Philip Rosedale Unveils High Fidelity's Version of Collaborative Online Creation in Virtual Reality

At SEA VR, a virtual reality conference in Seattle, as reported by Dean Takahashi:

Rosedale showed an alpha version of a “virtual toy room,” where two people collaborated, long distance, from inside a 3D, cartoon-animated world where they could pick things up and talk to each other.

Definitely looks more fun and appealing than Oculus' own version of a similar concept. At the same conference, Philip made a revealing point about High Fidelity, versus Second Life:

“That process is like learning to play the violin or something,” he told GeekWire after speaking at the SEA VR virtual reality conference in Bellevue on Wednesday. “I have to say: I was too ambitious at the time. I thought we’ll just figure out how to use a mouse to do this all. But it was too hard.” And then along came virtual reality. What used to take hours to learn through a mouse and keyboard, could be picked up in minutes with VR headsets. It turns out Second Life was about a decade ahead of its time.

The first part is definitely true, but having tried out the PC-only version of High Fidelity, I'd say the user interface is about as difficult as Second Life. If it's only easy to use with the full VR integration, that's nice -- but also limits its potential userbase quite a lot.

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Comments

[Kitty Revolver]

HiFi is way more difficult than sl, the time I used it. I couldn't walk on solid ground and had to adjust the camera so I could walk up steps. I just didn't find it user-friendly at all. I realize he wants to use peripherals, but that is not going to happen if he wants mass market. I haven't found a simple reason why people should use VR and it is very annoying to hear pie-in-the-sky arguments why people will use it. The AR people have been better at this, but Philip needs a reality check.

[Ezra]

No one, no one is going to buy that Second Life came anywhere close to maxing out the usability potential of keyboard and mouse and that's why Second Life is so difficult for new users.

Philip's going to have to find an angle for attaching a thousand dollars of peripherals to yourself other than fabricating frustrations with keyboard and mouse.

Does mouselook even work in High Fidelity yet? It didn't the last time I tried it. Of course keyboard and mouse experiences will be subpar when you don't build for it.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Yep, 2 people can almost kinda sorta pick up blocks together. You can see how groundbreaking the technology is going to be. Now to find out if you can actually surf on a hype wave.

[Sassy Monrue]

Some really do it.just the wrong people.
video below makes HF look like the stone age.
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2015/10/toybox-social-vr-oculus-rift-palmer-luckey.html#more

HF as done nothing but marginalize the needs of the Deaf & Disabled communities as well.

Second Life is much better off without him.

[Iggy]

Yes, Sassy, but once we all evolve into Rosedale's vision of The Singularity we won't need ears, eyes, or limbs.

[Iggy]

@Sassy, The form cut my bracketed aside: Snickers from a 20th Century "Orphan of Apollo," still waiting for his flying car and clam roll at the orbiting Howard Johnson's, follow.