Will the Rift revitalize Second Life?

Right now there's one huge barrier to adoption in Second Life: the lag. It's slow even on the fastest PC. To get graphics as good as some of those screenshots posted above, you would need a hell of a computer. I'm not even sure with that it would be performant. If someone can fix the framerate issues with SL/OpenSim, then they'll be so much further ahead.

"rocky1138" wrote:

"candiedbug" wrote:
One thing that bothers me a little is Linden Labs itself. Do we want a private company with profit in mind to be in control of the "go to" VR multi-user experience? Pros Cons?

If we want VR spaces to have a common way of trans-versing them, for example a road. Who "owns" the road?

This would be true if they didn't open source their client, leading to the development of other open source clients and a fully-fledged server solution: OpenSim.

Well, yeah, the client is open source, but SL itself isn't. You can have all the open source viewers you want, they are useless if Linden Labs decides to deny access to the content.

"rocky1138" wrote:
Right now there's one huge barrier to adoption in Second Life: the lag. It's slow even on the fastest PC. To get graphics as good as some of those screenshots posted above, you would need a hell of a computer. I'm not even sure with that it would be performant. If someone can fix the framerate issues with SL/OpenSim, then they'll be so much further ahead.

Very true, this might be a valid reason to avoid SL and design something specifically tailored to the needs of VR , ie. speed, ergonomics, etc.

The problem, it seems to me is too much is secret sauce code server side in SL. We need to have server light and client heavy implementations. So that the server tells you in the most minimalist way possible what the client should display and then the client does the lion's share of the work. But so much is being pushed from the linden labs server to the viewers I wonder if they can update it at all with out completely rethinking it and doing a ground up rewrite.

Think about browsers versus web page code. HTML is a small language with a few tags to produce big results because the browser can fill in the necessary details from the short hand of HTML. They are making strides with this with Web based 3d but I'd like to see it get even easier server side and put a lot of the burden on the client. So that as the pcs improve the experience improves with it without changing server code to make it happen.

Just some thoughts.

I sure hope so

I think it will, no doubt.

It'll revitalize it a bit. In particular, virtual cinema and virtual teleconferences. Imagine a group of people sitting around a table, all of them with the oculus rift on. That could be pretty cool.

However, in the end, there is too much baggage though for SL to re-escape velocity and re-climd the hype cycle. They might have to create an SL v2 which is a separate grid and a bit of a rewrite if they want to do that. Hard to attract great talent to a has-been company that is required for that sort of thing, however.

That being aid - there is nothing better out there, so it's a bit of silly thing to speculate that something better will come along.

That being said, I will :)

What the VR universe needs is something like mod tower / steam. Basically a series of interconnected virtual worlds with one virtual economy, but all of the worlds are built by professional designers and engineers and not by tools meant for amateurs. ("MakeVR" is just repeating all the same mistakes that SL did)

I went through the entire SL cycle as an early adopter (my avatar born 2004) - I know what people want. They don't want hobbyist made content. Sure, the odd sandbox and your own private island to play on would be fun, but that content is not meant for public consumption and only for private consumption (maybe you'll invite a few friends over).

"blazespinnaker" wrote:
It'll revitalize it a bit. In particular, virtual cinema and virtual teleconferences. Imagine a group of people sitting around a table, all of them with the oculus rift on. That could be pretty cool.

However, in the end, there is too much baggage though for SL to re-escape velocity and re-climd the hype cycle. They might have to create an SL v2 which is a separate grid and a bit of a rewrite if they want to do that. Hard to attract great talent to a has-been company that is required for that sort of thing, however.

That being aid - there is nothing better out there, so it's a bit of silly thing to speculate that something better will come along.

That being said, I will :)

What the VR universe needs is something like mod tower / steam. Basically a series of interconnected virtual worlds with one virtual economy, but all of the worlds are built by professional designers and engineers and not by tools meant for amateurs. ("MakeVR" is just repeating all the same mistakes that SL did)

I went through the entire SL cycle as an early adopter (my avatar born 2004) - I know what people want. They don't want hobbyist made content. Sure, the odd sandbox and your own private island to play on would be fun, but that content is not meant for public consumption and only for private consumption (maybe you'll invite a few friends over).

I couldn't disagree more. Imagine if someone walked in after mosaic first came out and said. You know people don't want to be able to make their own web pages. And, while it might be nice to play around with web pages, really we need to wait for the slick companies to come in and make the good stuff we can't be relied on to make ourselves. No the future has room for both. Room for the the Half life 2s AAA titles and the Minecrafts bolt from the dark. One guy with a dream can change the world. And the companies will also make their profit. Neither will be the only thing going. That's the beauty of technology. Ask a developer in school or just leaving school and many of them have heard of the rift and want to develop on it. Not every one of them is going to go work for EA and Valve. Some of them are going to do their own thing and we will all benefit from it. Even though I must, I can't wait. The future is so bright I have to wear shades; VR shades with an OR logo on them.

"Calanar" wrote:

"blazespinnaker" wrote:


...

What the VR universe needs is something like mod tower / steam. Basically a series of interconnected virtual worlds with one virtual economy, but all of the worlds are built by professional designers and engineers and not by tools meant for amateurs. ("MakeVR" is just repeating all the same mistakes that SL did)

I went through the entire SL cycle as an early adopter (my avatar born 2004) - I know what people want. They don't want hobbyist made content. Sure, the odd sandbox and your own private island to play on would be fun, but that content is not meant for public consumption and only for private consumption (maybe you'll invite a few friends over).

I couldn't disagree more. Imagine if someone walked in after mosaic first came out and said. You know people don't want to be able to make their own web pages. And, while it might be nice to play around with web pages, really we need to wait for the slick companies to come in and make the good stuff we can't be relied on to make ourselves. No the future has room for both. Room for the the Half life 2s AAA titles and the Minecrafts bolt from the dark. One guy with a dream can change the world. And the companies will also make their profit. Neither will be the only thing going. That's the beauty of technology. Ask a developer in school or just leaving school and many of them have heard of the rift and want to develop on it. Not every one of them is going to go work for EA and Valve. Some of them are going to do their own thing and we will all benefit from it. Even though I must, I can't wait. The future is so bright I have to wear shades; VR shades with an OR logo on them.

Should we then require "Building Codes" like in RL for VR public spaces? Who will enforce the codes?
I like the idea of a centralized "steam" like curator. But it will have to be an open international regulatory agency (like ICANN) and not a private one.

Here is a question: sandbox, theme-park or hybrid? Which type of experience would attract the masses in the near term?

I'm inclined towards theme-park for the next few years to attract more users with polished experiences and then the culture should evolve towards sandbox with a curated theme-park nougaty center :lol:

Engadget's gamescon discussion with Palmer and Nate of where the rift is going. Set to the relevant parts talking about content and distribution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yz2mUsb31U&feature=player_detailpage#t=332

Well look what Oculus did this week. They opened share. Palmer and Nate specifically said they want to make it so that indie developers can get their demos and ultimately their games shared. They also said in a Gamescon interview that they don't believe their should be a single entity that controls this market even them. That there are already steam games, and now share games and they envision an open platform. Which means the only thing enforcing the codes is the hardware itself. Everything else is recommended practices. And look what it is doing. A year ago there was little to nothing in the VR space. Now there is an explosion of games in the works. Several finished and many more that will be long before the consumer version is released. I think we are in good shape. I expect as you say the really exciting killer app AAA games will be there and are being worked on without a lot of hoopla. EVE-Valkyrie is a great example. But I still think some indie game is going to pull a Mindcraft and surprise a lot of us.