Linden Lab has uploaded about 30 new Second Life screenshots into their Flickr account that will, I assume, be used for PR purposes.
I’ve written before about how important I think it is for outsiders to actually see how good Second Life can look if your computer is up to scratch.
And it frustrates me that so many journalists use screenshots from 2007 to illustrate their article about our virtual world, regardless if the article is positive or negative.
But journalists today sometimes need a little help, they don’t always have the time to go inworld, figure out ultra graphics settings and look for nice locations or scour the internet for pictures, contact the makers for permission to use them, etc. Of course in some cases its not the journalist but the editor who decides on which images to use.
So it is Linden Lab’s and our job to make sure our virtual world is represented properly.
When Paste Magazine recently published an article on the 10 Best MMO’s written by Janine Hawkins, with a less than flattering illustration, people on twitter spoke up. The writer was contacted and the picture replaced.
I’ve started the ‘Second Life is looking good’ flickr group to show outsiders whats possible in SL these days, but these pictures in many cases come with copyright restrictions. Still, journalists could at least contact thebut I’ve also added a few screenshots to Wikipedia Commons without any use restrictions.
Journalists have already found and used these, with added bonus for me that my 1920s Berlin sim gets some free publicity at the same time.
Linden Lab does send some information and pictures if they are aware an article is being written or when a journalist contacts them, but I don’t know if they always speak up and protest when a journalist uses very old bad screenshots.
They do have a Press section on the Linden Lab website, but for some reason there are reporters out there who overlook the pictures they can find there or don’t even bother checking if the subject of their article has a press page.
To be honest though, there are only 12 not that impressive pictures to be found in Linden Lab’s Flickr album that the press page links to.
But now it seems that Linden Lab has decided to update the images they offer by adding about 30 new pretty good pictures. Not only are they of good quality, they are diverse and not too tacky.
They haven’t been added to the press folder yet and unfortunately they have not added a small description of the location or slurls so people can check them out inworld.
And to my shock and horror they’ve forgotten to include pictures of 1920s Berlin! However, they do offer journalists much better illustrations than before.
It remains our job to be vigilant and keep an eye out for articles that misrepresent Second Life, it is also in our best interest to let everyone know our world is not ugly, well not everywhere anyway. If you see a bad SL image being used, leave a comment, tweet the author, let Linden Lab know.
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.
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.
Although most people by now seem to realise the huge potential the new VR technology (in the shape of the Oculus Rift) could have for virtual worlds like Second Life, some still think that it will be a niche thing.
That only a few people will actually end up owning this gadget and that eventually it will end up in the cupboard, dusty and forgotten or only used by a few nerds.
I think that the Oculus Rift (or any other kind of virtual headset) will actually end up in almost every household.
People don’t always see that virtual reality can and will be used for much more than just playing games and having fun in virtual worlds.
I think that this technology will be used to watch movies/tv, to go shopping, for education, as social media, for exercise, to work, etc, etc.
I will try and explain why I think this.
Virtual reality & film/tv;
This video shows people enjoying short clips shot with a 360 degree camera, the camera is stationary, it does not move, the person watching moves his head to look around “inside” the film.
Walking around in something that was filmed in this way is at this moment not yet possible but I don’t doubt that this will be possible soon.
And yes, many of us would probably prefer to enjoy our movies in the old fashioned way but imagine watching the last episode of ‘Breaking Bad’ while actually being inside it, watching an exciting scene… and then suddenly realising someone is standing behind you…
It may not be your cup of tea, you may prefer to watch a movie the traditional way, but it is obvious that many people will enjoy this new possibility as well.
That makes this video so interesting, it is a big step in that direction.
Another option is to watch a movie together with friends in a virtual cinema;
I think that this is another interesting and fun way to watch a movie, it brings the magic of the cinema to your home without the noisy people, mobile phones or sticky floors.
And you can perhaps also pick a certain type of cinema, such as a lovely 1930s art deco one for that vintage movie, complete with an audience of 1930s people, smoking all trough the movie.
And of course you will be able to share the cinema with friends and family even if they live on the other side of the world.
Virtual Reality & Shopping;
I personally hate shopping and would love to avoid it completely but other people love it.
Either way, many of us already use the internet to shop and VR will make this experience more fun or less of a hassle.
For instance, imagine you need a new tv, you visit a few websites but the most they can offer you is a picture that perhaps, if you’re lucky, you can turn around a bit.
Whoohoo, I can see the backside of a tv.
In a virtual shop you can see 3d models of each television set but you will eventually also be able to get a free virtual copy that you can ‘rez’ in a virtual facsimile of your living room, make sure it fits in that corner, if you need a new table to go with it, etc, etc.
The tv will of course work!
And as always, this can be a shared experience.
You can invite your mother to come see you fit a wedding dress even though she lives far away.
It will probably never replace normal shopping, but I bet it will be the end of the regular online shopping experience.
Because those online shops are dull as dishwater.
Virtual Reality & education;
Now here is a big one, especially for me personally.
I am not a teacher but I work a lot with schools, museums and educational tv shows and as someone with a huge passion for history, sharing that interest and making people understand how amazing and interesting history is, education is hugely important to me.
But in the world of Virtual Reality this is also a big one to use as a way to promote this technology and it is quite simple to convince people about how well this technique could be used for this purpose.
For instance, sorry about using history again and blatantly promoting my own sim in the following bit, imagine a class room discussing 1920s Berlin as part of their curriculum.
Learning about the chaos of post WW1 Germany, the rise of Nazism, etc.
As the class begins, everyone puts on their VR set and soon find themselves wandering the streets of 1920s Berlin.
Perhaps they will use something like my crude creation in Second Life or a much smoother and more realistic version made especially for schools.
Teacher shows them some of the spots, their avatars in 1920s clothing makes them realise what they might have looked like had they actually lived back then, the place is filled with NPCs (non–playable characters) and feels alive, real. But after after the lesson, after school, children will go home and do their homework also by using the VR set to go back to 1920s Berlin, take their time to visit more places, to investigate or perhaps just to have some fun as well.
One day perhaps the whole school will take place in a virtual reality, a scary idea perhaps but a huge solution to those children living far away from school.
Anyway, I think it is quite obvious that Virtual Reality can be an amazing tool for education, both in school and at home.
I couldn’t find a nice video about the future of virtual education, so I’ll share this old one of me giving a tour in 1920s Berlin;
Virtual reality & Social Media;
Many of us spend a lot of time on facebook, keeping in touch with friends, family and work colleagues.
How this will develop in the near virtual future is very hard to predict.
Will it become a quick sort of virtual world where everyone has their own “page” that they can design?
Will checking how someone is doing be like visiting their tropical island, villa or castle in the sky?
Will it be something like Second Life… will it be Second Life?
Or will it be a bunch of pictures and notifications that just float in the air while you’re busy working or playing in your virtual office?
In the novel “Ready Player One” our hero has a virtual basement where he hangs out with his friends, will social media evolve into something like that?
Will facebook of the future look and feel like a virtual neighbourhood where all your friends have a home they designed themselves, with sign floating above it when something important has happened, where their latest snapshot is projected onto the lawn and where above the roof their current status is shown?
Where you can enter their home, look at their stuff and hear their music?
Exercise is big business but generally it is a rather boring activity, unless you’re able to spend a fortune to buy cool toys or travel to exciting places.
But virtual reality will make exercise a lot more fun for many people, regardless of budget.
Thanks to omnidirectional treadmills you will be able to walk and run in a virtual reality, you can choose to get your exercise just walking around some virtual world, running for your life in a computer game but you can also burn calories in surroundings specially created for this purpose.
After all, where would you rather do your morning jogging?
In the street outside your home that you see every single day already or some exotic beach, stunning dessert, the rainforest, across the moon or perhaps in a world you created yourself?
Virtual reality will make this possible and this will be interesting for people who might usually not be interested in gaming, virtual reality or even computers.
For instance, I can see my mum use VR for this purpose.
This is a big market.
The Wii Fit for instance, a computer “game” that allows people to do real exercise, has sold nearly 23 million copies.
This video shows some of the options, but here of course all they do is watch a screen.
Imagine doing these sports in a virtual reality.
Virtual Reality & work;
It is obvious that working from home (AKA teleworking) is going to be big in the future.
Renting expensive offices, travel costs (both in money, time and pollution), etc.
Virtual reality will make this a lot easier, you will actually be able to feel part of a team, be present at a meeting, do a presentation and even feel like you’re chatting at the watercooler, while never leaving your chair at home, or perhaps even without getting dressed…
Either way, I reckon it will beat this alternative…
Conclusion;
I am trying to explain that Virtual Reality will not just be a niche gadget for extreme gamers with more money than wisdom.
I hope to have shown that in the very recent future Virtual Reality will be something you’ll find in almost every home, the VR set will be as common as tv sets are today.
And when everyone has access to Virtual Reality and when Linden Lab manages to keep up and make it work very very well in Second Life… our virtual world may become bigger than it has ever been.
The minute people get their hands on a VR set for the first time they will want more than the demos and games.
And then they may remember Second Life, see that advertisement, hear that story, see that youtube video and realise that it still is the biggest online virtual world there is.
And that it can be more fun to explore something you have build yourself than some place build by some game designer, some place everyone has seen a million times before.
And maybe you will realise that some of the VR experiences you’re about to pay for… can already be found in SL, for free.
In short, we’re at the dawn of a Virtual Reality renaissance and I think that this could also be Second Life’s renaissance.
There WILL be a Second Life for Second Life… as long as Linden Lab plays its cards right… and fixes its Terms Of Service!
It looks like Linden Labs latest PR video is causing a little bit of a buzz.
And most of that seems to be because at the very end they mention the Oculus Rift.
A lot of people appear to be interested in the Rift and the combination with Second Life is interesting to many of them, even the skeptical ones and those who don’t seem to like SL much.
It is (becoming) a hot topic of discussion, sadly this also reminds us of the bad reputation SL has.
Everywhere you hear the old comments of “Does that still exist?!” to “Oh where the pervy furries do the naughty things” and “Oh where they have graphics from 2007?”.
However, I think the video LL just made gets is a step in the right direction to change peoples opinions of SL and I hope that their next PR step will be showing how pretty SL can be.
I am a gamer and have played some very recent games and although of course, SL’s graphics can’t quite reach the level of many of those games, I’ve also been in some sims where at least visually things get pretty close.
I think that it would be a great idea if LL started some sort of photo contest, picked the most stunning pictures made in SL and shared those with the world.
Or perhaps invite some of the best Machinima makers and ask them to shoot some stunning footage for a PR video purely made to let people know SL moved on.
I can see it now… Second Life… has such bad graphics… and then a amazing montage of some of SL’s most amazing places with superb windlight settings, shadows, the works…
Fade to black; This is how Second Life can look, we moved on, come along with us.
Come to think of it, one video per cliche might be fun.
One video about how Second Life is all virtual hanky panky (by showing all the other things also happening in SL), one about that it is only for people who like to dress up and pretend to be barbie (by showing the enormous diversity in avatars), one about that it is only for losers (by showing smart, educated, funny SL users as they are in RL), that it is laggy (by showing what SL looks like on a up to date computer), one about that it is only a virtual chatroom (by showing roleplaying, education, art), etc.
Sure, SL can be bad, but do you think that Rockstar games shows the lowest quality GTA 5 footage in its advertisements?
We need to let people know that Second Life is still here, is not what many people seem to think it is, that it has improved and that it will improve even more.
So more videos, more up to date pictures (contact those journalists that keep using 2007 screenshots!!) and keep the buzz going.
Anyway, I am getting distracted, back to the subject.
If you search the internet for Second Life and Oculus Rift, you’re getting quite a few hits, many of them quite recent.
And no, I promise, I’m not responsible for all of them… although you probably will bump into me at some of those sites 😉
Anyway, all of this makes it clear that no matter how it ends up, a lot of people are now watching this and are keeping an eye on how Second Life and the Oculus Rift will work together… or not.
Just as I predicted and expected.
So I am glad that LL seems to take this very serious as well.
I may be a bit too optimistic, but I still think that the Virtual reality renaissance that is about to happen could also mean a renaissance for Second Life.
One of the problems Linden Lab is probably working on as we speak, is making the User Interface (UI) work for people who are exploring their virtual world called Second Life with a Virtual reality system, such as the Oculus Rift.
After all, in Second Life we want to do more than just walking and looking around us.
The current viewer is based on a 2D system and it isn’t very practical.
To simply walk around, interact and communicate, you have to use all sorts of buttons, keep windows open, etc.
For this reason the mouse view option in Second Life is pretty useless, even when you’re using voice chat.
Changing this might be quite a challenge, because when you’re inside a game or virtual world with your VR setup, you can’t see your keyboard.
In my view the solution is to take everything ‘inworld’, put everything you need inside the game.
Need to type something in chat, make a hand gesture and a keyboard will appear in your view, on the screen and with your virtual hands you can type your message on that keyboard.
Need to select something from a menu?
Touch an object and right there, floating in mid air, a menu appears that you again can click with your hands.
Recently I found a video that uses that very idea, but it also shows a few other things that I am sure the people of Second Life will find very interesting.
Watch it with me and then I’ll continue my story;
The VR setup used here is far from perfect, they use the Sixense STEM System which is really cool, you add sensors to your body and they tell the computer where those parts of your body are and how they are moving.
But before we go into that, let’s look at the part I am interested most;
As you can see, the inworld floating menu idea is used here quite effectively.
Of course this is a simple menu and the hand isn’t very exact, but I bet that this could be improved and also work with more complicated menus, such as the SL pie menu that allows us to interact with things.
Many of us already use tiny keyboards that are projected onto our tablets or smartphone screens, I reckon we can get used to a floating one as well.
I don’t think we need a huge one that fills the entire screen (although that should be an option for people with bad eyesight for instance), it could be a smaller keyboard that perhaps even looks like a real keyboard, or perhaps just floating letters, etc.
There are many options, but we’ll no longer need the RL keyboard of our computer.
Anyway, let’s get back to the video because it shows a lot more exciting things.
First the bit I don’t like; they controllers.
What is it with controllers?!
We’ve been using those since the 1970s (yes I am that old) and just like the VR headset has just made a huge comeback, I think it is time that the virtual glove should make a comeback.
As you can see in this video, he use two of the five trackers to tell the computer where his hands are, this works very well but it also means the hands don’t come with many options.
For the feet, this is fine, it is very exciting to see him play around with them and even kick a football.
Will we finally be able to really dance in Second Life… and will that be a good thing? 😉
But with your hands, you want to do more than slap, push and make a fist.
Perhaps you want to play a virtual piano, poke someone in the eye, point in a direction, pick your nose or use all ten fingers to type on that virtual keyboard I just talked about.
The Stem system but also the Hydra, have lots of buttons on their controllers to give you more options but in the end that means that you’re still just walking around with some updated joysticks.
I don’t want to feel like I’m holding controllers, I want to feel like my hands are in the game, just like my feet and body.
So I hope that someone will start developing a new VR glove, perhaps with a few buttons on the top of the glove so you can still have a few action keys there, but one that will allow us to use all our fingers naturally inworld.
Besides, if you need action keys, something inworld could perhaps designed better.
After all, we don’t need action keys in RL do we?
Nevertheless, I think that this video again shows another huge step forward towards a whole new kind of experiencing Virtual Reality.
We’re still waiting for someone to combine the Oculus Rift, the Hydra Razor, the Sixense, the Omni AND THOSE VR GLOVES into one complete setup.
And of course we’re still waiting for Linden Lab to finish their Oculus Rift friendly viewer that was supposed to come at the end of the summer…
But try and imagine the amazing potential all this have.
In less then a year SL could have changed beyond all recognition and our VR experience more real than we can even imagine at this very moment.
Thanks to the hype surrounding the Oculus Rift, a lot of people are experimenting with new options, inventing new gadgets and are looking into new ways of using Virtual Reality.
It seems that I am not the only one who believes that the VR Renaissance is around the corner.
The ultimate goal is of course to be able to completely control an avatar in a virtual surroundings, walk, run, use your hands, look around, etc.
And it has to feel natural and be practical.
For instance, we now have the Virtuix Omni that allows you to make your avatar walk while walking on an omnidirectional treadmill in real life.
But for the moving of hands so far all we’ve depended on the Razer Hydra, two handheld controllers that track the user’s hands in RL and translate that into movement in the virtual world.
More recently the Sixense Stem system got quite a bit of attention with its system, but that still involves having to use controllers.
To me having to hold something that steers your hands isn’t a very good solution.
I’ve been wondering why nobody brought back the VR gloves or why someone didn’t combine the Oculus Rift with the ‘Leap motion‘.
Well now somebody has done something similar and I think that this is a leap (get it?) forward.
Only yesterday this kickstarter began (and it already reached its goal of course);
Have a look and if you can, help fund it even more then it has already been funded.
Originally designed by a company called Occipital to be the world’s first 3D sensor for mobile devices, it also seems to work rather well for virtual worlds.
Imagine no longer needing a mouse or even a keyboard for your SL adventures!
You simply use your hands like you would in RL to interact with everything.
Perhaps this even solves our communication problem, in stead of taking off your VR headset to see your keyboard, you simply make a gesture and a virtual keyboard will appear on your screen that you can use just like a RL keyboard.
Imagine building that way, actually holding a prim, rotating it with your hands!
Anyway, have a look at this video, it is of course just a bit of experimenting and there is still a long way to go, but it is enough to get excited about.
I think that this is much more interesting than any handheld device.
The Oculus Rift and Second Life can become a marriage made in heaven.
What is more fun then exploring and immersing yourself in a world created by some game designer… exactly, immersing yourself in a world created by YOU. Second Life offers that.
Recently I got a chance to try the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset at a Virtual Reality meetup here in the Netherlands.
As a 40 year old woman who wears 1940s clothing I stood out a bit amongst all the hip young nerdy geeky guys and as I never go to such events, I found it quite an entertaining experience.
I was the very last person to arrive at this place and was given number 63, given that everyone there would be allowed about 5 minutes on one of the two Oculus Rift sets, you can imagine how long it would take before it was my turn.
Luckily they also had a third setup where you could try the rollercoaster demo and as all the waiting people had a go on that before they got to try the official ones, eventually they had all had had their turn and I could try it.
I have to say that at first I was a little disappointed, simply because I had expected so much of it and we’re spoiled with amazing graphics in other games.
And to me the Oculus Rift is only interesting for certain purposes so sitting on a roller-coaster racing around with very low resolution made it a bit hard to see past that and imagine what it would be like in Second Life and with better quality.
Luckily I was eventually able to look beyond that when I remembered that I was just using one the first devkits, a very basic version.
I already knew that a sharper, better version had came out that very day, MUCH improved from the previous one.
Being a bit of a (polite) rebel I decided to convince the organisors to run the Tuscan villa demo on the third Oculus set in stead of that Roller-coaster.
This demo made me a lot more enthousiastic, because it was very easy to try and imagine this as being a place in Second Life.
And again, it made me realise that the Oculus Rift and Second Life can become a marriage made in heaven, that they are perfect together and that Second Life could be the Oasis as mentioned in the book ‘Ready player one‘ by Ernest Cline.
Once I made myself look past the low level graphics and the rather dodgy steering, I realised how this could, would and should change Second Life, gaming and even Real Life for ever.
THIS was immersion like I’ve never experienced it before, and I have been one of the lucky people who got to try Virtual Reality over 20 years ago.
You FEEL depth, when you look down you actually feel like you’re looking down, when you stand on something, you will experience that as standing on something.
Looking over the edge of a cliff will make you want to step back and perhaps a bit dizzy, being inside a little room will make you feel claustrophobic, in short; you are INSIDE the 3D environment.
Experiencing such strong feelings while the headset is still at such an early stage of its development, and with rather bad steering, makes it clear how awesome it will be once we get a little further down the line.
Of course the steering is not up to the Oculus Rift developers, they just make the screens we look at.
So racing like mad trough a Tuscan villa, almost as if I’m floating and with no body, felt very odd.
It took a lot away from the experience and made it clear that game designers (including Linden Lab) need to take a really good look at this.
To make it work in SL we will not just need a much better mouse-view display but someone needs to go and experience what it is like to walk trough a sim while using your head to look around in stead of your mouse and how it feels and looks to walk, how we show our body, etc, etc.
But even with the way it is today and before having tried the new improved version (already twice the resolution compared to the one I tried and that is not even the commercial version) it already gave me a glimpse of how amazing all this is going to be and how big the role Second Life can play in it could be.
At the very base of it lies one very simple fact; the headset creates the illusion of 3D and it does this very well.
It is based on the century old idea of Stereoscopy and simply puts two pictures in front of your eyes and gives you the idea of depth.
It works much better then wearing 3D glasses and staring at a tv screen, the headset blocks out the rest of the real world and the head tracking is superb.
At this moment it is not perfect, it still needs lots of work both from hard- and software designers. But you have to be blind not to see its enormous potential.
Unfortunately at the moment the people at Oculus Rift and others in the technical business are only looking at its possibilities in the world of games, mostly shoot-em-up games.
But the BEST thing about the Oculus Rift and virtual reality in general is the magic word; IMMERSION.
A good headset like the Oculus Rift will give you the idea of being inside the virtual surroundings.
And even with all its shortcomings, Second Life DOES give you the ability to immerse yourself in a more diverse virtual location then any other game or software out there.
Furthermore, it ads social interaction that you won’t find in any game.
And what is more fun then exploring and immersing yourself in a world created by some game designer… exactly, immersing yourself in a world created by YOU. Second Life offers that.
I have seen a few kickstarters and demos out there that offer certain experiences for the Oculus Rift… game designers want money to develop software for you to experience virtual diving, visiting museums, going to the cinema… But all these things are already possible in Second Life!
If Linden Lab realises the potential of their virtual world and manages to convince Oculus Rift and its users that they can offer all what they want and more, they will reach a huge potential market.
Yes the SL-viewer does need some work before they reach that point, but once they do, they should do whatever it takes to let the world know that Second Life could be THE place where virtually everything is possible.
Forget about just using the Oculus Rift for running about shooting at each other, virtual reality is suitable for so much more.
Let me sketch you my vision of the future;
I predict a time when most households will own a virtual reality headset and use it regularly.
It will be a very normal thing to use for all kinds of things.
We will visit the cinema together with friends living in another part of the world or just with our own family, watching something together again in stead of each doing something different on our own screen in another part of the home… something already possible in Second Life!
We will go shopping on the internet, being able to see something in 3d, examining it from all sides, try clothes on our avatar or simply visit a 3d supermarket for the daily shopping we’ll have delivered, just because it is more fun and less scary for some, then ordering via a regular website.
Schools will use it for education, imagine a history lesson about… oh I don’t know, 1920s Berlin… everyone put on their VR headset and woosh, here we go to virtual 1920s Berlin, the entire class together, no train tickets needed, no permission from the parents, no risks, no costs.
Police, medics, firemen and the army can use it to train people all time time without having to set up expensive real world exercises.
And combined with perhaps an Omnidirectional treadmill such as the Virtuix Omni people will use it for something many of us are obsessed with; exercise!
Imagine going jogging on a treadmill in a 3d created reality, in stead of seeing the boring neighbourhood you see every day in reality… you get to jog underwater, trough the streets of 14th century Venice, all over 1940s New York, on the moon, etc, etc.
The market for ‘Exergaming’ is huge, in 2009 such games were generating revenues of $2 billion.
And I’m not even talking about all the medical possibilities such as Physical rehabilitation, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder treatment, or simply making your stay at the hospital ward as a patient a little less boring.
Most of the options mentioned above could work in Second Life and would bring a LOT of new people to our virtual world.
Many people who are not at all interested in what Second Life has to offer at the moment, would flock to it if it had the added option of exploring virtual reality with a VR headset.
Of course, we’re not there yet.
But it is just around the corner, I can almost taste it and after trying the Oculus Rift myself I know that gaming, computers, virtual reality and even our day to day real lives are about to change drastically.
I just hope that the people behind Oculus Rift see that they can sell it just as well and as a tool for immersion and all kinds of virtual experiences, not just for gaming.
I know and understand that gaming is a big market, full of people ready to throw their money at the screen, but I think that the market for other kinds of uses may be even bigger.
And more importantly to us people who live in the Second Life world, I hope that Linden Lab realises the huge potential here and makes sure it gets in on the action as soon as possible.
Get in contact with the Oculus Rift people, stay in contact, invite them over to come and try Second Life and discuss some of the options.
And work on a viewer that will work with the Oculus Rift.
This will make mouseview properly functional for everyone, even without virtual headsets, but when the Oculus Rift launches its first proper public version and goes global (and it will), it is the duty of Linden Lab AND us, the users, to try and make the world realise how amazing it will be together with Second Life.
I know, there will be people out there who are sceptical of all this, I want to ask them to wait till they can actually try it, then sit down for a few minutes and imagine it working with Second Life.
Without actually trying it, it is very hard to judge.
Finally I want to end by sharing a video with you, it is an old one but to me this is what one day Second Life could be like and with the Oculus Rift, this virtual reality has gotten a lot closer;
