2014: The Year VR Goes Big (Again) - But This Time, for Real

The Atlantic has a good long December profile of Philip Rosedale and his work on next generation VR tech at High Fidelity, which you may have missed during the holiday craze. It came out shortly after a Wired story on the Oculus Rift, which includes this choice quote from influential VC Chris Dixon:

“Going and seeing the new [Oculus Rift] prototype gave me confidence that they were going to solve all of those problems. I think I’ve seen five or six computer demos in my life that made me think the world was about to change: Apple II, Netscape, Google, iPhone... then Oculus. It was that kind of amazing.”

It's insights like that, not to mention getting to talk with Philip in recent weeks, let alone all the money going into the space, and all the Rift-powered VR spinoffs, and the demos I've personally seen, which convince me of this: 2014 will be the year virtual reality reaches mass market awareness yet again. And though it had some vogue in the 90s and during Second Life's boom years, this time the tech is ready to meet the elevated expectations people have for VR. And yes, this means Second Life will be part of this awareness, as it becomes compatible with the Rift, and we have new ways and platforms for accessing SL. And in this way, Second Life will have a second life of its own.

I could write many thousand more words on the subject, and wish I could right now, but here's the thing:

I'm involved in some of these projects, pretty busy because of them, can't talk about them further now, but will have some announcements and news to share soon. For right now, suffice it to say this: 2014 is going to be a very exciting year.

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Comments

[Scarp Godenot]

Interesting post. Thanks for the links. I love to speculate and think about the future of this stuff...

[Iggy]

The Atlantic piece contains this telling line: "the rise of virtual reality will come not in a wave, but with a creep."

Agreed. I think the current buzz about Rift should be taken with the same grains of salt we needed for 1960s flying cars, lunar colonies, Picturephones, or, four decades on, Second Life as the next Internet.

The problem with the first two was that they were possible, but not affordable for mass adoption. Of course, we do have videophones now: I use apps for video chat with friends on occasion and professionally ever more often with each passing semester. But in that case, the software caught up with the hardware consumers were actually wanting to buy.

That's SL's and the Rift's dilemma. They are largely tethered to a desktop rig or powerful laptop. So The Rift might, say, become the next great accessory for console and PC gaming, but no way in heck will you see folks walking down the street with Occulus' blinders strapped to their foreheads.

At least the Rift, or whatever Rosedale invents, will not be burdened by stupidly high monthly tiers. Data-caps might make that argument moot; Verizon stopped laying FIOS around here in favor of wireless networks, and unlimited data plans seem to be a might-have-been dream.

High Fidelity interests me because Rosedale seems to be working on some sort of AR rig, if I read Hamlet's hints and teases correctly. Something you could wear to have co-presence, not a box on your head.

[elizabeth]

in the article linked Philip Rosedale mention 100ms as the gold standard for VR realtime. Is a bit less than this. Is 40ms at worst and 20ms is the sweet spot

the best test for this to have a band with the members at different locations playing together live. when it gets above 40ms then is quite noticeable for them as players and for the audience. When they are able to sit on 20ms then the band is able to stay tight

[Dale Innis]

So I anyone using it with SL yet? In a way that they can share? :) I got one as a gift, and keep finding all of these "coming soon" and "incomplete alpha" things, but not quite any "here is how you do it" things...