Second Life Overhauls Graphics, Adds Oculus Rift Support

[IanDavis]

Second Life Overhauls Graphics, Adds Oculus Rift Support

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The virtual social sim shows off its substantial upgrade with a new trailer.

Time is a funny thing. We treat decade-old games like octogenarians. We're curious about the strange time they come from and admire their tenacity for enduring this long. Since Second Life's [a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/125243-Second-Life-Celebrates-10-Years-Of-Sexy-Creativity]tenth anniversary[/a] this summer, Linden Labs has been overhauling the creative social game, adding a fresh coat of paint, Facebook integration, a new shopping experience, and a good bit more.

For reference, Second Life launched about the same time that the original Call of Duty did. While it's received various graphical updates since then, this most recent facelift should help prepare it for the brave new world of 2013. Along with new lighting and graphical effects, avatars should also load significantly faster, as the trailer demonstrates.

It's not all just graphical effects, as Linden even did a lot of work on the general user experience as well. Chat's been improved, shopping's been simplified, and the new Facebook integration actually makes sense for a game as socially-oriented as Second Life.

Old games like these can get pretty set in their ways, so a new "Welcome Island" will be there to greet incoming players. While the pretty lighthouse island will seem inviting to most people, it's liable to give Bioshock players flashbacks, so be warned.

The trailer ends suggesting that Oculus Rift support is coming soon, which should make all those flying dongs that much more immersive.

Source: [a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqxR1yBKTEk]YouTube[/a]

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[Victim of Progress]

First person, virtual reality furry sex?

Sign me up!

Goddamn you!!! I was about to write that myself.

 

[sirjeffofshort]

I think I'm going to bookmark this story so I have something to point to when my grand children ask "Hey, how did it come about that we all live in a virtual matrix now?"

 

[Roxas1359]

...and so the dawn of the extinction of man shall soon be upon us. XD

First person, virtual reality furry sex?

Sign me up!

I laughed more at this than I should have. XD

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

I always liked Second Life... in theory. There's unlimited potential there, it's like the internet itself, represented as a threedimensional virtual world of unlimitied possibilities. And there's hints of that potential being realised but sadly it just didn't catch on and has stayed a small niche type of game. A real shame. I'd really like to see it live up to it's full potential and maybe some day becoming the common way to access the internet. Well, a man can dream...

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

Oculus Rift support... huh...

Prior to now, I never had much interest in Second Life or any of its contemporaries; but with full VR immersion?

I'm tempted to try it out

 

[SadisticFire]

First person, virtual reality furry sex?

Sign me up!

Part of me wants to be angry at perpetuating this stereotype, but the other part of my laughed in the middle of class. So I'll go with
God damn you making my laugh in the middle class, you should feel awful.
But that's pretty sweet. I hope that they also optomize it because as is it's pretty inefficient and laggy.

 

[Covarr]

Second Life has a worse community than League of Legends. I'm not sure if it's something I want to get into. But damn, if it's not the perfect use case for the Rift.

P.S. Thanks

 

[SadisticFire]

Second Life has a worse community than League of Legends.

Citation Needed? Cause I've been there and found majority nice people. It could be coincidental in servers, but that just sounds like something completely false. I've actually found higher percentage of indiffernt to actively kind community than most online social interactions.
Offnote. my posts feel short :c

 

[Ranorak]

Is this "game" really nothing but sex?

Cause I think this might be interesting, but I'm not really looking for a porn MMO.

 

[Glaice]

The engine is highly unoptimized last I remember and took ages to load new areas of land when I dabbled with it a long time ago. Not impressed with fidelity, I prefer to see the engine fixed up.

 

[Not Matt]

Wait. Second life is really an actual game. I thought it was just a joke on the expense of furrys everywhere.

 

[Rad Party God]

Now the world shall be tortured by full HD, 3D furry porn!

 

[fraujo]

Second Life is awesome, but it has a bad reputation.
Fact is, that SL is made by the people who use it, it is just like the internet.
Lots of weirdos and filth... but also plenty of gems and amazing places.
In the last almost 5 years I've spend there I have seen less then 10 furries (none of them doing hanky panky), I've seen no naughty stuff happening.
I've seen riots, shootouts, car races, but I've also just been to the cinema, danced, listened to music, chatted, had fun and above all, I got to build stuff.

You can do anything there and you can find people doing anything.
So if you end up in XXX clubs where furries do some acrobatic nasty stuff, run away... or stop looking for those places

Look for something YOU like and then go there.
I'm boring, I'm a history nerd, I want to use SL for some virtual time travel, so that is what I do.
And soon I'll be doing that with the Oculus Rift, exploring ancient cities, long lost civilisations or just have a wild weekend in Berlin during the 1920s.

SL can be slow, not because of the engine but because it is build by people like you and me, not game designers.
So they use big textures, laggy scripts, etc.
But it has improved a lot lately and I still prefer visiting a place some regular Joe build or what see what my friends create, than seeing just another game.

BTW, yes I am a hardcore SL user and have been for almost 5 years.
Feel free to ask me any questions about it.

 

[A-D.]

Is this "game" really nothing but sex?

Cause I think this might be interesting, but I'm not really looking for a porn MMO.

SL is not a "Porn MMO". Sex exists, but then again if you complain about sex existing, you may as well stop using the internet, or stop being alive, because we got more porn on the internet than anything else and of course there's the porn industry in real life that keeps chugging along just fine. If you dont want to see pixel-humping, dont go to places which offer it, its literally impossible to "stumble" over it at random.

Well since everything is behind some sort of pay wall, yes.

You could fly and create whatever in the game's editor and sell the items. Problem was that you have no where to put them unless you buy land with real money and pay upkeep.

But the game is a ghost town, so you can walk among of the abandoned ruins of what used to be a populated area. So even if you want sex the joke is on you because there's no one around.

Oh dear, the ignorance is a little frightening there.

There is no "pay wall" as you call it. You can get into the game without a single cent, you are not forced or expected to spend any cash at all. However, who do you think makes all the stuff SL actually has? Its not Linden Labs, i can tell you that. Everything, from wierd crap to simple clothes is made by other users who expect to get paid for it.

You can create stuff yourself, but its an option. If anyone goes into that thinking "i can make loads of cash" i gotta tell you, thats not going to happen. There is so much competition between stores that everyday a new one pops up while another closes forever. The only way to make any real profit in SL is with land rentals, i.e. buying land and renting it out, but even that is not as profitable as it used to be. However the whole "physical store" thing is also a thing of the past since you can now make stuff and sell it over their marketplace without actually needing to have a physical store in-world.

Also, ghost town, really? Now granted alot of Sims are empty, and there arent enough people for the size of the whole grid, but its hardly a ghost town. Of course if you stick to PG or M rated sims, you wont see alot of people. Most hang out in the Adult areas but there you will run risk of seeing "naughty bits".

 

[fraujo]

Is this "game" really nothing but sex?

Cause I think this might be interesting, but I'm not really looking for a porn MMO.

Well since everything is behind some sort of pay wall, yes.

You could fly and create whatever in the game's editor and sell the items. Problem was that you have no where to put them unless you buy land with real money and pay upkeep.

But the game is a ghost town, so you can walk among of the abandoned ruins of what used to be a populated area. So even if you want sex the joke is on you because there's no one around.

It is not all about porn and everything is not behind some sort of pay wall.
You can go everywhere and do pretty much everything without ever paying a penny.
If you want to build stuff you can go to free sandboxes or decide to rent land, this can be very very cheap.
You can rent a place for 20 cents a week, some even cheaper.

The 'game' is also not a ghost town, it is just a HUGE world and its users are global.
So if you visit a sim mostly frequented by Europeans at a time when they are generally all at work on in bed in real life, yes the place can be empty while it is busy in the evening.
The place where I hang out is almost never empty, there are always a few people around.

And if you want hanky panky, it is very very very easy to find a place with people, it can actually happen that the sim is full.

Oops sorry, didn't see that someone else already replied.
Oh well, can't say some things too often.