High Fidelity, Philip Rosedale's new startup which is creating a new virtual world incorporating avatar interactions connected to sensor-equipped hardware like Google Glass and Leap Motion, is now accepting alpha testers -- go here to sign up.
This is the start of exciting times in VR which I alluded to in my New Year's post. I paid a long visit with Philip at High Fidelity recently, which I'll write about more soon, but for now, I'll let him explain what kind of Alpha testers he's looking for in particular:
"Our work is still early and definitely not feature complete," Philip Rosedale tells me, "so the first small group of people will be mostly very creative builders who can help us explore some of the design possibilities created by High Fidelity's software and hardware technology." (Emphasis mine, because creativity.) If you believe you might be just the kind of builder Philip that wants to find, go here to sign up.
Credit for the Alpha test announcement from Reddit user "Epona666", by the way, who also pointed out this new subreddit for High Fidelity's virtual world project.
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Is this another one of his "Give me everything for free" ideas?
Posted by: melponeme_k | Wednesday, January 15, 2014 at 06:01 AM
Philip is one of those people that, even when he flops, flops in ways that are richly innovative. I don't know if this project will fly, but I'll keep my fingers crossed for it.
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Wednesday, January 15, 2014 at 06:17 AM
Ok, Philip, you have our attention.
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Wednesday, January 15, 2014 at 06:38 AM
'"Is this another one of his "give me everything for free" ideas?"' by melponeme_k
SL had alpha testers, and then beta testers. That worked out pretty well for them considering the opportunity to have lifetime subscriptions and more free sq. meters of land.
I like to build, but I don't think I'm what they're looking for right now.
You should definitely go for it Adeon! I remember you saying how you wished you'd gotten in on the lifetime subscription for SL. Now's your chance :D
Posted by: Eliza Wrigglesworth | Wednesday, January 15, 2014 at 08:09 AM
I'm going to remove my grumpy-SL-oldbie hat for a second.
Philip Rosedale is going in the right direction with this, in terms of hardware, if he wants a mass-market product. I can't say that wearables are going to take off anytime this year or next, but they should have more appeal to the text/walk masses than the Occulus Rift "head in the box" model.
Something like the Rift may well become a popular and profitable item, but it's aimed at immersion, not augmentation. FWIW, this academic thinks his students want the latter. They already are glued to mobile devices.
Posted by: Iggy | Wednesday, January 15, 2014 at 10:51 AM
I know alot of what went wrong with SL, was beyond Phillip's control, like the corporate ownership grab, the closed wall you need to be rich to own a sim BS, but he really needs to lay out some sort of long term vision for his new project. Does he really expect people to go in and populate his new virtual world for free again with no roadmap to the future? Seriously Phil, if I build in your virtual world is it going to be a virtual world for the people or is it going to be another corporate hijacking of the metaverse vision. I'm not getting involved in something that is going to get hijacked by rich investors with a need to make immense profit.
Posted by: Metacam Oh | Thursday, January 16, 2014 at 03:47 PM
"I'm not getting involved in something that is going to get hijacked by rich investors with a ned to make immense profit" - Metacam Oh
What business starts with the ideal to lose money? Second Life is a business and with out investors and profit, they cannot keep it running period.
Posted by: Brandy Maltas/ Kalli Birman | Wednesday, January 22, 2014 at 12:46 PM
Second Life generates millions of dollars of PROFIT every quarter, so yes, it CAN go on for a long time as is.
Posted by: geoflea | Saturday, January 25, 2014 at 04:57 PM