Here's another video I was unable to blog during the Thanksgiving madness but is still worth watching and discussing -- the latest demo of High Fidelity, Philip Rosedale's new virtual world:
So this is two users playing Rock, Paper, Scissors (or as we called it in Hawaii, junkenpo) in real time -- including (as you'll note when one player unleashes Scissors) fully articulated fingers. That's made possible by the integration of the Leap Motion sensor, and an interesting hack using the Oculus Rift. As Dan Hope of High Fidelity explains:
Normally the Leap Motion sits on the desk, but we’ve found it works well when mounted on the front of Oculus Rift goggles. This lets the sensor more accurately portray the movement of hands and fingers for the user. As you can see, it allows us to boogie in the privacy of our virtual club.
Pretty cool -- though at the same time, pretty niche at least for a long while. The circle of people who own Leap Motion and Oculus Rift and want to access High Fidelity is going to be a small one for at least 5-10 years.
Please share this post:
Their making the same mistake others virtual worlds have made. They show off neat niche technologies and techniques using otherwise really sucky avatars. The sucky Avatars are what most peeps are going to remember. Sucky starter avatars is why SL had (and still has) such bad retention in the boom years.
Posted by: Amanda Dallin | Thursday, December 11, 2014 at 05:51 PM
gotta say Im very excited about HiFi. Applied to the alpha ages ago but never got an invite :(
Posted by: Metacam Oh | Friday, December 12, 2014 at 06:42 AM
Yes, but where's the Lizard and Spock?
Posted by: Harper Ganesvoort | Monday, December 29, 2014 at 10:54 PM