What's Second Life most need to transition to the Oculus/VR age, and be relevant in it? Palmer's reply was pretty interesting, when you think about it:

"I think that virtual worlds are going to play a big role in the future of Oculus and VR on the whole," Palmer Luckey says, "but it remains to be seen how big of a part of that future Second Lift will be."

I just had a short exchange with Oculus Rift founder Palmer Luckey on the future of Second Life and other virtual worlds in VR, following up on his comments at SVVR . Did he have anything to add about Second Life's specific role in Oculus Rift's future?

"I don't think anyone will know for sure until VR has more time to mature," he tells me. "Lots of poorly understood problems right now." If I'm reading that right, we'll need much more time using and developing for VR, before we'll be ready to build a virtual world that ideally works with that new platform.

As for Second Life viewers developed to run with Oculus Rift right now: "There are some cool third party viewers," Palmer says, "but the initial official release from Linden left a lot to be desired. I hear they just put out a new update, but I have only tried the old ones."

As I noted last week, he lasted used Second Life for a Bitcoin purchase: "I was buying Bitcoins, not selling them (I don't sell my BTC holdings), and it was the last time I used it extensively," he clarifies. As he told All Things D last year: "It’s very difficult to get into. There’s a steep learning curve. The last time I went into Second Life was to buy Bitcoins from a crazy guy who was selling them below market value, but you had to go into Second Life to meet with him."

Which is also pretty interesting, when you think about it: The guy who's done so much to drive the idea of the metaverse forward is irked by the difficulty of using the closest thing we have to a metaverse.

Please share this post:

Tweet