How to Use the VR Version Of Second Life For Firestorm & Steam VR

Austin Tate has a very useful, in-depth tutorial for installing and running Peter Kappler's VR version of the Firestorm viewer for Second Life (which I blogged earlier this year), with bonus points for a how-to on installing an XBox One/360 controller to run with the Oculus Rift installation.

While Second Life isn't social VR per se, it remains the largest, content rich social virtual world space with (relatively) high end graphics that can be explored in a VR rig.

As you might expect, Austin tells me/warns me that graphics performance does take a hit in virtual reality:

"Of course it depends on the framerate that can be achieved in the region and with the graphics settings," as he puts it. "I just 
posted some tests with Firestorm VR 6.0.1 in VR mode compared to Firestorm 6.0.2 (no VR) with same scene, same settings, etc. It looks to me like framerate is only down 25% or less in VR. I will be doing a much more careful comparison in the coming days for a separate blog post." So follow his blog here.

Average Second Life frame rate is about 30-60 FPS with a good PC rig and in a well-optimized, lightly populated sim, so a 25% degradation is pretty substantial. For instance, adds Austin: "I had a mainland region Houseboat on a very busy Second Life region that barely achieves 10 FPS in normal views, and that definitely did not work in VR, it flickers very badly." But seems like performance would still be decent enough to explore a sim like Drune IV during off-peak hours.

Comments

[Skate Foss]

Wouldn’t it have been nice if Linden Lab used the resources it spent on Sansar to update SecondLife to run on a virtual reality platform. They already have the user base, they already have the virtual world.

[Ai Austin]

I did some more testing... some Social VR settinmgs using Firestorm VR are pictured at:

http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/social-vr-using-firestorm-vr/

Some specific figures I observed on one Second Life scene trying to make the view distance (256m), graphics settings (High), etc the same...

◾Linden Lab 6.2.4 96-106fps
◾Firestorm 6.0.2 176-188fps
◾Firestorm VR 6.0.1 2D mode 136-144fps
◾Firestorm VR 6.0.1 VR mode 82-84fps

Put simply it looks roughly like Firestorm 6.0.2 100%, Firestorm VR 6.0.1 2D mode 75%, Firestorm VR 6.0.1 VR mode 50%. But the 6.0.1 VR mode is still roughly the same as the Linden Lab 6.2.4 viewer in 2D mode.

[Sassol IT Solutions]

Superb to see you continuing your efforts. Push enough and Linden Lab may really embrace your techniques, as they did with 360 panoramics!

[anna]

TCZ Superb to see you continuing your efforts. Push enough and Linden Lab may really embrace your techniques, as they did with 360 panoramics!