…is Linden Labs’ Second Life Project OculusRift 4.1.0.317313
Released just a couple days ago, I learned of its existence because of a Tweet by Jo Yardley (@1920sberlin)… and excitedly downloaded it to try it out. So far, I hate it.
Here’s what a rather small window of the regular 4k flat monitor looks like in 1920s Berlin, with pretty much all the graphics stuff set to ultra, super-duper, make-all-the-fans-spin-fast settings…
And here’s the hammered-$#!+ that happens when going into HMD mode…
Bright noon-day sun. No shadows. No character to the sim at all. Jaggy resolution. Jaggy motion. No mouse pointer (can’t open doors).
Linden Labs had a decade of a head start in VR before the first generally available consumer VR HMDs came out. All the other things necessary to make 3D HMD stuff get really immersive has already matured (CPU power, GPU power, broadband availability, etc.). So Linden Labs had a crazy advantage toward making Johnny-come-lately AltSpaceVR look absolutely noob-stoopid. (And it does look absolutely noob-stoopid.) However, I fear that noob-stoopid is going to win all the attention and users because, from an HMD-user perspective, and even from a 2D hey-I-found-this-thing-on-Steam perspective, that $#!+ “just works”.
Oh sure. It’s pretty easy to make SecondLife look soooo much better than AltSpaceVR. On a flat monitor, anyway. The avatars in AltSpaceVR are laughably horrible. Everybody looks like a friggin’ Pez dispenser, at best. But you can probably voice chat with them without wrestling with your audio settings. It probably already just works.
Then we get to HMD, and, well, the WORST thing I’ve yet to see available in the Store from Oculus Home – and I’ve seen some pretty crappy stuff – the worst thing was still far better than how SecondLife looks in Project OculusRift 4.1.0.317313.
Funny that the Release Page shows a long list of “Resolved” issues. All the problems I’ve listed so far are either listed exactly as one of the resolved issues, or there’s something VERY close in that list. Looks to me like maybe most of the Resolved issues accidentally didn’t actually get into the build that they put out for download.
And – again – SecondLife is largely WHY I got an Oculus Rift. So this $#!++y behavior from a FOUR-DOT-ONE release is crushingly disappointing.
Sansar better get released to public beta SOON. And it had better be so awesome I crap my pants. Otherwise, Linden Labs will become nothing more than a footnote in the VR story – if that. That would be sad. They had so many advantages.
