High Fidelity, Philip Rosedale's VR-Centric Follow-up to Second Life, Now in Open Beta

We're delighted to announce High Fidelity's open beta! Check it out here: https://t.co/WnRMvqy3Id pic.twitter.com/ib4jClgro1

— High Fidelity (@highfidelityinc) April 27, 2016

Click here to get it, both for Mac and PC, and optimized to work with Oculus and Vive, and Leap motion controllers. (Unlike Project Sansar, which is PC-only, at least to start.) While we still don't know much about Linden Lab's Project Sansar, we do know few people involved in Second Life's early creation are involved with it. High Fidelity, by contrast, has been SL co-creator Philip Rosedale's baby for the last three years after leaving Linden Lab. (Click here to read about its evolution during that time.)

In case you missed it, catch the latest (and impressive IMO) demo video:

Mpre about the demo here.

Share your own thoughts on this open beta below!

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Comments

[Ezra]

It's impressive what they're accomplishing with VR headsets and motion controls, but I can't believe keyboard and mouse controls are still as bad as they are, and graphics so super rudimentary.

I hope this gamble to neglect 99% of PC users works out for Phil, but banking on VR hardware as the primary interface might be 5 years too early.

[Eddi Haskell]

I hope Sansar does not look this primitive graphically.

[Skygirl Kline]

I think to be fair Second Life also looked as primitive as this whilst in beta and for a long time after.

[Argo Nurmi]

When you have an opportunity to log into HF you'll find they discourage the keyboard chat. That was different! One of their staffers is a friend and SL 3D artist Lemmondrop who indicated that dropping keyboard chat was a definite thing. I''ve been in SL nearly a decade and always used chat, except on a couple of important occasions. Adapting to voice over on HF takes a bit - but happily some forward thinking denizens of HF have written apps that support chat, so its not all future-shock.

A good SL friend of mine told me she could not speak or understand English well - a shock to me because our long chat conversations were often elegant and intricate. How did you learn English so well I asked? From you, (meaning our group of long time SL friends) she replied. I suppose an HFer will says, "Yes and now she has an opportunity to learn to speak and understand English (or a language of your choice) instead of just keyboarding."

I can remember when SL had only chat - mostly I remember a more courteous time. And I remember the angst when voice was close to being introduced. Voice added "biologic" knowledge. Much information is communicated in the unvoiced - its own body language. Mr Kapor would celebrate this but I think maybe our Eden was way more fun before this original knowledge.

Yes, keyboarding is my preferred way of doing business in VW. My "Hello World" for HF and other new VW will be the keyboard.

[Pussycat Catnap]

@Argo: I never use voice, but it doesn't exactly protect from rudeness.

Chat is ripe with misunderstandings. But it at least DOES make some understanding possible across language borders - which is what originally made me prefer it, back when translator HUDs were everywhere in SL and many of my friends had no languages in common.

Chat can be rude and annoying and hostile.

But I too find voice is very often rude. It seems to bring out some really bad things in some people.

But voice, without body language - often communicates just as misleadingly as chat. The difference however is we are more likely to be convinced that the misinterpretation is correct.

However chat miscommunications withstand time more. Its not uncommon to have people cart out a 'dead horse' from years ago and try to hold you to it. Made even worse when they have the meaning of what you intended wrong, and doubled by the possibility that you no longer hold the particular view - because things said are said in a timed context...

I'm not sure which is worse...

I meant to point out how much worse voice is than chat... but I see major problems with both.

We need to 'evolve' culture more before we have a good way of communicating online...

[joe]

Just take a big bong hit and then you'll see how grooovvvyyy Phil's stuff is.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Sadly, this doesn't run under WINE.