Can I see SL in virtual reality?

[NeoCandor]

Hi everyone,

I've been gone a very long time.

Is it possible to enter Second Life with VR? Any viewer will do. I just want to see what it looks like? I heard there is or was a viewer that has support for VR.

Many thanks!

[Lindal Kidd]

There was an experimental viewer, Ctrl Alt Studio, I believe.  But it only worked with the Rift Developer version, and it's not available any more.

While it would seem that VR and SL are a match made in heaven, it proved too hard to adapt the user interface to a VR environment, or at least I believe that was the problem.

If you insist on a multi-user virtual world in VR, there's always VRChat. 

Edited April 17, 2020 by Lindal Kidd

[Deepert]

So far i know its the frame rate in second life that can not handle  vr 

its just to slow to run vr

[ChinRey]

8 hours ago, Deepert said:

So far i know its the frame rate in second life that can not handle  vr

It doesn't have to be. With optimized content it's perfectly possible to make scenes in SL with render load low enough to give a frame rate high enough for VR, at least on a high end computer. But optimized content is very rare in SL and there are also other factors than performance that makes SL unsuitable for VR headsets.

 

[kiramanell]

Technology is one thing. Point is, that VR, the way we currently do it, is inherently flawed. You basically get car sick, after a while, as our vestibulocochlear organ (inner ear) finds a discrepancy between what its sensory input tells it about our position, and what our brains see with our eyes, and can't keep that difference up for long. Apart from heavy medication, there's no real way around that. If it weren't so, I would be all over VR -- and many companies with me, I suspect.

[Bree Giffen]

The Oculus Rift and subsequent headsets solved that problem. A VR headset that runs at 60 frames per second was the breakthrough needed to bring the current wave of VR. The problem with SL is that sometimes we can't even get 30 fps on a regular computer.

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

The Oculus Rift and subsequent headsets solved that problem. A VR headset that runs at 60 frames per second was the breakthrough needed to bring the current wave of VR.

It solved the problem for some people. Real Life has a much higher frame rate than that and people still get sea sick or car sick there.

But there's another just as iportant problem with VR in SL. The whole diea behind VR is to allow the user to immerse themselves into a virtual reality. Second Life is not made for that level of immersion, it's made to be watched from a bit of distance. Try to spend a few hours in mouselook and you should get the idea.

[Luna Bliss]

Here's a Firestorm VR mod....not sure if it's still applicable...

http://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/2019/09/27/firestorm-vr-6-2-4/

[Luna Bliss]

4 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Second Life is not made for that level of immersion, it's made to be watched from a bit of distance. Try to spend a few hours in mouselook and you should get the idea.

Mouselook is very different from VR though...however there are some similarities.

[Bree Giffen]

5 hours ago, ChinRey said:

It solved the problem for some people. Real Life has a much higher frame rate than that and people still get sea sick or car sick there.

But there's another just as important problem with VR in SL. The whole idea behind VR is to allow the user to immerse themselves into a virtual reality. Second Life is not made for that level of immersion, it's made to be watched from a bit of distance. Try to spend a few hours in mouselook and you should get the idea.

I think that's true. There are people who need higher frame rates. But video card technology becomes faster every few months with each new release. Eventually we'll get to a point where the technology becomes good enough for every single person to use VR.

VR also works great from the perspective of looking down on your character. VR games like Astrobot Rescue and Moss both show a separate avatar from the player and are quite amazing to play. SL in 3rd person VR would probably feel like looking at an exquisitely made doll/action figure in a beautiful dollhouse/landscape. 

[ChinRey]

14 minutes ago, Bree Giffen said:

I think that's true. There are people who need higher frame rates. But video card technology becomes faster every few months with each new release. Eventually we'll get to a point where the technology becomes good enough for every single person to use VR.

If there was a technological solution, we'd have found a cure for seasickness long ago.

Because that's what it's essentially about, your eyes tell you something, your balance organs tell you something completely different and the brain has to try to figure it out. Some people handle it with no problems at all, some can't take it at all and most people are somewhere in between. This basic problem has nothing to do with fps at all, low frame rate only strengthens the effect byt adding even more fonusion for the poor brain to sort out.

Edit: I should clarify, I'm not against VR in SL at all, I really, really wish it would happen. It's one of the reasons why I've specialized in making content that with lwoer lag than what any other SL cotnent creator can manage. I can't see how it's ever going to happen though.

Edited April 19, 2020 by ChinRey

[Luna Bliss]

16 minutes ago, Bree Giffen said:

VR also works great from the perspective of looking down on your character.

Yes, what most creates a sense of objects being 3 dimensional (in RL and virtual reality) is binocular vision (each eye looking in from a different perspective, as our eyes are spaced apart just a bit).  One can have this perspective & feel more immersed no matter how close up or far away one is when viewing the scene.
Mouselook just shoves your avatar up close but does not address binocular vision -- vision using two eyes with overlapping fields of view, allowing good perception of depth.

[Luna Bliss]

7 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

If there was a technological solution, we'd have found a cure for seasickness long ago.

Because that's what it's essentially about, your eyes tell you something, your balance organs tell you something completely different and the brain has to try to figure it out.

Well, technology can further trick the body 

And they are trying to do that, influencing proprioception  (perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body) with mechanical devices.

[ChinRey]

4 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

And they are trying to do that, influencing proprioception  (perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body) with mechanical devices.

Yes, that's the way to go but now we're talking about a rig that is far more complex than a pair of video screens mounted inside goggles.

[Luna Bliss]

2 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Yes, that's the way to go but now we're talking about a rig that is far more complex than a pair of video screens mounted inside goggles.

Indeed, and with all the trauma in the world today I do think this will be a long time coming, if ever (for the general population at the right price point).

[kiramanell]

6 hours ago, ChinRey said:

It solved the problem for some people. Real Life has a much higher frame rate than that and people still get sea sick or car sick there.

But there's another just as iportant problem with VR in SL. The whole diea behind VR is to allow the user to immerse themselves into a virtual reality. Second Life is not made for that level of immersion, it's made to be watched from a bit of distance. Try to spend a few hours in mouselook and you should get the idea.

 

VR would at least solve one of my major pet peeves: constantly finding yourself camming from behind walls/ceilings/etc. Car sickness remains a beatch, though.

[kiramanell]

35 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

If there was a technological solution, we'd have found a cure for seasickness long ago.

Because that's what it's essentially about, your eyes tell you something, your balance organs tell you something completely different and the brain has to try to figure it out. Some people handle it with no problems at all, some can't take it at all and most people are somewhere in between. This basic problem has nothing to do with fps at all, low frame rate only strengthens the effect byt adding even more fonusion for the poor brain to sort out.

Edit: I should clarify, I'm not against VR in SL at all, I really, really wish it would happen. It's one of the reasons why I've specialized in making content that with lwoer lag than what any other SL cotnent creator can manage. I can't see how it's ever going to happen though.

 

Zactly!

Problem is, that car sickness is a progressive condition: you get nauseous a bit, at first, and then progressively more so over time -- to the point where no medication can overcome the nausea any more (such medicine esentially works by increasing the viscosity of the fluids in the cochlea, thus dampening the effect a bit). And even if you could fully freeze it, as it were, you'd still want to be able to get up occasionally and get to the little ladies room, LOL.

I think VALVe has the only true system against car sickness: basically, just a large empty room, where you are making the actually movements you do in-world. I don't have it, yet (who has a spare 10m X 10m room?!). But it looks promising.

[Luna Bliss]

3 hours ago, kiramanell said:

VR would at least solve one of my major pet peeves: constantly finding yourself camming from behind walls/ceilings/etc

Let me tell you, there is much worse trouble you can get into with VR -- I am living proof!

[Lindal Kidd]

I think one of the problems with VR as it relates to SL would be that (as someone else said) it would be a lot like Mouselook...and we could not see ourselves.

I think seeing your own avatar is one of the best features about SL...just look at how many pages the "How Does Your Avatar Look Today" thread has!  This is probably why they invented "mirrors" in VRChat.

[kiramanell]

Just now, Lindal Kidd said:

I think one of the problems with VR as it relates to SL would be that (as someone else said) it would be a lot like Mouselook...and we could not see ourselves.

I think seeing your own avatar is one of the best features about SL...just look at how many pages the "How Does Your Avatar Look Today" thread has!  This is probably why they invented "mirrors" in VRChat.

 

The real underlying issue with that is still the lack of true mirrors.

[Lindal Kidd]

I do miss mirrors in SL.  But I think RL would be soooo much nicer if we could cam out and see our actual selves.

[Mollymews]

5 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I think RL would be soooo much nicer if we could cam out and see our actual selves.

nearly 😸

[kiramanell]

4 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I do miss mirrors in SL.  But I think RL would be soooo much nicer if we could cam out and see our actual selves.

 

That'd be nice.  But I like mouselook (why, actually I don't, as it's crappily implemented), but I really dislike constantly finding myself camming behind a wall or ceiling. I have like this beautiful, but small scifi apartment, that's virtually uninhabitable, because I can't take one step without my camera being inside the ceiling or something. We could use viewers with a 'Keep camera inside structure' option. That would require considerable A.I. though.

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, kiramanell said:

We could use viewers with a 'Keep camera inside structure' option. That would require considerable A.I. though.

Yes, or alternativetly you could switch Camera Constraint on:

It used to be on by default actually, I don't know when they changed it. It doesn't work very well though.

[Bree Giffen]

6 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I think one of the problems with VR as it relates to SL would be that (as someone else said) it would be a lot like Mouselook...and we could not see ourselves.

I think seeing your own avatar is one of the best features about SL...just look at how many pages the "How Does Your Avatar Look Today" thread has!  This is probably why they invented "mirrors" in VRChat.

You can see yourself in VR if the viewer was programmed that way. The effect is unlike anything I've seen in in VR and through a flat screen. Where 1st person VR gives you immersion, 3rd person VR gives you a certain kind of eerie reality that can be best described by looking at tilt-shift photographs.