort of updated CtrlAltStudio viewer, version 1.2.6.43412. This is a viewer based on the Firestorm viewer version 4.6.9 from December 2014.
The viewer does support Oculus Rift CV1… the commercial retail consumer product.
Hamlet at New World Notes is pointing out David Rowe has a SL VR Viewer working. The page Hamlet linked to is out of date. The new news is in the comments where David says,
David Rowe Post author5 Jul 2016 at 11:22 am
Just tried LL’s Rift viewer and, well, it’s surprisingly un-good. It’s like the graphics are being fed from the wrong framebuffer object or the pipeline is being misconfigured when you switch into HMD view. Intentional or bugs? I suppose time will tell. The graphics should be able to be so much better (even if understandably the FPS isn’t so good)!
Links:
Note Jo Yardley’s comment about being able to use Vorpx with a regular viewer (i,e., like Firestorm, Alchemy, or LL’s regular viewer) to view Second Life in your Rift. I haven’t tried it myself but am told it can be used.