Monday, May 20, 2013

Oculus Rift VR, By Philip Rosedale's New Company, Coming to Second Life


Jo Yardley, the lady known for her work on the 1920s Berlin Project, had a few things to say about something on the more futuristic scale of things: Oculus Rift.



Last month, Second Life's creator Philip Rosedale, who has moved on to found a new start-up company called "High Fidelity," announced "a new kind of virtual reality platform" called Oculus Rift, a "high field of view, low latency, consumer-priced virtual reality head-mounted display." Although the company's primary interest seems to be 3-D gaming, Halmet Au reported that Linden Lab was interested in this technology, with "several Linden staff … working on integrating Oculus Rift with Second Life in an *unofficial* capacity."

Jo states Oculus "truly is a game changer," "I can already imagine myself walking around those dark narrow streets, looking up, down, around me. Finally being able to see my city trough my eyes in stead of the eyes of my avatar. … It could give SL an enormous boost, put it back in the view of those who might have forgotten about it, and it could show off a whole new side of the OC."

Chatting with Rod Humble, Jo quoted him as saying, "Hopefully we will be sharing some vids within a few weeks then get into testing after that. I don't want to overhype this BUT SL+OR is like having dinner with Stefan Zweig and Peter Altenberg."

Hamlet Au called integration an "enormous gamble" that he earlier doubted the Lab would undertake. And in one article Jo Yardley linked to, the writer felt OpenSim would get it first. But it looks like Rod Humble, noted for his experience in gaming, will be having Linden Lab work on it.

Sources: New World Notes, Jo Yardley's Second Life

Bixyl Shuftan

1 comment:

  1. Oculus Rift is something completely separate from High Fidelity.

    High Fidelity is a software company working on next-gen 3D platforms. On the software side.

    Oculus Rift is a totally separate hardware company, famous for a kickstarter project that brought in tons of money for 3D virtual reality glasses.

    Second Life's experience with Oculus Rift is separate from High Fidelity's experience and plans for the Oculus Rift.

    ReplyDelete