Is Second Life Too Technically Limited to Create a VR Version for It?

I'm intrigued with Peter Kappler's open source VR viewer for Second Life, but longtime SLer and heavy duty VR user Adeon Writer is unconvinced, writing in Comments:

Nothing about Second Life was made for VR. The avatar motion will make you want to puke after a few minutes, and since all that's serverside, nothing can be done about it.

And even if we had a 100% working VR view, you'll never be able to move your arms or legs around and have other people see it. It's not VR except in raw technicality only... not worth it.

This is all true, except possibly the last point. I've tried an early version of a VR viewer for Second Life, and didn't get nauseous; however, it's definitely not a full-featured VR experience as we understand it now. As for arm and leg tracking, while that doesn't exist now, that strikes me as an addressable issue.

But perhaps it's a matter of changing the experience metaphor:

If you're depicted as, for example, not as a humanoid avatar, but traveling through Second Life in a floating pod, like an alien exploring an ancient planetary civilization, there's a way to make this engaging. What I do know for sure is there's so much great content in Second Life that deserves a new audience; and if a way to make that accessible in VR can be developing, it's worth doing.

But I put that point to folks with more technical experience than me -- is it worth the trouble?

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

We'll never have motion tracking in Second Life unless Linden adds it themselves, was my point. And Linden has no interest in that.

In order for it to happen without Linden's involvment, clients would need to communicate their data directly with each other, bypassing Linden's servers entirely, and this is forbidden in Linden's third party viewer regulations, as well as violate their shared experience rules, where a third party viewer can't have features that are visible only other users of their viewer but not to the official client.

[Adeon Writer]

And just to make it clear: Second Life can be rendered fine in VR. You can look around fine and walk around fine. If a ton of work is done, you may even be able to move your hands and arms around with some tracked VR controllers. But no one else will ever see you doing it.

It will be impossible for anyone else to know that you are in VR at all, because there's no way for the server to send other people any information of that kind. Your avatar will show no outward sign of there being anything different going on than a normal desktop user. It will be an entirely personal experience, with you being a ghost no one else can see.

[P373R]

You could use an AO controlled through messages from the viewer with hand positions relative to your body. Would not be as fluid but still >;
Other way would be to engage in a p2p communication with people near by .. but that would require exchanging IPs which sucks a bit for privacy reasons.

The movment issue can be solved just dont allow people to move and turn at same time.

And btw you can make a vr viewer out of the windows calculator .. You just need to put enough work in to it ;>

But still LL will not implement any vr simply because they have Sansar;>

[John_Westra]

I've been using @SecondLife with @VRDesktop, configured to wrap the screen around me 180 degrees and the result, is it remains the most immersive, easy to customize, content & socially rich '#VR' platform available.

[Frogstar_b]

I honestly think SL is too well entrenched to be challenged by Sansar, Sinespace, High Fidelity etc. Maybe a solution could be to have a VR only continent in SL. That should solve the lag and scale issues. All we need know is for Firestorm VR to integrate with Oculus Touch controllers :-)

[daniel Mounsey]

it cant be TOO hard to release a viewer like cntrl-alt- viwer?
at least for those of us who DO get something out of the limited VR option of SL. I thoroughly enjoyed my time years ago in an old dk2 & sl..it was fascinating. Art making was fun.
There's so little information on who to encourage to do this! Im paying for SL now..and its expensive..at least give us a little more reason to stay!