Linden Lab removes Oculus Rift Project Viewer and may not release another one

Tags

"second life", HMD's, oculus rift, virtual reality

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.

Second Life Oculus ready viewer released, fails to impress

Tags

"second life", Head mounted displays, htcvive, ocolus rift, virtual reality

Linden Lab has released a viewer that supports the Development kit 2 version of the Oculus Rift but also the consumer version.
This is something many people have been waiting for.

Unfortunately I can’t test it myself, I don’t own a VR headset nor a computer it would work with.
Any sponsors out there with some spare money?
Give me a call.

When you visit the Second Life website you still see an artist’s impression of what the Rift might look like, not a picture of the actual current headset and when you click for more information you’ll be taken to a blog post from 2014.
So Oculus users joining SL today, will not know they can use their headset till they try.

The viewer was much anticipated, but once tried the experience left several users less than impressed.
According to some users, it seems like performance has gotten worse compared to the dk2 viewer.
Of course we all know that Second Life is not perfectly suitable for VR headset experience, but you’d at least hope that it would still be working just as good or better than it did with the DK2 even though the commercial Oculus may be more demanding.
The viewer also lowers your graphics settings so even if you have a super computer that technically could handle SL at ultra settings in your Oculus, you wouldn’t be able to try it.

Check out the forum thread here (click) to see how people are experiencing it.

Jim Reichert, who does a lot of work with new VR technologies, uploaded the first (as far as I know) video showing the new viewer;

He was rather disappointed by his recent experience.
He writes;

I took a leap of faith on my part to update my Oculus drivers to the latest drop.
After an hour or two of laboring through latest Oculus installation and sorting out its ideosyncrasies, I finally got everything working– and by “working” I mean limping along like something from 2003.
Comparatively speaking, it’s a far worse Oculus experience than I’d had on Linden Lab’s previous attempt from 2014. Not only is it far choppier from a frame-rate perspective, but it’s rendered on the lowest settings– a far cry from the smooth experience that I’d grown used to.
More frustratingly, it’s not even good for taking stereoscopic screenshots since the render settings seem to have been pulled down as far as they could go. Setting them to Ultra had no effect whatsoever.
The real kicker, however, is that there is currently no way to go back to the original attempt– the one from 2014. I can no longer shoot videos to showcase how amazing Second Life is to my neo-VR friends.
It’s very frustrating development because I’m finally drawing a crowd.
What do I show them now?”

On twitter people have also been sharing their experiences;

Mr Tate writes;

Testing with various settings it seems HMD view colours are washed out, transparency & plants missing, HMD UI settings seem to have no effect. HMD UI can be across middle of screen, light blue squares on sea.
My setup is Windows 10, Xeon processor, 32GB memory, SSD drives and Nvidia GTX980 GPU.
Comparison shot of normal 2D view and HMD view with many missing items, sea patch, etc.;

Making more progress by turning “Atmospheric Shaders” off. Transparency okay then

On the Second Life VR Facebook page and the Second Life VR Facebook group people have also been commenting;

Mr Claesen;

I tried, works with CV1, well it works as badly as it did with the SDK2. Massive latency, bad shading, no AA, … . And it’s overcomplicated AGAIN.

Ms Lorentzson;

Wow that must have been the worst VR experience in a long time. All the old errors and a few new ones are still there. It is like pre Alpha.

Ms Millar;

Well yes, it works, and I’m so glad that it does, BUT it looks absolutely bloody terrible. Is there any point in me using something that makes my virtual environment look so appalling, just so I can move about it in a limited fashion anyway? I’m sad to say that it’s just not what I’d hoped it would be, and for that reason alone, I’ll stick with Firestorm. What I’ll take away from this whole experience is that it’s clear that it can be done, but as far as LL/official viewers go it’s with limitations.

Mr Mikula;

I was running it today on my rig which is driven by dual titan X’s and yeah its certainly a stripped back viewer. I actually enjoyed first person view more on my monitor than on the oculus “CV1”. Seems like many objects weren’t rendering even if I cranked it to ultra.
I mean my expectations weren’t too high, but I figured it’d at least show me what I can see in desktop mode! Definitely can’t wait for project sansar lol.

The discussion is also going on at SLUniverse (click).
There, Ms Cortes reported;

I only briefly tried the first viewer long ago with DK2, the new one is better from what I recall of it. As for the experience with the current viewer and the release version of the rift? It’s… okay I guess. Not being able to change the graphics settings to look better really hurts the experience. If it’s there I couldn’t figure out where, so no shiny ALM, shadows or any of that .

A lot of objects vanish or become 100% transparent when they shouldn’t be, scene loading in general seems very blocky. It reminds me of new chunks loading in Minecraft.

The head tracking could probably use improvement, but it’s not bad. Disabling seeing your avatar in mouselook is probably a good idea since you’ll see your own head clipping into your viewpoint on occasion, I imagine this is worse with people who have idles that move all over the place.

Here’s some videos I took (although not very good ones), I cropped it to only show the main center area of my screen (it’s quite a bit larger otherwise), and keep in mind that while the video looks jittery, it seems more natural with the actual headset on your head, since it’s your own subtle head movements and you looking around making all the motion.

This first small area is made to 1:1 RL scale (along with my avatar), which is key for any kind of immersion. Most of SL fails this terribly, and it is one of the reasons why VR in most of SL is bleh. The start of the videos where it’s all weird and shaky is me putting on the headset and recentering the view, and I do a few back and forth comparisons with HMD vs normal mode to show the massive graphical differences at different points in both videos.
https://streamable.com/wgys

This second area is a lot more spacious:
https://streamable.com/jcjh

All that said, it is still fun to play around with, and being able to see things in 3D is really nice, the videos don’t capture that sensation of depth. As it stands though, SL in VR sadly doesn’t compare well to a proper game made for VR.

Make sure you check out the videos Ms Cortes shared in the quote above.

So in short the main issue appears to be that the viewer forces you to lower your graphics settings, which makes SL look real ugly, real fast.

Also downloading the new viewer may cause your firewall and protection software to alert you because of an outdated security certificate, and the new viewer is Windows only.
A HTC Vive viewer is not being worked on at the moment, a shame as the Vive seems to have pushed the Oculus to the side as the leading VR headset.

But it is early days.
These problems may just be temporary bugs.
So although Lindens read my blog, make sure you file bug reports so the right Lindens get to hear about your issues asap.

Have you tried it?
What is your experience, let us know here in the comments section below.

On a side note; there is apparently a service called Vorpx that will allow you to enjoy Second Life with your firestorm viewer and at higher graphics settings in the CV1 AND HTCVIVE.

I will not buy an Oculus Rift any time soon

Tags

headset, oculus rift, virtual reality

So, the Oculus rift is finally going to be commercially available.

They are now available for pre-order  and will start shipping from March 28th onwards.

But… and here comes the sting… it is going to cost $599.

That is just too much.
And here in the Netherlands you’ll even be paying $750.
This does not even include their special controllers.

And that while Palmer Luckey himself only a few months ago answered a question by Road to VR about if the consumer Oculus Rift price would come in around that $350 ballpark target with;

You know, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. We’re roughly in that ballpark… but it’s going to cost more than that.

Must be nice to live in a world where $599 is roughly in the same ballpark s $350.

Either way, it seems they are selling them, lots of them.

But as excited as I am about all the new tech that is coming, I am not willing (or able) to spend this much on a headset.
Especially as I’ll also need to buy a new computer to handle VR properly as it doesn’t even work on my MacBook.

So even though I’m grateful to Oculus for sort of kickstart the VR renaissance, I also think they messed up.
Not only because of the high price they are asking for it but also because I think they missed the boat.
All this has taken them so long, that the competition has been developing other headsets as well, cheaper ones.
The Oculus will not be as much a seller as it would/could have been at half the price.
I think this may even slow down the spread of VR.

If even someone like me, who is crazy about VR and wants a good headset so badly, thinks that the Oculus headset is too expensive and will just not buy one, imagine what the average gamer or potential VR user will think
And let’s not even think about .general gamers, museums, schools and regular folks will think about this ‘toy.
While they should have brought us a good but cheap Rift that everyone would have wanted to buy and thus make sure that VR headsets end up in as many households as possible.

Do they really think we all want or need those special headphones, a game, a remote and an x box controller?
Because we pay extra for those, maybe not much, but it adds up.
Did they really have to spend so much time to develop all these extra things and their special new controllers?
I personally think they should have sold a basic Rift before Christmas and then sell all that other stuff separately for those who want them.
Now they missed the holiday sales and ended up with a very expensive toy.

But Palmer explains;

To reiterate, we are not making money on Rift hardware. High end VR is expensive, but Rift is obscenely cheap for what it is.

— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) January 6, 2016

I think and hope that the competition will now step up and offer us a good VR headset for at least half the price.
Oculus may have just ruined the opportunity of a life time.

I am secretly looking towards the people at Apple.
We know they have been acquiring quite a few VR related patents and are working on something…
And at least if they build a headset it will work on my Mac…

Will you be getting an Oculus Rift?

Photo copyright; Oculus.

 

Oculus announcement about the Rift Headset; it is coming.

Tags

oculus rift, virtual reality

Today Oculus had a special presentation with the latest news regarding their Rift Virtual Reality head set.

The commercial version will be available in the first quarter of 2016.

The design is pretty impressive, small and smooth, wearable like a baseball cap.

It comes with integrated 360 degrees special audio and headphones, but these can easily be removed if you prefer to use your own.

Comes with X-box 1 controller.

It will also work with a sensor you will place on your desk, not sure if this will just help locate which way you’re looking at, standing or sitting or if it will also be able to track gestures, like the leap motion.
It looks like this;

Here is the official Oculus introduction video;

At launch you will be able to experience a few games straight out the box.
Eve Valkyrie, a space ship shooting game, sounds interesting but I always wonder why anyone would want to do some science fiction space flying if you could also be flying a Spitfire!
Nevertheless, this looks very exciting and I can imagine that such a game is perfect for the VR experience as you’re sitting in a seat in RL and VR, looking all around you.
I can’t wait till I can defend London during a dogfight in 1940, suddenly being shot af from behind and as you try to look over your shoulder to see who is shooting at you, you see a Messerschmitt pass over your cockpit.
Anyway, a good game for the Rift either way.

Another game coming, ready for the Rift, is Chronos.
Doesn’t look very impressive and again, it is a fantasy theme, I’m allergic to those.
But technically it is all about a labyrinth, a RPG, again a rather good test case for the Rift.

‘Edge of nowhere’ is the next VR Rift made game, this again, sigh, is a fantasy theme, but it takes place somewhere in the Antarctic.
So atmosphere wise it is very nice and cold.
Other games are a shooter, a sports game, a kids puzzle game, etc.

To me this illustrates perfectly why Second Life is the best VR tool there is, none of these games or experiences are appealing to me.
I want to see some of the things I’ve seen in SL or even better yet, create my own VR experiences.

It is such a shame Sansar is not at that level yet to be part of this Rift deal, part of the package that is ready for VR users who have just bought the brand new Rift.
Lets hope Sansar is ready next year when the Rift hits the market anyway, although I think that is too soon.

Oculus has also developed ‘Oculus Home’, the virtual ‘desk top’ sort of library where you’ll have access to all your Oculus ready software or game.
You’ll see what your friends are playing, you can buy a game, manage downloads, join games, etc, without removing your headset.
But it is nowhere near a virtual world, so there is at least one company not developing a virtual world… yet.

I was quite amused when one of the chaps said that with VR we’re able to watch movies in a virtual cinema and that one day we could even do that with friends…
Seriously?
I’m pretty sure some of the VR cinema demo’s already have that but either way, we’ve been doing that in Second Life for over a decade…

The next, quite big news was the revealing of their secret project; Oculus Touch.
It is, according to Palmer Luckey himself, the best way to interact inside VR.
In short it is a sort of joystick or controller you wear in each hand and that allows you to, for instance, pick up things, shoot a gun, give a thumbs up, etc.
It looks interesting and it is smart, even impressive to come with a whole new way of controlling a game inworld.
But I can’t help wondering why they didn’t just go with an improved version of the good old VR glove.
Or improve their table sensor with something like Leap Motion technology.
People want to wear less stuff while in VR, not more.

It was not mentioned if these came with the Oculus Rift when bought, so I assume you have to buy them separately.
It seems like the Rift is going to be quite the expensive toy and although lots of rumours about how much it will eventually cost have been going around, we still don’t know how much money we’ll have to spend and it wasn’t announced during this presentation either.
Tech specifications were also not released.

The Rift is coming! Shipping first quarter of 2016.

Tags

oculus, oculus rift, rift, VR

The news has finally come; Oculus will start shipping its consumer version of their VR Headset ‘The Rift’ in the first quarter of 2016.

I’ve written before about how I think VR is going to change the world as one day VR devices will become as common as Radios and television sets once were.

We’re already being flooded with VR games, software and technology, VR movies and TV are following rapidly and a few ‘virtual worlds’ are being developed.

Not to mention the other headsets that have already popping up all over the place

We are at the dawn of a VR renaissance and with a bit of luck, we’ll be the trailblazers.

Second Life is in a rather good position to take advantage of the situation.

Because no matter what people think of our virtual world, it is still the oldest, most experienced one out there, has its own stable economy, more content than anyone and is working on a brand new up to date version.

If Linden Lab manages to get their Next Generation Virtual World ready before or shortly after the release of the Rift, it could bring in a LOT of new users and start a second ‘Golden Age’ for Second Life.

So, exciting times ahead, one way or another.
VR is here to stay this time.

There is no word on the tech details or how much the Rift is going to cost but I’m sure that will all come soon.
Personally I can’t wait to buy one, I hope I can afford it.

Some more details here in this interview;

http://techcrunch.com/video/oculus-vr-is-coming-your-way/518809523/

Picture; Oculus VR.

Oculus DK2 viewer for SL now available

Tags

oculus rift, viewer

Linden Lab has announced that the Second Life Oculus DK2 viewer is now available.

I quote from their announcement;

A few months ago, we released a Project Viewer that made it possible to use the first generation Oculus Rift development kit (DK1) anywhere in Second Life.

Since then, Oculus Rift has released a second generation development kit, DK2. The new hardware offers an even more immersive experience when used with Second Life – there’s less likelihood of feeling motion sick thanks to the motion-tracking features, and less of the “screen-door effect” on the visuals, thanks to higher resolution and brighter display.

We’ve integrated the DK2 with Second Life, and today are releasing a new Project Viewer so that virtual reality enthusiasts with the DK2 can use it anywhere in Second Life, just as DK1 users can.

Unfortunately, though, there are still some bugs impacting the experience, which we won’t be able to fix until we receive the next SDK from Oculus Rift. Because Second Life uses OpenGL in its browser, we cannot support direct mode in the Rift until Oculus releases a version of the SDK that supports that.

In addition, juddering is an issue (as it is with most DK2 demos).This can be significantly improved on Windows by turning off Aero, which allows the Rift to use its full refresh rate rather than being limited to the refresh rate of the primary monitor. This refresh rate is a major factor in the judder and turning off Aero can significantly improve your experience.

We’ll continue to fix bugs and improve the experience as quickly as we can once we get the next SDK, but in the meantime, we wanted to get this Project Viewer out into testers’ hands. If you have an Oculus Rift development kit, you can download the new Project Viewer here.

Second Life Oculus Rift experience

Reddit can be an intimidating place, especially if you love Second Life and dare to get involved in discussions about games, Virtual Reality and the Oculus Rift.
Because, let’s face it, Second Life is generally not very appreciated.

So when I found a story on the Oculus Rift Reddit page about someone’s experience in Second Life with the Rift, I was a little worried.

But Reddit user digi1ife wrote a wonderful, honest, critical yet enthusiastic and positive story.

I think he managed very well to explain the excitement of being “inside” Second Life and to share this with other, mostly non-SL users.
A good positive story about Second Life always makes a bigger impact when it comes from a skeptical user in stead of a hardcore fan.

With his permission I share his story here.

But I suggest you also visit the original page HERE so you can read the comments.

And do me a favour, vote up his original post.

My experience in Second Life with the Rift, by digi1ife 

A friend talked me into installing Second Life and trying it with the Rift viewer. Let me tell you. It still has all the same issues as SL. The thing is when seen from inside of the RIFT, your mind starts to explode at the scale and even tho crappy and unfinished things are there. It really does feel like you are in the huge world with so much potential. It’s crappiness actually looks amazing when it’s life size. Some how seeing it from inside the Rift changes your perception. It goes from being a crappy looking location. To some cool eclectic fantasy world. To be honest the experience may have been one of the best RIFT experiences I have had. Minus all technical wonkiness of it being tacked on Rift support (this was almost a year ago).

My friend invited me and another friend to her house she built in SL, Which was super cool being able to actually be inside of this house she built / Decorated. (hard to explain but really cool, We all had Rifts on) The coolest thing was she spawned a Life size car out of no where and me and my friend were able to get in said car and drive it down the road. He was the driver and I was the passenger. ( we left her standing on the side of the road ) It was like BOOM OMG i’m in a car with a friend who live states away. Driving down the road in a city we both never been to. When my friend looked at me I could see his avatar head look at me and vice versa. It was a CRAZY Awesome feeling.

We started to drive off and I looked back out of the back window at my other friend standing on the side walk. ( it was only a 2 seater) I shouted out this is NUTS! I turned and started looking out the passenger window as my friend who was driving started talking to me. (we had mics) He took his eyes off the road because he was so mind blown as well. We drove right off a cliff. I start to reach for the Door handle only to remember i’m in VR with no Hand / arm control. Pure fear seeing the ocean come into view out of the front windshield as we free fall to our would be deaths. I look over at him as we splashdown in the water. Car instantly starts sinking. I felt an uncontrollable urge to hold my breath. Then we teleported out back to safety.

Hands down one the best interactions I have had in VR! This being said it was all in crappy Second life. (I don’t mean to be rude saying that, it’s just too complicated of an interface and graphically dated) With the Rift it was worth it!! It told me what the future of VR is going to be like and I can’t freaking wait. It was the wildest thing ever. I mean COME ON! me and a friend were in the same car, in a world driving around talking to eachother. Then he drives us off a cliff on accident. All the while feeling like you are really sitting next to someone in a life size car. This was seriously Science fiction a year ago! For crying out loud I was inside of Second life. (as far as my brain was concerned)

I’m not saying you should go try the Rift in SL. The set up was a pain. The controls took 3rd part apps ( xpadder ) just to get the xbox controler working with it. We got it working well enough to be playable that way. I know SL made an official view and reworked a small area just for VR. But I have not tried that version. This was about a year ago that we did this. What i’m trying to say is you guys are gonna Fraking love this stuff when it’s made for VR. Be it SL, Hi Fidelity, Facebook World or Metaverse. It’s almost hard to believe it’s happening. Rant over.

 

Second Life Oculus Rift Ready!

Just now Linden Lab announced on the Second Life website the launch of this Oculus Rift video together with this official statement on their website.
This means that the Oculus Rift enabled viewer can NOW be downloaded from the website and used in Second Life!

I’m glad to say that part of the video was shot in the Oculus Rift Test area in 1920s Berlin that you can now also visit as part of your first SL oculus experience.
You can find it by clicking here.

Further more, there is now also a special section in the Destination guide with sims that are especially suitable for Oculus Rift users;

http://secondlife.com/destinations/Oculus/2

Here is the full text of the announcement, followed by the video;

At Linden Lab, we’ve been very happy to see all the recent activity and interest in the virtual reality space – it’s a sign of progress and innovation in the industry and helps validate the space Second Life has led for more than 10 years. Developments like the Oculus Rift hold great potential for Second Life, and we’re very excited to bring the virtual world into the future with new technologies and partners.

 A few weeks ago, we began a limited beta test of a version of the Second Life Viewer that makes it easy to use an Oculus Rift headset with Second Life for a fully immersive, VR experience. From the outset, we’ve seen strong interest in the integration, not only from existing Second Life users seeking a new way to experience the virtual world, but also from virtual reality enthusiasts eager to explore the enormous quantity and variety of user-created 3D content and social experiences inworld.

The early beta testers of our integration have provided some valuable feedback, identifying bugs as well as providing suggestions for additional features and options that would improve the experience of using the Oculus Rift with Second Life. Today we’re pleased to announce that our Oculus Rift integration is now available as a Project Viewer, the first step toward becoming a part of the default Second Life Viewer.

The Project Viewer features:

• Full Oculus Rift Hardware Support – includes automatic hardware detection and display calibration for quick and easy setup.

• Full UI Support – users can access the entire Second Life UI and HUDs while in Oculus Rift mode, so there are no limitations on what a user can do inworld while using the headset.

• Customizable UI – users can tailor the settings for Oculus Rift mode that work best for their needs.

• Avatar Head Motion – Oculus Rift head-tracking data is mapped to the avatar, so users’ avatars look where they do.

• New First-Person View – allows users to enjoy the immersion previously available with mouselook mode, but thanks to the Oculus Rift, the mouse is free again to control the cursor, allowing for interaction with the UI and objects inworld.

• “Align to Look” –  allows users to quickly start moving the direction they are looking.

• “Action Key” – interact with objects by pressing a key, works great in mouselook mode.

Like our initial beta release, this Project Viewer is more about making it easy to get started using the Oculus Rift to view Second Life than it is about optimizing the UI for headset users. We’ve made some minor adjustments to the regular Second Life UI in order to present it in head-mounted display (HMD) mode, but the UI headset users will experience with this project Viewer is still essentially the same as you’d see without an Oculus Rift.

If you have an Oculus Rift headset and would like to use it with Second Life, get the Project  Viewer here. Getting started is easy – the Viewer includes automatic hardware detection and display calibration, and we’ve created this brief video to help:

Oculus talks about Billion people MMO they want to build with Facebook

Tags

"second life", oculus rift, virtual reality

Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe was a guest at TechCrunch Disrupt yesterday and spoke about an idea they have been thinking about; creating an Massively Multiplayer Online Experience (MMO) for a billion users.

“This is going to be an MMO where we want to put a billion people in VR”

He also said that this is going to take a bigger network than exists in the world today,” but getting together with Facebook is a first step in the right direction as Facebook has about 1.3 billion users today.

Important is also that he mentioned that this idea was one of the reason they decided to sell Oculus to Facebook.
They want to reach as many people as possible, especially those who aren’t really gamers.

“We know with Oculus, with a virtual world, if you’re putting on this pair of glasses and you’re gonna be face-to-face communicating with people, you’re gonna be jumping in and out of this new set of virtual worlds, this is gonna be the largest MMO ever made,”

“This is gonna be an MMO where we want to put a billion people in VR. And a billion person virtual world MMO is gonna require a bigger network than exists today. Why not start with Facebook and their infrastructure, and their team and their talent that they’ve built up?”

A lot of people, myself included, have been talking about the possibility of Facebook and Oculus were planning to build a virtual online world, it now seems this indeed is the case.

In the chat he even calls it the ‘Metaverse‘.

As we speak they are visiting universities and recruiting the best of the best, getting students involved, asking them to help them create the new virtual reality world.

It is difficult to predict where this is going and how fast, but if they succeeded in creating an online Virtual World where the users can actually build and do what they want, they will turn out to be a huge competition for Second Life and High Fidelity.

It is still early days and we don’t have to get worried yet.
But this is big.
And I can’t help wondering if the Oculus-Facebook team are now looking at both Second Life and High Fidelity.
Regardless of the current state of both, there is plenty of interesting stuff there to buy, borrow or steal if you want to start your own Virtual world.

In the chat Mr. Iribe also said that Facebook promised them that although bought by their company, Oculus would be able to remain independent (like Instragram) and could decide to use or not use any part of Facebook.

You can watch the full interviews here at the Techcrunch website, a few interesting things about the general future of VR are being talked about as well.
As I wrote before, more and more people are now thinking that VR is going to become part of our lives, even if you’re not a gamer.

My first Oculus Rift experience in Second Life

After getting my hands on an Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset some time ago it took a while for me to get it to work properly.
You have to share displays and all that, in short, some complicated settings that need to be tweaked, especially on my Alienware laptop that was of course a little more complicated than a regular laptop.
And modern technology doesn’t like me very much.

But I finally managed to figure it out, I had been allowed to try the brand new official Second Life Oculus Rift Beta viewer so I was now ready to go explore some virtual worlds!
I decided to also try the CtrlAltStudio Viewer so that I could compare both viewers.

Before I continue please keep in mind that the Oculus Rift is a Developers Kit, a sort of Beta version of hardware.
It has low resolution and is not ready for public use yet.
Hence my trouble with trying to get it to work while the commercial version will be much easier to sort out and will use the plug and play principle.
Both the CtrlAltStudio viewer and the Second Life viewer are experimental viewers and Beta viewers so also not quite the final product.

To make sure I tested both the viewers and the Oculus Rift to the limits, I’ve explored SL while wearing the headset and used it during our daily happy hour, chatting with friends both trough voice and text chat for over an hour.

I will first write a bit about the experience in general, then I will discuss both the CtrlAltStudio Viewer and the Linden Lab Second Life Beta Oculus Rift Viewer and share my ideas on how the virtual SL experience could be improved and finally I will write (again) about why I think SL still can be the ultimate application for the Oculus.

The experience.

I had already tried the Oculus Rift a while ago with some basic demos, but I’ve been desperate to try it in Second Life of course.
The experience is mind blowing, truly amazing.
Obviously I spend most of my VR time in The 1920s Berlin project, the sim I build and live in, my baby.
So there I was, actually inside SL, I walked down the streets of the city I build, it felt and looked all so real and soo good.
I must confess that when I saw the Graf Zeppelin fly over, I cried.
It was so beautiful and a sight I’ve wanted to see ever since I was a little girl.
But also jumping on a tram and being driven around the city is so exciting, I couldn’t stop giggling.
The details, the sounds, the textures, all great, but the general feeling of being inside something real, a proper 3D surroundings, is just impossible to describe.
You experience depth, height, scale, all those things that get lost on a regular computer screen.
Stretching your neck to see the top of a building is a whole new experience.
There is nothing like it and it may sound rude but I have to repeat myself; Until you’ve actually tried the Oculus Rift, you can’t judge it.
I have used a Virtual Reality set almost 30 years ago, it was fun but you really can’t compare it and it is no wonder that these wacky ski goggles have turned the industry upside down.
They truly transport you to another reality.

You’ll get to experience claustrophobia, the pleasure of going outside into an open space, you’ll get dizzy when you look down while standing on a high tower.

But yes, we’re talking Developer’s kit here, so it is far from perfect and there is a lot I don’t like about it as well.
For starters the resolution is really low, no wonder as you’ve practically just stuck two tv’s right onto your eyeballs.
This has already been massively improved for the Second version of the Developer’s kit and my be even better in the consumer version.
Either way, this will of course just keep improving with time.
Some facts & figures; Developer kit 1: 1280×800 (640×800 per eye),^[5] Developer kit 2: 1920×1080 (960×1080 per eye), Consumer version: ≥1920×1080

DK1 also has very limited head tracking and no positional tracking.
So when you move forward to look at something a bit closer, the headset ignores that movement.
You can look up and down, left and right but that is about it.
This will all be hugely improved with the consumer version.

Although the headset is not heavy and not very bulky, it is a weight you notice, I’d be telling lies if I denied being relieved to take it off after using it a while.
And although I didn’t get seasick, I still realised that the feeling wasn’t always very comfortable either.
Besides, I’ve sailed trough a hurricane and didn’t get sick, so me not getting sick doesn’t say much.
But you still realise that you’re using some amazing tech, something that will actually change the world as we know it, as I’ve written before.
This WILL become part of our daily life, for everyone, not just gamers or geeks.
But more about that later.

One of the things I noticed right away was that little things we tolerate on our computer screens, become intolerable when actually being inside the simulation.
For instance, floating text, any kind of floating text, is horrendous.
I will be removing all of them from my sim, even if that means I’ll get less tips and people won’t always know what to do.
We’ll just have to learn to make better signs.
Letters floating in the air everywhere just look weird and ugly and out of place, after all, anything that damages the immersion, that illusion of reality, becomes upsetting.

But also the little flashes when a shadow vanishes for a second and light bursts trough a building, those feel weird.
Mesh not razzing right away, sculpties in general, badly made buildings, low resolution textures and unrealistic scale; they suddenly become even more irritating.
It is just very annoying to see a door and realise the door handle is too high for you to realistically reach.
Wanting to duck when you enter trough a small door is fantastic but entering one of those regular SL houses that is HUGE and appears to be build for giants is just very weird.
Much of SL uses an imaginary scale and thus makes no sense at all for regular primscale avatars.
When you walk into a room where the ceiling is 8 meters high, it feels like you’re in a room that is 8 meters high, which is really odd if it is supposed to be a small bungalow or cottage.
Adapting much of SL to a realistic scale will be something we’ll be seeing more and more.
Rejoice Penny Patton!

One thing that did disappoint me a lot was that it is pretty much impossible to use your keyboard while wearing the Rift.
You may think that this an obvious conclusion, but it affected me more than I expected.
For instance I can type without seeing my keyboard, I’ve been a fast blind typist for years.
But I guess I need my peripheral vision more than I expected.
If you want to communicate or build or do something a little more than just walking around, you keep removing the headset to see the keyboard.
And that is not good.
Enabling people to communicate and interact is going to be a tough job.

Seeing Second Life from within gives you a completely different experience, and that is an understatement.
Once you’ve tried it, once you’ve played a regular game with the Rift, once you’ve shared a virtual space with friends or watched a movie in a virtual cinema wearing the Rift, you will want more of it.
I bet that soon all games will be VR compatible, just like pretty much all games now have 3D worlds.

To quote Loki Eliot; “It is a really awesome feeling to be stood in places you have visited everyday in Second Life. In a way it feels like you’ve watched the movie everyday for five years and now it feels like you are finally standing at where it was filmed. Objects that constantly move such as a giant water wheel, your eyes focus on one part and your head moves to follow its rotation up and around. The sense of scale is amplified by the effort you have to make to see it all by the craning of your neck. Leaning over edges of cliffs and buildings you get that depth, you feel the distance and as you leap off you get that super human rush.”

Trying the CtrlAltStudio Viewer

The CtrlAltStudio Viewer is quite nifty and was the first that allowed people to explore SL with their Oculus Rift.
Made by David Rowe (who responded fast and friendly to my emails asking for help) it burst onto the scene last August, ahead of everyone else.
It works well and is very impressive though a bit basic.
All you get really is the ability to look trough your avatars eyes.
But to be honest, I think that is what most people will want anyway.
Some UI has been added so you can communicate but in general this is more of a ‘stop-gap measure’, as David described it himself.
I have to say though that it was a pleasure to work with this viewer simply because I’m used to the Firestorm viewer that this one is based on.

Trying the Linden Lab Second Life Beta Oculus Rift Viewer

First things first, as I’ve just said, I am used to the Firestorm viewer so many of my issues with the Beta viewer have something to do with me having no idea how the official LL viewer works.
For instance, with Firestorm I have muted pretty much all my groups, this means that I very rarely get chat messages from groups.
With this LL viewer I didn’t know how to turn these off, it may even be impossible, something I find very hard to believe.
Receiving messages from groups and getting bothered with group chat if you don’t want it can be hugely annoying, especially if you’re a member of some very active groups.
So the first things that I noticed while trying this viewer were the messages popping up, and with a rift they literally pop up, right into your face.When you are in VR, you want to be left alone, no popups, no messages, no floating text, no animation requests, etc.
Of course you can’t avoid all of them, but the fewer the better.
So maybe it is already possible but if not, I hope LL will allow us to put a stop on receiving a barrage of chats without having to change our status to being completely unavailable.

But in general I am very impressed with this beta viewer.
Because LL (or to be excact just one very hard working Linden) has tried to put all the regular SL functions into this viewer and appears to have succeeded.
You can do pretty much anything in VR mode that you can do in regular mode as well.
I’m not saying that it is easy and some things work better than others, but it works.
To succeed in this the viewer has 3 camera modes; regular (over shoulder camera), mouseview and the special new camera view.
The regular overshoulder view does not work for me, it is fun to see my avatar like that but well, I want full immersion with VR and not an out of body experience.
But I guess it does makes some activities easier.
The regular mouseview is quite handy for people who just want to go explore, its what I’d use if I wanted my friends to experience SL in VR.
And finally the fully functional camera view look, or First Person look, which is fantastic.
It allows you to explore SL with your Oculus Rift but still have access to the buttons you need to do more than just walk around.
The buttons float in front of your face but just out of regular view, to access them you have to look up, down or to the sides.
There is a bit of a fish eye effect that I personally don’t like very much, but it didn’t bother me too much either.
I think I would prefer something resembling a hud.
Smaller, hidden in a corner but when clicked it shows all the buttons.
Or even handier, hide all the buttons till an easy to find key on the keyboard is clicked.
You could of course switch between the 3 views all the time, but I like the idea of one button that reveals all floating bars and buttons, preferably grouped together and easy to find.
Having to look around to find buttons was a bit distracting for me.
And looking up at a nice building and seeing the slurl bar pass by wasn’t pretty.
An inworld and outworld (keyboard) reveal button might be a better solution, revealing all the bars and buttons with one click.
Another problem is that if you feel that the buttons and windows are too big (and they generally are) you can change the settings so they float away a bit further from you, but then the text becomes harder to read.
And when you get a whole list of options you’re stretching your neck looking up and down for the function you need.
I think that the VR viewer needs the pie menu back for better functionality or some sort of new scroll system that allows you to quickly and easily scroll trough menus and options without having to look all over the place.

But the best thing about this camera view is that it also works in regular non-VR mode, thus giving us a mouselook but with access to all the buttons from the regular view.
I’ve always felt that mouselook in SL was pretty useless because you couldn’t even chat while using it, but now we can, and more.

The camera does seem to lose track of where you are sometimes, suddenly your view is at a weird angle or when you think you’re going straight ahead, you’re actually turning left.
For this they have added a Q button that resets your view, which is very handy although it would be nicer if the camera just stuck better to where your eyeballs are.
I think that the CtrlAltStudio Viewer controlled the camera a bit better, at least I felt like I lost track a lot less.
But that could just be me.
The freedom we want in a regular viewer is one we don’t want while being in VR view.

Using the arrow or cursor is fun, it flies all over the place, making it sometimes hard to find, almost as if it has a life of its own!

So, in short, I think this beta viewer is pretty good and I was impressed that they managed to stuff pretty much all functions of the regular viewer into it.
I look forward to the next version.

How the virtual SL experience could be improved

There are some things Linden Lab needs to do to improve the SL experience in VR but there are also things the users and creators have to do.

I think that SL needs a basic viewer.
I know they have experimented with that but it didn’t quite work but in the not to distant future a lot of people who have just bought an Oculus Rift may want to try it in Second Life and they will not want all the options our viewers currently have.
They want to edit their avatar, find a cool place, walk around and chat.
I think a viewer should have 3 stages basic, advanced and experienced, all build into the same viewer.
Settings you can easily switch between that hide or show buttons and bars.
I’ve written about this before but I think it becomes more necessary now the VR Renaissance appears to be just around the corner.

Let’s face it, using a keyboard to communicate while wearing the rift is pretty much impossible.
Even if you can touch type.
Using voice chat is something most people will do once they start using the rift, but many SL users don’t want to use their RL voice.
I don’t have a problem with that but the avatars we portray in SL are sometimes a lot further away from who we are in RL than we want our friends to know.
Pretty 21 year old cheerleader Jolene may actually be a 53 year old trucker called Dave.
That old cranky grumpy barmaid who drinks and smokes too much, might actually be an 18 year old miss universe.
It is not that we all have secrets from each other, but our RL accents or voices sometimes just don’t match the avatar.
But Linden Lab knows this and that is why they added Voice Morphing a few years back.
Unfortunately it costs L$750 a month per pack, I know that this is only 3 bucks a month, but still.
Many people in SL don’t want to spend any RL money or want to spend it on something else.
It is more than some people pay for rent and it is yet another thing that costs money.
Not to mention that if you’re new to SL and just want to try it out with your rift, you need to first setup your account, connect it with paypal, buy linden, etc, etc.
So maybe LL should make the voice morphing a free service.
I think it will become more popular when the rift comes to SL.

Having said that, using voice simply won’t be an option for many, with free voice morphing or without it.
I am not sure if there is a good solution at this moment but with so many people using tiny keyboards on their telephone or tablet screens, an inworld virtual keyboard may be something we could experiment with.
Want to chat?
Click the chat button and a small keyboard window appears with a chat bar below it.
Simply use your mouse cursor to type.
Far from ideal, but it might work a bit.
Either way, very few of us will be able to actually type chat and use the rift at the same time and when it hinders communication people may not be interested in using it.

But the users and builders of SL have to start improving things as well if they want to make their sim a welcome experience for Oculus Rift users.
Once you actually are waling INSIDE our virtual world, you notice little mistakes and less pretty things a lot more.
And when the SL camera is suddenly at the same height as the eyes of your avatar, you realise that much of SL has been designed for giants, yes even if you are a giant yourself.
Ceilings too high, doors too big, etc.
Building according to prim scale makes an even bigger difference now, it is actually a very interesting and fun experience now to walk trough narrow streets and enter small houses.

And when you make furniture, did you program where the camera goes?
Because sometimes when you sit on something while wearing a Rift, the camera goes insane.

Why I think SL still can be the ultimate application for the Oculus.

Once you’ve tried it you realise that this truly is a game changer that soon will become part of our daily lives and will become as common as the television set is today.
I’ve already written about why I think one day Virtual Reality will be in every home here on my blog.
But it is very frustrating that at this very moment hundreds, if not thousands of developers and gamers are trying all sorts of things and creating ‘new’ experiences for the Rift… while everyone in SL knows that we could offer all those things to them already and have had them for years.
A Virtual cinema… a virtual museum… etc etc.
Second Life offers many of the things I’ve seen in Oculus demos and quite often SL offers them at much higher quality.
Recently a demo that allows you to explore the Seinfeld tv show apartment got a bit of publicity, I tried it, I’ve really seen much better builds in SL.
And the virtual cinema demo was nice and although watching a video on your computer works of course better than streamed in SL, at least in SL I can watch the movie together with friends from all over the world in a cinema I designed!

In short, Second Life is the biggest online user build virtual world.
A place where you can build whatever YOU want in stead of limiting yourself to the Oculus Rift demos and games.
In my eyes there is nothing more fun than exploring a VR location of your own making.
If I could make SL videos, I’d make one trying to explain the huge potential SL has to every Oculus Rift user.

I think LL should get some of the best SL builders they can find and build a showcase sim, one place where all new visitors with Oculus Rift should go first, with wonderful textures, lots of mesh, realistic scale, perfectly build to have as little lag as possible and one that shows all the many things possible in SL.
Not only will this give new visitors a good first impression it will also show them how wonderful a place this is for the VR headset users.
And of course such a place would be a good starting point for everyone and perhaps also a good spot to send journalists so that they for once realise we’ve moved on and they can make their own screenshots and stop using the 2007 ones.

And I hope Linden Lab realises how big this could make Second Life again, IF LL plays its cards right and of course if Facebook World isn’t going to be like Second Life 2.

The blog turned out to be a big chaotic, there is just so much to say.

Some of you may be very excited at the moment and can’t wait to try a Rift yourself.
Understandable, but you may want to wait a bit.
The DK1 will probably be much cheaper on ebay soon but don’t buy the DK2.
It is very near completion and I suspect that the consumer version might become available before Christmas.

Finally, I want to ask you if you know any sims that are especially suitable for explorations with the Oculus Rift.
Linden Lab is working on a list of sims for a special Oculus section of their destination guide, so perhaps we can help them with that.

And if you know of a few nice sims or if you want to share your Oculus adventures in SL, please do.
You can leave your story here or upload your pictures to the Second Life Virtual Reality group on Flickr.

Also make sure you join the Oculus Rift and Second Life Facebook group.

Oh and did I mention there is even a Reddit for Second Life & Virtual reality matters?