22 Wednesday Mar 2017
Posted in Machinima
Today Amelie Marcoud, 1920s Berlin tenant, released a machinima titled ‘Ode to VR: the future of Virtual Reality’, shot in Second Life.
A wonderful video, not to be missed;
Ode to VR: The Future of Virtual Reality from Amelie Marcoud on Vimeo.
(If embedding failed, try clicking this link)
12 Friday Aug 2016
Tags
"second life", 360, 360 degree camera, 360 degrees, Arduenn Schwartzman, draxtor despres, Electric Shepherd, The 1920s Berlin Project, vimagine, virtual reality
Imagine being able to bring your 360 degrees camera into Virtual Reality, just set it up in the club, house, park or city that you’ve build yourself in Second Life, record it and then share it online with people from all over the world.
Let them get a taste of where you live in VR, let them look around and even give them the feeling they’re actually there by looking at it with their VR headset.
This is now possible!
Yesterday Electric Shepherd from Vimagine (who also worked on the ‘Virtualize it’ documentary for ‘Der Spiegel’) and Draxtor Despres came to 1920s Berlin to test out an amazing 360 degrees camera to film the, as far as I know, first 360 degrees video shot Live in Second Life in real time.
The camera rig was made by Arduenn Schwartzman (of Warbug fame), it has audio and video syncing capabilities and all recorded tracks are then aligned in post production.
Even though this is still just an early test, it is already very impressive.
I can imagine short clips like these made in sims all over Second Life being used to show outsiders what life in our virtual world is like and the things that they can experience there.
Because these can also record busy events with lots of people and with many things happening at the same time!
Not only are these just fun videos on youtube, but they are very impressive when viewed through the Gear VR, the Cardboard VR or other headsets.
And not just that, it will also allow me to show off my sim in a whole new way to people who may not have tried Second Life, don’t know how SL works or who don’t have a computer that can handle SL.
And imagine making a full length machinima with this technology!
We could be making 360 films while people in RL have only just experimenting with it.
Once more the people in SL are groundbreaking.
You can see this pioneering footage here;
(not all browsers support 360 degrees video)
Some technical details send in by Draxtor;
And this article wouldn’t be complete without this earlier 360 degrees video in VR experiment by Zuza Ritt;
08 Monday Aug 2016
Posted in Time Portal
Tags
"second life", cinema, club, commerce, historical, history, mall, movies, retro, shopping, shops, theatre, Time Portal, time travel, vintage, virtual reality
You may have noticed that I love history.
And that is quite an understatement, I’m obsessed with it, I’m addicted to it, I live it, I breath it, I need it.
And to be fair, it is the only reason I am in Second Life, this virtual world allows me to travel back in time and spend my evenings drinking schnapps in 1920s Berlin.
There have been shops and malls in Second Life that had historical themes, where you could buy vintage, retro and antique stuff but as far as I can tell they catered to a rather specific era or sold things that weren’t quite authentic and historically accurate.
Not that long ago my 1920s Berlin Project was neighboured with such a mall and it was nice for visitors to Berlin to have a place to go shopping nearby.
But Berlin moved and that shopping sim has since vanished.
As my friend Sonatta Morales her shop and my own shop Weimar! now suddenly found themselves without a place to sell their wares, we started thinking about setting up something new.
So, coming to Second Life (right next to 1920s Berlin);
Time Portal; Time Travel Gateway
A sim that will not only offer you the chance to shop with some of the best vintage, retro and historical creators in Second Life but where you can also rent an apartment, visit a club, see a show at the theatre, watch a movie at the cinema or learn something new at constantly changing exhibits in the museum
A place where shops will sell the best in historic clothing and items from any era up to the 1960s, where you can live in historical buildings, where we have a club and theatre where you can enjoy historically themed shows and even a museum with historical exhibits.
And of course, everything you see, from goods, buildings to entertainment, will be historically themed.
It will truly become a community for Time Travellers and history lovers.
You may be a Victorian Urchin living in a dirty old attic, your neighbour could be a 14th century princess living in a tower, while the guy living across the street enjoys walking around in his Roman armour.
Time Portal will not be a role-play sim (although it will of course be allowed), there won’t be a dress code, anyone will be welcome.
You can listen to someone playing Live 17th century music at the theatre,rock ‘n roll by the jukebox at the 1950s diner, enjoy yourself at a 1940s dance in the dance hall, learn something about Medieval architecture at the Bauhaus style museum or just hang out with a bunch of Victorian pickpockets.
Try and imagine a city where Time Travellers live, shop and entertain themselves in-between time travelling and you’ll get an idea of what Time Portal will be like.
Time Portal will be build and managed by me, Jo Yardley, builder and manager of the 1920s Berlin project, a sim that has been successful for over 7 years and won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
And I won’t do it alone, my team of admins, advisors, event organisers, entertainers and performers from 1920 Berlin will also help out, all experienced people who know what they are doing and will make sure Time Portal will be a safe, fun place with plenty of customer service for visitors and tenants.
We are preparing Time Portal now, funds are gathered to buy the region and if everything goes well we’ll be able to start building next month.
We’re accepting applications for shopkeepers now.
If you sell good, authentic items or clothes from the stone age up to the 1960s, let me know!
And if you build and sell authentic and historically accurate buildings, also get in touch.
We’ll be filling the sim up with buildings from different eras.
To simply stay updated like and follow the page;
https://www.facebook.com/timeportalsl/
I look forward to seeing you in Time Portal!
07 Thursday Jul 2016
Posted in HMD's, Oculus Rift, second life, Uncategorized, 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.
03 Sunday Jul 2016
Posted in Head mounted displays, Oculus Rift, second life, SL troubles
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/wgysThis second area is a lot more spacious:
https://streamable.com/jcjhAll 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.
01 Friday Jul 2016
Posted in Uncategorized, Virtual reality
Tags
"second life", cardboard, headset, trinus, virtual reality, VR
A software company called Trinus VR has developed a platform that allows you to enjoy pretty much any game with android operated VR headsets, including the very cheap cardboard ones you can make yourself.
And by bringing the costs down dramatically, it could bring VR to a lot more people.
Simply connect a PC with an android device, slide the latter into one of those headsets and you’re ready to go.
The experience will probably not be as good as with the Vive for instance, but for a fraction of the price, you will be at least able to experiment VR from within your games and… virtual worlds!
And this is where it gets interesting for us.
The technology isn’t that new, Trinus VR has been around for about a year, but now someone has tried it with Second Life!
Of course the experience will probably not be as good as with the fancy pansy whoop dee doc headsets but it will allow you to go into Second Life with VR support without having to wait for the next LL viewer or buy an expensive Oculus or Vive or one of the other headsets.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
Sadly, I don’t have a mobile phone, so I can’t try it out.
Unfortunately there are no plans (yet) for Mac Support.
06 Friday May 2016
Posted in Sansar
Tags
collision, ebbe altberg, ebbe linden, pictures, project sansar, sansar, screenshots, video, virtual reality
Recently Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, was a speaker at the Collision Conference.
During his talk he showed a video about Sansar and a few screenshots were shared online before, also on my blog here.
Just now, minutes ago, Collision uploaded a video of Ebbe’s contribution.
It doesn’t actually show Ebbe talking but the images he used in his presentation.
And of course we’re all sad we can’t see Ebbe and judge whatever he was wearing (anything but a vintage 3 piece suit is acceptable) it is also quite nice because it means we get to see the Sansar video in great detail, in stead of just on a screen behind Ebbe.
The speech itself is good but not much is said that we didn’t know yet.
In short he talks about how big VR is going to be and that users will not just be consumers but also participants.
He explains that Linden Lab has a lot of experience and calls Second Life the biggest virtual world to date.
I am not sure if it is if you’d also count other computer generated worlds we know from some games, but I wouldn’t be surprised and I am of course sure that it is the oldest and biggest user generated online virtual world.
Either way, you can’t remind people too often of this as it seems that the wheel keeps being reinvented.
For instance, just the other day I stumbled upon something called ‘Hypatia‘ by a company called Timefire who claim that they’re building the first Virtual Reality City….
A ridiculous claim of course.
Ebbe talks about how SL is being used for business meetings, helping people who suffer from PTSD, people dealing with phobias, he mentions the lovely Fran who has Parkinson’s but finds much joy from Second Life, as seen in the wonderful Drax Files episode you can see by clicking here.
He talks about Education, the over 500 institutions that use SL (would have been more without the Tier fiasco of a few years back I reckon) for their lessons.
Ebbe talks a bit about the current state of VR, the headsets are coming, expensive but prices are coming down rapidly and of course an Oculus headset is cheaper than a similar VR rig would have cost a few years ago.
The next subject is the democratisation of a medium and that Project Sansar will make it possible for everyone and anyone to create and share.
He explains that most of us do not know how to actually create, just like in RL we live in a world where most of the things around us are made by others.
It always worries me a bit when that is mentioned because I keep wondering if Sansar will have easy building tools.
Being able to build whatever you want in SL, even if it isn’t easy, is one of the best things about SL and I think it is essential for Sansar as well.
Then again, I assume that most SL users are not creators.
Linden Lab has been working on Sansar for 2 and a half years now, a big investment but luckily SL is still “kicking off a lot of money” for them.
There are 75 people working on Sansar.
One of the creations made in the alpha stage of Sansar is a co-project between the Sorbonne University and the Ministry of Antiquities of Egypt, which shows laser scanned 3D models (of 50 million polygons!) of tombs and historical locations which the Sansar team then decreased to 40 thousand polygons and uploaded.
Which is very exciting but it does raise the question; why didn’t they build and upload it themselves in Sansar?
Either way, now anyone, anywhere could explore these tombs in Sansar (once it opens to the public).
A great example of a wonderful educational display.
Next we get some actual Sansar Video footage, the first we’ve seen since that very short video on a screen behind Ebbe at another conference.
First we see someone (Jason) using controllers and a headset (vive) to ‘create’, but what he is really doing is just moving things about and Ebbe says that you don’t really need to know how to actually create those objects, which worries me a bit again.
Because I want to create those objects and Blender isn’t easy.
Nevertheless, it looks cool and very much like I’d imagine it would be, we’re doing our SL moving about of stuff, but with controllers and a headset, even though we of course don’t NEED those for Sansar.
Next we get a smooth video which has been edited and comes with flash music showing quite a few very interesting and I must admit, impressive shots.
Skip to 12:38 if you want to see the footage.
We see a wonderful museum of the Partially excavated Ancient Greek (IV-III B.C.) villa Ortli in Crimea (did they use this model?) which looks very good and contrary to what I thought to see first time; the shadows do fall nicely over the ruins in stead of ignoring them.
Then we find ourselves in some sort of post apocalyptic Mad Max kind of landscape, with more walking avatars and a working kind of cable car system.
We then see someone diving into the sea, but if you look closely you see some sort of platform in the middle, so I think that what we’re actually seeing is a place where you as an avatar can enjoy a 360° video.
More apocalyptic stuff with a nice windlight setting.
And finally we see the Golden Gate bridge, which we’ve also seen before but this time without the flying crafts but a lady walking across it.
If you want to see any of these screenshots a little larger, check them out here on my Flickr account.
According to Ebbe all of what we saw was created with no engineer involved.
He ends with announcing that applications for Project Sansar are now open and the world will be available to everyone later this year.
He concludes with saying that VR will impact almost everything and Project Sansar will allow anyone to create, share, monetise and socialise within these VR experiences.
You can see the entire video here;
14 Thursday Apr 2016
Posted in Technology
When Facebook bought Oculus Rift, people laughed or got angry, wondering what kind of VR nightmare would be the result of such a match.
How would they combine social media and VR?
And could it one day become a threat to Second Life?
Yesterday at the Facebook developers conference a very impressive demonstration was given that showed some of what they have in mind.
See the video here, uploaded by UploadVR (click to visit).
To me it looks like a lot of fun, a sophisticated and even creative toy but not much more, not yet anyway.
But it shows a lot of potential.
At the moment we have avatars that are only hands and heads in a static, not moving 360° location.
But of course it will only be a matter of time before we can have these experiences in moving and fully interactive 3D locations and with complete and more realistic avatars.
I think I will enjoy this, I can see myself meeting my sister, mother or aunty this way while they are far away.
But with one click a then easily available and cheap 3D camera we can be with each other in the same location.
So will it threaten SL and Sansar?
Yes and no.
It looks like Social VR is going to work and be fun and for lots of people it will be more than enough, it will offer them a VR experience that is easy to use, they’ll enjoy and that will be all they need.
With many improvements and new options coming in the future in a way, it is competition for SL and Sansar.
But as long as they do not give us the amazing and unique freedom to create what we want and be what we want to be that we’re enjoying in Second Life and expecting in Sansar, Linden Lab doesn’t have to worry.
Here is a closer look at the actual VR footage, uploaded by Road to VR (click to visit).
Social VR is going to lower the threshold for millions of people who right now are not (yet) interested in VR, it will be their first experience and maybe it will make them want to see more, experience more… create more?
The golden ticket remains the absolute freedom SL is offering us now, that is what makes it unique.
In short; until I can build 1920s Berlin in Facebook’s Social VR, I won’t be leaving SL.
06 Wednesday Jan 2016
Posted in Oculus Rift, Technology, 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;
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.
05 Tuesday Jan 2016
Posted in Virtual reality
Even though I am generally promoting a VR experience that involves fewer wearables and not more, here is one gadget I might be tempted into wearing.
The Teslasuit allows you to undergo a wide array of sensations while exploring or gaming (or whatever else) in Virtual Reality.
From the expected bullet hits and punches, it also promises to let you experience wind, water, heat, cold and even something as subtle as a hug or stroke.
Yes, they really do promise that during your next visit to a VR beach, you’ll feel the water at your feet and the wind on your body.
Incorporated within the suit is a mesh of sensors that pick up and translate actions in VR into electric impulses that you’ll experience as pressure.
It is called neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) and is generally used for exercise, physical therapy, etc.
You’ve probably seen it done with little patches stuck to the skin.
It comes close to the Haptic Suit we know from the bestseller book ‘Ready player one‘, soon to be made into a Spielberg movie.
Just like with most VR related gadgets and VR itself, it is hard to imagine or understand how well it works and how much an impact it makes until you’ve actually tried it.
So checking out some of the videos that show people wearing and testing the suit is what got me excited.
Have a look at some of them by clicking here.
It is still early days and like many other gadgets being developed for VR these days we know that it is only the beginning and things will continue to get better, cheaper, lighter, etc.
I can imagine a not too distant future where VR haptic suits become even lighter and thinner, much cheaper and will cover your entire body, including your face and hands.
And that they can also be used to send signals to VR, not just receive them and when you close your hand, your avatar will close her hand.
I think that giving us gloves that allow us to actually feel what our avatars are touching or holding, or at least create some sort of sensation when you push a button or open a door, will change a lot of things.
I think the Teslasuit guys are working on those as well, and perhaps next a haptic balaclava so you’ll feel it when I slap you in the face for telling a dirty joke in my virtual bar in 1920s Berlin in Second Life.
When we have the ultimate suit that does everything, we will no longer need to place sensors in our rooms or wave controllers about the place.
And maybe they’ll add heat and cold pads that will be able to actually make you feel colder or warmer.
Maybe one day we can get rid of all our gadgets and wearables and just wear the suit and the headset to do everything.
One suit to rule them all.
The benefits of these suits are obvious; VR experiences become more real, more complete.
In games you actually feel a hit when someone shoots you, when you go sailing you feel the wind and the water, when you are with someone you care about you feel their hand shake, their hug or their hand on your shoulder.
And yes, I am avoiding the obvious, I’m too much of an old fashioned prude to discuss VR hanky panky with you lot.
I’ll leave that to your dirty, dirty imagination 😉
The Kickstarter went live yesterday and they hope it will get developers on board who will start creating experiences for their suit.
Their goal is £250,000 and as I write this the total stands at £7,649 £9,758.
Check out their video below and the Kickstarter page by clicking here.
Personally I am very excited about this development, not specifically this suit, because right now I couldn’t even afford one and I think that this technology still has some way to go, but it is more the potential that I love, I can see what this will be used for in the future.
It is the possibilities that are most exciting.
All pictures copyright Tesla Studios & Kickstarter.
Jo Yardley's Second Life 