Philip Rosedale Talks High Fidelity on CNBC Business Show

The three most interesting things about this interview? It's a business news show, which Philip Rosedale and other virtual world leaders haven't been on since roughly 2008; he's making basically the same case he made about Second Life back during its 2006-2008 heyday, which is why the reporters are skeptical, but now those claims are much more plausible. Also: Philip's High Fidelity avatar looks considerably more animated than it was even a month ago -- though at the same time, the double-jointed, flailing-puppet motions of the avatar are still pretty immersion breaking.

Hat tip: Reddit's High Fidelity community, which you may want to join.

Please sharehare this post:

Tweet

Comments

[melponeme_k]

There is no way a business would conduct meetings in VR if the avatars look like that example. Its distracting.

Rosedale wants to overcome the uncanny valley aspect but he just rolled into another valley. The equipment doesn't capture enough physical action detail to make it look good or human.

[Adeon Writer]

Start playing the drinking game with complaints about HF's avatars.

HF did avatars correctly. Unlike SL.

HF's avatars are 100% custom. HF didn't have "base avatars". You upload the model, the skeleton, everything.

Yes, the avatars they are using as a style I think is silly.

The platform is not bound to it in any way.

[Adeon Writer]

(Seriously, the point if what they are doing is really not about the avatars. It's programmer art.)

[james]

2011 Cryengine 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMJtY3O7UNc

2013 Cryengine 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aseq4T81P7g

[2014]

/me passes on the koolaid

[Ajax Manatiso]

If you have to design and rig your own avatar, off world, to use this platform it's chances of succeeding is a solid zero.

[melponeme_k]

A business is not going to want to spend time designing its own avatars. To think that they would do it is folly. If they were going to use it, they would just want to log in and use what is there.

What is there, hypothetically, looks like a child's cartoon. No one wants to do business while looking like a character from a Pixar or Dreamworks cartoon.

[A.J.]

Wherever You Go, There You Are.

Philip Rosedale is a one trick pony.

This looks a lot like Second Life if someone cared to develop it. It's not a bad trick, but this is hardly visionary. If he really does stick with this and avoids his ADD tendencies, then it doesn't take a crystal ball to see where this will end. It will end right back where he started from.

[joe]

When you smoke a lot of weed and use computers a lot, you pretty much just say and do the same things over and over and over again.

[Iggy]

Why is it that in every possible virtual world he enters, Philip has worse hair than IRL, yet when I enter one of these worlds, my hair is perfect and IRL I'm a bald-headed freak?

I enjoyed the video. I had a "here we go again" moment.