When Linden Lab released a new Oculus ready viewer, one that worked with DK2 and CV1, the reactions were, to put it mildly, not enthusiastic.
I wrote about it in my previous blog post that you can read by clicking here.
Today Linden Lab announced they have removed the Oculus Rift viewer from its alternate viewers page.
The Oculus headset picture and link to more information about using it in SL seems to have also been removed from the main page on the official SL website, at least I no longer see it.
In this discussion on one of the official blogs the following comment was posted by Linden Lab;
Thank you for experimenting with our Oculus Rift Project Viewer and offering your feedback. Unfortunately, the Project Viewer that we recently made available didn’t meet our standards for quality, and so we’ve now removed it from the Alternate Viewers page.
By definition, Project Viewers aren’t ready for primetime. The purpose of these experimental Viewers is to share with you the earliest possible version of what we’re working on, so that you can see what we’re up to, help discover problems, and provide feedback. In this case, though, we’re not ready for that, as those of you who tried it have seen.
We can’t say at this point when or even if we may release another Project Viewer for experimenting with the Oculus Rift in SL.
We want to prioritize our development efforts around initiatives that we know will improve the virtual world and bring more value to SL Residents, and due to some inherent limitations with SL, it may well not be possible to achieve the performance needed for a good VR experience. (In fact, this is one reason why we’re creating Project Sansar a new, separate platform optimized for VR).
We greatly appreciate the interest in trying SL with the Oculus Rift and are grateful that several of you took the time to try the Project Viewer. We regret that the quality was not up to our standards, and we will of course keep the community posted if we release a new Project Viewer for VR in the future.
Of course people were very unhappy with the new viewer and yes, it was not good enough for people to actually enjoy Second Life with.
But hearing that they may not release another one is very disappointing.
As imperfect as Second Life is for Head Mounted devices at the moment, I still was extremely impressed with my visit to 1920s Berlin wearing the DK1.
Regardless of lag and if the frame-rate was fast enough or not, I was exploring MY world, the place I build and loved.
I didn’t care about the imperfections, I was inside my Second Life.
Of course, if you can’t make it work, releasing (another) viewer is probably a good idea.
But it is going to be months, perhaps even years before most of us can start enjoying Sansar as a virtual world that is as interesting and has as much to offer as Second Life and it really would be nice if we could at least have some fun with the HMD’s in Second Life.
Even with the old Oculus Viewer and head set, I loved every minute I spend in SL with it.
So I hope that that we will see another HMD viewer for SL, regardless.
Jo Yardley's Second Life 
And – really – CtrlAltStudio was working *fairly* well for quite some time. Seems like it’s something that *could* be done if they really *wanted* to. Compromises? Yes. Less than optimal? Yes. But usable, and nice-looking.
Especially for – like you say (and I paraphrase) – those of us who don’t need the framerate necessary to run and fly, but rather tend to take leisurely strolls through town, sit, and have a little chat with neighbors.
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As someone who may never have an Oculus Rift or similar appliance I am relieved by this action. At this time both an Oculus Rift viewer and the pressure to accommodate 3D in SL were distractions for the SL development team. There are many more productive ways for them to spend their time.
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I need for sure to agree at 100 pct with Shug: I dont give a damn about 3d viewers, i doubt more then 0,0001 pct of Sl users care, but i caremuch more to be able to enjoy Sl on its all mighty 2d beauty without lag, with great crossing sims and so on. I just wish LL with do the same with Sansar, just drop it.
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Have you tried HMD?
Have you been in SL with one?
I have, it was amazing.
Within a couple of years every household will have a HMD and use them for lots of things.
It is only logical for LL to prepare for this as it is a huge potential market.
Ignoring HMD VR is like having a cinema and ignoring the invention of the TV.
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I doubt, really i doubt about that as any attempts made earlier. Humanity will never wish to embrace itself, it is our self defense mechanism that will prevent it.
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I have no idea what you mean.
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That is very sad. The DK2 previous version was almost there for experimental, demo and other uses.
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Such headsets have failed before to achieve anything meaningful. I’m not surprised that they failed again w.r.t. their integration with a highly complex application like Second Life. Maybe everyone can learn a few lessons from this…
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Yo, happy you have seen virtual world with HMD, it also must have show you that build scale and texture resolutions are not good in hmd if the are not scaled.
Mona Eberhardt HMD’s are not a fail, the are very good extension of the emmersive feeling. I cannot wait for the day i can jump,in virtual sailboat with HMD and jit just feels and works like a real sailboat.
Am also very intressted to see 1920 in the new world, It only important to build things more at real life dimensions and keep eye on texture quality.
HMD a fail no, sansar a fail.
I think not. besides sansar mut work in desktop mode to. and experience works as good or bda with desktop as the experiences is designed for it. If you design experience for pure HMD it not work good in desktop. it’s still the people and experience owner that make the design choices.
It’s not linden lab that force people to use HMD, the only give people the the tools to create a good (HMD) experience.
The only lesson that is learned, do not try to make secondlife useable for HMD. Secondlife have already problems to work good on good desktop hardware.
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That’s not true at all.
Second Life worked great with the Project Oculus Viewer 3.7 on the Rift DK2.
Linden Lab just completely screwed up the update to version 4.1 for the consumer version Rift and new runtime – version 4.1 was not just a little bad, it was *completely* broken.
This is not the fault of VR headsets or Oculus or the users. It’s the fault of Linden Lab who – once again – broke a promise. They broke their promise to make Second Life work in VR, which would have been possible.
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I Mean, Jo, no matter we can wish in our dreams, our brain will prevent us to totally immersed on 3d as we are on 2 d.
We can read a book, watch tv, be playing a game and fel like we where there, but in no way we will be able to do so in a 3 d ambiance, our brain in the back will tell us that is wrong what we are trying to do.
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Ah yes, I am not so sure but I guess we’ll find out in a few years when VR experiences become ultra realistic.
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Hmm, my brain is telling me the opposite. when i use my htc vive HMD. i still need to be carefull todo thing real life that only exists virtual. like placeing your hand controller on virtual object.
If you used HMD, a flat screen is pretty boring. But i also will use both, because for now i do not see me wear HMD for hours in a row.
But really HMD is amazing ! especially if it’s combined with the option to grab things, throw things, look aroind things like you can do in real life. I still seems todo virtual with things in HMD mode. especially plants ! it’s amazing !
it’s only important that the build scale is correct !
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I hate to see the effort stop.. I wonder how this story would have ended if Strachan Ofarrel (David Rowe) was on board. Not only a gifted programmer but David took his time to help all others that wanted to try the experience.
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This is an extremely poor decision by Linden Lab. They advertised Second Life as VR compatible for years, published a category for VR on the destination guide, talked about VR for years and even released a viewer in 2014 (version 3.7) that worked great with the DK2.
The broken update for CV1 was disapointing, especially to people who invested into VR equipment to use it with SL. VR can work well with Second Life and when it works well, it’s mind blowing. We saw that with the Project Oculus Viewer 3.7 and the DK2. Using a fast computer, SL should be able to deliver a decent VR experience on the CV. If Linden Lab is now giving up on VR for SL, they should at least publish the code so the community can take over.
I am extremely disapointed of Linden Lab over this decision after years of advertising VR.
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I agree, Rai, LL should publish the code and the 3rd party viewer developers can see it through. The biggest problems I saw with the Oculus Rift related to scaling of objects in-world and the placement/rigging of the camera in Rift mode. Too many content creators seem to have no concept whatsoever of scale, and it sucks to see your head detach from your body when you look around.
If those two things are not acknowledged and addressed, VR won’t make much headway in SL/OpenSim anyway.
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Considering the nature of liturgic twists to corporate decisions it could be from a need to stay above 60 FPS. That’s the medical reason demos are under 6 minutes and SL has no chance of sustaining that level of performance.
Another SL issue is David Rowe doing his magic at High Fidelity. I’d love to hear his input on the 60 FPS barrier.and the possibility of SL’s VR capability matchup.
OpenSim is a whole different situation and has moved away from being a SL server clone. It has the ability to offer an open sourced VR experience should they chose.
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