Why Linden Lab & Second Life Developers Should Risk Time & Money on the Oculus Rift (Comment of the Week)

Last weeks' posts on integrating the Oculus Rift with Second Life provoked some interesting reader conversations, with longtime SLer and Oculus Rift user Jo Yardley making some passionate and perceptive points that deserve special highlighting here:

"If you have not tried it, you don't know what you're talking about. Sorry to be so blunt about it but that is just how it is. Try it first, then judge it. It is not mouselook.

"The main think about the Oculus Rift is not how it works at the moment but the huge potential it has for SL. IF they can get it to work properly, it will be a game changer."

Here's her case why, both as an SLer and someone who's tried the Rift developer kit:

"I spend my time in Second Life either roleplaying or building. For roleplaying, this is the ultimate tool, also for exploring. Being able to actually walk trough a city and be inside a house will make a huge difference. SL will never be the same again to people like me. OF COURSE it isn't perfect yet, and no, I do not know how they will fix being able to chat and what it will be like to try and build wearing one of those. But I bet someone is working on that as we speak.

"Why is the Oculus Rift important for Second Life? At this very moment a huge chunk of the games industry is trying to get their games to work with the OR. This is a gadget a lot of people will have, if not the Rift, then another VR headset. People will use it for gaming but another HUGE market for VR will be exercise, people will want to jog on their treadmill and see a sunny beach somewhere in stead of the gym or their living room on a rainy day.

"Once you've tried the OR, games without it will be a bit disappointing. It is like comparing Super 8 movies without sound with a movie on a big screen with surround sound. It is that big.

"The first thing you do once you've tried it is dream about your favorite games and what they will be like in the Rift.

"As we speak there are lots of people trying to get money together on sites like Kickstarter to build a diving game, a virtual cinema, a fishing game... things that we've been doing in SL for years.

"A lot (not everything) of what people who buy the Rift will want to do, can already be done in SL. And people will realize that once they have the Rift that although it is nice to explore a 3D world built by someone else, it is also very cool to explore a 3D world you build yourself.

"And that is when they will look at SL again.

"Once again, this is what COULD happen and Linden Lab would be mad to stand back and wait, if this is indeed the virtual reality renaissance, they have to jump on it and hang on for a wild ride. This COULD be big for SL, maybe it won't, maybe it's a craze, maybe the renaissance will not happen... but it is a risk you have to take."

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Comments

[Terry]

Something that could prove useful, but not a solution for all, would be to use speech to text for chat. I know what your thinking, then why not just use VoIP in the first place? Because not everyone uses VoIP, or cannot afford the extra bandwidth for it (I'm on a rural DSL and it's wonderful when I hit 150k download speed), or they don't like how their voice sounds or - insert your reason here - of course I have yet to see a speech to text system that is 100% reliable, so the need to edit text while in the VR headset will be a necessity. A return to the thought bubble chat may help when conversing with one or two avatars, but completely unreadable for groups. This may sound completely stupid, but what if the VR headset had a trapdoor that could be flipped open to permit seeing a real world keyboard? I can't touch type and must see the keyboard to know what keys my fingers are pressing...

[Adeon Writer]

Terry: Speech to text programs already exist and work fine with SL. I voice near exclusively but it's useful in areas that ban voice chat.

[zzpearlbottom]

Just a quick note, it works as good not only on SL but also in any open sim grid as for now it depends only on viewer side!

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I don't know if this is THE MOMENT for stereo 3D, but the moment will come soon. The relevant factors are coming into alignment. The first version of Oculus Rift might miss the mass-market price point, but that's not unexpected. Either subsequent versions of OR or a competing product will break that barrier.

I'm not a great prognosticator, but this one is so obvious. If it doesn't gel in what's left of my lifetime, I'm personally going to haunt every individual in the industry and ghost-slap them upside the head.

[Harvey]

I've been playing with the Rift for a little while now, and I absolutely agree with Jo when she says "If you have not tried it, you don't know what you're talking about."

I wasn't prepared for it, but it is that different. When I first put strapped on the headset even, I didn't realize what I was stepping into. It was only when I instinctively moved my head to track a butterfly as it flew past me in the OR Tuscany demo, that it really began to hit home just how immersive it is.

While I've not had the opportunity to try it in SL yet (I'm eagerly awaiting a Mac build of CtrlAltStudio) I've got little doubt that the experience will be great.

I've never been one for voice in SL, but it's likely that I'll reconsider that when using the Rift. Are there other problems that will need to be overcome? Of course, but I think once more users try it for themselves, rather than assuming what it might be like, the demand for improvement will be there.

[Jo yardley]

If LL fixes voice, I wouldn't mind using it either.
The only reason I don't at the moment is because the second you turn it on you get people screaming, background noises, static, etc.
And from far away in stead of only hearing those close to you.
Not just an LL problem of course, so many people still haven't got a proper headset.
If voice chat wasn't so annoying, I bet more people would be using it all the time and one day we may even look back and wonder why on earth we did all the typing.

[Eurominuteman]

Immersive HUD (Oculus Rift) + Full-Body Immersion (PrioVR) on Kickstarter Crowdfunding
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yeitechnology/priovr-get-your-ideas-moving

[Eurominuteman]

Immersive Worlds with HUD + Full-Body Immersion
https://www.facebook.com/groups/immersiveworlds.hud.fullbody/

[Robertus]

Yes Eurominuteman ;)

I just did a pledge on PrioVR on Kickstarter
Combination with the Rift looks so promising

[Renmiri]

Free voice chat: Skype group calls.

Very cheap voice chat: Ventrilo, Teamspeak.

With the added benefit only the people you know and like are part of it.

[Eurominuteman]

Will Burns writes: The problem isn't the software, though it can often aggravate the effect. The underlying problem is the design of the hardware itself. Artificial Stereoscopic view is the inverse of how the eyes actually focus on the real world, whereby the immersion sickness stems from your eyes telling your mind that it sees 3D and the mind realizing that the typical motor focus of the eyes is incorrect, which then translate into conflicting cues for depth in the mind.

Because of this, every way that your eyes actually focus in the real world on an object is the opposite in a HMD. Inability to narrow focus through eye tracking (because you narrow your view in real life this way), lack of view convergence (left and right eye focusing on something by meeting at a point in 3D space in front of you), and even the subtlety of missing proper parallax shifting all add up in the mind as "Something is seriously wrong... we must be poisoned!"

The mind, therefore acts like the body is poisoned and takes appropriate measures. Of course, because you get conflicting information across the board, you never get to a point where you are going to throw up - but you wish you did.

The long term issues are that if you become adjusted to the incorrect HMD view, you become maladjusted to the *real world* natural view, because now the mind has been trained to the HMD and thinks it's the right way to view depth and 3D. Ergo, when the sickness subsides wearing a HMD, you have reports of headaches, blurred vision, etc when people take off the HMD.

Now your mind is treating the real world like it is the incorrect false 3D and not the other way around. The long term effects are that you also (in a state where your mind thinks you are poisoned or drugged) get overlapping immersion situations later on - reported as a type of LSD Flashback in a virtual sense from overexposure. This is a type of cognitive dissonance after-effect from engaging in two polar opposite methods of immersion and spatial awareness.

The more severe effects of prolonged HMD use (VR Flashbacks) are something I have first hand experience with, and it's not fun. This is why I (personally) refuse to wear an Oculus headset. The actual solution for this problem is not about telling software designers to redesign their environments, but in telling Oculus to redesign their headset to not conflict with natural spatial perception.

From an Australian Department of Defense report that I've read, they have classified it as sharing the initial symptoms of motion sickness but have said that it is definitely not motion sickness. There is a lot more going on and the long term effects of prolonged use are potentially highly detrimental. http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/19/4636508/oculus-rift-is-working-to-solve-simulator-sickness

[Eurominuteman]

Simulation Sickness and Motion Sickness due to Vitual Reality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_sickness#Simulation_sickness

[Adromaw]

Now that you mention it I recall a VR simulation at Sega world a long time ago. Fortunately it was short run enough to not really achieve the impact (I think). But momentarily it did feel funky when the headset came off.

Hopefully someone will come up with some solutions. The devkit supports are already long available in non-kickstarter F2P MMO's.

And I'd kind of like to try it, with less of the 'sickness'.