Cloud Party Becomes First Virtual World to Officially Support the Oculus Rift; Ex-Linden Cyn Skyberg: "We Are Getting Very Close to the Original Concept of VR"

Cloud Party, the web-based virtual world, now officially supports the Oculus Rift via a plug-in -- read about it here on the company blog, and if you have a dev kit, follow the instructions for connecting Cloud Party to your Rift headset.

As such, Cloud Party becomes the first virtual world to officially support the Oculus Rift. Second Life developer Linden Lab was expected to unveil its support for the Rift last Summer, but so far, only this unofficial third party viewer for SL is currently available. However, Cloud Party is backed and advised by SL co-creator Cory Ondrejka, and ex-Linden Lab VP Cyn Skyberg now heads up Cloud Party's community management.

Speaking of which, here's what Cyn Skyberg says about the experience of using Cloud Party through the Rift (that's her pictured above):

"My personal description is 'Crap! That is way more impressive than I ever thought it would be!' The level of detail is amazing." Some users may experience a feeling of seasickness at times -- a sensation common to every platform running the Rift -- but even then, she goes on, "It is very, very compelling."

For her, Rift integration with Cloud Party gets us closer to virtual reality as we originally conceived it -- and platforms like Second Life were originally built for:

"If we could combine it with something like LeapMotion (also possible) we are getting very close to the original concept of what we thought virtual reality would be like," as Cyn puts it. "When I started working in virtual worlds, THIS is what I wanted -- to jump into it, to just... be there. And to be able to see a huge variety of different things, from Yosemite Valley to Hoverbike Racing. And this addition to Cloud Party does that. I freaking love technology."

Cloud Party developers, by the way, recently added a number of updates to the world's graphics, such as procedural skies, which are likely to make the OR experience in CP that much more immersive. It will be interesting to compare it to Second Life and the Rift, when that comes available. In any case, this week's news suggests virtual world virtual reality development is no longer driven by just one company.

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Comments

[Masami]

What makes OculusBridge, a third-party open source tool, more official than CtrlAltStudio's third-party viewer? I sense some bias here.

[Timo Gufler]

Cloud Party has a smaller development team than Linden Lab has, but still they managed to support such a modern technology so quickly. That's simply impressive! :)

[Ezra]

@Masami

He did state "officially" support for what that's worth. Also, OculusBridge doesn't do all the work, it just allows browsers to communicate with the headset. There's still handling the input, then outputting stereoscopic 3D. The input will be very interesting if its ever exposed to creators in Movement Modules.

Cloud Party aside, I hope a lot of browser-based 3D experiences use the Rift and push towards official web standards that lead to proper browser support for it. This is Cloud Party's first time compromising and using a plugin to solve a problem, that must mean they feel any official browser support isn't anywhere close.

[Adeon Writer]

The only thing keeping me out of cloud party right now is working on my custum avie. :P need to stop procrastinating.

[You Know]

Cloud Party is backed and advised by SL co-creator Cory Ondrejka, and ex-Linden Lab VP Cyn Skyberg now heads up Cloud Party's community management.

[Lani Global]

There has been a lot Oculus Rift users running around OSGrid for a long time.

Oculus users were at the OpenSim Community Conference last month.

Official Support of a grid wasn't needed. lol

[zzpearlbottom]

Funny how All seem to forget that Lani, its always the old same thing, Open sim are parias and a niche inside a niche inside a niche!

[Oink]

Oculus Rift is working to solve Simulator Sickness
http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/19/4636508/oculus-rift-is-working-to-solve-simulator-sickness

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