Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Hypergrid Business has an article up about the rumor that a free VR Gear head set comes with the preorder purchase of a Galaxy S7. The headsets go for US$100. See: Rumor: Free Gear VR with Galaxy S7? Maria sends us to 9 to 5 Google for details.
Word is out that the Oculus Rift consumer version can be pre-ordered for a mere US$600. :/ What I find today is that if you order now, you MAY get your Rift by June… That is six months. If you have already ordered, you should see yours get shipped to you in the March 28th … Read more
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.
I found a couple of new articles about Project Sansar. I’m only going to point out the stuff in the articles I found interesting.
Second Life eyes second act as virtual reality matures – Financial Times (FT)
The FT says the Lab has magazine covers from 2005 that tell about Second Life™ being the next big thing hanging in their offices.
FT points to Project Sansar, High Fidelity, and AltspaceVR as the coming new Virtual Worlds (VW).
FT quotes Wagner James Au (Hamlet), New World Notes, as saying fashion designers are the likely second category of VW users that will make money from VW’s. Presumably the first is those needing to build VW’s for various reasons.
I sure it will thrill many that Hamlet says the third money making category is probably going to be porn. I agree with him. Porn was the early money maker when the Internet started. Hamlet also thinks many big businesses will make the same mistakes they made in Second Life. They will jump into VW’s to look cutting edge, high tech with little or no idea what they are doing and whether it will make them money.
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.