Oh my! Is our Second Life community, and especially the geeky part of it, losing it’s innovative edge? New World Notes posted a few days ago about how the Kinect is being used to move around and play in World of Warcraft. Watch this video:
Interesting to note: in 2008 already former Linden Lab Chairman Mitch Kapor was involved in the development of 3D web cameras enabling people to control their avatars by moving their body. Wagner James Au said in his post that an earlier version of the project “evolved into the Kinect”. Reading around, I learned on ArchVirtual that the co-developer of Hands-Free, Philippe Bossut, still works for… Linden Lab (the company behind Second Life).
All of which makes it even stranger that as yet we don’t have any video footage or stories about the Kinect in a Second Life context.
Is this because Second Life is not a gaming world? In the comments on New World Notes it seems people are interested in building in-world using Kinect hacks, but then again, sophisticated builders are a minority in Second Life.
So I set out to ask people in-world about Kinect. The AW Groupies is a very active tech chatgroup, but it seemed they were far more interested in discussing issues about “making meshes portable across platforms” (if you don’t understand a word of this, do not panic, go here)
Demoralized, I went to OpenSim, where I bumped into John “Pathfinder†Lester. Yes, also Pathfinder thinks the Kinect could be a game-changer, but no, he had no information about people in OpenSim or Second Life actually trying that out. “Give it some time”, he said.
Now, in case you have any doubts of the importance of what’s happening around the Kinect, Robert Scoble shared this video on Quora (notice the interesting remark about deviceless augmented reality!):
This work by rolandlegrand is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
Hey
That was a nice post.
Like the way you wrote.
Online games have been expanding like wildfire lately.
Plethoras of gaming website coming up lately are a testimony to this.
However as a core gamer, I found many of them missing the depth.
Of the many WATGame was the one that caught my attention. Clearly written by a passionate gamer, the articles had that distinctive feel to them.
I would like to know of any more that you would like to suggest on such topics.
Happy Writing!
I have to agree with you, because I share your opinion. LL should have innovation coming out of their ears. But there isn’t even a little drip.
But just for the fun of it, I won’t end this reaction with a sound of agreement.
I shall end this reaction with a question.
If I exchange my earned 119000 Linden Dollars (on a basic account) for Euro’s, I should have 200 something Euro’s. Do you think I can BUY a kinetic for that amount?
yes, actually you can buy the Kinect for that price. But of course, you might want an Xbox as well…
Ooh snap!
Guess I’ll have to raise the prices of this virtual clothes.