Back at the end of April, word got out that Second Life would be getting Oculus Rift support. In a new interview, Linden Labs (developer of Second Life) CEO, Rod Humble says that the company is working on making Second Life Oculus Rift support a “triple A experience…”
Second Life (2003) is a free massively multiplayer role playing game (MMORPG) where players create virtual avatars to inhabit the world. Players can create homes, clothes, buildings, and more; a virtual economy provides ways for players to sell and trade such goods. Second Life has around 33 million registered users.
Jo Yardley’s Second Life reports the following from CEO Rod Humble in an interview with Draxtor Despres released today:
We’re working internally on integrating Oculus Rift and VR headsets, which I’m really exciting about. I can’t wait, it’s already great.
It is actually trivial to get it up and working so you can look around, what isn’t trivial is you absolutely need to now convert all of your user interface because when you’re looking around you can’t track around with your mouse, it doesn’t feel right anymore.
So you have to make that UI helped with where you’re looking. Which is astonishing, we wouldn’t have predicted that but it’s really really necessary.
We have the Oculus Rift working within Second Life and we are working to make it a triple A experience particularly round the user interface.
We’re glad to hear these words from Humble; he makes it pretty clear that Second Life Oculus Rift support won’t be experimental or alpha, rather, it’s going to be a fullly polished experience.
There’s no word yet on when exactly we’ll see Second Life Oculus Rift support, but according to the interview, Linden Labs plans to roll out some improvements to their platform this quarter and the next — perhaps Rift support will be implemented then or shortly thereafter.
Regarding the future of Linden Labs an Second Life, Humble says:
We are working on not only large features for Second Life but also we have a very very large virtual world investment that we haven’t announced yet and that is still a few years out but I think that’s going to really excite people.
I think that Virtual Reality, things like the Oculus Rift are very important.And I also think that one of the biggest multipliers that will happen within virtual worlds is creation tools getting easier and easier. And that’s going to be a huge bonus.
We’ve been having a lot of fun and as I said, our largest product it is virtual world related and for Second Life Users, I think people are going to be excited. But that is a few years out.