After Oculus Rift founder Palmer Luckey was featured at SVVR talking about the future of VR, I got a chance to briefly meet him in the media room. He's smart, funny, well-spoken, and surprisingly grounded for a 21 year old who's suddenly on the cover of Wired magazine, not mention being worth bazillions. We talked about the idea of whether there really is a moral imperative to create VR, as he argued at SVVR, because "a lot of people in the world don't have as good an experience in real life as we do here". That's a fascinating subject for another post -- and as you might imagine, we also talked about Second Life, and using Second Life with Oculus Rift. And to answer the question NWN readers are surely asking -- Yes, Palmer Luckey has used SL with the Rift, and yes, he's used SL in general. And you won't believe the reason he last used Second Life:
When it comes to Rift-compatible SL viewers, Palmer told me, he's a fan of the third party versions. (I assume he was referring to the CtrlAltStudio version.) By contrast, Luckey told me he hasn't had much experience with the official Linden Lab version (which is notable).
As for using Second Life, here's his last experience:
He went into SL, he told me, because he wanted to buy some Bitcoin (he's done some dabbling with the virtual currency), and the guy he was buying it from insisted on doing the transaction in the metaverse. (Or at least the closest thing we have to the metaverse right now.) "Guess he wanted the full cyberpunk experience," I said to Palmer. I forgot to mention that Linden Dollars are still far more used than Bitcoin, but I'm guessing he already knew that.
Anyway, hoping to interview more Palmer soon, and trade notes on the metaverse I know, and the one he's trying to build now.
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I had a chance to try Oculus Rift at a conference this week, with the most mundane scenario imaginable: A simulated datacenter. It was still remarkable. I'd love to try it out on something fanciful.
Posted by: Mitch Wagner | Thursday, May 22, 2014 at 08:25 PM
Palmer comes right out and says he wants a "Paradise" for all of us Eloi to inhabit while he and his fellow Morlocks eat us for dinner.
Fun times. Yeah, we definitely need VR to take us away from our horrible RL lives.
Can anyone see how messed in the head all of this is? I feel like I'm in crazy town when I read about these people and how celebrated they are in the business.
Posted by: melponeme_k | Friday, May 23, 2014 at 06:27 AM
Why is it that being very young automatically makes you a tech expert? The article, the person, is FAIL FAIL FAIL (He thinks he can find bitcoin in SL!!)
Posted by: Ajax Manatiso | Friday, May 23, 2014 at 06:41 AM
Ajax, rarher than correcting you, you should probably just actually read the article in full.
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Friday, May 23, 2014 at 07:03 AM
This is the real VR headset news - http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/22/samsung-vr-headset/.
Samsung (with a tech research budget much bigger than Facebook/Oculus) is making a VR headset similar to Oculus to work with it's phones and tablets that will be cheaper and arrive sooner. This will be the volume seller, while the Oculus Rift (at least initially) remains a 'geek buy'.
Posted by: Hitomi Tiponi | Friday, May 23, 2014 at 08:11 AM
I'm really diggin that Luckey made the cover of Wired. He's like got vision for all of us.
Imagine if we all had like virtual handhelds so we could connect with RL in the Rift. I got like ideas.
I see a world where nobody dies or poops or nobody has pain. They just disconnect. I'm pretty awesome and I can see like, life.
Posted by: A.J. | Friday, May 23, 2014 at 08:57 AM