Here's what Second Life's homepage looked like last month:
And here's what it looks like now:
So bye-bye Rift. Why bye-bye? Jo Yardly points us to this little-seen comment by a Linden Lab staffer in a long thread on the official Second Life messaging boards:
Thank you for experimenting with our Oculus Rift Project Viewer and offering your feedback. Unfortunately, the Project Viewer that we recently made available didn't meet our standards for quality, and so we've now removed it from the Alternate Viewers page.By definition, Project Viewers aren't ready for primetime. The purpose of these experimental Viewers is to share with you the earliest possible version of what we're working on, so that you can see what we're up to, help discover problems, and provide feedback. In this case, though, we're not ready for that, as those of you who tried it have seen. We can't say at this point when or even if we may release another Project Viewer for experimenting with the Oculus Rift in SL.
None of which is a surprise, as Linden Lab execs themselves have mentioned SL doesn't generally have a high enough frame rate to deliver a satisfying VR experience. The surprise is how long the company promoted Rift for SL on the homepage anyway. And anyway, the real capper to that comment comes at the end:
We want to prioritize our development efforts around initiatives that we know will improve the virtual world and bring more value to SL Residents, and due to some inherent limitations with SL, it may well not be possible to achieve the performance needed for a good VR experience. (In fact, this is one reason why we're creating Project Sansar a new, separate platform optimized for VR).
The prioritization for SL users is good, but the prioritization for Project Sansar makes me go Nooooooooo. And ask, yet again, why put so much emphasis on an unproven platform that's so little used -- even by owners of VR devices?
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Neither suprised nor disapointed. I spent a few hours in Second Life with my Oculus Dev Kit 2 and not once, even in up in a skybox with nothing around, did I get a steady VR-comfortable framerate.
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Friday, July 08, 2016 at 05:48 PM
VR in SL works fine with VorpX.
Posted by: cyberserenity | Saturday, July 09, 2016 at 12:54 AM
Interesting, two responses and basically a 50% success rate. Points to the face that the Lab don't actually need to waste any more resources on Rift support for SL - in a way, they already are sitting on a property that can be used (had to look up VorpX) by 50%... not a bad position really. I would still have the viewer available with a big tag saying 'highly experimental and peer suport only' and let it lay. Be just another Project viewer and not the first to hang around by any means.
But if by "emphasis on an unproven platform that's so little used" you mean the as yet not even open Sansar I am not sure I follow. They are building *something* so why not, at this stage, include support for the toys as well? Written in at this stage is one hell of a lot easier than trying to shoehorn it in after.
If you are referring to the toys themselves then yes - your previous article about actual ownership was an eye opener. Seems a teeny tiny amount even at a fairly early stage. Which it could be argued is not actually that early. Perhaps there isn't much demand right now or those that have tried have gone 'meh, maybe in a few years' and that reaction has spread?
Posted by: sirhc deSantis | Saturday, July 09, 2016 at 11:15 AM
VR is just hardware. It needs a reason for people to use it. If someone doesn't attempt to create something like Sansar that uses VR tech then no one will use VR tech.
Posted by: Amanda Dallin | Saturday, July 09, 2016 at 04:06 PM
The number of actual Second Life users who currently own a Rift or similar headset is very small, perhaps 1- 2% (depending of course on definitions). By the end of the year, it might expand to 2-3%. My initial thoughts are that headset users are going to be 1. immersive gamers 2. people interested in new forms of online sex (how about immersive sex 2.0 - the possibilities are endless), 3. fashion, design, building - I can imagine people creating avatars and getting into fashion shows or design in entirely new ways. The thing is once you wear a headset -- you are cut off from the outside world -- unless an intermediary is found to alert you of a real life situation that must be attended to. I am still not convinced headsets are optimal for Virtual Worlds like Second Life -- but perhaps are optimal for new VR applications. Sansar as a platform for constructing these will be successful and will probably bring new entrants to Second Life. Its just a bit too early to be promoting Rift right now. As my Grandmother would say "wait a year for a better party!".
Posted by: Eddi Haskell | Saturday, July 09, 2016 at 11:00 PM
It's the other way around, really - if you do have a headset, SL is the last thing you want to mess around with.
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Sunday, July 10, 2016 at 03:20 AM
There goes the only reason I might have had for buying an Oculus Rift. I'm too invested in SL (inventory, learning curve, land & builds) to start in another VR world just to wear goggles.
Posted by: Flashing Merlin | Monday, July 11, 2016 at 04:47 AM
Yep. I no longer have any interest in a Rift. Nor do I have any interest in Sansar since I can't bring my inventory with me.
Would the last one to leave, please unplug the coffee pot?
Posted by: Shockwave yareach | Monday, July 11, 2016 at 08:41 AM
I am always interested when the first throes of big change start to appear. People divide up into predictable groups, and it's always the same. There's the ones who say: "Woohoo, something new...here I come!" and ones who say: "No, no, never, this is the end of the world. don't do it!"...and the "If I don't pay attention, it will stay the same."
None of these is good or bad, they are just the way people react to change. I have no idea if VR is going to live up to its hype, but one thing is for sure: There is no going backward. Something is going to change, and maybe we can't take our inventories with us, but maybe we don't want them in new location.
For those interested read these books: Our Iceberg is Melting, or Who Moved My Cheese?
Oh, and me? I have an HTC Vive, and I use it sometimes.
Posted by: DrFran | Monday, July 11, 2016 at 09:04 AM
Dr Fran, before the inn clone computers, there were dozens of computer companies, all very different from one another. And even within companies the products were incompatible with each other. When the PC appeared and you could run your old code on a new machine, that is when computers began to get serious usage.
In this day and age where CPUs are fast enough to emulate any other CPU, saying that Sansar will not accept existing inventories is nothing but blatant pushing for everyone to go out and spend thousands of dollars to by all their stuff once again. Assuming that will even be possible in the first place. It would not be difficult to have two rendered, one for old and one for new. This would even improve fps, using an extra core properly. They COULD have made Sansar a SL2 and made nearly all their customers happy, and gained new customers as word of mouth spreads.
Instead, LL is throwing all existing paying customers under a bus in order to chase potential customers. The only time in history I can remember a new system succeeding without backwards compatibility was apples Macintosh. And a) it was a huge tech breakthrough and b) sales took time to lift the company's fortunes - they relied on the apple 2 sales to stay fed for some time. Not until the Mac 512 did this incompatible system help the company.
It is not that Sansar cannot be backwards compatible - it is that ll chooses not to make it so. And it is not silly of me to expect to use that which I have paid for. There is no SL2. Ll will not make it happen. So combined with all the previous incompetence and lying, why would anyone trust ll with their money in a new venture? Ex) how many of the previous efforts ll has made to build a nonSL anything been fruitful? They tried to make money from nonSL folks with the Dorito construction set; I suspect they made less than was spent on coffee over those months. With the lack of backwards compatibility, why should Sansar be any different?
The only positive is that when Sansar fails and takes sl with it, I'll be able to go back to writing once more.
Posted by: Shockwave yareach | Monday, July 11, 2016 at 11:35 AM
Glad it's been dropped for SL. VR is a roaring success for some people though:
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/07/japan-vr-porn-festival-shut-down/
Posted by: Mr. S | Monday, July 11, 2016 at 01:19 PM
David Rowe has kindly updated his CtrlAltStudio viewer to CV1 support: ctrlaltstudio.com/blog/2016/04/05/oculus-cv1-support
Posted by: Graham Mills | Monday, July 11, 2016 at 02:35 PM