Can I see SL in virtual reality?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

On 4/18/2020 at 1:54 PM, kiramanell said:

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.

As someone who gets car sick very easily, I can stay in VR for 8 hours straight and feel perfectly fine, besides the physical exhaustion. The problems you talk about happen mainly (or at least universally?) when the framerate goes down (or bad tracking, which is more of a problem with the physical setup). The people who get sick from just being in VR seem to be a minority.

The main reason why VR remains niche is the cost of entry. VR is expensive and doesn't have that much quality content for it. Developers/publishers aren't making content for VR because it doesn't have a large customer base. One of those things needs to change before things can really improve.

6 hours ago, kiramanell said:

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

It really doesn't. All it requires are a couple line checks from the avatar to where the camera wants to be. If there is something in between, the camera gets moved closer. Like ChinRey pointed out, it even already exists. Making it better essentially only needs more parallel "lines" to check (denser = detect smaller objects that might be in the way).

[kiramanell]

2 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

As someone who gets car sick very easily, I can stay in VR for 8 hours straight and feel perfectly fine, besides the physical exhaustion. The problems you talk about happen mainly (or at least universally?) when the framerate goes down (or bad tracking, which is more of a problem with the physical setup). The people who get sick from just being in VR seem to be a minority.

 

That's nice for you, but I can't even play a game like Doom (at 120 Hz). constantly spinning about, quickly reacting to enemies, without getting car sick VERY SOON. And that's not even in VR. Also, sensitivity to frame rate is also not universally the same. Some ppl get car sick at 40 FPS already (and below), others, like yours truly, don't seem to be affected by it much.

 

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The main reason why VR remains niche is the cost of entry. VR is expensive and doesn't have that much quality content for it. Developers/publishers aren't making content for VR because it doesn't have a large customer base. One of those things needs to change before things can really improve.

 

You won't really need to have to 'make content for VR': the conversion to VR mapping will be done automagically, for every content in SL.

And you're trying to wag the dog's tail, if you think a 'large customer base' needs to exist before VR will be widely improved. The technology for VR will first need to be improved before VR itself will become more popular. "Build it, and they will come." Not "Let's hope they will come, and then we'll improve on the tech."

 

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It really doesn't. All it requires are a couple line checks from the avatar to where the camera wants to be. If there is something in between, the camera gets moved closer. Like ChinRey pointed out, it even already exists. Making it better essentially only needs more parallel "lines" to check (denser = detect smaller objects that might be in the way).

 

Yeah, that's the makeshift solution, sans A.I. And, as ChinRey pointed out, it doesn't even work properly, half the time. That's why I said a real A.I. would be needed: one that doesn't just only keep the cam between objects and you, but simply 'understands' where the true outlines are, like walls and ceilings.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 hour ago, kiramanell said:

That's nice for you, but I can't even play a game like Doom (at 120 Hz). constantly spinning about, quickly reacting to enemies, without getting car sick VERY SOON. And that's not even in VR. Also, sensitivity to frame rate is also not universally the same. Some ppl get car sick at 40 FPS already (and below), others, like yours truly, don't seem to be affected by it much.

Just to clarify for context, do you have VR? I wasn't saying that everybody gets affected by low framerates the same. I'm saying that everybody, when the FPS gets low enough for them, will suffer. For example if you show them a still frame and tell them to move their head. I'm pretty resistant to it, I can put up with 15+ FPS although it's not comfortable, but if it hits that or below, I crumble to the floor.

Also, if you're saying that you're getting car sick while playing on a flat monitor, this is literally the first time I've ever heard of that happening to anyone and I've been playing games my whole life. I don't doubt you, but I can't imagine that being normal.

1 hour ago, kiramanell said:

You won't really need to have to 'make content for VR': the conversion to VR mapping will be done automagically, for every content in SL.

And you're trying to wag the dog's tail, if you think a 'large customer base' needs to exist before VR will be widely improved. The technology for VR will first need to be improved before VR itself will become more popular. "Build it, and they will come." Not "Let's hope they will come, and then we'll improve on the tech."

When I was talking about VR content, I wasn't saying for SL. I'm very aware of the basic concepts of how VR works on the programming side, I've been making games as a hobby for a few years and I'm a full-time student in a "coding school." (Not game related.)

But it's absolutely true that a lot of companies will look at VR and say "we can't afford to develop a game for such a small platform. Too high risk." The market is very small, and most of the content that exists is bad. (I've tired subscription-based platforms like Viveport. 95% actual shovelware, 3% dead games, 2% actually playable but mainly singleplayer.)

You can read any number of articles on why serious companies aren't working on VR games/content. The ones we get are indies, asset flippers (buy ready-made stuff and resell it as a game, poor quality), and unfinished "early access" type stuff. We need more exceptions like Beat Saber, Boneworks, Half Life: Alyx, and to a lesser extent Skyrim/Fallout VR conversions but none of these are frequent.

1 hour ago, kiramanell said:

Yeah, that's the makeshift solution, sans A.I. And, as ChinRey pointed out, it doesn't even work properly, half the time. That's why I said a real A.I. would be needed: one that doesn't just only keep the cam between objects and you, but simply 'understands' where the true outlines are, like walls and ceilings.

To me this sounds like cutting bread with one of these:

It'd work, but it seems a bit overkill...

I've never heard of any game using AI for their camera, lol. I can't think of any situation where you couldn't implement a "don't go through stuff" camera with simple raycasting and a sphere-shaped collider. Personally I have no idea how the camera in Firestorm is so bad at staying inside buildings, unless it's one of those "the physics shape is messed up so it's not the computer's fault" things again.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[kiramanell]

33 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Also, if you're saying that you're getting car sick while playing on a flat monitor, this is literally the first time I've ever heard of that happening to anyone and I've been playing games my whole life. I don't doubt you, but I can't imagine that being normal.

 

Oh yeah, that's a real thing.  It's based on the same principle that affects VR, namely a discrepancy between your physical position, and what movements your brain sees you make in-game. VR is more immersive, of course. And on a flat monitor you still have reality around it to visually 'anker' your real-world position, so the effects in VR are much stronger, and far more immediate. But if your monitor is large enough, and you start making all sorts of crazy spin-motions in-game, it can surely happen too.

Yes, I have one of the older (pre-order) Oculus Rift VR's, but very soon abandoned it, not even for the nausea, but because the framerate and resolution were simply too low.

 

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But it's absolutely true that a lot of companies will look at VR and say "we can't afford to develop a game for such a small platform. Too high risk." The market is very small, and most of the content that exists is bad. (I've tired subscription-based platforms like Viveport. 95% actual shovelware, 3% dead games, 2% actually playable but mainly singleplayer.)

 

You'd be surprised.  Look in the STEAM store, for instance: more and more gaming are given the VR-treatment. (I'd love to play Alyx!) Some of these games are, indeed, specifically made for VR (much like, in the early days of 3D movies, films were specifically made to showcase 3D), but it's not necessary. Like a Dev of Star Trek Online had a friend, who ported a storyline mission for him to VR (inside the mycelial network), which was reportedly gorgeous -- and sans any adaptation to the mission-code. Like I said, if my brain could handle it well, I'd be all over VR.

As for the use of A.I to determine the true outlines of an SL home, I think that's still like 20 years away; but it's undoubtedly going to happen, and be deemed entirely normal too. In the meantime, would be nice if LL added an extra settable flag/attribute to prims and such, like an 'Outline Object' flag, that would greatly help the camera. Or simply improve upon Mouselook.

Edited April 20, 2020 by kiramanell

[ChinRey]

12 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

just look at how many pages the "How Does Your Avatar Look Today" thread has!

SL is certainly very avatar centered. But it would be itneresting to know what is the cause and what is the effect here.

A game developer I met long ago said that you can make anything you like with Unreal Engine (it was UE3 at that time) but you really had to struggle if you didn't want to make a combat game.

Similarly - although not nearly as strongly - you can do anything you like in SL but almost everything lead you towards the "doll up your avi" alternative. When I joined SL, I would have laughed at anybody who suggested I would spend a lot of time working on my avatar's appearance. But it's so easy to do, just log in and off you go with a few minutes of innocent fun while your brain takes a break. Anything else you want to do in SL takes a little bit of effort to even get started.

I don't for a minute believe avatar customisation is inherently what most people in the world would find the msot attractive use for a virtual world I don't even believe it's what most SL'ers joined for. But it is what SL was unintentionally made for.

[Da5id Weatherwax]

For most people, motion sickness gets less severe over time. It's why even experienced sailors still get seasick after a long time ashore but then regain their "sea legs" - so for VR most people should become less sensitive to it with increased duration of use and increased frequency of use. The brain adapts and learns that this discrepancy between the visual and balance centers inputs is "normal"

In seasickness though, there is a population that never adapts in this way. I doubt those folks, of which I suspect we have a few in this discussion, would ever find a VR SL comfortable, no matter the framerate.

[Takeshi Hykova]

I'm sorta confused. Isn't there a completely separate grid that LL started for VR? (VR Goggles)

Edited April 24, 2020 by Takeshi Hykova

[Ardy Lay]

Once upon a time, there was a private estate, owned and paid for by a VR fan.  They only had content there that rendered quickly.  They were building a city.  One had to have a VR headset and be invited to the estate owner's group to visit this estate.  I didn't have a VR headset and wasn't about to purchase one at the time, so, sadly, declined an invitation to the group.  When LL pulled the VR project viewer, the estate owner stopped talking about their estate.  I suppose it's gone now.  All I have are memories of some of the snapshots.  Those didn't look austere in any way except there were never any avatars in the images.

[Solar Legion]

1. You're not going to get VR in Second Life without first updating the renderer to use modern OpenGL and/or Vulkan
2. Current VR hardware is quite expensive
3. There is no need whatsoever for an AI driven camera system - none
4. Not everyone is going to want to use Voice, which is the present 'norm' for VR social communication

There are other options out there if you really want a VR based social world. Until number one in the above list happens, they're your only choices. Pick one.

[Takeshi Hykova]

OK I did a little research a while back Linden Labs was trying to develop a VR based grid separate from the normal SL Gird. it was called SANSAR. But it was abandoned recently and was sold off to a small company. Here is the news story'

"The game developer behind Second Life has abandoned its grand efforts for a virtual reality follow-up to its early 2000s hit.

SF-based Linden Lab announced today that they’ve sold off assets related to Sansar to a small, little-known company called Wookey Search Technologies, which will take over development of the title. Linden Lab will continue developing and maintaining Second Life and it sounds like some of its employees will be joining Wookey. The deal was reported by Protocol.

The game studio had already announced layoffs last month."

So it seems with the layoff it's basically going down the tubes. Below is the link to the site which still seems to be up.

https://www.sansar.com/

[Alwin Alcott]

5 minutes ago, Takeshi Hykova said:

 I did a little research a while back Linden Labs was trying to develop a VR based grid separate from the normal SL Gird. it was called SANSAR.

don't you think you try to kick in a open door? ..or the obvious thing?

There's a Sansar section on the forum here, there was no real need to investigate, you can read it there...


The official announcements were publicly made on the LL/SL blogs.