Jo Yardley has a great scoop: Rod Humble recently told her all about Linden Lab's efforts to integrate the Oculus Rift with Second Life, and they're going great:
It is up and running right now within SL but we want to make it excellent. The new work is on integrating the mouse/cursor/UI support within the Rift, this is important because real VR requires rethinking the way you interact with the world and UI to take advantage of head tracking. Hopefully we will be sharing some vids within a few weeks then get into testing after that.
Read more here, including Rod Humble's pretty enthusiastic description of the experience.
Hold your breath Hamlet, we may just be at the start of Second Life's second life.
Posted by: Argo Nurmi | Friday, May 17, 2013 at 01:45 PM
Man, now I'm going to be even MORE pressured to get a dev kit. ARG.
Big congrats to Linden Lab, I really think this is going to be great.
Rumors are going on that the consumer version of the rift will also support positional tracking, not just rotation. Which is also cool. Can't wait.
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Friday, May 17, 2013 at 04:31 PM
Oh goody, more technical debt to add to a 2012 13 percent and a 2013 3.5 percent region loss.
Can we put this guy in test labs and get a CEO now?
Posted by: Dartagan Shepherd | Friday, May 17, 2013 at 08:33 PM
I remember the earliest attempts at VR headsets and love that they seem to be getting a second life ( pardon the pun) via OR. The biggest problem in those days, and as I see it now, was that some people could not handle the disconnect of what you were seeing and the lack of cues from your other senses like the Eustachian tubes that gave us spacial orientation thus causing something akin to car sickness. However I look forward to them being affordable and trying them myself one day.
Posted by: Connie Arida | Friday, May 17, 2013 at 11:57 PM
Mesh, pathfinding, and now server side baking were supposed to be big changes (that no one was really asking for) to save Second Life from its slow disintegration. They have all failed dismally, for the simple reason that until or unless buying virtual land becomes affordable for SL users, none of the tweaks to the system will amount to anything. People don't use Second Life because it's too expensive and the user interface on the default viewer is crap.
Posted by: Archangel Mortenwold | Saturday, May 18, 2013 at 10:23 AM
Mesh failed?!
Mesh has changed SL for me 180%.
More prims, more details, more fun.
And second Life is as expansive as you allow it to be.
I've been running a region for 4 years without losing any money.
Posted by: Jo Yardley | Sunday, May 19, 2013 at 05:59 AM
"The new work is on integrating the mouse/cursor/UI support within the Rift, this is important because real VR requires rethinking the way you interact with the world and UI..."
I read, "We are trying to re-emplement the radial menu code."
Posted by: Scyne | Sunday, May 19, 2013 at 11:37 AM
Boohoo... Land is to expensive, default viewer is crap. "Whine with your cheese Sir?"
Owning a sim isn't a right, it's a privilege because you can afford it, and try a third party viewer.
Posted by: 2013 | Monday, May 20, 2013 at 06:16 AM
I only wonder is how LL will manage to give me more then 60 fps steadly in order to use this!
I bet much more on Open sim tech to see this working sooner and faster!
Posted by: zzpearlbottom | Monday, May 20, 2013 at 07:48 AM
BTW if anyone is interested in this old vid on SL insides when it was still fab:
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Second-Life-Ian-Wilkes
Posted by: Argo | Monday, May 20, 2013 at 06:17 PM