STAY IN THE KNOW

Keeping You Up To Speed.

Be Involved In The SL Community

Awareness is Key to Positive Change.

Explore Your Options

Get your REAL experience points HERE!.

CREATIVITY

The Possibilities are Endless.

Find Your Inner Peace

Ground Yourself and Discover New Things

SLE Ticker



18 Years and counting...Got SL News? Get it Published! Contact Lanai Jarrico at lanaijarrico@gmail.com
Showing posts with label Oculus Rift. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oculus Rift. Show all posts

Saturday, June 6, 2015

SL 2.0 - FUD for thought (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt!) -- Gatz Inoue Martian reporting




SL 2.0 is coming


Someday soon we might log into our beloved virtual world and see something like this on the login screen of our viewer:


PRESS RELEASE - Linden Labs today announced that it will be shutting down the virtual world service known as Second Life.  This will mark the opening of Second Life 2.0, the company's new virtual world….


And so it goes...but for many of us the loss of Second Life isn’t simply the loss of a game like World of Warcraft, it is much more akin to a meteor hitting the earth and wiping out all life.  


The virtual world we inhabit is not called “Second Life” for nothing,  it is designed to be just that, a second life.  Many people here have families and activities that are just as important to them as any activity that a person might partake in with actual flesh and blood.  For some, Second Life provides a means to live a life that they would not otherwise be capable of enjoying due to disability or other hardship.  To everyone this deeply involved in Second Life, the potential loss of something that is such a central part of your first life causes anxiety and fear.


Linden Labs is aware of all these things,  a simple google search on “Second Life 2.0” returns quote after quote from Linden Labs going as far back as 2014:


“...The new Second Life will offer more robust tools for creators. Games, designs, goods, all the things that make the current incarnation of Second Life the go-to place for current users will be part of the new world….”

https://monaeberhardt.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/ebbe-altberg.png CEO Ebbe Altberg
CEO Ebbe Altberg


“...Linden Lab is working on a next generation virtual world that will be in the spirit of Second Life, an open world where users have incredible power to create anything they can imagine and content creators are king.”


Oculus Rift and Second Life


One of the rumors that started a lot of furor toward the end of last year was the introduction of a viewer that supported Oculus Rift.  Oculus Rift is a virtual reality helmet designed to be owned by people and used in the home.  It will interface with a desktop computer and will allow people to bring themselves closer than ever to the virtual world they inhabit.   Many thought that you would be required to have a Rift as part of the usage of the new Second Life.  While you can find several statements indicating there will be compatibility with the VR helmet, there is also indication that the new Virtual World platform will support PCs and mobile devices right from the outset.  



Given that Linden Labs wants to support Oculus Rift from the outset but also wants to maintain the current user base, they would be foolish to cut off support for the PC which is the primary platform.  The rumors surrounding this were blown vastly out of proportion, if anything Second Life 2.0 will support more ways of accessing the service to allow a wider user base and a larger community.  “We want to support mobile from the beginning... Any content in the new platform will be good on Oculus and PC.”  --Ebbe Altberg http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2015/03/second-life-news-ebbe-altberg-sl-2.html)


From the Oculus Website:
Today, we’re incredibly excited to announce that the Oculus Rift will be shipping to consumers in Q1 2016, with pre-orders later this year.”  
It is interesting that the consumer Oculus Rift and SL 2.0 are both set to release in 2016,  working together it seems likely that Linden Labs and Oculus VR will be able to produce a result that is much larger than either one of them could produce on their own.  It also stands to reason that a release of the consumer version of the “Rift” would coincide with the release of a new virtual world platform so that Linden Labs could ride the wave of excitement surrounding VR.  Oculus VR is talking about a 200-400 dollar price point for the VR helmet,  which means that it will be within the price range of most people and hopefully not as cost prohibitive or as complicated to use as the present developer incarnation of Oculus Rift.


Given Linden Labs continued support of the present Second Life and their active development of Second Life 2.0 with plans toward compatibility with upcoming hardware it seems unlikely that the user base is going to be abandoned.  What is most likely is that SL 1.0 and SL 2.0 will both exist side by side for a time as people get used to the new platform and gradually shift over to it.  Any way you look at it, it is an exciting time to be a resident of Second Life.  There is so much on the horizon that promises to be far more than we could have imagined when this service came online 12 years ago.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Technology: Oculus Rift – a New Virtual Reality Viewing Accessory- Stareyes Galaxy Reporting…


Oculus Rift is a new virtual reality (VR) viewing accessory that is designed to give VR gamers a new level of user experience. 

The device development was initially financed by Kickstarter, and demonstrator units are now available for developers, together with a software development kit (SDK). Linden Lab is looking into porting this VR experience to Second Life © (SL) users, but there is still a way to go before we can expect the first avatars to enter SL using an Oculus Rift viewer. Stareyes Galaxy had the opportunity to test the demonstrator.

The technology behind the Oculus Rift is quite straightforward. It uses a 6” liquid-crystal display (LCD) and enlarging optics for both eyes. A personal computer (PC) is used to send the viewable content to the display. The user then sees a stereoscopic view of the VR content, as both eyes get their own view, separated by the perspective. The optics focus on the display surface itself, but the perspective seems to be set in infinity. The rendering for the display is done by means of the software, for each eye separately. The viewer uses the same content that is rendered on the PC screen.

 
cookieassistant.com